The Setup

I was always fascinated by acid, ever wondering what it would be like to hallucinate. Would I see the things with my open eyes? Or would I be sleeping and dreaming an intense dream? Finally, it was time to find out! We were at the beach, Calangute beach, goa, to be exact. It was around 9 pm; I was with my best friend, let’s call him K; and one of his friends (let’s call him O).

I got the paper, which was promised to be 1500 mcg. The guy warned me only to eat only half of it, otherwise, it will get me fucked up, but, of course, I was going to take the whole thing. I took it, put it on my tongue and started sucking on it. With time, our curiosity grew, what will happen and more importantly when. K remarked we were tricked, and that was just a plain paper with some colors on it. After about an hour, I started to feel weird and told K that something was kicking in. He seemed skeptical and thought I was only saying that to justify myself that I wasn’t cheated.

The Onset

I felt sand on beach racing about, struggling to come up from the surface. I glanced up and saw stars started flowing. K and O still thought I am showing off to cover up because I was scammed. I got up and strolled about on the beach, and then hands came out from the sand and started gripping me, trying to pull me down. I was leaping and jumping here and there to avoid being grabbed. Glancing up again, I noted stars all turned green and were firing green rays of light down to the beach. I lied down and watched them moving fast and forming a wireframe of green lights while still firing green colored rays down. As I saw the horizon, in the dark shade of sea, I saw mountains tops climaxing at the end. And then a colossus Buddha lying sideways where there were mountains just a minute before. I asked K to help me back to the hotel sensing it will get out of hand real soon.  Leaning on his shoulder, we left for the hotel, as I struggled to avoid getting caught by those hands coming out from sand.




The Journey: Part 1

Our room was in a dark alley, with no street lamps and any moonlight completely blocked by long trees. When we walked in, I couldn’t open my eyes, because the vision was blazing. I saw blinding lights, my vision engulfed by a million different colored lights. Eyes closed, unable to see, K had to get me up and I climbed just feeling the stairs. In the room, I opened my eyes and noticed the intensity of light had decreased. There were faces coming out from the walls, all kinds of faces. Mostly animals with sharp teeth, like wolves, dogs, and a few were demons, dragons, and whatnot. The floor tiles started breaking and moving apart. I lay on the bed and the music got intense, and then a cloud formed over my head, and it started dripping blood on my face. K and O were sitting on the terrace while I laid inside. I felt parched and was drinking whenever I was conscious, which was about every 20-30 minutes. About 2-3 hours in (I don’t remember any concept of time, I am telling the time of events as per what K and O told me later); I was hungry; we haven’t had dinner. I went to the terrace and grabbed a piece of egg roll that K was eating, but just as I looked outside, I saw a T-Rex coming from behind the tree, and I dropped the roll and went inside to save my life, as I was sure he was coming to eat me.

The Journey: Story 1

When I got inside, I looked in the mirror that was placed on the wardrobe door and saw blood flowing in my veins. At first, it was just one or two, but as I kept looking, I saw my heart pumping blood and saw every single vein it traveled in. After that, I laid down and there were people around me, doctors, in their white coats, performing operations on me. My stomach cut open and the only light I could see was what they were using in the operation to shine on my body. They were discussing something. Then it all went blank. I woke up in a graveyard, and I was carrying a large cross sign I was ready to bury in the ground.

The Journey: Story 2

After that graveyard scene, all went blank. I gained my consciousness again, had water. K was worried sick, and he was searching on the internet what to do to calm acid peak and such. He asked me if I was alright but I couldn’t put together any words. The music hadn’t faded but had the intensity had slowed down. I laid down again on the bed, and this time I was in, don’t know how to describe that, but if anyone has played “Batman Arkham Asylum”, then there is a part/gameplay with scarecrow where he is in space, with fragments of ruins from houses scattered around in the form of a circle and scarecrow is in the middle. Batman has to hide from his vision while reaching for the last point to kill the scarecrow. To get a clear picture, Google, “Batman Arkham Asylum scarecrow dream” and see any video that comes up! I WAS THERE! I WAS THE BATMAN!!! I saw the scarecrow, and I had to save my life. I don’t remember how it happened though, after a long duration of escaping his gaze and jumping around, I again passed out.

The Journey: Story 3

I again gained consciousness for a moment. O was asleep, K was just resting there. My motor skills were better, I went to pee and washed my face, but the shape morphing and everything else was still there. I called my GF, (took more than 10 minutes to dial her) and told her that all this shit was happening. She got crazy worried, but K talked to her and assured her he is taking care of me. I settled on the bed again.

This time there was an enormous staircase, hanging in the middle of nowhere. Just a spiral stairwell and some people on it at various levels. The camera zoomed in on an old guy, and it was none other than me! Just as the focus was on his (my) face, there was also a waiter carrying coffee, and he crashed into me and spilled the coffee over me. The camera zoomed out again to get the whole staircase in sight and then zoomed in, this time focusing on the waiter, and unsurprisingly that waiter was me!!! Now as I was descending the stairs, a kid bumped into me that made me spill the coffee on that old man, (who again was me). Again zoomed out to get the staircase in the view and zoomed in again. And this time, the focus was on the kid, and no surprise, that kid was me. I was playing with a bouncy ball and I was trying to catch it when I was running and bumped into the waiter that made him spill his coffee on the old me. gain Again the view was all zoomed out to cover the whole staircase, and this time while it zoomed in, it focused on an infant in his mother’s arms who was feeding on her mother’s breast, and that infant was only me!





Interlude

After this part, I again gained consciousness, had water, ran to pee repeatedly, and peed a lot. As I was getting back from the bathroom, I saw our hotel suite floating in space, shattered into fragments with nothing but vacuum all around it. I seated on the terrace and smoked a cigarette by myself. K and O were both asleep by then. After finishing my cigarette I went inside and slumped on the bed.

The Journey: Ego Death and Meeting the Source

It’s been more than a year, but my hands still shiver as I think about that time and try to put that down in words. I’ll try my best to recreate that moment, but no matter how hard I try, I am sure I cannot put exact feelings into words.

This time when I settled down, my eyes closed, I saw tiny stickman figures, like those gingerbread man character in Shrek. It was all black except for them, and there were a bunch of them, in a green hue. They were joining hands to form a circle while their legs spread outwards; like when a father swings his child by hands and his legs spread outward with the force. Their legs were in that position, and they are all falling from outward to join hands and turn into one. First, there was only one circle like this, then there were more, loads, everywhere. Then more stickmen joined in and it formed a well-defined sphere, with simply one end missing and that was me. It erupted with tons of such spheres contrived and stretched across my whole view like galaxy clusters dispersed in the universe. The melody that was playing is unfathomable, it seemed like my brain was about to orgasm. Then the circle came down zooming in at infinite speed and one of the stickmen grabbed my palms. But just as I took their hands, the circle went back up again, lifting me up with them, moving in spiral inward motion, merging into a single spot, but I lost hands! It felt thwarting. But they came back down taking me again by my hands, and like them, I was a gingerbread man too. We all, in this circle and all others in their various circles, infused inward as if trying to implode, but again I lost hands. It was as if you are in a video game, and you are in the final boss fight, and you keep falling and failing again, but you know, you are about to win, this is about to end. I felt just like that, and I knew I was on the brink of something significant. And then, the cycle repeated, they all came down again, I joined hands, and we moved inward in a spiral direction, but this time, I didn’t let go! AND HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!! Just when I fused with them and we concentrated into a single infinitesimal point of wholeness, my brain infused with what I can believe a thousand orgasms. An upsurge of dopamine and serotonin rushed over me. And then, it all went blank, nothingness, death, life, abyss, everything and nothing all together. The whole concept of humanity, life, death, love, hate faded into nothingness. Like Neo in the matrix, I discovered the source, that empowered the whole creation and existence of not only the humanity but the whole universe. A point of infinite energy. After that, I don’t remember a thing, I don’t know how long was I out, I don’t know how I came back. As per K and O, I passed out and they were worried sick if I was dead or not (my heart was beating, but I was totally unconscious) (I later found out that it’s scientifically impossible to die from acid, no matter how much you take, so that was a relief!) and I regained my consciousness (according to them) after about an hour. (It was 6 in the morning).

The Journey: Final chapter

After returning from ego death, I was stumped, questioning the reality itself.  I wasn’t talking to anybody. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, just observing things around me. Each and everything looked mysterious yet serene, so exquisite that I cannot find words to explain that. About 7 am, I was standing on the terrace, and the sun was just rising. To this day, I have never seen a more beautiful sunrise in my entire life. I could feel the air rushing through my hairs. I could see the dew on the grass, I appreciated the tiny little insects were there in the room. When I saw the sun, I felt life, the meaning, love, and the sense of oneness. I could feel every single ray of sun, touching me, and hitting millions of objects and people on this earth giving origin to life as we know it. Just as I was witnessing this miracle of life, I smoked another joint. When I was done with that, the hallucination started again, and I had the urge to lie down on the bed. My eyes closed, this time, I experienced waves, like those in mathematics, sine and cosine waves, and those waves were inside a gigantic assembly hall, and gradually ascended. I saw people sitting there by the walls, smoking, talking, laughing, and I thought to myself, shit! People live there? What is this place? Who are these people? And then the waves continued, leading me to a room and then the doors of the room opened, and again my mind went blank. I don’t remember what, or whom I saw in that room. I remember waking up after an hour. After my death, born again, with a fresh spirit like that of a newborn baby.





The Journey: Conclusion and aftermath

Even though I have tried to put in every specific detail of my trip, or at least as much as I can remember, I know I can never put in words the feel I had in the trip. There’s a saying that “curiosity killed the cat”, but the full variant of is “curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction bought it back”. That’s what took place. I was just doing it for fun and just to see what it feels like to see hallucinations, but it ended up changing my life more than anything ever did, or anything could ever do. I was already an atheist, but now I realize the universe, the atoms, the spirit molecule are all one. And our purpose is only restrained by our own self-absorbed human doctrine, while the universe, life and the existence itself is an extremely bigger reality itself. Each and every single thing on this planet, plants, animals and humans; and anything in the whole galaxy or even universe, is made from the same carbon and hydrogen atom that expanded from that imperceptible point, that source of energy. Yet we fight over the absurdity of race, religion, cast, and color of skin. The existence of religion is an insult to the universe if such a ginormous thing can be insulted by meager humanity.

Disclaimer: This article does not condone or promote consumption of any unregulated substance in any sense. It merely reflects an experience encountered by the author.