Eating the Syrian rue made me feel nauseous, and as I was lying down at the start of the trip this made me uncomfortable.

When I started tripping, me and my girlfriend were listening to ‘Any Colour You Like’ by Pink Floyd, and we could see the cascading synth lines as fibres of light falling over our vision in time to the music. After a little while I became very aware of my throat; I could feel my windpipe and all my veins, and I was not getting a satisfactory amount of air as I was lying down with my head quite high up (on some pillows). When I moved my head it felt like all the tubes in my throat were getting tangled and folded, so I went into the living room to sit upright. I was lost in thought, and somehow came to the realisation that I was dying; I had just ingested a research chemical, made by people I’ve never known about in a lab somewhere I’ve never seen, and I was convinced that I had taken one risk too many by ingesting these chemicals. I started to get worried, and told my girlfriend I was dying (she tried reassuring me), and tried to call my friend to warn him not to take any more, blah blah. I didn’t die and I felt like a drama queen afterwards.

The rest of the trip, despite thinking I was about to die, was nice and reassuring; in the end, it took away my fear of death. At the time I was dwelling on the things I’d never achieved in my life, but since then I’ve quit the job I hated, went travelling, and made my life a bit better overall. When I was tripping I was convinced that I was going to become a part of the universe; I would live on forever as an integral part of space and time, as part of the background radiation of the universe or as a part of its static.

I was listening to some classical Indian music, one with some chanting in it, and the song morphed into a goatrance song (though not in reality), and I clearly heard a gruff man’s voice say “We. Are. One.” This was it. I said my goodbyes to my girlfriend, closed my eyes, and fell forward onto the bed I was sitting on, and the visuals changed from magnificent colors and gently became grey and cloud-like; like a mix of grey clouds and TV static, when the TV is between channels. I thought this was the cosmic radiation I was meant to be part of, but I think it was just intense ego death as I don’t remember any more of it, and I was sober after.

After the trip I was dopey for about 90 minutes. We watched American Dad and I just didn’t know when I was meant to laugh, so I just faked some laughter whenever I heard my girlfriend laugh. I couldn’t even choose between 2 episodes as I literally couldn’t make the decision; I had no thinking power at all, and it felt horrible.