I went out to my favorite park for tripping. This time I brought an insect net and my collecting supplies. I reach my destination and go into the woods, at which point I settle down and pop the tabs into my mouth. I then romp around in the woods looking for insects. I run into a bunch of strangers smoking weed, though they seem to be down with psychedelics. We have awkward conversation and I smoke a few hits from their blunt.

I begin to feel it. It manifests as a feeling of being unsettled, a sort of queasiness and uneasiness deep inside my gut. My limbs begin to feel numb and light and I start feeling sweaty. Mosquitos have been swarming me this entire time, so I am very uncomfortable inside and out. I start getting lightheaded, but in a sense that the entire word has become light and is rising around me, with my head as the focal point.

The discomfort sets in so deeply. I am no longer seeking insects but pacing frantically in the woods, as if to run away from this feeling. I settle down on a rock and smoke a joint. I feel so faint and dizzy, but not in any threatening way. The visuals are beginning to set in, although they are pretty light and do not overwhelm me at all. They are simply decoration on this gruesome cake that is forming from my body. After I finish the joint it feels like my mind has been subject to a rush of warm wind that sends shudders through me. I resume my hunt for insects. I find myself running through the woods, it is getting dimmer as the sun begins to set and I find that I am not really headed in any particular direction, but rather running around aimlessly to stave off this discomfort. My navigational skills thankfully are not compromised and I am easily able to find my way around the forest.

I am tripping pretty hard now. The visuals are not imposing or impeding me in any way, but they have certainly made themselves known. There are rainbow auras around things and my entire field of vision seems to be pulsing and flowing around the edges. I sit on a rock to watch the sunset, but the bodyload is immense. I am very nauseous and I feel like I am about to throw up. The sunlight is all powerful and cascades around me, I truly feel like I am bathing in its heat and life. I try to catch insects here, but find them to be sparser than I thought they would be. This is slightly frustrating. I am manically pacing the area, the restlessness I feel is incredible and overpowering. I wish the nausea would go away. Other people come to hang out on the rock and smoke and I suddenly find myself extremely anxious. I feel as though the deep discomfort of this trip would very adversely affect my ability to interact with others and I am deeply afraid they might try to interact with me. I feel as though I would only be able to stammer out incoherencies. Sounds in the distance and reverberating and trailing off, and the clouds begin to morph into meso-american looking patterns.

My thoughts begin to travel to darker places, I begin thinking of the incredible amount of violence that has existed in the world, of what it must be like to sustain incredibly traumatic injuries, like being slashed with a sword, run through with a spear, shot with an arrow, shot with a gun, hit by shrapnel, stepping on landmines, stabbed with a knife, having limbs be dismembered or crushed or mangled. It pains me to know that so many people in the history of earth have felt these incredible and mind boggling pains, and I realize how fortunate I am that I do not live surrounded by war and violence. I imagine the horrors that battlefields of old must have been, with so many people having their entire lives snuffed out in a frenzy of incredible pain and physical trauma. I wonder how it must feel to bleed out on a battlefield after having a limb cut off with a blade, or blasted to shreds from a musket shot or gun shot. And then there’s the fact that some people dedicate themselves to a cause by means of violence, that someone has read up on the theory of a cause, that they have dreams of elevating that cause and bringing it to fruition, they have taken up arms and yet before they can make meaningful change they are blown to pieces by mortar fire or something. And even without violence one can be traumatically injured, it could happen to me today. I could get hit by a car, or fall off a cliff. I realize how precious and fragile my body is and vow to protect it as best I can.

I decide to pace around the forest more. It’s getting darker and I soon find navigating the forest is becoming more difficult. The visuals begin to deceive me, making it appear like there is a trail where there is not one. I still manage to navigate successfully. At this point I am mostly just looking for a place to lie down where I can settle all of this discomfort. I find a nice hill of dirt and flop down on it. Lying down feels a little better, and I calmly gaze at the sky and the trees battered with the golden orange light of the setting sun, the twisting and spiraling mess of branches soaking in the dimness beneath them. I breathe in and out, and for a second it feels like this incredible discomfort is letting up.

I return to my rock and sit down, but feel awkward and return to pacing around the forest. I am tripping very very hard. It’s not too visual, but is heavy mentally. I am dissociating from the entire world, and my mind feels as though its jumping around to different times and locations. Sometimes I feel like I fall into holes of thought that consume me for hours when in reality it has just been a few minutes. I was invited to a party across the city that I feel like going to, but I do not feel as though I am in any condition to be in public. Nevertheless, the forest is getting very dark now and the only way out is to climb down a big rock face. I pace around some more in the dim forest before returning to the rock. There are plenty of people there, but I just ignore them and climb down. The rock looks incredibly beautiful, it glistens and sparkles as though it is encrusted with a druze of little crystals. Its forms are flowing as if it’s a speleothem in a grand crystal cave. I am absolutely transfixed by its glistening mystical beauty. I navigate my way down to the trail below.

I am definitely still peaking. I walk along the trail where people are jogging and biking. I try to ignore all of them and hope they ignore me. Thankfully there is a path I can walk along the riverfront that’s separated from the main bike/jogging path. There I can take solace in being alone, I can sit down and take a break and stare at the sky. The water is rippling into beautiful fractal patterns and the sky is decorated with blocky images of dragons and faces. Everything is parading in the resplendent pink and salmon glow of the setting sun. I keep walking.

I reach a more populated area and walking around people is very freaky. I try to avoid them. At a restaurant on the riverfront there are people preparing for a wedding. It’s surreal to walk by that while I’m covered in dirt wearing torn up clothes. I reach a point where there is a lot of plant growth around the river and the sound of insects becomes deafening. I lie down and take it in. It amazes me that almost all insects are silent and rely on chemical signals and odors, but there are a few who have adapted to use sound to communicate. It amazes me how almost all sound generating insects belong to a specific order (Orthoptera), yet there are a few prominent examples in other orders (like cicadas), meaning that the ability to generate sound was a result convergent evolution. The buzzing vibrates and reverberates around my skull, it’s like listening to really buzzy noise music. It feels like it’s making my brain vibrate, and it’s really neat to pick out the sound of each individual species. I am getting devoured by mosquitos. I begin to think of all the insects flying around filled with my blood, It’s surreal to imagine little parcels of my blood flitting through the air. I see a bat above snatching up insects and my thoughts turn to violence again, the violence of nature. How an insect going about its business is suddenly accosted from the gloom by this horrific hairy creature with massive fangs. The pain an insect must feel when it gets crunched between those sharp teeth, the pain insects must feel from all of the unimaginably horrific ways they can die. And it’s weird to consider that a bat is eating little bits of my blood.

Walking along the trail I run into a friend. Conversation feels very awkward at first but I manage to speak coherently and cogently eventually. I feel like I am entirely out of touch with reading nonverbal or emotional cues however, and I feel like I keep saying inappropriate things. Whatever. One thing he tells me that really stuck was that he was out of school now, and he had to adapt to the lifestyle of eternal work, as opposed to the long breaks that come with doing school. It’s a frightening thing to consider, and I am easily able to visualize the blocks of time in my mind as large tangible portions. We eventually part ways and I walk 20 blocks to the party as fast as I can.

I reach the party. I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people there, but I have come down a little. I am mostly tired. I only know like two people there, but one of them comes to great me. They lead me through the house introducing me to strangers. I am so flustered. Eventually I just flop down and sit on the ground and rest my tired limbs. I am so sweaty and dirty and I look very out of place. Some of the people there freak me out, and I view them with an incredibly cynical eye. Two people in particular seemed like cartoon characters, just stereotypical depictions of stoners. They seem like they are extremely performative with this image. They are very offputting to me. Interacting with all of these strangers is very awkward. I smoke a lot of weed, but it doesn’t seem to kick the trip back up.

The party has been ok. I am not really talking to anyone just hiding in corners. I am very sweaty inside so I go outside to where there is a goddamn pool on the roof. This is decadent. I am too dirty to go into the pool however. Eventually another friend shows up and I try to hang around them, but I still feel awkward and it feels like my social skills are stunted. I can’t seem to form a meaningful connection with them in this moment and feel like a lost puppy following them around. I give up on that and resign myself to a corner inside. I am incredibly sweaty however, so I resign myself to a corner outside. I look for bugs because that’s my favorite party trick. Eventually I am able to strike up conversation with some people. At this point I am able to interact more confidently. My words flow out naturally, and I am struck with the calm and familiar feeling of enhanced mental acuity that manifests on the comedown of trips.

I am mostly down now. The party was pretty cool a lot of people were offputting but maybe I am just being judgmental towards strangers. Every party I had been to recently was awash in close friends and they were comfortable environments. I am happy that I was able to go to a party full of strangers and have good interactions with them, and none of them would be able to find me and interact with me later as I use a different name online than in real life. I take the subway home. In the subway station a random guy chats me up and tells me that he had been going to the library recently and learning a lot. He tells me all the stuff about science that he has been learning and I teach him things I know about bugs and biology. It’s a pleasant and fulfilling interaction.

I get home and smoke weed with my roommate. We play videogames for a bit. I just feel stoned now, the drug has mostly worn off, although a slight afterglow is present.

I go to bed. I am back to baseline.