Awkward Acid

Onset

T0:00
Dose taken.
T0:30
Feel the onset, manifests in some tooth grinding and a slight faint dissociated feeling.
T1:30
I’m hanging out with my roommate downstairs. I feel like constant contact with him keeps me from realizing how distant I am drifting off and how awkward my social skills are becoming (at least from my perspective). It is truly a feeling like drifting off, like floating on a rippled surface of a lake and having a warm wind slowly gently push me out into deeper waters. It feels like there’s numbness in my fingertips. This feels very similar to LSD in terms of the come up and headspace, although it feels somewhat more dissociating, mentally and physically. There is also somewhat more body load, with a good bit of nausea setting in. Visuals are fairly abstract and lacking any sort of definitive form or pattern. Rather, they are concentric and rippled.

Peak

T2:00
This trips feels very ‘standard’ for a psychedelic experience. Thought is deeper, as in every bit of stimulus my mind encounters gets carefully handled and picked apart, dissected to have its internal depths plumbed and dredged and tinkered with. It’s like my mind is going the extra mile with regards to analyzing each designated “object”, and whatever associations that object generates. While this could certainly be considered a sort of mental enhancement, I realize that my mind’s ability to limit itself in this regard is functional and useful to keep me from constantly being awash in a daze of thought. This constant preoccupation with my own mind makes me feel awkward and stumbly in terms of my ability to outwardly interact with others and the world. Imagine a horse trying to run while staring intently at its feet. Eventually my dear friend/old roommate comes over. I am now with two of my closest friends, we are hanging out and playing videogames. I watch my roommate play Kirby 64, It’s entertaining as hell and it’s pretty cool to see the visuals manifest on the screen. I feel like I am making a lot of really awkward and stupid comments that are attempting to come off as funny. I feel like I am just awkwardly and automatically saying and interjecting things to fill the silence, all of which go without response, the silence following each statement is deafening as my own voice echoes in my head. My friend talks about music he’s writing and recording and it’s so cool to hear how he engages with his passion and how this engagement interacts with his struggles with mental illness. He plays us a song and it’s so cool to listen to and this provides a substrate for me to talk about everything in substantially more fluid and less awkward manner. I still have some trouble articulating my thoughts, and it feels like I am treading carefully the line between profound statements and psychedelic burnout incoherency.

Offset

T4:30

I have noticed that the visuals are mostly passed now, save for some faint color shifting on every surface. I still mentally feel very strongly as if I am tripping. I am certainly on the comedown now. We smoke some more and decide to go for a walk outside. It’s the first weekend of the school year and throngs of people are around town partying. My one friend is feeling very manic from the 3-MeO-PCP and wants to interact with everyone we walk by and run and play. I am extremely intimidated by everyone and want to keep to myself. Sometimes when coming down from psychedelics I am definitely in a sort of hypomanic state where I want to talk to everyone and I feel like I have something to say to everyone. However now, I feel like I cannot generate the appropriate words in any situation. I feel like I cannot even generate the appropriate thoughts. I feel meek and silenced and muzzled, I am awkward and afraid. I beseech him to stop trying to invite interaction from strangers. I am so very inhibited. We reach a grassy area between two dorm buildings and he does cartwheels on the lawn. I hide in a chair and try to artificially boost my confidence to stave off these effects. He eventually invites comments from people in the windows high above us, and honestly it’s a pretty silly and ridiculous situation. Eventually some of them come down and interact with us. Ideally I would have been able to converse smoothly and provide some sort of input, but I am in a sort of stunned silence, only able to utter awkward phrases. We eventually go to a grocery store and head home. I reflect on my lack of confidence. Part of it was the drug and its effects, however I feel like a strong part of all of this was also the fact that I was not presenting as I usually do, which can be intimidating or idiosyncratic to a certain degree. Appearing as my “normal” self made me feel weak and neutered. On the way home we meet up with some old friends in a restaurant and hang out there for a bit. In this setting I feel slightly more confident, like this muzzle is wearing off.

T6:00

We return home. The rest of the night we just hang out and smoke a lot of weed and play videogames. The cannabis entirely overtakes the psychedelic by this point and from here on I mostly just feel entirely stoned. I am able to cook a full meal for myself which is nice.

T11:00

I tried to go to sleep earlier than this, but noticed I was still a bit wired in that way that psychedelics keep you awake-you cannot feel the effects but you just don’t feel capable of sleeping at all. At this point though, I am finally able to sleep.

Awkward Acid

Contents

Onset

Peak

Offset

Conclusion / Aftermath