[SERIOUS] People who tried LSD or any other hallucinogens, what was your experience like?

I made most of my 20's decade about two things - grad school in immunology and tripping. I'm 20 years beyond that now and have a great family/career/house/dog/etc. I only say that that to be clear that if you do your homework and play safe, you aren't throwing your life away by trying hard-core hallucinogens of many types, as the drug warriors of the past might have had you believe. More on this at the end. In many ways I feel like my experiences with hallucinogens actually helped me achieve my life goals, rather than interfering with them. My last introductory thought is that the first time is usually mostly about just coping with the effects and learning about the experience itself, especially if it is a larger dose. Later episodes are the ones where you really get to extract all the best of a drug's particular offerings.

My favorite has always been LSD. The first time I took it was at a legal rave in Portland, ME in 1993. I was accidentally given two powerful tabs which were folded in a such a way that we all thought I only took one. All my friends had authentically only taken one hit. The hallucinations were extremely strong and very fun but I was not socially competent in any way. I had trouble looking at people's faces so I spent most of the night looking into a plastic gem ring someone had given me. I think the idea was that you were supposed to chew on it like a binky but I just used it as a lens. I conjured a happy little family living inside the gem and made up names for all of them and gave them little life tips as they all prayed to me at night.

Later episodes of LSD were much more therapeutic. As /u/counttheclock noted its primary gift is the ability to clearly see the perspectives of other people. Most people can't do this effectively because their own ego prevents it. If you are a particularly horrible person, I've seen this cause really bad trips. I imagine it is because upon realizing their shittiness they have to reconcile it with who they used to think they were all while being in a state which prevents you from doing exactly that. I've never had a bad trip, but the closest I came was the day after when the lingering effects motivated me to write a letter to my best friend from high school who I had been thinking about. I had moved school districts in 8th grade and he was my first friend in the new school, and I often felt like I followed him around like a lost puppy, especially in those earlier years. My letter was about that and opening up to him about that, and about how I sometimes resented myself for being socially dependent on him. I never mailed it. That one time was the rare exception though, and most other times were all about learning new things. Artistic learning becomes much easier on LSD, and creativity and free expression is unleashed, again because your ego which usually inhibits you goes away. Your social defenses, which are useful in regular life, just fall away. If you think things like "what will other people think of me?" the answer always comes back, "it doesn't matter" and if you are doing acid in the right environment (like a rave), that's true. This is why LSD is so socially disruptive because in other "real life" contexts, it actually does matter but you can't care and your resulting oddness is too weird for sober people to cope with. This can also cause bad trips and it is why the environment in which you are doing LSD is so crucially important. Unlike alcohol which also strips social inhibitions, acid does not impair you in any other ways. You can speak with crystal clarity, and you are in control of your body and your mind. You still understand the consequences of your choices and actions, all that really changes in a behavioral sense is the degree to which you think they are important or not.

The first time I tried MDMA was at an underground warehouse rave in Baltimore in winter 1996. I don't know if it was stepped on or if it was just a huge dose but shortly after I "came up" I had to vomit. This almost sent me into a panic until the more experienced girl I was with ("Heidi" who had done E before, bless her) jumped into action by soothing and reassuring me by telling me it was OK and normal. She moved us to a new part of the space, and gave me a mint and told me to just relax and keep enjoying the night. From there it was all OK and the two of us just spent the first half of the night exploring our new love and staring into each others eyes, kissing, telling each other what we loved most about each other and meaning every word. At this particular rave there were two rooms. At the half-way point of the night we moved from the back of the main room and into the "chill-out" room where there were a bunch of people in a similar state all sprawled out on the padded floor in a giant cuddle puddle. Heidi and I joined the pile and continued with our affections, but this time directed at anyone within touching or talking range around us. All of it was reciprocated. To be clear, no one was fucking, but everyone was kissing each other's SO's and being kind and sharing each other's affections equally without jealousy or threat or possessiveness.

Later episodes on E were far more well-behaved and mostly just involved hugging all my friends and telling them how much I appreciated them. I've never done E without more than 4 or 5 friends close by and I wouldn't want to unless it was with my wife. Speaking of which, Heidi and I broke up not long after that episode above, but it was amicable. She wanted to explore a very sober and serious kind of open sexuality which I was into at first, but it drew us apart. When two people are diluting their love among so many people its hard to stay focused on each other. This is was the point in my life where I stopped looking for casual relationships and moved on to actually finding someone to build a family with.

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