It's rare apparently but I wish I'd never risked it. The way I see it, when you're a child your mind is shaping itself to the world. After enough time, that becomes your basis for understanding the world and gets sort of set. Psychedelic drugs remove that set and let reality shift a bit in your mind, but all the ideas and thoughts of a mature person can then influence the underlying foundation, so reality becomes dreamlike. Everything's up for grabs, undefined. All the constants become variable.

Normally, you see what is, not what you expect to see. Tripping, your mind can't tell thought from reality. I looked for demons in the evil people around me, so that became by basis for reality. It became a possibility in my perceptions. Still don't know I wasn't seeing something real. But I don't see it now.

If you have fears, dreams become nightmares. I think it's the same on a drug. Your focus becomes your reality.

I don't know, but if I could go back in time, I never would have tripped. I tried five times, trying to undo the damage, getting worse each time. Last time was sugar cubes. I got a pretty healthy amount, maybe 3 hits? But I was with a really cool girl, seemed like an angel, and things were rainbowy and clear, lucid, and safe. It may have helped, but it's hard to say.

Drug use tends to gather in a circle of people who are self-medicating for something, at least in some circles, so you get a self-selected bunch of people who are pretty nonstandard. That's when things can easily get hairy.

I think I ended up in a circle of people who were into dark spiritual stuff, and I an innocent babe in the woods. Less than ideal.

That plus my lapsed Christianity fed my delusions into a bonfire of madness.

If you asked my advice, which you didn't, I'd say it's not worth the risk for the potential reward, and less powerful drugs or none at all would be a better attempt at getting some realizations. I know I think better sober, though I think more positively while under the influence of caffeine or hydrocodone, more forlornly with alcohol, and before LSD, more feverishly focused on pot. Can't smoke pot at all now. Immediate hallucinations and delusions, flashbacks.

I take antipsychotic meds now. I have no way of knowing if I would have had trouble regardless. I also feel like my mind is unreliable since acid.

If you ever do trip, do so with someone you trust utterly, with no drama, someone to whom you would feel safe telling everything and in whose hands you would trust your very soul.

Your doors will be unlocked.

I wouldn't.