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A Life Cycle - by Halcyon Source EROWID Experience Vaults

On January 12, 2008, I had an LSD experience that would change my view on the world for good. More than just feelings of pleasure and pain, it had the sheer force of intensity to it, and my complete surrendering to whatever came along. My only desire being to see things for what they truly were.

Now this was around my twentieth trip on acid, and I had been taking it regularly, once or twice a month for about a year, thinking I had seen most of what the drug had to offer. It had taken me about five trips to realize that I was best when taking LSD alone in my apartment, apart from the raves, parties and night clubs which most of my friends would choose as a setting. Over the course of all this acid experimentation in 2007, I acquired a clear sense of direction and purpose in life, readjusting myself dramatically to the things I thought were in fact worth fighting for.

I quit a four year addiction to Klonopin, lost complete interest in alcohol, marijuana and tobacco; found my soul dwelling in the arts as I rediscovered painting and classical music. Actually, I quit my language course in the university to try a major in piano, realizing that I had spent my teenage years too fearfully to affirm my artistic identity, and that the track I had been leading would surely lead me to undeniable frustration. My hermitage also grew considerably and social interaction became an ever greater task, as I substantially found myself on another plain of thought and interest, I could no longer go out with my friends to just “hang out”, neither submit myself to any passiveness towards daily life. I felt like there was a bubbling, active volcano, erupting inside of me, pleading for artistic productivity and disciplined dedication to musical studies, and that there was no time to lose, no time to be spent fooling around.

I must also point out that three months after my first hit, I developed intense tracers, light and noise sensibility, a wavery vision in which nothing stands still for too long and some phases of stomach clenching anxiety. Symptoms I later related to what is called HPPD. There was something else I can only call “enhanced thinking”, as my imagination and creative powers sparkled to an unprecedented level of output causing me to put a lot of faith in the my artistic development as a whole. Interesting enough, as these HPPD symptoms sky-rocketed, my interest in LSD only grew stronger.

In January 2008, I acquired 8 hits of a blotter I had not yet tried. At about 10:30, on a sunshine Saturday morning, alone in my fourteenth floor apartment about 50 meters from the Brazilian coastline, I took one of these hits. And within 50 minutes I realized that something very different was at play, as reality began a slow and unstoppable path towards disintegration. The trip came 4 to 5 times stronger than I had ever tripped before, and the well known apartment which I had been living for the past three years morphed into uncharted, unexplored territory.

Now something inexplicable happens to me when I take acid that my piano and painting techniques burst ridiculously with expression, something I could never really match while being sober, and for that reason tend to have a frustrating outcome. But I never give up trying, having the drug showed me what I’m capable of. On this particular trip, there was very little playing, no painting at all. I could barely move is most of what I can say. With six to seven thoughts in my head all at once, there was very little room for action or decision making…………….