I posted this message a little while after returning home from a vacation to Las Vegas (which my girlfriend and I left for the very day I got out of the hospital). This post was meant to serve as a warning to others less experienced, as well as to get feedback on my experience (and also to post an experience report). This was not my first LSD experience, but was my first particularly "bad" experience.

I'm writing this to let you know how careful you have to be when taking strong doses of LSD with regards to becoming paranoid when you start to lose touch with reality.

My girlfriend and I took 2 hits of good acid on a saturday night. It was good strong stuff, and we were having a pretty good time. LSD makes her babble on endlessly, which usually drives me nuts. After about 3-4 hours I decided to take another hit. I'm not sure why I did... but I felt that the effect was lessening, though it is more likely that my girlfriend's babbling was distracting me too much.

Within 45 minutes to an hour, I started losing touch with reality. I wasn't sure what was real, and what wasn't... We were sitting in the backyard, and my girlfriend mentioned something about the grass looking like fireworks... and that triggered the paranoia... "What if there really are fireworks -- or something else -- burning!?!" Even though I KNEW (normally) that when on acid everything I saw was based on reality, and if I stopped and looked hard, I'd see things for what they really were, I couldn't help myself from being paranoid. Things just kept getting worse from there on. "What if I'm not really at home?", "What if I'm in danger?" The worst part came around that I had to go to the washroom. Now let me tell you... that this part of the acid trip is the worst time to have to go to the washroom. Things just got worse and worse... and now my girlfriend started freaking out because I was acting weird. I was paranoid and wouldn't calm down. She soon utterred the words that you do not want to hear when losing touch with reality...

"We're never going to do drugs again!"

These seven deadly words can instill the worse paranoia imaginable. If you're even slightly paranoid about what's really happening, and what's really REAL, hearing those words will induce your worst fears. I imagined that something REALLY terrible must have happened to make her say that. I imagined car wrecks, injuries, disfigurement, police, ambulances, etc... our whole lives ruined...

Now as if this wasn't bad enough... it caused a chain reaction. Her saying those words made me ten times more paranoid... and that made her even more upset... she started crying out those seven words over and over again... and it pushed me into the strangest experience...

First... let me explain what I *experienced*, then I will tell you what *happened*.

I completely lost all concept of time. I felt as if I was an 80 year old man, and my whole life had passed by as a vegetable. I was now old and decrepit. I started shuffling around the apartment like an old man, and all I could say was "Never", and "never do drugs", and "never do drugs again". I kept repeating those words as if they were all that gave my life meaning... as if even though my life was almost over, I was going to do what I could to make sure this never happened to anyone else.

Then I seemed to start working backwards through my life... I was suddenly some 40 year old strung-out hippy type. Living a crap life, a wasted man and a wife-beater. I then got feelings that things weren't so bad, and that I had control... I just had to put effort into my life. the more effort, the better my life. I also started fighting for drugs rather than against them. This seemed to also improve things. I started rushing about raving on "Drugs are good!" "Drugs are the answer!" "Drugs, drugs, drugs!". I was pushing back down through years... 30...25...24...23... and even younger than I am. As if I had control of what point of life I could be at. Life was good.... in fact life was great! I knew the meaning of life, the universe and everything... and it was BETTER than I ever imagined! The future... space... other worlds... space ships... etc., and more! It was all so simple, and so wonderful. It was something like dying and becoming god-like. Knowing everything, being everywhere. It was like becoming part of some after-life "club". I had feelings of being welcomed and helped along, as if by family and friends. Everything was extremely emotional... it is very difficult, and likely impossible to describe in words what I felt and experienced, but I might call it a taste of heaven. Imagine living a long, full and fulfilling life, and being able to cherish every second of it as if you had just experienced it, to relive it all, at any point, and at any speed. Imagine the most comfortable and relaxed you have ever felt, and multiply that by a hundred. Imagine the most pleasure and enjoyment you have ever felt, and multiply that by a thousand. What I'm writing here barely covers a fraction of what I experienced... it's hard to recall it all, hard to describe, and as I said... some is probably impossible to describe. It was like dying, living a whole lifetime I haven't lived yet, and like being born all in one.

I started coming back to reality in a hospital bed. My hands and feet strapped to the railings.

When I started going on about the meaning of life the universe and everything... my mind was starting to separate from my body. While I was off in a pile of emotion and universal consciousness, my body was running around screaming and smashing into things. I smashed into a huge picture on the wall, cutting my nose right between my eyes (requiring 3 stitches), I smashed into doors, I grabbed a fluorescent light with my hands, and it shattered all over the place, (the light was ON at the time), I was running around like a trapped animal. Acting not quite unlike how a caveman would have, having found himself in a strange place. I was naked (as previously my girlfriend had undressed me and tried to get me to go to bed when I started getting paranoid), and covered in blood. My girlfriend called 9-1-1, requesting help to get me to the hospital. Five police officers came and wrestled me to the ground, handcuffed my hands and feet, wrapped me in a blanket (by my girlfriend's request), and loaded me off into an ambulance.

I have very vague recollection of the events that really happened. I seem to recall being forced to the ground, and carried off. I seem to recall being carried to an ambulance. I have no recollection of being in an ambulance, or being taken into the emergency room. I do remember smashing into the picture, and grabbing the lightbulb, but not smashing into doors, (which did get damaged).

Let me also share that hospital doctors know very little about LSD. The doctor claimed there was no antidote (which apparently does exist according to research documents I have read), and did not give me anything at all... not even sedation of any kind.
The doctor did not assure the family and friends that arrived that I'd ever be okay. He claimed that often LSD users in this state end up on a coma, or stay like this (how I was) forever.

I came to mumbling about life, the universe and everything. Which was understandable as it was quite an experience... but made everyone think I was still looney. Nine hours after taking the first hit, I was fine.

Was any of what I was experiencing really part of something spectacular, or was it all in my head? I'll never know for sure. What was the so simple answer to life the universe and everything? I'm not so sure... but it had something to do with "One". I'm not sure what that means.

The conclusion? The moral? The meaning? All I can say is that you need to be careful when taking strong doses of LSD. You must make sure NOT to let yourself get paranoid. If you start to get paranoid, get a grip, relax, and look around. If it looks like you're at home, it's most likely you are at home. All that happened to me could have been avoided if I had been able to calm myself down, relax and enjoy.