LSD-25 – Challenge #184 from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

This is a writing challenge from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. I don’t usually do challenges but I thought I’d try. My writing is always autobiographical. The events are mostly true with a little creative license. I’m always true to myself. The other people may be quite vague and approximate for their privacy.

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LSD and I were good friends for several years after I came to California.

When I was in my mid-20s, I rented an upstairs room from a lady in a condo. This day I was inside my room, really, really, really tripping on several hits of acid. I did a lot of psychoactive stuff alone because I had no friends to do it with. I was a very lonely boy, riddled with ADHD and Asperger’s, which caused me extreme difficulty in social interactions, ‘stimming,” and “obsessive special interests,” among other things.

Pot, ‘schrooms, LSD, and especially MDMA were self-administered medications. When I was high, I lost my social inhibitions. It was like I left some of my Asperger’s baggage behind. On MDMA, I actually felt like a normal human being and could interact with people positively. Hell, I could even dance creditably. LSD put me in an extremely flexible mental state where I could make connections inside my head I could not otherwise do. I really did discover things about myself when I was tripping that I would never have otherwise realized.

Of course, some people… many people… destroyed themselves on these drugs. I got lucky. While straight, I kept myself under extremely tight control most of the time for fear of making a social faux pas. I loved the euphoric, out-of-control feeling I got when I tripped but somehow never did anything super dangerous like driving or doing downers.

I didn’t like how alcohol felt. Enough to start feeling good was almost enough to be nauseous.

I had determined to see just how high I could get. I rarely got full-on hallucinations, but this time I saw streamers and colors everywhere. Gigantic pink fuzzy spiders who were very friendly. The walls around the city of Bablyon. Landlady, who was a very nice older woman, a former flower child/hippie, knocked on my door and said she was going to watch Conan the Barbarian and I should come to join her. She knew I really liked that movie.

BTW, nothing ever happened between us. No romantic or sexual relationship at all. She had her own bf she was tight with. I felt very comfortable around her, but as an Aspie, I was afraid to interact. I was always afraid to interact.

After a few minutes, I stumbled downstairs and plopped onto the sofa. Completely naked.

A look of surprise flitted across her face for a minute for a minute, but beyond that, she didn’t react at all. It was like there was nothing unusual going on. She was smoking some pot herself. The bong and scent gave it away. She smoked it to “numb out” at the end of the day and often shared it with me. It let me relax.

I hadn’t thought this thru, was just swept on by a wave of euphoria and 6 hits of windowpane. I was suddenly afraid – being afraid on acid is how bad trips happen – but her lack of any response allowed me to feel comfortable with the situation. I had a vague hunch that she’d be cool about it, and it turned out correct. Pretty unusual for me.

Conan was a trippy movie to start with, even without drugs. We watched the movie and talked and talked and talked, with her stoned and me tripping like crazy. I even cried. A completely radical experience. The acid had left me psychologically naked as well as physically.

Eventually, I went back upstairs. Splashed water on myself and toweled off. Then I crawled into bed with headphones on and listened to music until I fell asleep.

The next day, when I came downstairs, she said that I’d looked well and truly f’ed up last night. I told her what I’d been on. I was still slightly trippy. Shook her head and said she was too scared to try acid, and we talked about the experience. The nakedness really wasn’t a problem, just unexpected. It had looked to her like I had no irises in my eyes at all, just huge black pupils, like something out of a horror show. And I was staggering like a drunk. She was worried about me.

No long-term repercussions. Seems she’d dealt with people on wild trips before, Woodstock era. She said I could be clothing optional inside the house as long as I was cautious about it. I agreed, and I was indeed cautious.

I wish to hell I’d met a therapist who listened and tried to understand so well. We were casual friends for a little bit; I probably felt more friendship for her than she did for me, but then, that described my entire life at the time. And then I had to move because the condo was put up for sale, and that was that.

That’s just how my life went in those days.