I was at the Hilton Anatole for Quakecon 2012, a gathering of the most sweaty meatballs and skinniest grease-sticks who all like to finger keyboards all day. It happens every year, same hot days, same smelly place. I was with a group of friends discussing a way to burn time that didn't involve games. Me being me, I spoke up that I had a connection to some LSD that I had found recently and asked to everyone if they might be interested in a mind melting afternoon of psychedelics. For the most part everyone was agreeing, but there was concern in everyone's minds about the strength and feel of the stuff. None of us had ever done Acid, and I was the only one who had a good number of mushroom trips under his belt (with an exception to Jared). They all eventually agreed to get it, a well as pay for my hits under one condition: I test them right then and there. "Hell yes."
A couple of them go and pick it up, and meet the rest of us in our hotel room on the 25 floor of a very tall tower. My friend approaches us, both hands behind his back. He extends his arm and opens his palm to us, exposing a tin foil wrapping containing eight Altoids, ambiguous and intimidating altogether. Looking over to me, his other hand comes out, holding a separate foil with two inside. The inside of the foil had a smiley face sharpied onto it. At this point in time they had showed up to watch a performance by Master Pancake Theater commenting on the movie "Back to the Future: Part 2". We all decide to go down to the atrium and get a seat before the place is filled. I place the tab under my tongue and head down with them. An hour passes and I feel a bit strange, but not strange enough to be absolutely sure. I take myself back to the hotel room and take the other hit and began to make my way back to the room full of drunk nerds. I get back to the entrance of the door and I feel this strange electric feel coarse through me. I take no mind of it as I get back to my seat. The performance goes on for what felt like 15 minutes when suddenly I feel a shift.
Normally when I feel "The Shift" in mushrooms it's a comforting sensation of connectedness with my reality, the unity of my bodily atoms with the atoms of the word around me is a welcomed change in sensation. This was different though. This was something fierce and abrasive. I sat there staring at a movie that was being made fun of by people on stage. The realization of knowing what these people were doing was considered entertainment was a baffling and oblong thought in and of itself. Boom, I realize that I just had a thought that was out of my typical line of processing. I knew I was on this stuff. But for how long, how strong, and how wrong was it going to be? I looked to my pant leg to notice this impossibly complex pattern cover my denim, a pattern that started to leak onto other surfaces. This was overwhelming, the sudden change in my visual field had made me uneasy, turning to Jared seated next to me I spoke "I have to go man" Being an experience user himself he instantly understood what to do. He and his brother began to escort me out the room that was growing heavy with roaring laughter and profanity. As I exited the door I noticed that the entire world around me was skipping like a video game with a terrible frameset. Reality was flickering as I moved through it, and I was the only thing in the universe at that point that was moving fluidly. This thought made me feel lonely, my string of thought was that I was the most unnatural thing ever to be in existence, and my fluidity was visual proof of this. This thought ran loops in my head, growing more and more grotesque with each runthrough. Approaching the elevator area to go to our room, the visual stimuli of a row elevators was nauseating. So much so to the point where I began to puke. "OOP! He's spewing Caleb!" Jared said as his brother made a quick dart for a receptionists garbage bin. I hurl into it, holding it limply with my mouth dropped staring at what looked like horrified tourists. Jared and Caleb quickly usher me into an empty elevator and press 25. The number of possible floor choices was an overwhelming amount of numeral information, I turn my head away to lessen the stimuli only to see that I am blasting up a an impossibly high building. Glass openings to elevators are cool if your life essence isn't withering away at the same time.
We get to the room where the visuals being to bend in distort along side my thoughts. Jared's excessive amount of clothing in the summer, Caleb's devilishly curly hair gave me no comfort as I began to cry in fear into a pillow. Closing my eyes gave me no relief, just a clear as day view of a world that was as chaotic as an atom bomb. In that world I had nothing. No items, no names, nothing. I was forced to open my eyes as it was the lesser of two evils at this point. I felt myself splitting into multiple versions of myself, I felt myself combining with other people that I couldn't even see. Jared had left to tell everyone what was going on with me in the hotel room but I don't know if he ever came back the the room that night. It was just me and Caleb. Now for never taking a single Psychedelic in his life, he is one of the best people to have with out If you start freaking out. He was logical and structurally sound in his words. He led me through my own thoughts and related them to the place I was at in time, Using analogies that had helped me regain lost information about who I was, what I have done recently, and where I was. "Picture in your mind a simple mouse, you use it every day, it's something you know. Imagine the cord of this mouse as straight as you possibly can. Where does this cord lead you? To a computer of course! I understand that everything has little relation to you in this state, but from where I am sitting I can assure you that everything is calm. You're not in trouble and nobody is mad."
Now I probably wasn't the easiest to communicate to in that state, as I remember having a conversation with Caleb that needed certain parameters that I had to set. The condition was this: I could not speak to him truthfully unless he realizes that he needs to be me, but sober. That thought, even now, is confusing to me, such a request should only be met with a questioned stare and a broken attempt to make sense of it yourself. But Caleb carried on just fine with it. I remember waking up in the hotel room, calling the person we had gotten it from and asked her how strong were the dosages. She regretted to inform both myself and my friends that she had dropped 5 hits onto each of my hits. 10 hits total. Asking why they would do that in the first place for my first time I was told "Well I thought you wanted to party."
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