LSD
by Zac Porter
Yesterday (8/3), I experienced my first LSD trip with Luis. It seems useful to write about it in regards to the location.
PRELUDE: Luis and I each took approximately 3/8 of a tab at about 6:00 PM. Luis told me to keep the tab under my tongue for as long as possible, which was surprisingly difficult. I kept the tab under my tongue for about 15 minutes before swallowing it. By 7:00 PM there were not any significant effects from the LSD. Luis suggested smoking a bowl of weed and I agreed. The smoke inhalation of the cannabis slightly burned my throat. Not too long after hitting the bowl, the LSD began to take effect. We noted that the cannabis seemed to be the catalyst for the trip. The time before the trip was a kind of purgatory, waiting to leave this world. Luis and I interacted normally.
COUCH: The LSD trip began sometime after 7, about 7:15 PM I think. I was listening to Luis’ playlist on the PS4 when I began to notice auditory hallucinations. I also began to notice tingling sensations in my legs. In my trip dictionary, I wrote that my feet felt like aliens housed in shoes, making my shoes alien houses. It seems a benchmark for my trip is whether or not my body feels alien to me. During a Big Thief song, there seemed to be an underlying synthetic roar that was the base track or something. It was mostly awe-inspiring. My body jumped involuntarily to a very sharp drum beast in one instance. I was also fixated on the fridge. The way the sunlight played off of it seemed particularly interesting. I also remember really liking the song ‘Southern State’ by Bright Eyes. Also, with consistent success, I was able to enter the song. In the past, I’ve described it as synchronizing to the wavelength of the music, which still feels accurate. Luis mentioned that it’s sort of like a higher-dimensional dance, which also feels accurate. The cat, Arthur, was being uncharacteristically friendly toward me and again I felt like the cat and I were doing some sort of dance. When Arthur cuddled with me, I could feel us both purring, Luis did not interact with me with the exception at the very beginning of the Trip, to verify if I had also began tripping.
BACK PATIO: Luis and I both went to the back patio to talk for the first time since the initiation of the trip. I don’t really remember what we talked about. I distinctly remember the outside feeling very good. I smoked an American Spirit. We drank a ginger-berry kombucha that tasted particularly good.
BEDROOM: At some point Luis mentioned that we should look at art in his room. Luis talked about how all art is good and that status plays a large part in determining the ‘goodness’. He began showing me a short film he made of himself looking at his computer. I felt that the films cinematography was done really well, all of the shots of Luis web-browsing were perfect. I browsed at Tao Lin’s Mandalas and other art and it would later encourage me to draw in my notebook. Luis showed me a drawing of his that had a dark energy. There was a large black circle that was the focal point of the drawing. To me it symbolized a primal darkness and more specifically of the darkness under the island in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which is the primal darkness that exists in harmony with the light, yin/yang. I became bored with Luis’ short film and began to read random pages of Megan Boyles’ Live Blog. I felt inspired to begin my own Liveblog. I reassured Luis that his Liveblog was good and brings the same types of issues and ideas to the table as Megan Boyles’. I would later joke that Liveblogs are the kombucha of literature, raw and unfiltered.
FRONT PORCH: For a short amount of time, Luis and I stood on the front porch. We felt that the front porch was a vessel. There was condensation on the door I was really intrigued by. I felt very different about outside vs inside. Inside felt like the lesser place. Luis went inside to get Molly while I was fixated on the door. Mid-stare, Luis let Molly out the front door and she lunged at me. I was really scared, actually the most scared I can remember feeling recently. In my trip dictionary I wrote, ‘felt primal fear of beasts.’ Should be, ‘felt primal fear of beasts embedded in human consciousness expressed in a single, brief, instance.’
NO MANS SKY/SLEEP: When we returned indoors, Luis went to his room and I began to play No Mans Sky. I was lost in the world of No Mans Sky for probably close to 1-2hrs. I don’t remember having too many thoughts that weren’t centered on my objective, which was to meet 30 aliens for the pelo in the space anomaly. Had a profound feeling that No Mans Sky is very closely related to the trip, in a more ‘meta’ way. Like, No Mans Sky is an exploratory game, where you’re finding other worlds and meeting other beings and its fun and feels important, which has been the basic premise of both of my psychedelic trips. After the objective was complete, I went to bed. I remember the animals particularly freaking me out. Molly’s claws clanked very loudly on the hardwood floor and she was walking around in a way that felt aimless and borderline psychotic. Arthur kept attacking my hands and managed to jump directly onto my face a couple of times. The scariest of the ‘SLEEP’ animal interactions was when Molly put two paws on the couch near my torso to make it appear she was ‘standing’ and looking down on my supine body. Obviously she was looking for a place to cuddle, but there seemed to be a darker notion that she was scanning/inspecting my body. I also had a mildly intense facial pressure that I felt behind my orbital bones and above my top row of teeth. It made me wonder if I was feeling my body as it truly is. The suppressed sensation of years of malnourishment, pesticides, etc. exerting their effect on my body brought to light. I fell asleep around 2:30 AM. I dreamed I was with a lover and we were escaping a tyrant of some sort. When the tyrant confronted us I pushed him away and he caught on fire and still pursued us. We rode away from him and his mangled body and embraced each other.
•
Creator’s Complex
the spell is partly broken
being alone has that
power
i don’t know what
to do with myself
engaging with art is
engaging
i have a bad habit
of not admiring my
own work
i told my grandma that
i have a ‘creator’s complex’
i’m not sure if that meant what
i wanted it to
i want looking at my art to feel
like listening to
my favorite album
being alone helps
i confronted my
my ego
the spell is partly
broken
Zac Porter is a junior at WVU majoring in Ecology. Besides class, his main focus is reading and writing.