There is a saying, there is no such thing as a bad trip, just a challenging one.

It is August of 2020. This was my first time taking LSD, I had heard stories of how it has helped countless people resolve their inner most problems, and I also read how LSD has driven people to kill themselves from going insane. Couldn’t be me right?

The come up was slow, my girlfriend was trip sitting me and I was sitting down at a bench near a lake, I was watching the sky when I noticed that one side was darker than the other, it was then I knew the tabs were working- I spent the next several hours tearing up from happiness, emptying out all of my emotions and coming to peace with my fears and regrets. When I started to come down we begun to drove back to my girlfriends friends place, we had planned to camp out in the car and watch the stars- on the drive back music sounded incredible, I was listening to Kavinsky – Nightcall, it was as if I was fully immersed in the music.

Once we got back it was dark, and we decided to smoke a cone, this is where things took a 180- my tolerance to marijuana was basically none as I only smoked maybe once a month, I took a total of 5 big hits from the cone, coughing each time. Big mistake. Nearly 30 seconds later I was shot to the moon, it was as if my trip got 100x stronger. I noticed something extremely strange, polygons began encompassing every part of my vision, they looked like little triangles with faces laughing at me, I felt a chill in my bones and then nothing, I couldn’t feel my heart or my body, I was completely numb. I got back in the car trying not to freak out when I lost nearly all my memory, I thought I was being drugged by my girlfriend and about to be raped or murdered, we had only been dating for a month at that point, it got worse and worse, I couldn’t remember my name or why I was there or even where I was, then I peeked outside and looked up at this big tree, what I saw was terrifying. All of the leaves had morphed into rectangular monsters with big bright eyes staring into my soul and razor teeth moving and snarling at me, I could hear the razors getting closer and closer and I couldn’t comprehend anything because I couldn’t remember my thought from 5 seconds ago, I could not even form coherent sentences, my girlfriend told me later I was speaking gibberish. She was trying to calm me and I looked at her and she looked completely different, her face was dark and her hair had become geometric snakes, it was terrifying, I thought I was going to die.

The next 2 hours were hell on earth as I was constantly hit with wave after wave of anxiety, everything turned into a different dimension, it was as if everything was made of play dough. It is hard to explain in words but imagine controlling a camera and you can only use the arrow keys, up, down, left, right, all the while your vision is delayed to the point where you cannot perceive anything. Eventually my body gave and I couldn’t control any part of my limbs anymore, as I stay laid down looking up at the ceiling I saw myself crawling onto the road when an ambulance arrived, I blinked and now I was laying in a hospital bed looking at the faces of my concerned and disappointed family who had came.. then I blinked again and I heard a loud “beeeeeep” indicating that I had died and now I was hovering over my body, at that moment I was at peace for a few seconds before I came back to my senses and started spazzing out in the car. That part never happened, it was just an hallucination, yet it felt so real. It was the most terrifying experience of my entire life, no question.

The following months I felt dissociated from reality and thought I was going insane, I would developed extreme panic disorder and my general anxiety disorder increased 20 fold, I would cry nearly all day & refuse to eat, have 2-3 panic attacks per day and experience hallucinations of monsters that had followed me into my life, and were watching me through the dark- I had also developed severe HPPD with visual snow and trails and I nearly dropped out.

Now a year later I am doing much better, and this is due to medication as well as meditation, healthy eating, getting enough sleep, and mindfulness as well as CBT therapy and my wonderful girlfriend who has stuck with me through all this and helped me a lot. I realize that my anxiety is a spider, a spider on my brain constantly telling me bad thoughts, but that’s just it- these are just thoughts. They can’t hurt you and they don’t define you, and once you acknowledge them you will be free and they will be silenced.