The following is an account of the worst and only “bad trip” I’ve ever had on LSD. When I say bad trip, I really mean it. I’ve had plenty of uncomfortable and challenging experiences that ultimately were good for me in the long run. The aspects of these trips that made them challenging was the heavy introspective nature causing me to be hyper-aware of all of my flaws and problems. But, as I said, all of these trips were beneficial to me in the long-term. This trip was not like that. It was an actual bad trip that actually made life worse for a while. I am not trying to spread a scare-story; much of the factors that made this a horror-trip were my own fault. My mindset at the time was not good. Me and my girlfriend of four years were just about to break up. She hadn’t quite broken up with me yet, but I had the sense that she didn’t love me anymore. I am a bisexual male, though I had realized I was bisexual while I was with my girlfriend. She was bisexual too, and because of this I felt accepted and content with my bisexuality when I was with her.  I was not out at the time to anyone except her. Deep down, I was feeling insecure about my sexuality because I knew our relationship was about to come to an end. This will be relevant later in the trip-report. The setting was my house. My mother was out on a trip and expected to be back at around 2 a.m. I should also mention that I am extremely experienced with drugs of all kinds. At this time I was active in a pretty heavy addiction to opiates. Let the story begin. 

It was a beautiful, warm November day and I suddenly got a very strong urge to trip on some LSD. I gathered my money, met with my dealer and bought 5 paper tabs. I had the whole house to myself. My mom was out of town on a trip but would be back around 2 a.m. Seeing that it was only 4 p.m., this gave me plenty of time to trip. I was in active opiate addiction at the time. I’d tried to quit many times but failed. I was quite depressed at the time and thought a trip would help me figure out my problems. 



T   0:00 - I consumed two of the paper tabs. Looking back, I believe these tabs were around 100 ug each. They were definitely on the stronger side. 



T   30:00 - Beginning to feel the acid take effect. I consume another tab, bringing me to 300ug. 



T   1:15 - Really feeling the acid now. I take another tab, totaling me at 400ug. I decide to hop in the shower. This was a very strange experience. All along the side of the shower, where the water condensation formed I began to see Egyptian hieroglyphic- type patterns. My opiate addiction at the time was causing me to lose some hair. I was already concerned about this, but I was even more concerned when I shampooed my hair and saw massive amounts of hair in my hands and falling to the floor.  I know some hair really did come out, but I’m sure the acid made me see a lot more hair than there really was. This really freaked me out. It didn’t have too much of an effect on my trip, but it made me really aware of what my addiction was doing to my body. This eerie feeling began to creep up my spine.  I was listening to Grateful Dead’s Cornell 77 (a fantastic album to listen to while tripping. I recommend it to any psychedelic user) on a big JBL speaker. I vividly remember during the song “loser” when Jerry starts singing the chorus there is a big feedback interference (eeeeeeeeeee sound). It was this sound that coincided with my trip really taking off. Anytime I hear it today I get reminded of that feeling. 



T   1:45 - I get out of the shower and just sit naked on my bed. I get the plastic baggie that the LSD was sold to me in and closely examine it. Inside the folds in the bag I see mushrooms. Not literal, physical mushrooms, but I see mushroom shaped patterns on the bag, kind of like those cartoon-style mushrooms. The trip was starting to get very intense. 

T 2:00 - T 3:00 - The peak begins to set in. I don’t remember much. I kept listening to Cornell 77. I love this album so it brought me out of my introspection a little bit (or rather made the introspection a little more positive). But around halfway through the album, my speaker died. I found myself in this eerie silence. All of my problems and demons began to float to the surface again. A very common effect of acid for me is an increased sense of hearing. I always hear this buzzing noise. Some of it comes from a truck engine, a few houses done, and some of it from the buzz of the fan in my freezer and some from the sound of my heater. When this is combined with the already buzz-like nature of the LSD auditory hallucinations, it creates this eerie, alien ambiance. My mind began to become consumed by this. I also remember thinking a great deal about biology. This brought up some deep fears of death in me that will be relevant later. I was looking at my arms, at my blood vessels. I realized now just how fragile life is, but also how alien it is. It felt very weird to internalize the fact that I am a living organism, and part of this massive universe. 

Some Sexual Details Below - Don’t Continue If This Triggers You or Makes You    

Uncomfortable!    

~ T 3:30 - All I remember at this period is becoming very horny. LSD has this effect on me alot. It is a different kind of horniness though. I started to masturbate, watching some straight porn but also some femboy porn. Watching porn and having sex on LSD, especially high doses is a very strange experience. I kind of forgot I was human, but the sex drive is so deeply rooted in the species that I was almost doing it subconsciously. A layer of me didn’t know what I was doing. As I mentioned above, the horniness caused by LSD is different from usual horniness. I was less focused on the sex itself, but the senses involved in it, if that makes any sense. Instead of focusing on the genitals, for example, I would focus on the thighs or the hands, I would focus on the look and feel of the skin. There was no sexual power involved in it. The humans I saw engaging in sexual activities felt more like aliens. I went along with it because my body was telling me too. When I say it is alien it really is. The naked bodies are covered with infinitely complex, morphing fractals seemingly flowing in a 3D manner through and around the cells of the body. As I did this there was another layer of my consciousness just watching; observing. I don’t know how long I was masturbating for. But looking back, my climax or orgasm happened around the same time as the most intense peak of my trip. I very very briefly remember the time of orgasm. After that, I blacked out; complete ego death; merging into the one. 

I will not be using time markings after this, as I had no sense of time so I cannot accurately make any assumptions about when these events happened. The next thing I remember is a knocking, almost banging on the door. My mom was home.  My house has a big glass entry-way, and so it also has two doors. The outer door that leads from the entry-way to the outside and the inner door that leads from inside the house to inside the entry-way. My mom had a key to the outer door, but none to the inner door, it could only be unlocked from someone inside the house. I have no idea how long my mom was waiting at the door. I got up and let her in, still peaking very hard. She was upset for a minute for having to wait at the door, but I told her I was asleep. I talked to her for a minute trying to act sober when I realized my phone was on and still had femboy porn on the screen. I hurried and turned it off, she didn’t see. 



My mom started to notice that I was acting weird. When she asked me if I had taken anything, I told her that I was just pretty stoned and tired. (My mom has no problem with me using cannabis. She knows I’m an opiate addict also.) This plan started to fail when her face started to turn into fractals. Out of desperation, I told her the truth. I remember flat-out saying to her “Mom, I’m on LSD”. She was very upset at first, and this vibe instantly threw off my trip. I had already caused her enough trauma with my opiate addiction and I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. This is where the trip really started to go bad. 

My mom was looking at her phone, I had an auditory hallucination of the dialing sound. I thought she was calling my dad (who at the time had no idea of my drug use. I am somewhat intimidated by him) I began to panic, thinking all of my secrets would be exposed. We argued for a few minutes, saying the word LSD a few times. I thought that the neighbors could hear us, and because we were mentioning LSD, an illegal drug, they called the cops on us for a noise complaint. My mom left the house to go to a restaurant right down the street to calm down. I didn’t know she left the house, I just thought she went downstairs. The auditory hallucinations began to become intense. I heard my mom screaming, wailing for help. “Heeeeeeeeeeelp!” the sound of the wailing had this distant, echoey, eerie quality. Looking back it reminds me of those movies where some evil force can imitate the voices of loved ones, trying to lure them in. I started to run all over my house looking for my mother, all while screaming “MOOOOOOM!” This also reinforced the idea that the neighbors were calling in a noise complaint to the cops. At this point I began to come in and out of consciousness. I remember that I kept trying to put on music forgetting that the speaker was dead. I looked for my speaker, picked it up and found out that it was dead then put it back down. I repeated this many times; the infamous thought loop, though this was not the only one. I would come into consciousness, look into my entry way and literally  see two cops opening the door (the outer door into the entryway) and walking in. I would proceed to panic, run around the house like a madman trying to find and hide any “evidence” that the cops could find. (I was selling quite a large amount of drugs at the time, though during this experience I didn’t have any notable amount of product in my house. This shows LSD’s ability to reflect subconscious fears.) At one point, I even considered jumping out my window and running so I wouldn’t be caught. I would panic like this for a few minutes and then lose consciousness again. What I did in these ego-death blackouts I don’t know. I would then come into consciousness again and repeat the process. 

I repeated this a few times until I blacked out for a longer period. After this long black-out, I remember coming-to on my bed with my mom rubbing my head, comforting me. Apparently my mom had gone down to the restaurant and realized it probably wasn’t the best idea to be angry with me while I was tripping on acid.  While laying on my bed, my mom was trying to put some music on to comfort me. I still thought the cops were in my house, but the delusion got worse. From my living room I heard the sounds of the cop-radio. I heard the beeping sound of the walkie talkie along with some indistinct words coming from it. Around this time there had just been some cop-shootings in the news. This apparently was in my subconscious mind because I began to believe that I was going to be killed by the cops in my house. I vividly remember sitting there on my bed looking at my doorway, wholeheartedly believing that any second a cop was about to walk through the door, and shoot me on the spot. My mom said something about cannabis and I maniacally put my finger to my lips and said “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”. I thought the cops were listening to her speak along, of course, with our neighbors. 

 I was in full-blown psychosis. At one point I remember my mom asking me “You're gay? You’re a femboy?” Keep in mind, I am not a femboy lol. This just goes to show the strange ability of psychedelics to take every subconscious thought and ideation and bring it forth in your conscious mind in one big jumbled mash. As I previously said, I was not out to my mom as bisexual at the time, and I don’t think I was ready to be out to her. Keep in mind, when she said this to me I believed that my neighbors, the cops, and my dad who was “on the phone” could all hear her say this. All of my neighbors, my dad, the cops, they all knew that I was a druggie, gay femboy. I felt ineffably vulnerable. It was somewhat like being naked in a massive sea of people. I had no privacy whatsoever. It felt like my deepest, darkest thoughts that even I don’t acknowledge were out there for everyone to see. I knew that my life was over. I remember sitting there and having to come to terms with the fact that I was a disgrace, an embarrassment to my parents and my neighbors. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was about to be killed by the police. I went on my phone and frantically texted a few of my drug buddies that I was about to be busted. One of them I just said “run”. I also deleted anything related to anything gay on my phone and social media. I finally sat there with my eyes closed, meditating. I started meditating so the transition to death would be as seamless as possible. I also kept having images of me using drugs. I find that psychedelics, especially LSD, are incredible at evoking intense archetypal ideation. I saw my addiction to drugs through various archetypes/ideas. I saw an image of me, long hair and in a hoodie, taking a dab. (Though there were three of these images side-by-side) This represented the part of me that thought drugs were cool, my stoner personality. I also saw a vision of my body shutting down and dying; my life wasted. This represented my opiate addiction. I became utterly aware of the negative-effects of my drug use. This, along with the other things mentioned, made me hyper-aware of my own mortality.  I know that there is an element of humor here, even I think it’s funny. Despite this, I cannot explain to you just how traumatic this actually was to me. Yes, it was a delusion, but whole-heartedly believing your deepest thoughts were exposed, and having to prepare for your own death is a terrifying, humiliating experience. 

It continued like this for a while, the same thought loops and delusions. My mom was still sitting there comforting me. After around an hour or two of this, I finally began to come down. I was still extremely high, but it occurred to me that I might not die, and that I’ll just go to jail. Eventually I came down enough to realize that cops weren’t there. I asked my mom “are the cops here” and she said “Of course not why would they be?” This felt a little like waking up from a nightmare, thankful that it wasn’t reality. I was so thankful that I wasn’t going to be killed or arrested. Despite this, I still believe my neighbors and my parents knew all of my secrets. I was not as delusional anymore, not as scared. I just felt this intense feeling of embarrassment and vulnerability. I felt like an utter piece-of-shit. I felt like shit for being an addict. I felt like shit for being bisexual. I felt so insecure.  I kept apologizing over and over to my mom, I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. I eventually became sober enough to realize I had a small supply of trazodone on hand, which I immediately took. Within 20 minutes, I started to sober up, though I was still far from baseline. I went into the sunroom in the back of my house (where I had previously believed the neighbors were listening to me) and realized that it was just a sleepy Sunday afternoon. None of the neighbors were even awake. That killed my delusion of the neighbors hearing me. The delusion of my dad knowing all of my secrets was also killed when my mom told me she had never called him. I still thought my mom knew all my secrets. I am 99% sure that I hallucinated her saying “You’re gay? You're a f?” because when I actually came out a year later she seemed very surprised, though I never asked her if she actually said this, so I don’t know. 

The trazodone put me to sleep, and I woke up the next morning feeling very groggy. I apologized to my mom, trying to find out how much she knew. I was sober, but the experience was very traumatic. I had a sort of PTSD for the next two months. During those two months I had an extreme fear of death, so strong that I had multiple panic attacks. I felt hopeless, as I didn’t think I had it in me to quit opiates, and that I’d die an addict. I also felt embarrassed because I had to explain to my friends why I frantically texted them the night before. In conclusion, this experience was the worst trip I’ve ever had, though it was my fault. I didn’t respect the set and setting rule, nor did I use a responsible dosage. LSD is a very powerful compound and one must treat it with respect to have a positive experience. The negative effects from this trip are now gone. Around a year later, I was admitted into a rehab (somewhat by will somewhat not) which actually ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. In fact, I am writing this from rehab. I am a little more than eight months in and I am about to graduate. I realized here that the trip was not a waste. The LSD (my subconscious) was trying to send me a message. It was reminding me that this life is not forever, and that I need to treat my body with respect. It also taught me that I should keep no secrets. It is okay that I’m bi, it’s who I am. I appreciate anybody reading, please take this story as a word of caution to respect psychedelic compounds. Good luck to all of you! Jaya Rama! Jaya Hanuman!