Caught Up in the Let-down

The comedown is always so sad. It's like, for a few hours something makes sense. Maybe not life, the universe, and everything, but something: why people do what they do, your own neuroticism, the body... and then as you sober up, things go from crystal clear to the opaque solidity of reality. You still have all the same facts present, you remember what you said, but that perfect diagram you had of human interaction as a switchboard where everyone's motives are as clear as the golden paths on a microchip, that's gone. When you're on acid, it seems so silly that you spend so much of your sober time loving trippy things so much, but when you're sober you remember that it's in the hopes of recapturing some little part of that. But you can't, really. So you drop some acid again, a few weeks or months later, expecting to get closer to that mystery, and maybe you do. And then the process starts all over again.

In another way, my comedown was good. My first trip, as I sobered up I realized that I had lost my entire sense of identity-- it was like my body knew all along who I was, and my mind had to slowly remember. It resulted in a lot of weird questioning over the next few days ("Why do I care about this person? Why do I like to do that?" etc) but overall it was a positive experience because it forced me to question the basics of my identity. I guess that sensation has been a staple of my trips since then, but I never really noticed it until I picked up my journal last night to record a few fleeting sensations, and then started rereading the past few weeks (like I often do). I happened to open up to a page where I was writing about one of the happiest experiences of my life. And everything that I read after that seemed to take on that same hue of brightness and hope. I was reading my journal like somebody else would, and I was amused at all the things I wrote. That was a pleasant introduction back into my daily life, which made the rest of it a little easier.

I commented to my close friend, who I was tripping with, that this was my eleventh trip. I only knew that because it occurred to me that my first experience with DMT was my tenth (to use trip in a broad sense). He said that he had heard various reports (from various people who don't trip) that it's impossible to reach ten without having a bad trip, or that after ten you're legally insane (I heard it was seven). Obviously, they're full of shit. I don't feel any more insane than I did yesterday (or a few months ago). Obviously, LSD has had some long term effects (a greater appreciation for color, my decision to just wholeheartedly not give a shit, some great friends I've made, and some of those revelations I talked about in the first paragraph) but honestly, I don't think that I would be doing LSD if I wasn't that kind of person anyway.

Despite the unfortunate comedown. LSD is definitely my favorite drug (shrooms may still be in the running, but require more experimentation). The pricing system is easy, it's easy to conceal, it doesn't require paraphernalia, it doesn't show up in drug tests, it's cheap, and unlike anything else you can buy for 10 bucks,  it can change your life. For some reason, I just feel more comfortable dealing with people and life while I'm on acid than when I'm high, which I'm sure is the opposite of most peoples' experience. Like, going to the bathroom is so much more daunting when you're high. Am I odd? Most likely. ;)