My Experience doing LSD in Big Sur

Too often, I forget the pleasures of living in California and its beautiful landscapes. I usually stay focused on exploring outside of California, or trying to leave the U.S in general, but sometimes staying in California to explore some of the many different landscapes is just as good. Me and some buddies decided to go camping in Big Sur and indulge in mind altering drugs, specifically lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). My friend wanted to try it out for his first time and since I had taken it before, probably a few years back, I decided to do it with him cause I have some experience with it. On top of that, I’ve never been the one to let drugs take over my mind or let myself go down the ‘rabbit hole’ so to speak. We all decided tripping on LSD in nature is hands down one of the best environments to do it, and speaking from first-hand experience doing it during the day is better than tripping at night. Big Sur is a perfect place, campsites are cheap, not that many tourist, it has a beautiful coastal scene and it's relatively close to where we live.

We camped at the Andrew Morella campsite, it cost us around $25 for two days with parking included. The campsite was really nice and open, took us about five minutes to walk to the campsite from the parking lot, and upon arrival the area was very clean with lots of grass, shrubs and trees. The coolest thing about camping here is that the landscape is very open, oftentimes we would catch deer roaming the grasslands in the morning over breakfast.

The following day after we had arrived to the campsite, we both took one 100microgram dose of LSD dissolved on a paper tab, we were both super excited cause we had the perfect campsite, open, filled with plant life, and animals. Tripping on LSD around wild animals was a very cool experience for us, living in big cities your whole life has a tendency to remove you from feeling connected to animals and just wildlife in general. It was one of the more prominent experiences that I felt, which was being connected to not only animals but also to plant life. We can't forget that plants are living and breathing entities themselves so we as humans are innately connected to them. I knew that I wasn't in my 'normal' state of mind, but if I could describe the feeling of LSD, it would be (for me at least) is possessing a heightened sense perception and connectedness. I think a big misconception about LSD is that people think when you take it, you'll lose control of your mind, but for me it didn't feel like that nor did it feel like that for my friends first time.

I got a lot of time to spend with myself that day, just wandering in silence and listening to my inner voice. I came to some interesting revelations about how all life came from water. Interestingly enough, when we would enter a peak phase throughout our trip cause LSD is sort of ebb and flow like, we found ourselves most calm when we were next to water or drinking water. This makes sense cause water has always been around on the planet since day one, and our bodies are composed mostly of water so being around and connected to it made perfect sense! I'm sure I could've arrived to the same conclusions sober, but Its hard to have time to think so abstractly living in a big city were you have to work everyday, society around you is so materialistic, and the constant bombardment of information.

Warning, doing LSD is a WHOLE day event lol, however, the experience of the LSD trip throughout the day felt much like the properties of waves as you hit your crest and trough points. Its during the trough moments when you must remind yourself that you are on LSD, and to enjoy it, this is only if your entering into 'bad trip' territory. And personally, I think it's rather hard to have a bad trip if your in nature and in good company. The latter is probably more important cause having someone help guide your mind to a happier thoughts is key. Sometimes we can get fixated on what I call 'thought patter image' meaning random images (could be bad or good ones) all of sudden emerge in your mind based off the circumstances, and when your on LSD you have a tendency to dwell on those images, which ultimately lead you down a series of negative (or positive) images and thought pattern. This is were the good experienced friend comes into bring you out of the 'rabbit hole' and back to positive, and supportive vibes.

Again environment is also key, we spent a great deal of out day laying on the beach and watching the natural ebb and flow character of the waves rush in toward us. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but watching the movement of waves in the ocean is very relaxing, it was representative of our trip as we would slowly peak then come back down. At that moment, we were both meditating hardcore and trying now quiet the inner voice that resides in all us.

While on our trip, we had a lot of time to get to know each other better as well. We were already good friends before, but even your best of friends, you still sometimes don't know everything about them. It's good to connect and learn more about your friends, we talked about a lot of stuff like relationships, politics, and just life in general. I don't know about you guys, but its hard to find people these days who actually think about and want to talk about the meaning of life, or whether or not plants can speak to one another. I personally think about some of this stuff even when I'm not on LSD, as my regular job I do scientific research on medicinal compounds that are used for cancerous cells so I ask myself lots of weird questions that seem unrelated.

I took this picture of sap oozing down this tree I seen while walking on a trail, but I thought it looked really cool.

Toward the end of our trip, we spent a good amount of time walking back to our campsite in reflection and overall positive vibes. Interesting enough, we hadn't eaten anything the entire time, which easily lasted for 6+ hours. The only thing crucial to us was having plenty of water around especially cause LSD can be very dehydrating. So we couldn't wait to get back to our campsite, start a fire and make some food!

It turned to be a very good meal, especially when you have't eaten all day! The remainder of the day/night we both felt calm and silent. The only thing that would have been really cool is if one us had brought some sort of music along the journey, but maybe that might have killed the vibe. Who knows. Some of things my friend and I discussed is that we both agreed that theres a huge misconception behind tripping on LSD. People who have never done it think that you won't have control over your mind, but from my experience I didn't feel that way at all. As I mentioned, LSD behaves like a wave, you do have peak moments of visuals but you also have trough moments of sober clarity. It's not like a constant trip, its like the Jimi Hendrix album - Experience. I recommend though, going out in nature, never take it a night, and do it with someone who has some experience with it if its going be your first time. Also I recommend being by water, typically ocean, lake, river or some sort of running water as I think its very pleasing to the mind when your on LSD. That was probably my third time doing it, I don't plan on doing it frequently or anything it was just for the experience. I still haven't tried shrooms so that might be next on the list in a few years.

If you like nature and psychedelics go ahead and upvote!