I’ll never forget the first time I tripped on acid. I was with my two best friends in the world, and then one other guy who, after that crazy night, also became one of my best friends.

The funny thing about LSD is that you could take it and literally do absolutely nothing, and still feel like you’ve had one of the greatest experiences of your life. That’s what we did that night – absolutely nothing. We holed ourselves up inside an apartment and went on an eight-hour carnival ride of the mind.

The only memory I have about that night is the four of us lying on our backs on the dining room floor staring up at the bottom of a table, giggling in astonishment; astonishment at absolutely nothing. We may very well have lain in that position for eight hours straight.

As with most drugs, the first time on LCD is usually the best. Every time after that, I don’t remember how many there were, I had hoped to reproduce that same otherworldly first-time feeling. They all fell short.

We came close the next time the four of us dropped acid together, this time at my house. To make things interesting, we bought a big pack of glow sticks. At some point in the night, one of us decided it would be a good idea to break them open and sling the glowing liquid all over the walls and on each other.

My living room looked like a planetarium.

People who do drugs together form a sort of bond. I wanted to experience this connection with everyone I met, so I became a fervent drug-evangelist. If someone had never smoked weed, I wanted to get him or her high. If someone had never tripped, I wanted to be the one to give the experience.

A Trip Like No Other

My dad was a professional scuba instructor and would frequently travel down to the Bahamas. Occasionally he would take me with him.

On one of those trips (the real kind to an actual place), I met a girl from Atlanta. I don’t actually remember her name so I’ll just call her “my friend.” We hooked up and hit it off, so she came a few months later to visit me where I was living in Memphis.

We had gotten high together in the Bahamas, but she had never tripped on acid, and so I began to witness to her. I won here over, and she agreed to try it.

It’s smart to make sure you’re in a controlled environment when you trip, especially with a first-timer, because you never know exactly what’s going to happen. So we decided to hang out in my bedroom.

Just so things didn’t get too out of hand, I tried to ease her in gently. We each took half a hit and waited. Forty-five minutes went by and I asked how she was feeling. She said she wasn’t sure, which to me sounded like, “I feel normal.”

I didn’t want the experience to be anti-climactic because I had really talked it up. So I said, “Hey, let’s go ahead and take another whole hit each so we can make sure it works.” Since she was following my lead, she was like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

The smart thing would have been to just take another half hit each, but I obviously wasn’t thinking straight having just taken a half hit of acid.

Well, it didn’t take long until we were both starting to peak. The next thing I know, she’s curled up in the fetal position on my bed completely unresponsive. I tried to speak to her and started shaking her, but there was nothing. No response. Her body was there, but she was someplace else.

I was tripping really hard by this time, so I couldn’t figure out if she was alive or dead. I began to grow anxious and a little paranoid and slipped into what’s commonly referred to as a “bad trip.”

If you’ve never experienced a bad acid trip, it’s hard to explain to you how awful it is. Imagine the worst nightmare you’ve ever had, and the terror you still felt when you woke up, and then multiply that by ten.

A dark cloud had descended over my mind. I started to question whether or not I would ever feel normal again. I again tried to wake up my friend, shaking her and yelling. There was still nothing. She looked to me like she was dead.

I began to contemplate calling an ambulance, to take her to the hospital in case she really was dying. Then I thought, “Wait, if I call them they’ll ask what I gave her.” As paranoid as I felt, I still managed to reason, “Well, getting arrested would be better than her dying.”

I felt complete and utter dread, and didn’t know what to do. I tried to tell myself over and over that she was okay and that eventually this would all end and life would continue as normal. The panic only intensified when I realised we were just a few hours into this trip and we still had another five to seven hours before the effects of the drug wore off. Even if it did end, I couldn’t imagine feeling this way for that long

With no where else to turn, I decided to pray.

I was not a religious person, although I did grow up with my parents in and out of a few churches. I had never intellectually rejected God’s existence, but I certainly had no desire to talk to Him or read a Bible. The thought of going to a church was repulsive to me.

But in that moment of desperation, without much forethought, I cried out to God for help. It was my last-ditch effort before calling an ambulance.

I still remember exactly what I said.

God, if you get me out of this, I will never do this drug again.

It wasn’t even a request. It was more of an arrangement, a deal. You give me something I want, and I’ll give you something I think you want.

Immediately after offering up my little deal to God, something unusual happened. My entire range of sight was filled with what looked like a giant M.C. Escher drawing of interwoven doves, with a rainbow pulsating through it.

Granted I was tripping, but this was more visual than anything I had ever experienced before. Furthermore, it was very spiritual imagery and very vivid. Since the time of the ancient Hebrews, doves have been representative of God’s presence and the rainbow a sign of God’s promise and protection.

After a few moments of flipping out on these M.C. Escher doves, I suddenly came to. The feelings of dread washed away and I sat up on my bed completely in my right mind. I looked over, and my friend was sitting up as well. She was also completely normal, no longer tripping.

I asked her what was going on and why she was unresponsive. She said she didn’t really know but she just felt trapped and couldn’t move.

I still remember telling her, “We were just having a bad trip and I prayed and then it stopped. This wasn’t supposed to be over yet.” She just shrugged her shoulders and didn’t seem to understand the significance of what had happened.

I don’t know if you believe in God or in miracles, but to me in that moment, I knew something inexplicable had happened. I looked at the clock and it was about 2:30am. We had taken our second hit only three hours before at around 11:30pm. It was supposed to take at least another five hours before we were back in our right minds.

Here’s a timeline of the typical LSD trip…

You might be thinking, maybe there was something wrong with the acid. Maybe it wasn’t very potent. I looked for ways to explain it away myself. But I had taken this same acid a few weeks earlier and had a normal eight-hour trip. It was definitely potent.

I couldn’t have verbalized it at that time, but looking back on that experience, I can see that I learned three things about God that would go on to radically reshape my view of the world.

God exists.

I think I already believed that there was a God. My prayer seemed to have assumed that he was there, and also that he cared how I lived. But for the first time, I felt that my life had been personally impacted by his existence. God had invaded my life in a tangible way.

It was simply a matter of cause and effect for me. The effect was the removal of my mental torment through the canceling of the influence of LSD. The cause was God responding to my request. I felt that I had encountered more than an impersonal force or power, more than ultimate reality, but a transcendent and all-powerful being.

God is listening.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that a creator exists, but another to believe that he is a person that can be known. This experience taught me that I could never be a deist. I could never believe that God created the universe but then left it to function on its own. He was close enough to hear my prayer.

Because he heard me, I reasoned that he could be known. This encounter with God laid the basis for my belief that he is not only transcendent, but he is imminent. He is intimately involved in the affairs of my life. He is amongst us.

God is not silent.

Not only did God hear me, but he also responded. He saw past the fact that I didn’t even make a request but instead tried to twist his arm. I made a promise that, assuming he is omniscient, he knew I would later break. And yet, he was not silent.

God revealed to me through the imagery of that vision that he was with me and that he cared about my pain. Then he reached down and removed my mental torment and anguish and replaced it with total peace. He showed me that he is good.

From a philosophical perspective, I learned that God did not create a closed system that was determined from the beginning, but rather one that is open to his intervention; a world that he could reach down into and reorder.

The Promise Breaker

Although my mind was opened to truth that morning, I didn’t fully embrace a life of faith in God. That didn’t happen for another nine months. I went about my life trying to deny the significance of what had happened to me.

A few months later, my favourite band, Widespread Panic passed through Memphis and having already seen them play four times over the previous year, I wasn’t going to miss them in my hometown.

It was also a given that I would ingest some kind of hallucinogenic drug before going to the show. I just had one problem. Acid was easy to find, but I had promised never to touch it again.

I did have a loophole. I hadn’t made any promises about tripping on mushrooms. Unfortunately, my buddy who was supposed to bring the shrooms that night showed up empty-handed. I faced a moral delimma.

Do I break my promise to God and drop acid, or do I keep my promise and go to a Widespread Panic show with nothing more than a bag of weed. It seemed like a travesty. Being someone who was more ruled by emotion than principle, I broke my promise.

I still remember how I felt when I walked outside and looked up at the sky just after putting that little square piece of paper in my mouth. I felt that I had betrayed someone who had been so very kind to me.

I quickly brushed those negative thoughts under the rug of my conscience and went about my evening. Turns out, someone gave me some mushrooms once I got to the show so I ended up tripping on both. At one point I remember looking down at my feet and counting sixteen tows. It was another crazy night, but that was the last time I ever tripped on LSD.

What do you think?

Do you believe there is a God, as I described him? Why or why not?

Have you ever had an experience that didn’t fit your worldview? How did you explain it?

Have you ever prayed in a moment of desperation? What happened?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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