In Search of the Unknown: An experiment with LSA

I had always regarded myself a psychonaut through my late teenage years, an "armchair psychonaut" however. Triggered by my spontaneous experiences with lucid dreaming, I began reading a lot of philosophic and metaphysical materials and slowly developed an eagerness to experience a lot of what was written. I was also fascinated by the psychedelic communities and the number of psychoactive plants, and the active underground groups surrounding them in the west (especially in the US, Canada and South American Countries) where most of the authors I read came from.

As it was, the knowledge of psychotropic plants and psychedelic substances were either alien or esoteric where I grew up but you could get Marijuana, a plant I had grown to dislike, firstly, due to it's association with local hoodlums and secondly, due to the sedative nature of the available strain; I was not trying to be put to sleep, I only craved the mental adventures and discoveries I had read about from fellow explorers.

In my University days, most nights were spent in corners of dark rooms late in the night, meditating. I was a student who majored in Land Economics but metaphysics was my unofficial major. With years of meditation, pranayama and special breathing methods and a brief exploration of Jungian active imagination technique behind me, I was slowly becoming an impatient seeker, I was experienced with ludicd dreams and similar adventures but I wanted a substance induced trip where the elements lead the way through parallel worlds. So you know how exciting it was, a few years later, when I learnt I could order an LSA laden seed off Amazon. This was the closest I would probably get to a trip.

The next few days after my discovery was pretty exciting as I awaited my delivery from Amazon, it eventually came in a white padded envelop. This was the closest I would get to an entheogen, that was what I thought. I couldn't wait to take the first trip, I waited till late evening and took a few seeds and lightly scrapped the husk off, I later squashed the seeds and carefully placed in a white tea sack which I had emptied out and placed under my tongue while I did a few things around my apartment.

Now it was really dark outside and I was in alone, I could feel waves of tremor sweep over my body, it seemed like the gateway to a good trip and I was starting to loose balance. Wobbling over to the room, I fell to the bed, laid down and surrendered to the feeling, closing my eyes slowly to ease the dizziness and hoping that beautiful visions of colours and imageries would take over,,, maybe I was wrong.

It was now a few hours into the night, I had been on the bed for hours unable to sleep, I was visibly agitated at this point, beautiful visions and colours were unwilling to emerge as I have read, instead, my heart was racing uncontrollably and I felt it would get ripped off my chest making it even scarier,,, at that point, I felt like I would be dead before the morning came and I was really terrified. Death had never felt so close by. Since I couldn't figure out what to do, I slowly surrendered to my fate, hoping maybe somehow I would survive.

I later fell asleep while semi-conscious of my dire state. My thought process was not too clear for the rest of the night but for unknown reasons, I thought I had to finish my post graduate thesis which I had left pending for months, I felt this was the only way to have a decent trip, and that made no sense to me at all. Not only was it a lacklustre experience, it was more of a terrible one.

I woke up later in the morning, I had fallen deeply into sleep at some point in the night and I was grateful for that. I told myself I wouldn't ever try such a trip again but a few days later, I would be trying the same thing with the same result.

This was the point where I had to flush the remaining seeds down the toilet, maybe till some other day...