Trip Report August 7th-8th, 2025

On August 7th, 2025, I picked up tabs of LSD from a friend. They are literally tiny squares of paper, no taste, no sensation of intake, quite different from alcohol and cannabis, the only "drugs" I had tried up to this point. I took one piece at 6:30 PM and strapped in for the 1–2 hour startup my friend had described.

The first signs that anything was taking place came from the TV. I had astral white noise playing quietly, and I noticed the still image of a nebula on the TV changing resolution. This was actually happening, as YouTube does indeed have to buffer still images sometimes, amazing. But around 7:15 I realized the image in the TV was pulsating, like it was breathing slowly. The breathing of the TV did not match my own like I thought it would have.

I stood up and felt the slight spaced-out head rush that is typical of a light cannabis buzz and walked closer to the TV to inspect if the movement was part of the video or part of my trip. I walked around the house and noticed how the atmosphere of each room changed my thought patterns. The plant room felt especially cold and disconnected, which I found shocking given how much importance that room has to me normally. The bathroom mirror was calling to me.

I’ve heard to never look yourself in the mirror during a trip, advice I blatantly ignored in favor of curiosity. The man I saw in the mirror was a stranger; I blushed nervously as I accidentally made eye contact with him only to realize that it was me. For the first time in my life I was seeing myself as how everyone else sees me. I was fully aware that it was me in the mirror and I recognized all my normal features, but in my day to day I’ve never found myself once looking at myself and seeing an actual person — it’s always with some kind of goal in mind, like brushing my hair or popping a zit. Yet here I was, face to face with myself as I exist to others.

I was completely enamored with my reflection, seeing details in my own face I’d never noticed. If I focused hard enough I could see more detail than reality had to offer — the psychedelic tapestry was revealing itself.

The tapestry first took form in my forehead. I saw impressions of letters, all capital, and with little to no vowels or spaces. The words were vivid enough to "read," though no meaningful information was contained in them. It looked as though someone was hitting random keys on a keyboard, text like "YTHGAXZYHTZ" scrolled continuously across my forehead, down to my shoulders, and into my hair. This tapestry would find itself in every moment of visual focus I would have for the remainder of the trip.

I began to feel incredible amounts of euphoria. I was bathed in the joy that I am alive and existing. Every thought was about how insane it is to just be alive and able to think and feel; I smiled uncontrollably.

My every thought began to consume my focus, taking me out of reality and into my head where the feeling of profound realizations would be stopped by the crashing of my train, only to be picked back up after moments of awareness as to just how deep in my head I was.

With Herculean effort I managed to type this into my notes during my mirror fixation:

"Every single person will have such a unique experience on drugs, and it will often feel profound, but what they do not realize is that the most profound thing was that they are an individual to begin with it."

"Simple existence is fucking insane. It is no wonder why we cannot feel like this all the time."

I was happy to be alive, something that tends to elude me when I’m not forced into numbness by anti-depressants, and a feeling that is still following me as I write this.

I must have stared into the mirror for an hour straight. Time didn’t lose meaning but became something I could actively ignore, which I did.

I began to laugh — a concept I had read about when researching Salvia divinorum had come to the forefront of thought. The cosmic joke is said to reveal itself to people under the influence of salvia. I found myself understanding the joke and finding it hilarious. This "joke" would find its way into my head several more times, each time a slightly different version.

I exited the bathroom and felt myself drawn now into the plant room. The atmosphere changed as I could no longer hear the astral droning of the TV. I went into the living room, thinking that I had to be close to the TV to pull up the same video on my phone. I have no way of knowing how long this took as my sense of time was being consciously ignored, though I have a feeling it took a comically long time to figure it out.

Returning to the plant room with the "atmosphere" of the living room successfully captured in my phone, the "cosmic joke" revealed itself when pondering how much meaning and profundity I was feeling, but had no way to properly convey it to anyone else, as words simply can’t. The irony was immensely funny at the time.

I wandered around the house, observing every detail like it was brand new, running my hands across surfaces, feeling their textures in new ways. At some point, I sat down on my couch and closed my eyes, letting the waves of thought wash over me. Each one felt like an ocean current carrying me somewhere new — sometimes to deep reflection, sometimes to pure sensory bliss.

My vision when my eyes were closed wasn’t dark — it was full of colors, shifting fractals, and the same strange tapestry that had been appearing on my skin earlier. Every thought I had seemed to ripple through it, changing its shape and flow.

At some point in the early morning, I noticed the comedown starting. The visuals slowly softened and my thoughts became less overwhelming. I felt calm, centered, and strangely clean — as if my brain had been scrubbed of dust.

I cannot stress the immense joy of the experience enough. I feel refreshed as if my brain got the deepest, most restful sleep of its life. These drugs are immensely powerful and serious — they should be used in a meditative setting and with supervision of a trusted loved one if you choose a high dose. It is up to the experiencer how much meaning comes out of it; you could drop acid for a night and party, and throw the experience away as just a drug-induced state — but you could also treat it as the most meaningful conversation you’ve ever had with yourself.