The Craziest Trip Reports of All Time | Part Six

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:25]Welcome to the world of tales from the On one fateful Tuesday at around 1:00 in the afternoon during the Easter holidays, me and my good friend decided to try out HBW, Hawaiian Baby Woodro.

[00:00:59]row seeds. It was the perfect moment to try out our first psychedelic experience, for we were staying in a friend's country house along with a bunch of other people we knew very well and far away from the stress and paranoia associated with big cities. I had about 3 days to stay there, so it was all fine and dandy. And I figured 3 days was plenty of time.

[00:01:23]So, as I said, at 100 p.m. me and my friend, let's call them A, each dropped 10 grains of HBW into coffee mugs. We filled the cups with about two fingers of pure water and not tap water because chlorine destroys LSA, or so I've heard, and closed the mugs with the solid surface so as to not let any air escape.

[00:01:46]I'm pretty sure A did the bastardly deed of stealing one of my grains, but it would not change anything to the oncoming effects he later experienced.

[00:01:56]After leaving the grains in the water for about 20 minutes, we both quickly drank it, which had turned yellow, and thoroughly chewed on the remaining grains. We had not eaten anything before taking it, so we stupidly thought we could eat afterwards. A ate a few strips of bacon and I ate a few chips.

[00:02:16]We walked out of the kitchen into the living room. The inexraable nausea was coming quickly after a few minutes, and I felt the mild pain in my stomach, but nothing too harsh, though. Ace suddenly felt drowsy and needed to lie down in one of the unoccupied beds upstairs. I sat down on one of the living room chairs while some guys were watching television and waited for the effects to hit me. I had no idea how much time the onset or the coming up were going to take. Nothing happened for about an hour, so I believed the grains were not working. Sadly, I had taken every grain I bought, and I felt slightly bummed that this experience was wasted so easily.

[00:02:58]I decided to check on a lying down on one of the beds upstairs. He seemed to be sleeping, but after examining him for a few seconds, he muttered that he felt like he had taken a sedative. He told me he wasn't experiencing any visuals either, openeyed nor closed, but his thoughts were racing and his imagination had a raging boner. I felt even worse that I was feeling absolutely no effects except the nausea even though he was as he had taken precisely or at least approximately the same dose as I had.

[00:03:33]This bad feeling turned into a physical bad feeling and I raced to the bathroom only to stay there 20 minutes waiting to puke but nothing was coming out. I came out of the toilets and A had left the room. He was downstairs smoking a cigarette and talking to people. I decided to start watching a film to forget about my lack of luck. I watched Saleo or the 120 days of Sodom, Pasolini's masterpiece, with my friend for about an hour and a half. After a while, I started to feel pretty heavy and weak. Thus, I believe this was due to my lack of sleep and excessive alcohol abuse over the last few days.

[00:04:13]So, I climbed into my bed and relaxed. I stayed there for a while with my eyes closed as one of my friends watched the film with a who had finally decided that his trip was over.

[00:04:26]3:50 p.m. Progressively, my imagination was running wild, which is usually normal in the moments before I fall asleep. Though, something was different this time. The nausea was slowly creeping back. I felt that my legs were getting heavier. I stretched out and it felt so good. Suddenly, the need to vomit surged out of my bowels and I was running to the toilets upstairs.

[00:04:53]My friends, still watching the film, were laughing at my violent and amusing change of state. I lifted up the toilet seat and puked like a robot about five times. I thought it wasn't going to end, but after a short while, it did. I became dizzy and I thought it was because of the pressure I'd put on my head.

[00:05:14]I was wrong. I looked into the mirror and lo and behold, my pupils were as big as Elton John's anus. My face was constantly morphing and with a mad and childish glee, I ran downstairs to proclaim that the grains were finally working. After 3 hours of digesting, the effects came on slowly. I sat down in the living room on a chair facing the colorful patterns of the opposite wall.

[00:05:41]I stared at this banal thing for a few minutes until I noticed that the wall was sliding and the patterns were meshing into each other as if this bed of purple and blue tulips were being blown by the wind. I did not marvel at this change of perception. I simply acknowledged it and took it for a sign that the grains effects had barely started coming. I stood up and left the living room for the garden.

[00:06:08]The sight that I beheld was incredibly glorious. The rain had left a coat of dazzling diamonds on the explosively colored flowers of spring, while the wind shook the great trees that looked immense and noble. After a night of rain, the sky was clearing itself and the clouds were patchy and incomplete. I looked to the sky. The clouds were titanic angelic ships sailing across the klein blue of the spring sky. I stood there like a fool with my mouth open wide in astonishment until a came out and told me in a calm and gleeful voice to sit down. I took a chair. The few drops of rain that had found a way onto it were shining with a blinding brightness. To the eyes of my friends, I seemed hyperactive and excited as my dilated eyes darted around the garden like bees. One of my friends started talking to me. It took me a while to grasp the flow of the conversation and I was constantly asking him to please repeat the sentence. After a hard time of trying to understand what the hell was being told to me, I gave up listening for it seemed a waste of my time to listen to seemingly insane gibberish during a psychedelic experience.

[00:07:25]I was fearful that this might lead to them thinking I was blatantly ignoring them, but they understood my condition and I started roaming the garden looking for more eye candy.

[00:07:36]The clouds were starting to cover the sky again, and the light that managed to shimmer through those holes in the clouds were astounding. For a minute, my weak sense of perspective led me to believe the clouds were right there in front of me, and the light was shining right through the trees at me. I was overjoyed.

[00:07:56]I decided to climb once more into my bed and enjoy the closed eye visuals. I looked around the room. The patterns on the bed sheets around me were writhing like snakes and falling into each other.

[00:08:08]The small shelf on the wall had books colored so that they stood out a lot and the room was lit in a dim red light, which is actually how it normally is. I was experiencing a pleasant sensation overload. The TV outside sounded as if it were around me, as did the people speaking in the living room, as well as all the small sounds of movement, doors slapping, and a ball being kicked.

[00:08:33]Sounds echoed abruptly and seemed to emanate from my own mind.

[00:08:39]700 p.m. My eyes were darting around very quickly, for there was simply too much to comprehend. Thoughts were emanating from various objects around.

[00:08:49]The effects were becoming stronger and I was losing myself to the innane flow of my own thoughts and the amazing closed eye visuals I was experiencing.

[00:08:59]Golden velvet human eyes in triangles over a blue sea. Eyes on top of thrones.

[00:09:06]Dolphins raping humans. Disturbing. Soon enough, this trip was turning into something I couldn't quite control. The incessant flow of my thoughts were accelerating to the point of incoherence, and I was worried for my sanity. From time to time, in the glimpse of a second, I was able to tell myself that this was just a drug, that my family has never had accounts of schizophrenia, that I was overreacting.

[00:09:33]But none of these phrases could slow down the unstoppable force of insanity I was experiencing.

[00:09:39]For an hour, I lived in the hell of what is described as schizophrenic psychosis.

[00:09:45]Time was eternal. I was stuck in this madness forever. I tried listening to My Bloody Valentine or Ozri Tentacles, music that usually calms me, but the lyrics of the first made absolutely no sense, and the latter's progressive rock was dissonant and giving me the creeps.

[00:10:05]After a long while, I managed to hang on to the thought that this was all temporary and it would change again. And it did. I was still insane, but I managed to walk up to the toilets upstairs and stare at my constantly morphing face. The black and beige granite on the floor was swirling like a mastrum and distorting itself to the point of becoming gray. I looked out of the window. Two of my buddies were doing some crab magga in the garden. And as they jumped around, they seemed to be made of an extensively stretchable material.

[00:10:39]I came back into my bed and being unable to object or even talk coherently, some friends walked into my room and drew stuff on my face with a UV marker. I was desperately trying to get them to help me, but they started leaving the room and I couldn't speak. A walked in and approached his head to my face and stared at me. His face was taking on completely different dimensions, and his typical Joker smile made him look terrifying to my poor tripping mind. He left, and once again, I was alone.

[00:11:14]8:00 p.m. I mustered up the courage to see what was going on in the garden. The house was empty. For the guy whose house this was, I got the impression that I might turn berserk and thrash around the house. I stepped into the garden and as some people watching the two guys do Krav Maga turned their heads to see what I was up to. I started feeling paranoid and believing they were scared of me and didn't want to talk to me. My incoherent thought process had since left me, but the feeling of paranoia was nearly as overwhelming.

[00:11:46]Then it started raining. I helped them pick up their equipment for the fighting and came into the living room. The setting sun looked like fire on the horizon. Sanity was coming back to me and I was increasingly feeling better, though sad that I had such a horrible experience. I crashed into a comfortable sofa and looked around. The walls seemed to be morphing as well, and holes were being dug by invisible forces into the yellow paint. The colors of the television were crazy and extravagant, as were the people acting out the soap operas. Ace sat beside me and asked me if we could jam as I was sure he noticed my sadness. I tried playing along with him, but it was hard. It was like learning to play the guitar all over again. Thankfully, this activity kept my mind off of my bad experience. And as we played a few bluesy numbers, I started feeling much better and euphoric.

[00:12:43]I felt weird coming down slightly back to reality as if my eyes were shrinking, which they were. I finally got up and started fully enjoying the hallucinations. The flowers on the wall were morphing into these sleeping, violent human faces. The sensation overload I was feeling early on was turning into this feeling of being encircled by loving friends indifferent to my current state, but who would be there for me if anything went wrong?

[00:13:13]It's strange, but the sensation overload is nearly exactly the same experience by Raul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This state of confusion where the immense mass of information received is strangely interpreted. I was starting to move around like Robert Plant, much to my friends and my own amusement.

[00:13:34]900 p.m. I left the living room to look at the garden again. I think that at this point the effects were wearing off but still very present. The stars were very shiny. So were the puddles of rain on the round and dew on the flowers. My friend comes out to talk to me. I now fully understand what she's saying, but she still thinks I'm in the ignoring mode. We stepped back into the house just when dinner was served. Sitting at the table was like a new glimpse into the terror of insanity. The table is rocking. Eating is hard as I seem to no longer possess any saliva. Watching people talk is hard because their face twist into perverted grimaces.

[00:14:19]I start feeling bummed again. But then I once again tell myself that this is just one last wave of negative effects from the drug. After a good dinner, I sit in my room and start enjoying the last of the sensory overload until A walks in and starts talking to me, asking how it was like if I was still on the bad trip.

[00:14:41]At this point, the feeling of anxiety tied to insanity had vanished. I realized the trip was nearly over.

[00:14:50]What followed was the end of the trip, spent at a small table where a circle of my friends and me smoked hookah. A great sense of comic awareness was dawning and I found myself laughing. I have a hard time expressing my amusement at the stupidest of A's antics. The girl beside me being drunk and thus depressed and silent and the other Brazilian guy talking about who knows what that is supposed to have to do with the philosophy based on an opposition to a negative aspect of life.

[00:15:22]I slept very well, and the next day, even with just 4 hours of sleep, I felt more fresh and open-minded than I had ever been before. Cleaning the house was fun, as was watching the phantom menace and watching the clouds outside that still seemed to be humongous.

[00:15:41]Overall, even with a bad trip on my first experience, I'm sure that it was tied to the unusually large first dose of about 10 grains, I felt this has been an enlightening moment. I take more interest in color now, though my interest in music has slightly decreased. Patterns on walls or anywhere take on more significance. My imagination has increased in potency, and I still manage to perceive quite lucid visuals when I close my eyes.

[00:16:11]these days.

[00:16:23]I will try to recall the experience as best as I can, but it was incredibly powerful. I only wish words did it justice. There was so much more that can possibly be said here. This was amazing, horrible, scary, fascinating, annoying, uncomfortable, painful, and surreal all at once. This happened a few years ago.

[00:16:46]It is now January 2015, but I believe it is worth mentioning. I'd been discouraged from recording the experience at the time by the fact that all the careful notes I've been taking during the experience turned out to be nothing but illeigible scribbles, symbols, and crumpled notebook paper.

[00:17:05]When I examined them the next day, I had previously been given 150 seeds by a friend who mistook them for morning glory seeds. The mistake could have been dangerous, but in the end, I was shown the plant and properly identified it. I chose to take some seed pods home with me. With a little bit of research online and with the seeds themselves, I ended up finding what I believe to be a dose that would take me far, but wouldn't put me in the hospital or worse. Deter's potency varies 5:1. So now I always start with a very, very low dose and work up.

[00:17:43]I prepared 450 individually counted and finely ground seeds into a coffee filter and tied a string around it so it resembled a closed tea bag. I dipped it in a pot of warm water for approximately 24 hours and agitated it every few hours. I discarded the seed bag and I took the potion as the sun fell under the moon. This seemed appropriate because this plant had earned the nickname moonflower.

[00:18:11]My brother came up for the weekend and wanted to try the experiment with me in the last minute. He was to be my sitter anyway, so I gave the okay. My brother was not made tea, but instead yogurt, so we could get on with the experience.

[00:18:25]For my brother, I prepared 150 finely ground seeds and sprinkled them into a yogurt mix. I've been fasting all day for the experiment. I do not know what he had to eat, but he weighed around 135 at the time. I believe it might have been better for him to start at 50 to 100, but I gave him 150 because he insisted he wanted to really feel it.

[00:18:50]I began feeling the effects of this potion before I was done drinking it.

[00:18:54]Granted, it took me about 15 minutes to finish because it tasted so foul, but most potions for the mind taste bad. I find it's almost a right of passage in my eyes. Still, this kicked in notably fast when compared to my other deter experiences.

[00:19:11]My brother had a much easier time downing his yogurt mix. I find even with the scientific and rational mind, I enjoyed the ritualistic aspect of these experiences. So, I tried to be as serious about it as I could. This was an exploration of the mind, not recreational intoxication.

[00:19:31]About 15 to 20 minutes after downing the potion, I was already feeling very drunk and distended from my body. I hadn't even stood up from my original seat. I was just battling nausea. I had been fighting an incredible urge to purge since the first sip. And considering the sheer intensity of the confusion I was facing, I was abandoning the idea that I was going to peacefully meditate myself into another plane of thought. I didn't even make it to the bathroom. I purged right back into the pot I had prepared my brew in before I even got a chance to stand up. I might be paranoid, but I think this may have saved my life. I faded out of memorable consciousness after stumbling to the bathroom.

[00:20:17]Time doesn't make any sense. The notes I am writing don't seem to want to form together coherently. I'm very confused and uncomfortable. My stomach doesn't hurt anymore, which makes it much easier to think clearly, but I still feel very drunk. And my skin feels incredibly sharp. I'm shaking, and I don't know why. It hurts to touch anything that's not completely smooth or soft. Touching anything with my hands or arms send sharp pins and lightning bolts up my nerves. I think my throat is swelling up, and I'm compulsively drinking water to ensure it doesn't close. I am swallowing nothing constantly just to ensure I can still swallow. Trying to breathe through my nose is easier. My throat might just be numb and not swollen, but I can't tell. I fade out again.

[00:21:09]I wake up sitting in the dark apologizing to my blanket for being so intoxicated.

[00:21:15]I don't know how I got here. I am more self-aware now but cannot think clearly as I seem to genuinely think my blanket is my ex-girlfriend who had deflated into a pile of self-aware skin and muscle due to the disappointment she felt. She had always disapproved of my studies and claimed I was always just trying to get high. She lays there crumpled on my bed and staring at me disapprovingly with the marose look on her face. I hold her for a while and apologize more. I fade out.

[00:21:49]I decide to try and take a shower. I believe this was irresponsible and dangerous. It should have been obvious to me because the room was spinning and I found it very difficult to walk or function at all for that matter. My legs just give out underneath me and I fall in the hallway over and over. Stumbling to find my placement, I fade out on my knees, staring at the carpet.

[00:22:14]This fade seemed to happen quite a bit.

[00:22:17]I was slipping in and out of consciousness. With Deta, I still seem to function while I'm out, as opposed to the more familiar nod associated with opiates. With an opiate, I wake up right where I faded out. But with Detera, I wake up in a room I don't remember walking into in the middle of doing things or talking to people in contexts that don't make sense. Similar to a drunken psychosis, I woke up in mids sentence, realizing I was talking to no one, but aware I'd been talking for at least 5 minutes prior. I wonder who I must have been talking to. Could it have been my brother? I then realize I am naked.

[00:22:58]Shortly after that, I realize I'm in the shower with water running down my face.

[00:23:03]I'd been talking to no one. This was very interesting to me. I wonder what could have possibly caused me to slip in and out of worlds like this with no real recollection of what I had been doing prior, or at least why I was doing it. I fade out again and wake up standing in the hall with a sober brother of mine, third brother, asking me a question. I don't remember what I said or what the question was, but he told me the next day that I had answered him coherently, even though the answer had nothing at all to do with the question. While I was in the shower, the brother that had joined me on my adventure had woken my grandmother out of her sleep. It was about 2:00 in the morning to inform her the flower truck was outside again. We live in the middle of nowhere. No flower truck, no neighbors, and it's not even daytime. I don't believe he saw a flower truck, but I do think he genuinely believed it was there when he told her.

[00:24:02]I wake up again in mid-sentence. I'm in my room and having a conversation with some Cat in the Hat slippers that I have apparently placed on my bed so the faces faced me, I guess, so they could pay attention. I reached over to use my laptop to play some music and nothing was there. I didn't have a laptop. Why did I think one was there? I am still confused. My skin still tingles painfully and my throat is still sore and closed at this point. This fade in fade out theme happened many, many more times. And every time I woke up talking to an inanimate object or someone that wasn't there, sometimes still genuinely believing the clock could understand what I was saying. This was a very mindoriented experience, not classically psychedelic at all.

[00:24:52]The visuals are light but unique. Jagged changes in my environment take place throughout the trip. When the room isn't spinning, corners and walls bend and shake quickly, then go back to normal, like something out of a horror movie.

[00:25:07]When the director flashes something weird on the screen for a few frames, and it goes away as fast as it arrived is the closest thing I can compare it to. Parts of a chair shaking against its own structure in a way that should break it, but doesn't. For example, probably an even better analogy would be to compare it to fast glitching in a 3D video game model. I've seen nothing like it in other enthogens.

[00:25:33]I finally have to give in to the drowsiness that has been chasing me the entire night. I go to bed shaking because I feel cold, but I wasn't.

[00:25:42]Everything I touch still feels like razors cutting into my skin. And I will continue drinking water every 3 minutes throughout the night while I'm awake. I hear while trying to lay in bed auditory hallucinations that sound ominous and far away. Nothing to understand really.

[00:26:00]It seems like old trees moaning and whining in the distance. Maybe as a way of communicating to each other. The language of the trees, I think. And I slip off to sleep easily enough. I wake up with the hangover the next day.

[00:26:16]I would never do this again for many reasons. I'm glad, however, that I was able to experience it. I wish I could remember more of it. Even reading this wall of text, it doesn't seem to properly convey to you the experience, the weird almond taste in my mouth, the strange noises and thoughts that didn't seem to be my own, etc. Hours of adventure condensed into a few short paragraphs. I believe this was an irresponsible dose, and I had not understood the dangers of going so far in. I might just be paranoid, but I didn't know the seeds could be as toxic as they can be during the time of ingestion, or I would not have gone in so deep. It was poor research on my part. With responsibility and caution, it can be quite the experience, but I wouldn't expect it to be fun.

[00:27:17]Hi, I joined to share about my 50-year-old brother's experience with Dura 6 months ago. It is important to understand that he was living with a brain injury when he took it. So he had a much weaker brain than a healthy person. Even alcohol can have many times stronger effects on damaged brains. That brain injury occurred 5 years ago due to his drunk driving and disabled him physically and mentally to the point where he could not work. He could however find his way about town, used the internet to surf and email. He had mood problems. But if you did not know him on a good day, you might not realize he had any mental problems at all, even after talking to him for 30 minutes, aside from his poor hygiene.

[00:28:04]Anyway, 6 months ago, he emailed me the following. Found Dura down here. Very, very hallucinating plant. My days for that sort of kind of thing are long over. Nice that I do have the eye for psychedelic plants, though. Little did I know, this is the last time he would be able to email me. A few hours later, the owner of the care home he lives in called to say he was having full body seizures. He then stumbled into the street and dislocated his shoulder and scraped himself very badly all over.

[00:28:38]An ambulance took him to a hospital where they assumed his seizures were related to his old brain injury. It didn't occur to me until later that night to mention the deter flowers. They had no idea about Deta. Even the doctor had hardly heard of it. They treated his seizures over a period of a few days. We believe he ate an unknown quantity of flowers seeds too, but the hospital had no toxicology test for it.

[00:29:06]When he was able to talk a few days later, he was still hallucinating. He was saying there were birds in his room that were talking to him, etc. He had no idea where he was. He actually thought it was the 1970s.

[00:29:20]These hallucinations went on for almost a week in the hospital. Some were actual hallucinations and others were just his scrambled brain making up best guesses to questions.

[00:29:32]In total, he spent two weeks in the hospital and another week in physical therapy for his shoulder. When he got out, his memory was much worse. He hardly knew where he was living, what year it was, etc. He didn't use his computer anymore.

[00:29:49]I expected him to start recovering 3 or 4 weeks later, but he never did. It has been 6 months since the day he took Dura. The following changes have occurred. He lost the ability to use a simple mobile phone. He doesn't even know how to turn it on. Whereas before, he would call people daily with it. He lost the ability to use the internet and email. I asked him to email me once and he just typed up the address on his keyboard, never loading up a program or anything. He lost the concept of how a day works. For example, if I tell him he gets money on Thursday, he would call me 10 times complaining that his watch has been stuck on Wednesday for days. He believes every weekend that his friend is coming to move him down south. He has not spoken to this friend in 6 months.

[00:30:40]He has remembered and talked about his child only twice. He used to speak about him every day. He has no memory of the deter trip or hospital stay.

[00:30:51]Anyway, I wanted to share that as a warning and just as some information. To be honest, there is one positive side effect to this sad outcome. He is less depressed and agitated than he was prior to taking Dura. I think this is simply because his brain is working at much reduced capacity and he is unable to think through much anymore. He can still walk to the corner market and buy soda and cigarettes.

[00:31:26]After hearing my friends talk about their experience with gyms weed, I figured I would like to be able to tell a story as crazy as them. I didn't know exactly what I was doing, so I just ate one large ball, a little smaller than the size of a baseball. Flesh, seeds, spikes, and all. It was the most terrible tasting thing I've ever eaten in my life.

[00:31:52]After about 10 to 15 minutes or so, I could feel almost like a hot poison was running through every blood vessel in my body, and I started to feel a bit strange. It was getting to be late summer, and the sun was going down, and I had left my jacket at home, so I decided to run back and get it. Big mistake. Running caused my trip to accelerate. And as I was running home, there was a large silent vortex forming in the middle of the road. It was starting to swallow everything that was on the opposite side of the street. It was almost like the cars and buildings were painted on a big sheet of cloth and the vortex was pulling it down. Kind of like the magic trick where you pull cloth out from under dishes into the hole.

[00:32:38]I can't remember getting to my house, but I do remember my mom finding me lying in the middle of the living room talking gibberish. Needless to say, she freaked and took me to the hospital. I guess I had told her that I was shooting heroin into the ends of my toes. She had to help me to the car because I couldn't walk and my mouth was so dry it was painful.

[00:33:02]After I got in the passenger seat of my mom's car, people I knew were appearing to me in the space between my legs under the dashboard. They were all curled up with their knees under their chins, asking me where I was going. And as soon as I would start to answer them, they would vanish in a puff of silver sparkles. When I reached the hospital, I couldn't remember my name anymore, and I could just barely understand where I was. This was the beginning of the real intense hallucinations.

[00:33:35]A lady and her kid were sitting across from me and my mom in the waiting room.

[00:33:40]At this point, I was having severe audio hallucinations. I thought there were people talking to me all the time, but I couldn't really tell what they were saying. Every now and then, I would yell, "What?" at the lady and her kid.

[00:33:55]After yelling, "What are you saying to me?" A couple of times she got freaked out and left. When it was our turn to see the nurse at the front desk, I could no longer walk at all. And I thought my mom was a fat man that ran a French fry wagon on the roof of the hospital. When the nurse began to ask my mom questions concerning my condition, I would butt in loudly, saying that this French fry guy should come over and meet my mom sometime cuz they looked a lot alike.

[00:34:25]The next thing I remember is sitting on a hospital bed hooked up to heart machines. I kept thinking that the heart monitor stuck to my chest or someone's headphones and that I needed to return them. I wasn't very happy being in the hospital. That is to say, when I wasn't hallucinating, that I was elsewhere.

[00:34:43]Note, visual and audio hallucinations were so intense I could not decipher between them and reality. Much of my reality was made up of these hallucinations. i.e. partying with my friends, sailing my yacht down the streets of London, reading ancient books in enormous libraries.

[00:35:02]So, when I was cognizant of the fact that I was in a hospital, I was looking for ways to escape, I had noticed that there was a space where the walls didn't meet with the floor, and I figured I could get out through there. My wife, at that time she was my girlfriend, said she can't remember how many times they had to drag me back onto the bed after finding me trying to leopard crawl my way through an imaginary space in the wall.

[00:35:30]I remember one instance where I was sitting on the bed where I could hear a very loud rusty screeching noise. Out of the tops of my eyes, I could see a garage door opening in my forehead. Once it was up and had retracted back into my skull, small black triangles started flying out of my head. Hundreds of them.

[00:35:52]I then looked over at my girlfriend and asked her why she was crying so much. At that point in time, I couldn't remember her name, and she appeared to be a fat balding man with a greenish atomic glow.

[00:36:04]Sometime after that, I met a friend for the first time that night, which would stay with me for the remaining three days of my insanity. He was a small albino Chihuahua with a large Cheshshire cat-type smile and red eyes. He was always asking me if I wanted a smoke, but his mouth never moved, and he was always smiling. Whenever he went off to find me smokes, he would always return a couple of minutes later with a single cigarette hanging out of his pointed tooth smile. The aggravating thing was that every time I would light one and take a drag, it would immediately burn all the way down to the filter and then melt into hot orange wax all over my hand.

[00:36:48]My memories of this trip are very fragmented. I can only recall certain things I had done in the 3 days that I forgot my name. I remember nurses asking me by name, "Rob, do you remember your name?" And I would answer, "Of course I don't. Stop asking such stupid questions." One time, my girlfriend was asked to bring me into the bathroom to help get a urine sample out of me. But when she went to help Mr. her happy pants out of his house. I smacked her hand away violently, thinking that it had been a hungry cat. I can't really remember leaving the hospital with my mom, but I do remember that strange green fat man sitting beside me in the back seat crying his face off because I couldn't remember who he was. That's about all I can remember. I think I came close to a lethal dose that night. I definitely had the symptoms of being poisoned. Even having moisture from ice chips touching my tongue was enough to make me cry from pain. I highly recommend using caution when taking the substance. I think I just got lucky.

[00:38:06]It all started at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. Me, my brother, and a few of his friends all took about the same amount. We then decided to walk around a bit. After about 20 minutes, we all began to feel a buzz coming on, so we started heading home. After another 10 minutes, we really started tripping. My one friend was standing in some old lady's yard and watching her TV. She came out and called the police.

[00:38:35]We tried to get him to leave with us, but he wouldn't move. The cops got there and called him over to the car. He raised his hands and yelled. I think he was trying to scare them away. Both of them tackled him and proceeded to subdue him, resulting in him having many cuts and scars on his face.

[00:38:54]My brother and I hauled ass out of there. But the other three just wandered off somewhere. Both of us were on our way home, tripping our nuts off when my brother disappeared. It turns out he wasn't around me for a long time.

[00:39:09]The next thing I can remember is being arrested and brought to the hospital.

[00:39:13]The first thing they did when I was there was stick a damn tube in my [ __ ] dick, then gave me an IV. They transferred me to a different hospital because I was under 18. On the way there, I remember I kept trying to sit up and play with my knife, which I didn't even have. When we arrived at about 4:30 in the morning, they stuck me in a room and I got out of my bed and rode my IV pole down the hallway. When the nurse caught me, I said the dog made me do it, although I don't know why. I talked to my IV pole for a while and blacked out. They found my brother laying in the road talking to the sidewalk and one of the other people they found were in an alley with one shoe in a pissed pants. Do not do this drug.

[00:40:16]Hello everyone. My name is Jay and here's a little backstory on myself before I begin.

[00:40:22]I have had a pretty bad life. When I was born, my mom was on meth the entire pregnancy.

[00:40:28]When I was 3 weeks to 3 months old, she got rid of me for meth. She gave me to her aunt and uncle who are my true parents because they raised me.

[00:40:38]Unfortunately, it was too good to be true because my new mom developed mental issues and she started becoming very violent and by about five or six, she finally started abusing me. And at this point, she had already been abusing my dad.

[00:40:53]Because of the growing issues, me and my dad left and after a year, I was 14 and in a fresh new start. So, I did what anyone who was depressed and beaten to a black and blue pulp did. I tried marijuana. After marijuana, I then tried Xanax, then cocaine, then meth and bath salts, all the way up and down the list.

[00:41:15]But weed was the only psychedelic I had tried at that point, except one time I made DMT, but I sold that for money. I also fell in love, and she was truly my first love. I had girlfriends before, but she was just so godamn beautiful and smart. She truly was my everything. But I made the mistake of loving before I loved myself. I took too many drugs. I cut myself. And in dissociated states, I couldn't remember. I would say some awful things like, "I don't understand why you can't love me the same. It makes me want to kill myself most of the time.

[00:41:51]I regret most of those words now, and I would apologize, but I don't want to start problems or hurt her mentally.

[00:41:57]She's been doing very good since her and I were together, and we seem to fix each other while growing apart. And honestly, I couldn't be happier now. Back then, though, I was so depressed, I finally tried heroin, and I'd smoked it for months until I finally tried LSD.

[00:42:15]It's 6:00 p.m. in February. I had just gotten out of the shower, and I'm debating if I want to try my first bladder tab of acid.

[00:42:23]My roommates are B, E, M, P, and A. P and A and E and M are a couple, and A is my cousin. Be is my best friend and he was there for every other drug experience I'd had since that point. E was my other best friend and him and I were the ones always sourcing new drugs for our group. Also, I was coming down off of heroin and cocaine at the same time when I tried LSD.

[00:42:49]The beginning of the trip, I walked into the living room of my trap house with a few things. There is one tab of LSD, one 2 mgram bar of Xanax.

[00:43:00]Quick PSA about benzoazipines. They can kill almost any trip. And trip killers can save your mental health if you're having a bad trip. And safety is number one. Fun is always number two. Remember that. With the tab of LSD and 2 milligram bar of Xanax, there was also a quarter of marijuana and my phone. Be said, "Hey, you're out of the shower.

[00:43:21]You going to try acid?" I had a very childlike experience. It was great. I said, "Yeah, give me a sec to set up." I then found E and M and asked them to tripset me and if E could roll me a 3.5 g joint for when I start tripping. Big mistake and you'll see why soon.

[00:43:40]I popped the tab while in their room and we decide to set up Xbox with Total Drama Island on for ENM in the kitchen and be put anime on in the living room.

[00:43:50]I started to trip and at first it was just small and cool. So, I get up and start moving around to see how things change as I move. And I end up walking outside for a few minutes to watch the stars. I sat on the porch and watched my first true visual. The stars proceeded to start beaming light between one another. Me and my state perceived it as the aliens were doing that. So, I walked back in happy at the discovery as it seemed like a valuable lesson.

[00:44:19]I find E and M after running past three or four times and E asked me, "They're going to distort the world and everything will know true suffering.

[00:44:27]Even Hellfire won't burn nearly this hot."

[00:44:30]I looked over to him and asked if you could repeat that. And he said, "Yeah, are you feeling it yet?"

[00:44:37]I looked at the wall and said, "Yeah, I'm definitely feeling something." The wall then started getting little black dots in a line and spiraling up the wall and black liquid goo leaking down the crack.

[00:44:49]I decided to get up and move back to the living room with bee and watching everything start to bend and sound distort even more.

[00:44:58]I yelled into the kitchen, "Hey E, can you bring that joint in here? I want to see what weeded feels like since it's also a very mild psychedelic." He said, "All right, let me finish rolling my blunt for when I go to bed and I'll be right there.

[00:45:12]A few minutes later, he walked into the living room and sparked my joint.

[00:45:17]We smoked it, and I could definitely feel the difference. The joint made the LSD hit extremely hard and intensely.

[00:45:25]I decided to get up and hide in my room for what felt like years. When I walked out of my pitch black room that looked like a junkie had lived there, M asked, "Hey, you all right? You look a little distressed. My first acid trip was also a little scary. I can help." I said to her, "Yeah, I'm all right. This demon's cut is very different." But I only remember saying, "Yeah, I'm all right."

[00:45:49]I then walked into the bathroom and started truly freaking out then. I was just a few months into the breakup with a and I was finally confronting my true feeling, just in a much different way. I had been watching the bathroom flash into different realities. kind of like I was floating in space and distorting the flow of time, watching nebula instead of planets. But it was as if the nebula was made of earth and rock, light flowing from and all around it as if they were rivers.

[00:46:17]I then turned around and finally faced the mirror. That voice that came from E when he asked me if I was all right came back. She asked me with her voice echoing around the room, "You know what?

[00:46:28]This is right. All the pain and torture caused me. You were the one that loved one. It's my turn to teach you a lesson.

[00:46:35]Less using you did me so many times.

[00:46:39]A then walked into view of the mirror from behind me as if she was using my body to shield my view from her. I gazed into the mirror as the nebula turned into visceral blood and gore. The streams of light flowed with darkness, sucking the light from the area and space it was around. It was then I cried for the first time in months. The hot tears slowly flowing down my cheeks.

[00:47:02]They flowed, leaving a black viscous stream. A reached out and touched me, one of her finger turning black and the tar of evil reach very faintly to infect her non-existent finger. That's the evil that flows within your veins. Jay, you have both good and evil within. But at this rate, the evil and toxicity of yourself is going to spread. If you keep on this righteous path of self-destruction, you won't just destroy yourself. You're going to infect everyone you know. From there, it spreads over and over and over. Do you really want to be the downfall of not only yourself, but your friends, family, and all loved ones you hold dear to your life? I said, "No, I don't. This world is hell, and I don't know if I'm the devil or a useless demon to do his pawning. But regardless, we are stuck here. Death is the only escape. And in reality, it's you signing your soul to me. the evil that comes in darkness, the light fading, and the darkness envelops us all when we die to isolate us just like before any of us were born.

[00:48:07]She just looked at me, the tears she was holding back flowed like the ocean or a sea of black tears. The black emptiness completely overtaking the walls. What light was there I no longer saw. The nebula was drowned out. The very faint distorted sound from the TV disappeared and all that was left was her. Good me, evil me, and the me that perceived all of this. Good me was to the left and it didn't look like me, but I could feel the life force of that embryionic looking version of myself. He represented the purity and innocence.

[00:48:39]The evil me with skin blacker than charcoal with two distinct black horns, two humongous blood red eyes, and a red glow from behind.

[00:48:49]A was across from me holding out a razor blade. I asked her, "So this is where I make the choice of what I am?" She smirked and replied with a simple, "No, me." "So then, what is all of this? This is your time to finally truly understand yourself and the constant changing of the world itself. Sure, you have an influence, but there's so much you haven't learned, like true happiness, true friendship, or even true love."

[00:49:17]With a swift motion, she ripped off the very shirt I'd met her in years prior and proceeded to slice open my chest and pull out my heart still beating, blood still leaking from the veins that kept it connected to me. She cut some rune into it and then said, "This is a symbol of an observer and warrior of love. I am willing to give you a new path to follow, but you're going to have to embrace your evil and good. Balance the two. If you balance the two, you will find your new path awaiting. I asked, "How will I know what to do, though? I don't even know where to start.

[00:49:51]You will know when the time comes."

[00:49:54]All at once, I fell millions of miles and crashed back into my body, facing myself in the mirror, pulling one eyelid down with a finger and looking very intensely at my huge pupil.

[00:50:06]I was freaked out by the experience I just had and decided to very skittishly creep back into the kitchen with ENM.

[00:50:13]They both looked at me, paused, then looked at each other and then back to me and at the same time said, "Are you having a bad trip?" I looked up and said, "It's as simple as pie." It was not simple at all, though. I felt like my heart was on the verge of exploding.

[00:50:30]My brain also felt the same way, and I felt very, very wrong.

[00:50:36]I persevered for a couple hours in that bathroom and was coming up on hour five by the time they asked if my trip was bad.

[00:50:44]They resumed Total Drama Island and I had no idea how much time had passed at the moment. But I was thinking I'm coming down finally. It's easing up.

[00:50:52]Then the TV was playing Owen in the dodgeball episode and all I heard was complete gibberish. Something like this if I had to write it out. whiff perfume myth big John such magic feet and then gave a very evil look with angry bloodthirsty eyes and evil body language from seeing that I started laughing very very hard to the point where pain wasn't the problem the problem was I felt extremely sick and started dry heaving along with very extreme anxiety and then it just stopped after what felt like 30 minutes I then just started staring at the wall again the black dot showed up but the black gooey rivers had disappeared from the grain of the wood. Those damned dots started flowing in circles like plastic bottles of air on a winding river until they started spinning in circles that just kept spiraling inwards of itself.

[00:51:43]It eventually overtook me and everything started spinning very, very fast and I started crying again while I just kept saying, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." Stuck in the thought just constantly looking for god knows how long. But once the spinning stopped, the dots flowed into single words at a time.

[00:52:02]I want it. E. And me tripping very hard, feeling very dizzy and sick, read them aloud. And E was my tripsitter who had given the 2 milligram Xanax previously.

[00:52:14]I also told him if I say at any point I wanted the Xanax to get it in my system no matter what, even if he had to hurt me physically.

[00:52:23]I didn't fight it though. I didn't have to. I had no strength nor the mental capacity to even know what was happening.

[00:52:31]He put the pill in my mouth and from habit of letting all my friends feed me pills when I wanted them, I chewed up the awful bitter pill and swallowed. I then collapsed on the table and fell asleep for 5 minutes.

[00:52:44]When I awoke, I was still mildly tripping, but I was back and I could remember all the main details of my trip ever since.

[00:52:53]Because of LSD, I am now sober. I am almost a year off of heroin, and I only smoke weed and take the occasional mushroom, acid, or maybe DMT trip.

[00:53:04]People say drugs can ruin lives. I'm here to tell you they can do both. LSD has saved my life, and I haven't regretted anything since I took it. But in the moment of tripping, that one faithful time was long enough in hell to set this demon straight.

[00:53:33]I'll start by saying that despite the fact I have attempted to smoke weed before, it was a while ago and I never had smoked before that, so it didn't really work. I have also never tried an edible, so this was completely new for me. My dad and I went on a weekend trip to Prague. We had no idea that cannabis was decriminalized there. On our first night there, we were exploring the city and came across a shop selling cannabis.

[00:53:57]Now, in my country, cannabis is still illegal. So, this was very interesting to both of us. We looked around a bit and most of it was just the standard CBD stuff you could find anywhere. But behind the till, they had more stuff.

[00:54:09]All sorts of edibles and other stuff with THC in it.

[00:54:13]The next day, we returned to that shop and decided to buy some edibles to try.

[00:54:17]The woman at the till recommended these cookies. I could be wrong, but I think they may have been 100 mg. Neither me or my dad really understood what this meant, though. We just knew it had THC in it.

[00:54:29]That evening we decided to have half a cookie each, thinking this was a sensible amount. We were very wrong. It was only later I found out that a quarter is a good place to start. We were told it could take up to an hour to have any effect. So, we went to a restaurant in the city to have some drinks and food. It was maybe 30 minutes later and my dad started saying he felt strange. At this point, I still felt completely normal. Disappointed, I thought maybe I'm just immune to the effects.

[00:54:56]So, after another 10 minutes or so, my dad was becoming increasingly affected.

[00:55:01]He said that it was like everything was moving. I asked him a few basic questions, but he didn't seem able to focus on anything for any length of time now.

[00:55:09]It was maybe an hour after we initially took the cookie when I started to feel it. It started suddenly. I was just sitting on the chair at the table when I felt like I had left my body. I spun around in slow motion and slowly came back to reality. My dad said after this, I said, "What the hell was that?"

[00:55:28]At this point, I was starting to feel it big time. Nothing felt real and I felt my mind had separated from my body. Soon after this, the food arrived. My dad and I snapped back to reality while the waiter gave us our food. I immediately started eating, shoveling it back so quickly I barely chewed. For what was probably a few minutes, we both just ate in silence. Then everything got a bit confusing. I started having random fits of laughter. I look at my dad and seize up laughing, then stop and continue eating like nothing happened.

[00:56:00]After what felt like forever, my dad suddenly stated he had a plan. He started saying something, but I lost concentration too quickly to register what his plan was. I kept losing grip on reality, coming back to reality and laughing. I then realized I didn't know what my dad's plan was. I asked him to repeat it. This time, I managed to concentrate long enough to register what he said. "There is no way I'm going to be able to eat all this food," he said.

[00:56:25]"No matter how much I eat, it won't go down. I need to find a way to disguise the fact I have barely eaten anything," he stated. I looked at his plate and at mine and started to panic, realizing he was right. I started shoveling my food back again, but it was a struggle. I kept forgetting how to swallow, and the food kept getting stuck in my throat. At this point, I had completely lost my appetite.

[00:56:49]After what was probably 5 minutes or so, we decided to give up on our food, realizing we physically couldn't eat anymore. The bill took what felt like a lifetime.

[00:56:59]At this stage, I felt like I was in a time loop, and sitting still in the chair wasn't helping. I badly wanted to leave and see if a walk would break the loop. At this point, I remember announcing my own plan. I got it into my head something was very, very wrong and the only way we could get some help was to return to the shop and asked if this was a normal reaction. My dad said it was a stupid plan and he wasn't going back to that shop.

[00:57:24]Eventually, the bill came and my dad struggled to tap his pin into the machine to pay for our food and drinks.

[00:57:30]As soon as he managed it, we left. I immediately set off, determined to get back to the shop. I thought that walking would help break the loop, but it didn't. I felt even worse, even more like my mind wasn't attached to my body.

[00:57:44]As we walked, I kept asking and asking what the time was. Time was increasingly becoming a concept I couldn't understand.

[00:57:52]About 15 minutes into the walk, I suddenly remembered we had forgotten our hats back at the restaurant. I was not about to lose my hat, so we began to walk back. My dad following behind. I was practically running at this point.

[00:58:05]It was some point on this walk back when I started to completely lose grip on reality. I knew I recognized my dad, but I had points when I forgot who he was.

[00:58:15]We made it back to the restaurant and managed to reclaim our hats. But after this, things got worse. I don't remember, but we must have began walking again. I remember getting more and more panicked as I thought we were walking in a loop past the same shop over and over again. I don't remember the next part, but my dad said I just stopped walking all of a sudden, then leaned against a wall and slowly began to sink to the floor. At this point, I remember how cold and wet the floor was and how uncomfortable I was. I felt horrible and suddenly was violently sick all over the cobbled floor. I was fading in and out of consciousness. My dad kept having to hold me up so I wouldn't lie right down.

[00:58:56]I was completely freaked out at this point. I had no idea what was real. I just kept being sick and passing out, then being woken up again. A crowd of people began to gather around us. A group and a woman and a man asked us what was wrong. My dad told them I was just drunk. I was annoyed by this. I wanted to say I only had one drink and there was no way I could be drunk, but I'd lost the ability to talk by this point.

[00:59:20]I began to shake violently and I remember struggling to breathe properly.

[00:59:24]Both my dad and the other man were trying to sit me up and stop me passing out again. I just remember wanting to lie down and die in that moment. I still had no idea what was going on or what had happened. I hate being sick and couldn't make sense of anything that was happening.

[00:59:40]This continued for what felt like an eternity. The woman who came to check on me was still here. My dad later told me they were talking about whether to call an ambulance for me. My dad said at this point he was also struggling to come across as sober. He was having a rough time, but it was nothing compared to what I was experiencing at that stage.

[00:59:58]I must have passed out because the next thing I remember was lying on the floor looking up and seeing a paramedic leaning over me. I felt a sense of relief, hoping they would help end this nightmare. Then suddenly the paramedic put something cold behind my ears. It could have been some sort of object or his hands. I'm not sure what, but all of a sudden, I felt a horrible shooting pain radiate through my head. Horrified, I looked up at the paramedic and I remember thinking he was some sort of mad scientist trying to do some sort of experiment on me.

[01:00:29]I was put on a stretcher and into the ambulance. On the ride to the hospital, I must have passed out a few more times because the paramedic did that horrible thing to my head at least a couple more times. After that, I fought to keep my eyes open, keeping a close eye on the paramedic so I could make sure he wouldn't do that again.

[01:00:46]I remember nothing for a short period of time. I don't know whether I passed out or just couldn't remember, but what I do vaguely remember was coming in and out of consciousness while the hospital staff took some blood and put a heart monitor on me. I was also put on a drip around this time.

[01:01:01]I will mention that as soon as the paramedics arrived to take me to the hospital, my dad told them I had taken an edible with CHV in it, so they thankfully knew what was wrong. I was still unable to talk yet and wouldn't have been any use in telling them anything.

[01:01:16]Going back to when I had the drip put in, I remember bits of the hospital staff talking to me and why they were giving me the drip. I remember feeling like I could talk again at this point, but I was still very out of it in every other way. I remember asking who I assume was the doctor if I was going to feel better soon and he just said hopefully. I freaked out and asked am I going to be stuck like this forever? But I don't remember what his response was.

[01:01:41]I remember some other hospital staff asking me and my dad about insurance obviously to cover the treatment cost and ambulance only. We had no holiday insurance so we would have to pay for everything ourselves.

[01:01:53]I was wheeled back in a hospital bed into this long narrow corridor as I was unable to move still. They left me there on the drip for about an hour. After an hour or so, I was beginning to come back to reality. I still was struggling to move or talk, but I was feeling a bit clearer mentally. I started panicking that I was in trouble and there was no way we would be able to leave. They would keep me here for days, I thought.

[01:02:16]Thankfully, this didn't happen. And soon after a nurse came to remove the drip and said that when I could walk I could leave I wouldn't be able to move or talk for another hour or more yet though my dad kept asking me every half hour or so if I was feeling any more normal but I didn't respond not until a while later when I started to feel a bit stronger and the nurse came back and help me sit up then stand.

[01:02:40]After this we were able to leave that hospital and we got a taxi back to the hotel. I remember freaking out trying to process what just happened. It made no sense.

[01:02:50]After we returned to the hotel and I went to bed, the trip was pretty much over. I felt awful though and felt my head was badly bruised behind the ears where the paramedic had done whatever it was he did. Even now, I'm not sure what it was. If anyone has any idea, please let me know.

[01:03:08]In conclusion, this was by far the worst experience I ever had with any drug. I have taken shrooms before and experienced a time loop then, but this was far more extreme and not enjoyable at all. I genuinely believed I was going to die and I'm still in shock about how strong those cookies were. They were small and we only had a half each. It freaks me out to think what might have happened if we had a whole cookie each.

[01:03:32]I will also mention I was given a letter from the hospital about the situation and the treatment I was given. But as I was in the Czech Republic, the whole thing was written in Czech with no English translation. So, I could only roughly translate it using Google Translate, which obviously isn't very reliable.

[01:03:48]I will never take edibles again, not even ones that are regulated and legal like what I took. I wonder if I had some sort of allergic reaction to cannabis, because this felt like a very extreme reaction, even if it was from a high dose.

[01:04:13]In my personal opinion, although I've been in a multitude of county jails, rehabs, and AA meetings, I am the worst drug addict I know. Whether it's been cocaine, crack, or opiates. When I'm using, it's beyond a full-time job. It's an aroundthe-clock nightmare that consumes every particle of my being. I started getting high like most people do. smoking weed and occasionally tripping on acid or shrooms as a teenager.

[01:04:42]I was rebellious. I cut school, hung out with the weird kids, but I wasn't entirely one-dimensional. I had interests. I always liked to read, write, see live music, and so on. It took me until about my mid20s until drugs really got their fangs into me. By 21, I lied, cheated, and stole in order to get money for Coke. By 25, Coke wasn't cutting it anymore, so I progressed to crack. By 30, I stumbled upon opiates, and they became more important than anything else.

[01:05:18]I had periods of sobriety where I would embark upon a very successful venture with extraordinary determination.

[01:05:26]Sometimes I think it's a type of determination that only an addict is capable of. When I was working in entertainment, I chased each achievement like it was my next line of coke or hit off the foil. I performed publicly six or seven nights a week, often two shows a night. Unfortunately, I used the term working very loosely because being a live entertainer in Hollywood doesn't pay very well unless you're a household name, which I definitely wasn't. When I was on stage, I typically wouldn't use anything more than a little bit of alcohol or maybe a clonopin or two. Of course, towards the end, that changed.

[01:06:07]After 3 or 4 years, I managed to find some regular connections that would bring strong painkillers to the shows that I hosted and performed at.

[01:06:16]Unbeknownst to me, opiates, at least for the type of opiate user that I am, demolish all creativity and motivation.

[01:06:24]Of course, unless it's the motivation to get more opiates or the creativity it takes to convince a drug dealer to give you pills when you don't have a dime to your name.

[01:06:34]I spent about 7 years in and out of opiate and benzo withdrawal. My limited finances acted as a bit of a governor when it came to how dangerous my addiction could get. I was almost always completely broke. So outside of getting a doctor or two to prescribe me some pills. I rarely had money to spend on a fistful of street drugs. If I had money at that time, I'm sure that I would be in a coffin right now rather than writing this.

[01:07:02]In 2018, I encountered some real consequences. My girlfriend left me. I lost my apartment and I wound up on the street. This was a tremendous wakeup call. I could deal with being a strung out, dirty, dopick drug addict, but I couldn't deal with the existential terror of wandering the streets of Los Angeles, riddled with solitude and despair, void of any hope or companionship.

[01:07:28]Being that I had run out of options, I made an attempt to pull it together. I borrowed a few hundred bucks from someone and got into the cheapest sober living I could find at the San Fernando Valley. It had bed bugs and bunk beds, but it was better than the street. I eventually got a part-time job, saved $1,000 or so, and got myself into a slightly better sober living. In a moment of clarity, it occurred to me that a few of the dropouts and burnouts that I used to get high with managed to get decent jobs in the financial sector, where you could earn six figures without any degree or licensing. This is what I would do. I would exaggerate or outright lie on my resume, get a decent suit at the thrift shop, and set up dozens of interviews until I could hoodwink some hiring manager into thinking that I knew what the [ __ ] I was talking about.

[01:08:20]It turns out that most of these investment firms don't pay a salary.

[01:08:24]They only pay commission. So, if you can form a coherent sentence in the English language, odds are is that they'll hire you because what do they have to lose?

[01:08:33]If you make money, great. If you don't, they didn't lose anything because they were paying you $0 an hour to be there.

[01:08:40]I took a chance with the smaller company because my office had a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. I immediately made it a point to start hanging out with the top broker in the room. I committed to memorizing everything he said to potential clients on the phone. This was not a face-to-face sales job. All of the business was done over the phone, and I like that. The prospect had no idea that they were considering investing a million dollars with some inexperienced drug addict wearing jeans and a $7 Target shirt.

[01:09:12]Since I had some experience in entertainment, I approached it like I was studying a character that I wanted to become. I took the things that I learned from the top couple of guys at the company, put my own slant on it, and turn into a boisterous, flamboyant, but articulate and wellrehearsed sales pitch. Because so much communication is physical, I compensated for that by creating colorful metaphors and visual explanations that would impress upon my prospect a sort of theater of the mind where he or she could feel like something exciting was going to happen.

[01:09:46]It wasn't a logical process.

[01:09:50]I was cultivating an emotional experience that can make a person temporarily suspend all reason and commit to turning over large sums of money by the end of a 15-minute conversation. At the end of my first month, I made $20,000.

[01:10:05]After my second month, I made closer to $50,000. I continued to rise through the ranks, outperforming brokers with years and years of experience month in and month out. At about the six-month mark, since I was still living in a relatively gross, sober living an hour and a half away from the office, the number one broker that I learned so much from early on suggested that we get a two-bedroom apartment down the block from the office to make both of our commutes a little bit easier. It was a beautiful 8,000 a month furnished condo close to the beach in Santa Monica.

[01:10:41]I never made this kind of money and I never lived in a place this nice.

[01:10:46]Everything was nearly perfect except for a rapidly progressing oxycodone dependency coupled with the occasional Xanax for sleep. Although we weren't ripping people off the way Jordan Belelffort was in the Wolf of Wall Street, the lifestyle, the drugs, the women, the adrenalinefueled mania of our chosen vacation was definitely similar.

[01:11:08]The size of my commission checks was increasing, but so was the cost of my habits. My mentor/roommate, who had struggled with addiction years ago himself, would frequently attempt to get me back on track by sharing a cautionary tale from his past. He was always vague and cryptic when he talked about his drug history, but he assured me that it got very dark and that with the kind of money that we were making, my downward spiral would not be pretty. He said that he had seen it happen to wildly successful brokers over and over again and that if I didn't watch out, it was going to happen to me.

[01:11:46]Needless to say, I never perceived any of these cautionary tales as coming from a friend who just wanted me to be okay.

[01:11:54]It usually just felt like some salesman vomiting his ego all over me, telling me about the celebrities he partied with while making a brief mention about wanting me to get my [ __ ] together because it was getting embarrassing. So, I ignored it. In retrospect, I realized I was so caught up in the way that the message was delivered and who was delivering it that I missed the point entirely.

[01:12:18]During CO, the drugs seemed to get stronger and far more addictive. The withdrawal was hell. The oxies had fentanyl in them. The Xanax had fentanyl in them. It got so bad that one day I reached out to a contact with some very pure heroin. And it didn't even get me out of withdrawal. I had a several hundred a day habit. It took a dozen or so pills just to get out of the house in the morning to go to the office.

[01:12:46]I blacked out constantly and people at work started to notice that I had changed. I would fall asleep for a few seconds at a time while at my desk. I would go out for a smoke break and be gone for an hour. Clients would call in all day and reach my voicemail. I would almost never miss work, but there were days that I was sent home because I was in such rough shape. This can be a forgiving field if you're talented at making money for the company. If you were caught getting high on hard drugs in your car or in the bathroom, there weren't really any consequences as long as you had deals on the board.

[01:13:24]There was almost an old school pre-rehab culture at the company when it came to addiction. Just wake up, go to work, be a man, and handle your [ __ ] No one wants to hear your problems, so just deal with them. I appreciated that because I certainly didn't want to hear anyone's problems and I didn't want anyone asking me about mine. I just wanted to work and be left alone. I would eventually take some time off and go to some rehab in Malibu with equin therapy and juice cleanses. I would be fine. I had good insurance and money in the bank and I would deal with my [ __ ] eventually. I would just take an aderall, wake up a little bit, close this next deal, and everything would be cool for the time being.

[01:14:08]But things were not cool for very long.

[01:14:11]This lifestyle was not sustainable for me. If I had a neverending supply of opiates and benzo when I needed them, perhaps I might have been able to sustain things a bit better or for a bit longer, but that was not the case.

[01:14:25]Eventually, I crossed the threshold of spending more than I was making. Deals were falling through. Management was giving preferential treatment to the brokers who were not strung out. Imagine that. And there were many times that I was in full-blown and nightmarish withdrawal in work. One of the more repulsive and pressing issues was the condition of my bathroom at the apartment.

[01:14:49]As many people know, opiates constipate you, but not forever. After four or five days without relief, it is entirely capable of desecrating the toilet with a massive elephant-sized [ __ ] that is guaranteed to clog even the most efficient plumbing system. Over the course of a 2-month period, I spent the majority of my free time, which was minimal in the first place due to constantly seeking out my next fix, tending to the worsening disaster that was my toilet bowl. It was in a complete state of disrepair.

[01:15:21]Past the point of plunging, I purchased multiple plumbing devices, manual and electric snakes for example, to unclog the drain. If by chance one of these devices did the trick, it was always temporary. 3 or 4 days later, the toilet was completely backed up again. After enough times of this happening, the only feasible option was to use hefty bags to discard my waste out of the toilet and into buckets, then disposing of them in the dumpster behind our building. A putrid odor wafted from the restroom and unrecognizable insect species were becoming attracted to this accumulation of vile bodily functions, vomit, urine, and feces.

[01:16:04]Although we each had our own restroom, the pungent stench of mine was too much for my roommate, not to mention being thoroughly fed up with the other byproducts of my worsening condition, coupled with a recent reemergence of his own substance use. So, I decided to move out. Having the place to myself led to the obvious outcome. It became a dirty, cluttered drug den. The money was quickly running out, as was the patience of my managers at the office. They cut me a check for about 15,000 and sent me packing. As costly as my habit had become, it didn't take very long for me to blow through the 15,000.

[01:16:45]I stayed in a couple of hotels and Airbnbs over the course of a few weeks as my habit spiraled even more out of control than it had previously been. I was more of a mess than ever, coping drugs on Skid Row, stopped in question by the cops multiple times, losing wads of cash that I stashed here and there.

[01:17:06]It became a living nightmare. But one morning, the nightmare hit a fever pitch. My weekly rent was due at the Airbnb I had moved into, and I didn't have the money to pay for another week.

[01:17:18]With all the moving that I had done in the past couple of years, I knew enough to travel light. I packed two suitcases and left. I had no plan in place, and I was becoming increasingly dopesick. The stiflingly hot California sun was blinding me and scorching my skin, while my bones and blood became increasingly frigid. My physical withdrawals always start in the knees with radiating pain that slowly intensifies into fullbody bone crunching agony.

[01:17:50]Everything was gone again. I guess my saving grace was to know that I've come back from this predicament before. I didn't know how I would get myself out of it, but I knew that eventually I would figure something out. A voice in my head told me that I needed the consequence of a couple of nights out on the street in order to achieve the appropriate rock bottom that I was long overdue for. What I was not prepared for was the delusional, delirious, and psychotic break from reality that would ensue as I quit a 3 to 400 a day opiate/benzo habit cold turkey. Obviously, I should have seen this coming, but I was not exactly playing with a full deck at this point.

[01:18:35]Soon after finding a shaded and somewhat isolated street corner, what ensued was an agonizing physical and psychological terror that words could never do justice. I lost touch with reality.

[01:18:48]Every square inch of my body achd, then burned, then achd again. I would fall in and out of consciousness as my mind and body were repeatedly transported from one morbid scenario to the next. No part of me knew that I was delusional. I believed with every ounce of my being that the hellish world I was trapped in was real. I was convinced that the local homeless population had organized to stalk and ultimately kill me. In one dream state, my body was made of ice.

[01:19:20]And as I died, my skin and blood melted into ice cube trays in order to recycle the remaining narcotic residue in my system to be dispensed to others in need of a cheap fix.

[01:19:33]I saw catastrophic explosions in the sky that were beyond terrifying. Junkies on every corner were overdosing as I attempted to revive them with my imaginary supply of Narcan. I produced and starred in my own big budget drug themed conspiracy movie that was clearly influenced by my favorite directors, namely Kubri, Scorsesi, and Oliver Stone. For what felt like a week, Joe Peshy, Robert Dairo, and I attempted to unear the connection between the CIA and the massive influx of fentanyl that was flooding the streets of every American city. That part was actually pretty awesome. I should write it out someday.

[01:20:15]This was the only time in my life that the line between reality and fantasy had ever been blurred. I've taken hallucinagens before, but I always knew I was tripping. This time, I believed that what was happening was entirely real. In fact, it felt more real than anything I've ever experienced.

[01:20:35]Through a confluence of miracles, I was found on the streets of Santa Monica and checked into rehab by a concerned acquaintance. He was a guy who has helped out many of my former co-workers to get sober.

[01:20:48]The rehab was absolute garbage. No scenic views, smoothies, or equin therapy. It was basically county jail with a few mandatory groups a day. But it was the bottom that I needed, and it had provided the time away for my drug connections necessary to achieve some clarity and decide that it was time to choose life or death.

[01:21:11]After completing my drug program, I heard that my former mentor and roommate had overdosed and died. After we went our separate ways, he started hanging out with some hardcore opiate addicts at the new company he was working for. And it didn't take long for him to get his hands on some [ __ ] that I assume was way too much for his minimal tolerance since he was in the early days of his relapse.

[01:21:35]This was 5 years ago. With the exception of a relatively brief relapse, I have remained sober in therapy, housed, healthy, and in AA. I now speak to residents in various rehabs about what I have achieved in my sobriety and offer my assistance if they are willing to pursue recovery once they complete their time at the program. I often find sobriety and being an upstanding member of society incredibly boring. But I have determined that it's the lesser of two evils. Not knowing if I'll live through the next 24 hours is no longer something I am okay with. I have embraced the concept of delayed gratification rather than the instantaneous pleasure of chemicals with hell to pay after that initial fix.

[01:22:22]I've read these types of drug stories on the internet and many people finish them by stating that no one should ever try this substance which the author was horribly addicted to. I think that statement is empty and pointless. Humans have always sought relief in the form of various substances and I'm fairly certain that they will continue to. I honestly believe that only through thorough self-examination and introspection rather than somebody's cliche just say no horseshit will the addict eventually decide that they've had enough and that they just don't hate themselves enough anymore to withstand the awful cost of severe addiction.