Bad trips are awesome and humbling. It's all sensory, and difficult to put into words what I have experienced under the influence of LSD, but I know I reached out to something greater when things got particularly dark. I suppose after tripping I had a better awareness of empathy and realised just what being backed into a corner can do to your mind. On the other hand, maybe it just revealed how deeply I hope for the light at the end of the tunnel. I looked into a mirror at one point, after having lay down with my eyes closed for around forty minutes and I looked just...like a corpse. I was genuinely uncertain of whether or not I was still alive. But I was totally open to the idea of afterlife, without any doubt or cynicism. Throughout all my trips and emphasis has been on learning and consciousness expansion, LSD is a tool which can be used for different things depending on the choice of the individual.
But a lot of it is lack of familiarity, the world is a big, scary, exciting place when you're a child, LSD throws you back into a big, scary, exciting world and it's a lot to cope with initially. Everything you've been taught is transformed, and only you can come to learn and inhabit the new world, with no outside interference or guidance. If nothing spiritual, the psychological side is real and tangible, I feel toughened by bad trips. I have prayed, internally, under the influence of psychedelics, I'll never forget the thoughts and emotions that came into play throughout my bad trips and will never be totally flippant about God and spirituality. I seek to better myself, but without psychedelics for now.
I've heard people say ego is an essential part of our survival, but we live in a world where it has become our greatest flaw. Ego loss induced by LSD is real and physical and as liberating as it is terrifying, the pettiness and temporary nature of our world, here and now is exposed. There is no subjectivity or bias, you become a witness, consciousness that is entirely separated from the body. The ownership of thoughts is removed, I am no longer 'SWIM', I am chemistry and consciousness without identity. Personality and beliefs are left in the physical world upon closing your eyes. This is a world within a world that has always existed in all of us, LSD uses chemicals already present in our brain, and through the physical self we become open to the spiritual self, without ego. Then we begin to explore, and learn without boundaries.
On the other hand, there has to be determination to experience something spiritual and profound during any psychedelic experience, maybe after using LSD we can decide what we wish to experience and the entire thing is artificial and a hollow illusion. The same however, can be said about day to day life, we choose to continue to exist within the ideals of others and their culture, at least LSD removes us from such external influence and allows us to finally see ourselves, however profound or meaningless we actually are. Culture restricts thought processes, LSD is a removal of cultural bias, spiritual or not, our thoughts become independent after using LSD. To say LSD isn't real is naive, it is denying the presence of already apparent chemicals and neurotransmitters. To say it is a pointless practice is to deny an inherent part of human nature, apparent in tribes and civilisations all throughout history.
If nothing else, LSD has shown me I am small and that I know nothing, nothing at all. LSD only brings about awareness of what was already apparent, that which cultural opposition wishes you to never see. I now understand I hope for something greater, I am no more aware of what's to come than I was before. This sounds silly, and like LSD offers very little in the great scheme of things, but what I'm saying, is I'm no longer a sceptic and understand the dangers of absolute certainty. To cease consciousness expansion, to oppose meditation and use of psychedelics (including Cannabis) is to give up hope. Prohibition restricts access to thoughts and perception, the highly artificial nature of drug laws will never overcome the elements of hope and desire to explore that are so present within our species.
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