I did a very stupid thing at a party when I was 18 — I went “candyflipping” (which is what it’s called when you combine MDMA with LSD). I was not a heavy drinker or drug user. I’d never used LSD before that night because I knew that acid trips largely depend on your mood and personality and knew they could be bad news bears for an anxious person like myself. But I had taken MDMA a handful of times and really enjoyed the experience. So—I agreed to candyflip when my friend said the MDMA muted the hallucination/paranoia effect of LSD and really just felt like a more intense “rolling experience”.
But… SHE WAS INCREDIBLY MISTAKEN. It was one of worst nights of my life.
(Full disclosure: another friend with us that night only took the MDMA and said it was a dud—that she never felt anything. More likely than not, ours were too.)
If you looked up “bad trip” in the dictionary, my experience could be listed there. First of all, we were in Walmart when the drugs kicked in and I thought I was a rat trapped in a maze because I couldn’t find my way out of the aisles. Then, I got behind the wheel and drove like the dumb teenager I was. I had two Mardi Gras beads hanging from my rear view but it looked there were 50 of them. I grew fascinated with them and nearly drove us off the road until the friend who didn’t take the hit of acid made me pull over to let her drive. When I got out the car, I threw up like 10 times. We arrived at a small house party about 30 minutes later and I was so thankful because I had to really, really relieve my bladder. This is where I ran into my first problem. As I sat there trying to desperately to pee, I could not get my brain to concentrate long enough to make it happen. Instead, I was examining the tiles on the floor that looked ten feet tall. Or the shapes blooming out of the wallpaper. I finally gave up and rejoined my friends only to repeat this process several times over the next half hour. By this time, I was in legitimate pain and majorly FREAKING OUT because I couldn’t go!
My night only went downhill from there. We left and went to a club some time later and I thought everyone there was an alien. I believed my brain was going to be stuck in its current state forever. After I’d been high for TWELVE HOURS, I laid in bed and prayed to God to make it go away and swore that I’d never do drugs again. (A promise that I kept, BTW.) As I prayed, the flames of hell were reaching up for me from underneath my bed. It was truly a living nightmare.
I pray KR is okay.
