12 Hours: My first psychedelic journey and what not to do.

 

My first psychedelic experience was in a field at night alone, something I would never advise now. I was well into adulthood and had begun the period of my life characterized by study of nature-connected ritual and ceremony.  At the time, I was part of a course in rites of passage and indigenous ways of combining community, leadership, and nature connection. I was assigned a solo overnight fasting experience as part of the culmination of this course. So that’s where I found myself on the evening I took my first ever dose of LSD- as dusk arrived and the sun began setting behind the trees. Alone in a field, surrounded by darkening forest.

 

Adding a psychedelic medicine to this experience had not been part of the assignment, and given the solitude of the experience, I am sure I would have been advised against it had I asked anyone. I didn’t though. As I had left the house, with my sleeping bag, tarp, and gallon of drinking water, I had slipped the Ziploc bag containing the tiny squares of LSD paper into the pocket of my backpack, almost as an afterthought.  “Just in case”, I thought. In retrospect, I remember it as an impulse.

 

I don’t remember what I was expecting. I do remember desiring a greater connection to the spirit of the natural world around me- and a desire to formally dedicate myself to it. And I had a vague intention of using the medicine ceremonially, to honor and anchor that intention. I had not yet entered the stage of my life where I became trained as a psychedelic guide, holding circles where people gathered to work with psychedelic medicines. In my earlier life, I had experienced what I would now call mystical spiritual states, but at that point, I had no experience with psychedelic-induced states. So, taking LSD, in such circumstances, was naïve- and potentially dangerous. Nowadays, if a trainee of mine told me they were planning to do this, I would be horrified.

 

It was the very fact that I didn’t know anything that made it possible for me to decide, as the sun disappeared and the field got greyer, to place the small paper on my tongue, take a deep breath, and decide to go for it.  I remember becoming scared shortly afterwards- once it was too late to undo the choice but before the trip fully began. But it was, in fact, too late. The vows I made then and the requests and prayers I spoke were too wordless to clearly recall here, and too personal to write. I can only say that the phrase “leap of faith” meant more for me after this experience. I have felt since then that I really understand what that expression means.

 

The first thing I remember about the beginning of the psychedelic trip was the consistency of the trees and ground shifting. The bark of my nearest tree stopped being bark and became a mass of patterned, moving insects, swarming in bark-like patterns but constantly moving. At the same time, the trunk of the tree expanded and contracted in a breathing rhythm as if echoing my breath. The ground likewise became less solid, stirring underneath me as if alive and swarming itself. There was a wetland nearby with croaking frogs, and the sound suddenly became overwhelming- as if the frog sounds were stretched into elongated cries and pulsing through the air and then through my body with a kind of force.

 

There was a fierce beauty to all of this. But there was also a profound disorientation, as nothing ordinary stayed. As the effects of the substance deepened, I lost orientation even to my own body in space. I had to move on all fours and extremely slowly, centimeter by centimeter, checking visually that my body was still attached to the ground, so that I wouldn’t fall off the earth. I wasn’t sure my head was above my body or that up and down existed anymore. Everything seemed to come from everywhere. I crouched on the ground, so that I would not lose contact with it.  I made a fierce promise to myself that I would stay near my sleeping bag and tarp, in order to not be taken over by the terror of losing or harming myself.

 

Because, in that moment, I was afraid. What had I done? By that time in my life, I had slept alone in the woods many times. But I understood then, even in my altered state, that being alone in the woods in the dark was now dangerous, because I had taken away my ability to orient myself. Dark and terrifying objects would appear when I turned my head, looming into my field of vision and erupting in front of me as if I was seeing through an out-of-control zoom lens. I’ll be honest. It was nightmarish.

 

I don’t know how long I huddled there in disoriented overwhelm.  I remember closing my eyes to minimize the jumble of visual stimuli and trying to talk myself down. “You’re still sitting here at your campsite. The ground is under you. Nothing is touching you. You are in the woods and it's night-time. Those are crickets and frogs, and the LSD is just magnifying them”.  These are the things I was telling myself over and over.  I do remember moving at one point into a strong safety debrief with myself, trying to tune out the sensory and emotional jumble of new sights, sounds, sensations, and the roller-coaster waves of fear, and ascertain facts.  “Ok”, I thought to myself, “What are the facts?”

 

The facts were that I was alone in the woods and beginning what would be a very long, 12 hour trip, and I needed to navigate. “Ok Signi, you need to navigate. Figure out how to navigate in here, or this will get dangerous.”  How could I do that? I thought through my safety needs. One, I needed to stay in sight of my sleeping bag and not wander. Two, I needed to watch every step I took with absolute slowness and precision so as not to stumble. Three, I needed a light source for when darkness fell. I remember repeating these three things to myself several times and feeling a kind of intense focus that I suspect only comes in states of fear.

 

My first task was creating a light source, lighting my battery lantern and leaving it lit, and I promised myself I would keep it in sight. This would be rule #1. The bizarre sensory experience of opening my backpack to fish out and turn on my lantern is hard to describe. Nothing I touched matched what my eyes were seeing- like my hands and vision were registering completely different realities. If I closed my eyes and just went by feel, things got a bit better. What I felt made sense. But if I opened my eyes, they would show me something very different than what my fingers were registering- as if one of these senses was lying. I tried to pay attention to this, and I remember determining then that I was less afraid with my eyes closed, even with the incessant eeriness of the distorted frogs and crickets pulsing in my ears, because touch seemed accurate. This was new and helpful information.  “Ok”, I told myself, “You can help yourself. There are things you can do in here. There are choices”. I remember this being an extremely helpful realization at the time. I was still terrified, but I could take actions that created predictable results. I just needed to keep paying attention. As I recall this moment now, what comes back to me is the felt sense memory of that moment. It was a combination of fear and steely determination. And something about it changed me.

 

Now I had my light source, throwing what I assume was probably a halo of light onto my red sleeping bag, but which looked more like a harsh, stabbing constellation of shooting rays that I could not look directly towards and were often in places they could not logically have been, such as far to my right or left.  “There can’t be other lanterns out there suddenly” I had to say to myself. “That is a visual distortion of your lantern. Focus. Here it is, right in front of you. And here is your sleeping bag. And here is the ground. Stay here.” 

 

I reassessed my safety brief and decided I needed to look myself over to make sure I had all my limbs and parts, and that nothing was penetrating my body.  That was actually the thought. I wasn’t sure I could tell. I remember scanning, visually- which was tricky- and by touch, my hands, arms, legs, feet. I was barefoot as I typically was when camping, and I noticed thorn puncture marks in the sole of one foot. And I could not tell one bit whether that was something concerning or not. “Should I be concerned about this?” I asked myself. It was confusing. There was this growing thing inside me that didn’t care at all- wanted me, in fact, to go out further into the field and maybe even to the woods beyond.  There was an intense sense that nothing mattered and everything was okay, even if I died out there.  And in response, there was a smaller part of me that became even more afraid- afraid that the siren song of that swelling call would lure me to physical danger or death.

 

For a while, these two parts battled inside me. It felt as if the usual, normal me had been squeezed into a very small space and was shouting, “This is dangerous!” while the larger, growing part of my awareness was overtaken by the alluring desire to stop caring- to let it take me. Whatever it was.  The crickets and frogs now sounded magical and ancient, like they were speaking to something very old in my blood that I barely remembered. The darkness started to shift from frightening to alluring, and I felt it beckoning to me. “Come out here”, it said. “NO! For God’s sake, don’t leave your lantern and sleeping bag!” the smaller part said. By then, night had fully fallen, and the woods were black.

 

There followed a period of time I remember as a kind of negotiation- the negotiation between the part that understood safety and the part that didn’t care.  Though it is not the most dramatic part of my journey that evening- at least on the surface- I now know how powerful that negotiation was for my initiation into working with psychedelic medicines. I struggle to describe it in words, but I made a contract. The contract was that I would listen to the siren woods AND keep my body safe. I would not tune out the voices that were beckoning from the spirit world. But I would not let them take me completely, never to return. There was a contract that needed to be made- between me and them. Words fail when describing this, but the power of that experience has never left me. It is the part of that journey that, more than any other, I am grateful for today.

 

I learned that the altered state of consciousness can be an ally. There was a relationship there. I requested, and it responded. I had agency. I was invited- and I also had choice. Writing this now, these are just words and concepts. But then, I didn’t just understand it. I KNEW it. And strangely, I recognized it.

 

After that, things shifted. I was still afraid, but I was in a conversation. I started talking back.  I started saying things like, “I will do such and such, and then I will pay attention to what you do”. My first deal was that I would go listen to the woods, but that I required that I be allowed to establish safety first. “Okay”, the woods agreed. 

 

Mentally, through force of will, I tuned out the pull of the magic and revisited safety. I had my light. I would agree with myself never to go past where I could see it, even if the sirens got louder, so that I could find my way back. I wasn’t sure I could do that. I was afraid this thing might take me over, and I would lose that small, watching safety part altogether. Throughout the entirety of the experience, that fear never actually left me. If someone were to ask me today why I didn’t just stay in my sleeping bag, given that risk, I’m not sure I could answer.

 

I made myself focus intently on the “real world” nature of my lantern, rather than the magical light being it was becoming. In the real world (seeming more and more irrelevant by the minute), the light would dim as the battery lowered. In the real world, it had a battery. I should track this, right? If I walked a distance away, I must check the presence of the light at certain intervals, and I must remember to check that its brightness, measurable against the surrounding sleeping bag and sticks and leaves of the forest floor, wasn’t dimming. If it dimmed, I would have time to return but must do so immediately.  I thought through all of this clearly and distinctly.  And while I was thinking it, the woods called incessantly, “Come, come!”

 

The dialogue, as I remember it, then became something like this: “Hang on!” I told the woods. “I’m coming out there!” And I really did want to. “I’m just doing this silly, irrelevant safety thing that my real-world self wants. I know, I know, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Death and dissolving away into whatever you are is beautiful and okay. But I did make that contract.” 

 

I have learned since then that psychedelic states of consciousness respect contracts. They are tools and allies if used with discernment and in relationship. They are dangerous if their nature is not respected. All of this I understood somehow in those moments, though it was my later experiences that proved it true over time.

 

This journey was an initiation for me, and therefore tender to write about. When I retraced my steps the following morning, after the trip had ended, I marked how far I walked that night. In ordinary distance, it wasn’t far.  But I remember it as an hours-long journey. At each step out into the dark field and woods, the magic grew and ordinary reality melted away. I knew that I was not what I thought I was. I may not even be at all. I may really just be these trees and stars. Nothing that is really is. It’s a cliché that psychedelic realities are hard to put into words, and I won’t try. But the other world- what we have long called the spirit world- was there, and it pulled me closer.

 

And at every single step, I re-negotiated that I would turn and check that I could sight my lantern, so that I could return.  And that I would step slowly and with precision, checking every place my feet landed before stepping, so I would not fall.  And every step was rewarded by more magic. And then the rain came. It was slight and misty, and I was struck that I couldn’t feel wetness or cold. “Wait!” alerted my tiny safety self. “You can’t feel cold?” Not good! Hypothermia!” Meanwhile, there was a second awareness that was enraptured by the sensation of non-wet, non-cold rain on my skin. The rain was not separate from me at all, I noticed. I, myself, was raining into myself, and it was completely new and completely beautiful.  I paused in the field, taken over by ecstasy and looking up into the dark sky and falling, misty rain.

 

But the thing is, and this is important to me now, I also remembered my contract. I checked for the presence of my light. I mentally checked that its real-world aspect would not go out in the rain. I remember reminding myself that the thorns, when I had stepped on them, had not caused pain, and that the rain now falling on me was probably cold. I negotiated. The deal I remember making was that if I started to visibly shiver, I would go back to my sleeping bag, which I knew was dry under my hanging tarp. “As long as you aren’t shivering, you can stay out here”. Now I tracked three things: my light, my foot falls, and whether my body was shivering.

 

It's funny- I remember those thoughts so clearly. But all the while, my whole world and universe were falling away. My next six hours in that forest, if that’s where I actually was, are not to be told. I would summarize the experience, if I had to do so, as an initiation into a mystery. The often-used phrase “initiation by spirit” works too. There aren’t really words. For those of us who have had such experiences- and many have them even without use of medicines- they are ours to hold.

 

I tell this part here, though, because it led me into the work- as an underground guide, and then later as an “above ground” psychedelic medicine practitioner in my psychiatric clinic. Though I now know to never begin with the kind of dose I took that night, I work every day with clients whose world falls away from them. And what they find there I can’t predict, and they can’t control. But I know that there is a conversation to be had in that uncomfortable and new place.  The path of negotiating a relationship with the altered state is one I know- and a worn path down which I now lead others. It is one of the great privileges of my life.

 

 

 

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