My first time with LSD.

All of this took place December 7th, 1995 in my flat in Rome. My mother was 
out of town for the weekend, so I invited my friends Valerio and Max for the 
night, with the explicit intention of dropping some acid we had (of the 
"panoramix" batch, named after a character in the french comics "Asterix". 
The blotter paper had "200" printed on the back, and I assume that referred 
to the amount of LSD in micrograms.)

I had done some acid before, but it was mostly 1/4 of hits of unknown 
quality, so I never really felt anything besides jitteriness. Max has done 
plenty before, and he seems to handle it pretty well. Valerio never did it, 
and he turned down my offer of taking some.

Anyway, we dropped at 10:15p after smoking some pot; Max took 1 1/2 hits, 
while I settled down for just a half (Thank God I did!)

All in all, the one thing that really scared me was the rush after about 45 
minutes -- I wasn't prepared for it at all. It just kept getting more and 
more intense, and I couldn't handle it. I repeatedly asked my friends to 
bring me to the hospital, but they wisely talked me down. I eventually sat 
down on the sofa in front of the TV about 2 hours after I dropped, and 
stopped complaining after a while. I didn't stop complaining because I could 
finally manage what was going on but rather because my train of thought was 
disrupted that I couldn't really focus on something long enough.

Anyway, this is what I remember about my trip:

At the beginning, Max and I would laugh uncontrollably over the stupidest 
things -- like watching the Prime Minister on TV. When I started feeling the 
acid come on I remember telling Valerio something as stupid as "This feels 
so... psychedelic!"

I don't remember much about the peak -- just a few events and feelings I had 
during those brief periods of time when I regained my "consciousness". 

I remember feeling telepathic; it is the thing that amazed me the most. I was 
thinking of something, and then somebody would say just the same thing before 
I did. This must have happened quite a few times, because after I while, I 
started telling my friends "Say it" whenever I thought of something. (Max 
confirmed this a few days after our trip; Valerio told me that whenever he 
said something I would look at him and say "That's true! That's true" like he 
had just found the Ultimate Truth.)

I remember feeling that time was a spiral, and this feeling was somehow 
related to feeling telepathic -- Valerio would say something that I had 
thought of before, and those two moments in time would somehow be connected 
to each other even though they had happened separatedly, just like two points 
on a spiral that are adjacent to each other on a 2 dimensional plane but are 
separated down the length of the spiral itself.

I didn't really have any hallucinations, but all the sensory distortion was 
there -- trailers, seeing complicated patterns move, the buzzing sound and so 
on.

I started coming down at about 2:30, and I was somehow glad this happened, 
because it meant that I was safe. Coming down was the weirdest feeling.. it 
felt like I "re-learnt" life over an hour. I went to my bedroom, and although 
I recognized it it wasn't really _mine_; I remember seeing my computer and 
remembering that computers played a major role in my life, but I wasn't 
really interested in it. I must have said "Gee... *what* happened?" about 20 
times over 90 minutes.

But when it was gone, well, I missed it.

So.. This is what I think about the whole experience:

I am *very* glad that I followed all recommendations that I found in the FAQs 
and on the net (familiar environment, friendly company, calm setting etc.) I 
wasn't prepared for tripping even though I had read just about any book I 
could get my hands on (including "the Psychedelic Experience"), but by 
following "the rules" I made sure that nothing too dangerous happened to me. 
I will definitely repeat the experience, and I hope this time I'll be better 
prepared; I think I am now, knowing what to expect at the beginning and that 
I've already survived it once.

Plus.. I loved the way the flowers on my wallpaper melted into each other. :)

A.