Is This Real Life?
For nearly 20 years, the online community Erowid has been the one of the largest database for information about psychoactive drugs. In the Experience Vaults section of the website, users can describe their own adventures on drugs; good or bad. Here are just 6 of the 23,000 entries, each of which describe hallucinatory journeys so bizarre they can only be true.
Boyband Conspiracy
Drug: Salvia and Hard Liquor
"...The next thing I remember is looking at the TV, where three or four boyband members were standing with their arms around each other's shoulders looking out at me and laughing in a disturbing, maniacal fashion, like the cave ghosts in the third Lord of the Rings film. Some sort of wall ran from the TV through me... This wall - which seemed to be connected in some absurd and indescribable way to my eyes and the roof of my mouth - was about a metre or so high, flesh-coloured, of indefinable thickness, had a wavy top edge and seemed to signify the border of reality.
...Still hearing that metallic bass music overlaid with scarcely humanoid rhythmic laughter, I suddenly realized that the group of men on the television were talking directly to me.. and I realized that they were all telling me that my whole life had in fact been nothing but an illusion; a cruel joke. The sensation of white-hot terror and grief running through me in that moment cannot possibly be put into words. My personality, memories, friends and family – none of whom I was able to recall – had been nothing but a product of my imagination, as vapid and unreal as a psychedelic trip can appear when scrutinized from a sober standpoint..."
-Soav
Dan Meth
Beware the Little Plastic Mexican People
Drug: Salvia
"...Reality was concave, and being stretched at the weak points beyond the breaking point, and I was being sucked through the void that was left... And the voices were getting louder and louder. They were saying different things to each other, like 'here he comes', 'he's in our world now', 'now we have him', or 'don't let him get away'. It was the din of a crowd getting louder. And I was careening toward them into the blackness.
By this time, I was in abject terror. The experience was so real and overwhelming that I was completely in the moment and had no memory of having just taken a drug, even though I knew who I was, and my identity as 'I' was intact.
As I fell farther and farther, what originally looked like paper dolls at a distance, now actually had color and shape. As they got bigger and bigger, they began to look like PEOPLE, little plastic Mexican Fisher Price type people, only they were malevolent. Some wore hats or ponchos, and they all had very circular heads with cylindrical bodies, and no legs or feet. And the were moving their heads back and forth, and talking to each other. And they wanted to hurt me, to trap me there, and never let me get back..."
- Shrike
Dan Meth
Jesus has a Gap Between His Teeth
Drug: LSD
"...I had never been to a huge festival like Ozzfest. I was in the mindset that i would be going down in history like the people at Woodstock...
Incubus had just come onto the stage and they started in on some odd Brazilian-type bongo epic. I looked around me and noticed every blade of grass was individually colored. I felt a wave of anxiety come over me like i had never experienced. it was about 90 degrees out with a heat index of like 110.
I looked at the guy in front me's back. He had a 'shroom tattoo and it appeared that the many freckles on his back were running away from the fungi, which symbolized a very powerful message to myself. Also above me I noticed a very pronounced Aztec meets tribal pattern rotating and flashing in the sky.
To make the rest of this long story short: I was taken back home, grounded for 6 months. I vowed to never trip on acid again... I have since then, but it has never been as good as it was before Ozzfest. Now whenever i trip i get a fear in me and i have to take it with valium or Xanax handy, and almost always end up needing it. I take it about every 6 months and i make the perfect setting with only one other person, soft lights, and plenty of Beatles vinyls..."
- SunKing
Dan Meth
