A Mostly Harmless Substance

It was late summer 2020 when the deadline to submit my Bachelor’s Thesis was rapidly approaching and I was stuck. There was only a month left and I hadn’t even started writing the thesis itself. I was still trying to fix performance problems with my plugin for CrypTool 2, an e-learning program that professors all over Germany used to teach cryptography and cryptanalysis.

I had already been working on this plugin for over three months, even though, according to the rules, a Bachelor’s thesis must be completed within three months. However, it was quite common for students to work on their thesis (with their advisors) for some time before officially registering, after which the clock starts ticking. The idea was that a student needed to learn enough about a topic first before committing to it, but in reality, it was just an excuse to prepare everything in advance so that the three-month period would be a breeze. That wasn’t the case for me though.

I must have underestimated the amount of work left when I mentioned that I thought I was ready to register. I wanted to change universities for my Master’s degree, and if I didn’t submit my thesis on time, I wouldn’t be able to join in the winter term. This would mean my curriculum would be out of order, as most of the entry-level courses to the more advanced topics were offered only in the winter term.

That’s when I looked into my drawer for some inspiration and found the sheet of acid. I wasn’t only stuck with my thesis; I also felt stuck in life. I didn’t really want to spend another two-plus years in formal education just to hold a piece of paper that proved I was a boring person who didn’t know what to do with his life and kept studying.

Life was just happening to me, and I allowed it. However, every time I took acid, I learned anew that there is so much more to life beyond my usual experience of it. It also confirmed repeatedly that life isn’t a rigid thing you can’t shape; but also that life is extremely fragile. Any choice you make could have a huge impact, for better or worse. I was in full control of my life, even if I wasn’t aware of it all the time. This might sound obvious, but applying this knowledge to my own life was something else—or realizing how I didn’t apply this knowledge to my own life.

As always, I hesitated even though I had been considering going on a trip again for weeks. In that moment, the desire to free my mind must have been too strong. But every time when I was about to put the tiny blotter under my tongue, there was this thought in the back of my head that tried to intervene:

Are you sure you want to do this? Do you really think this is a good time? Did you really think this through? Are you not out of your mind?

It makes sense to hesitate since you want to be careful with it. I would describe LSD-25¹ as a mysterious substance that might kill you (or whatever you think makes you up) if you didn’t respect it enough. But if it decides not to, or if you were indeed prepared enough and made it through, you’ll find yourself more grateful for your life afterward and considering to never take it again because it was absolutely terrifying between the moments of wonder and euphoria. Or in other words: a mostly harmless substance.

After I took it, there was never any going back. In theory, I could still reconsider and take it out, hoping that not too much had been absorbed yet. But in practice, that was never an option. I knew I would be too disappointed with myself if I did that. It would prove that I was reckless and hadn’t thought it through. So I never even considered this option. At least to some part of me, that made sense and didn’t seem stupid.²

Daring The Dark

+0000 | It was evening and the sun was about to set. Since I usually go outside during a trip (it feels like nature is calling), I had to go out now or else I would get caught out in the dark. And being in the dark while tripping definitely didn’t sound like a pleasant experience–more like the stuff nightmares are made of.

+0200 | My curiosity had lead me to uncharted territory. I was walking down a countryside trail with trees on both sides when I realized I have ventured too far. It was getting dark fast. I didn’t turn around since I was actually so far away from home that it didn’t really matter in which direction I was going.

But I was also concerned with admitting that I was scared by turning around. I tried to stay calm but I definitely had goosebumps. Being high on acid made me naturally more on alert but the thought of being on acid alone in the dark with not a clear vision of what’s next to me in the trees… I wasn’t sure how to react.

Should I start running? But what if there is really something watching me, wouldn’t it start to chase me? Is it better to pretend like I don’t feel like something is watching me?

I really wanted to start running because this feeling of being watched became overwhelming but I was still more scared of triggering a chase in which I would eventually stumble, fall and hurt myself. It didn’t really matter if something like a pack of wolves would really chase me: just allowing this intense panic to take control of my body would already scar me for life.

In my head, I screamed at myself to stay calm and just keep walking. Since I was only two hours into the trip, I knew it would get more intense soon. I kept an eye out for a long, sturdy stick so I could at least defend myself if something indeed decided to attack me. The thought of me trying to fight for my life with a wooden stick kind of amused me but in a maddening way. Maybe the wolves would start laughing and leave me alone to die in shame.

As luck would have it, it only took a few minutes of walking to find my way back to the safety of civilization with the reassuring glow of streetlights. But I knew I just barely escaped an experience that could have been unimaginably more terrifying than it already was, by sheer luck. I would definitely remember this.

Being Your Own Best Friend

+0300 | When I arrived home, still frightened to the bone by what could have happened to me, I found a post-it note on my desk:

Washing machine. Everything will be alright ;)

It was a note I had written to myself before I left. I had totally forgotten about it. In that moment, I felt like I had a guardian watching over me, and that guardian was my past self. Apparently, my past self knew me so well that it could anticipate how I might be feeling when I came home and decided to show some compassion by writing a note. It didn’t even need many words. It knew exactly what to say and was nonchalant about it.

Just moments before, I wondered how I could have been so stupid to go out at this hour while tripping, but now I saw my nature in it: The competitive part of my past self might have simply challenged me to “fuck around and find out”, whereas the compassionate part wrote this note.

I hung up my clothes to dry in the basement as the note was reminding me while pondering how many parts of myself I was truly aware of from moment to moment. I could be very lazy but also incredibly competitive. I showed compassion for everyone, including my past self, but seemed to usually neglect my current self. I could find purpose in helping others, yet struggled with not expecting anything in return. There was definitely something sinister in some of my actions that I had never really acknowledged.

It was this dark side of myself that I wanted to understand better: Why was I essentially sabotaging myself sometimes? I hoped that by acknowledging it, we wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and that maybe we could become friends. However, I knew that ultimately, I would betray it and I think it knew it too. It seemed like it knew me better than myself, hiding in the shadows, always watching me, making sure I never got too comfortable in my head.

When the only reason you want to know yourself better is to change yourself into someone you’re not, do you really deserve to know yourself better? Isn’t ‘I want to acknowledge myself’ just a lie then, hiding your ulterior motives again? Aren’t you simply failing to be compassionate with yourself, flaws and all, again?

…

Look at you. You can’t even acknowledge that this voice in your head is part of you. How pathetic.

Begging For Mercy

+0400 | After I was finished with my clothes, I went back upstairs and unlocked my computer. One of my best friends was online on Steam. We started chatting about my Bachelor’s thesis. I casually told him that I hadn’t even started writing yet. He was shocked.

Him: Isn’t the deadline in less than a month?

Me: Correct

Him: Dude, wtf, you need to start right now

I was worried he might be right. I was really behind my schedule. I had no idea how I would be able to meet the deadline. I lied to myself that this trip would help me but I was actually just running away from my problems again. Thinking about my Bachelor’s thesis stressed me out and sent me into a spiral of negative thoughts amplified by the acid in my system. This wasn’t a good time to talk about this.

Me: I don’t need to hear this right now

Him: I think this is exactly what you need to hear right now

Me: No, you don’t understand

Me: I took some acid and I’m not doing so well

Silence. At least this friend also had some experience with acid so could now understand more what I meant by “don’t need to hear this right now”. I started to wonder if his silence meant that he didn’t care about how I was doing but I knew this was probably just another one of my negative thoughts. He probably just didn’t know how to respond and didn’t want to make it worse. At least I hoped so. I couldn’t tell anymore which of my thoughts were reasonable or not, or even if they were truly my thoughts:

This isn’t me. I just took a drug and it’s taking a hold of me. But I am the person who decided to take it. If I am not myself, where am I? And who am I?

Another way I described taking acid was as getting root access to your brain. You could look around, fix some things, and make minor or major changes, but you could also massively screw yourself up if you weren’t careful. The commands were your thoughts, so you had to be careful not to entertain any “too dangerous” thoughts. But if you ever tried to avoid thinking about a pink elephant, or realized that you probably just asked yourself what a dangerous thought might be and tried to find some examples, you will understand that it wasn’t easy to escape a loop of such thoughts.

I turned off the computer because I realized that I was only using it to distract myself from the feeling of impending doom in a pathetic way. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts but it was the only thing that sounded reasonable to at least some degree. I had fucked around and I was about to find out.

But before I faced my fears, I needed to use the restroom. My flatmate was in there at the moment, but she must have heard me walking back to my room because, after she finished, she called out that the restroom was available now. I shouted back, ‘Okay!’

How loud did I just say that? Did I sound annoyed? Is she now aware of my shenanigans? Is she calling the cops right now? Should I tell her I am sorry? What if I did in fact not sound annoyed, that would mean that me apologizing would be weird and raise suspicion. Oh my fucking god, I am so paranoid right now, it’s ridiculous. Or am I?

It was time. I could no longer avoid confronting how my life was falling apart in front of my eyes. I lay down in bed and closed my eyes, terrified of the unknown that was about to unleash itself in my head. I had never been so afraid of myself before. I didn’t even know it was possible to be so scared of one’s own thoughts. Something seemed to be possessing my mind as my identity shattered into a million pieces.

Please, I am so sorry, it was stupid to take acid in this set and setting. I did what I thought I would never do: I underestimated you Lucy. Please, whatever you have to do to me, have mercy with me! I beg you!

I was still trying to avoid going through what was inevitable. I tried to simply fall asleep or wait until the drug wears off so I can be myself again.

But would I ever be myself again? Unlike with alcohol, taking too much acid doesn’t mean you’ll simply forget what happened. You will have to live with whatever happened for the rest of your life. This means you will never be yourself again. In fact, this idea taken to the extreme, we’re never ourselves ever again. Every day, we wake up as a different person just like grass grows continously. The difference here is though: Would I be a totally different person when I wake up? Would I be able to recognize myself?

My decision to take 150µg in this set and setting, the highest dose I had ever taken, brought down the wrath of Lucy upon me in a way that I never experienced before. I majorily disappointed her and myself. I read about ego death before and I wanted to experience it at some point in my life, but I didn’t necessarily wanted to experience it right now and like this. I didn’t know what I was thinking when I decided to take 150µg. I usually only took 100µg and I thought I knew that increasing the dosage by 50% didn’t mean that I would simply have 50% more cool visuals and interesting thoughts.

After what felt like an eternity of trying to let go of my sense of self, as I had read one should do in this situation, I realized that I couldn’t. I was gripped by an intense fear that if I truly let go, my entire nervous system would short-circuit and my ego would die and never come back. I wasn’t ready for this at all. I compared what I imagined would happen to the sensation of hypnic jerks, but on a scale so extreme that my body would cramp up violently enough to cause what was essentially the same as death.

So I lay there, drenched in sweat, stuck between the sensation of imminent sudden death and clinging to reality in the last moments to repeat the cycle. Alongside this tension in every fiber of my body that increased the closer I got to this death was this overwhelming feeling of my soul attempting to leave my body, only to be pulled back in a sudden, looping motion. It’s hard to explain but I will never forget the closed eye visuals that accompanied this.

Closing Remarks

I don’t remember how I got through this without it severly affecting me in a negative way. All I know is that I felt relieved when the worst was over and I noticed I was slowly calming down (or perhaps getting tired of being so scared?). I think I simply acknowledged afterward that I had made a mistake and I deserved this experience. I was grateful that I got off so lightly.

I had to seriously reconsider my desire to experience ego death at some point in my life. There was so much in life I still wanted to experience, but maybe ego death just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t sure though, as I didn’t want to give up on it so easily. It became an open question for another day.

When my advisors found out during our next meeting that I hadn’t made any significant progress regarding writing my thesis, they recommended that I ask for an extension. They suggested using the pandemic as a pretext, even though it hadn’t really affected my work. In fact, the shift to online meetings had been quite convenient for me.

During the extension period, I addressed my performance problems using a concept I knew from React: a virtual DOM. The performance had been poor when trying to skip forward because each intermediate step rendered its change immediately, even though it wasn’t the final state. The solution was to accumulate changes in a virtual DOM and flush its state to the screen at regular intervals, thereby avoiding unnecessary renders. It was a major milestone in my programming career: For the first time, carefully thinking through some architecture before implementation led to massive benefits.

I ended up receiving the best grade possible and was offered a job by my advisors to work on CrypTool with them. However, I declined because I was already very happy as a working student at an IT security company.

Everything turned out to be alright indeed.