INTRO.
    I took LSD yesterday, and I'm integrating the insights today. Here's what I learned. 
    Disclaimer: These insights are from my perspective. They're not absolute. But I think a lot of you will resonate. KNOW THYSELF.
    An hour after popping the tab, I didn't know who I was. 
    Literally, I did not know. There was nothing to define me. I was nothing, had nothing, and everything was leftover. I felt like I had arrived, which is the feeling I've been looking for my entire life without realizing. Death didn't matter, because the distinction between death and life didn't apply. When there's nothing to hold onto, what dies? 
    I laughed and cried. "Thank you for my life" cannot even come close to the level of gratitude I felt. ACCEPT THYSELF.
    I agree with Freud when he says that societies are fundamentally neurotic. Civilization is full of "should's". It needs to be in order for things to run smoothly. We forget, however, that humans are animals, and to moralize an animal is to cage it. 
    The zookeeper, the thing that keeps the human animal in its cage, is often called the ego or the lower self. I like to call it the Guardian. The human animal has no knowledge of death, but the Guardian does. He thinks he has the animal's best interests in mind by protecting it from the Darkness, by keeping it in a cage, by not allowing it to get hurt. Sure, he allows the animal to survive, but he doesn't allow it to live. 
    The human animal has a primal urge to connect. To share. To give freely without taking. To feel. To be naked and vulnerable. To have wild and crazy sex. To look someone in the eye and acknowledge that they're here together on a leaky boat in a shoreless sea. 
    I realized that my Guardian has been using spiritual ideas to deny these things. Leo has revolutionized my life; I thank him dearly. But his prioritizing of spirituality/truth has also convinced me that spending time with friends is useless. That connecting with other people is a waste of time. That I should instead work endlessly on self-actualization alone. 
    Stack that on top of the spiritual purification idea, that sex is somehow bad, that you shouldn't feel anger or sadness. Then watch all of those Rupert Spira/Mooji videos to see how peaceful they look, and then to try to be that way all the time. 
    It's ironic how I've used the very tools for uncaging the human animal, to cage it even more.
    I've been isolating myself. Avoiding social interaction. Reading books for mental masturbation. Masturbating to porn, using one hand to block the view of my other hand. This is the Guardian, sedating the caged animal before it gets stir-crazy again. 
     For as long as I can remember, I've had little to no circulation from my waist downwards. Cold feet. Premature ejaculation. Constipation issues. It's like the bottom half of my body's been lifeless and I've been "full of shit."
    But once the LSD kicked in, the Guardian was obliterated, and the human animal escaped its cage. Circulation came back to my bottom half. I could actually breathe again for the first time in years. I felt relaxed. I felt my primal urge to connect, to give freely, to be horny and beastly. I was alive! 
    When this happened, I started growling and walking around on all fours. I did somersaults, something I only did in my childhood. I took all my clothes off and went in an ice bath. I laughed and cried and smiled. 
    I took a walk outside and laughed that I had to wear clothes. I felt like a chimpanzee in a tuxedo. Looking at other humans was the most fascinating spectacle. This place is just a massive costume party. I realized that I take my costume way too seriously.
    Leo talks a lot about holism, about accounting for all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now I see the value in that. Focus too much on spirituality, and it becomes a sedative for the caged human animal.
    
FORGIVE THYSELF.
    This bit is more personal, but I figure I'd share. 
    In my journal, I mentioned that my friend killed himself a couple years ago. What I didn't mention was that I felt it was my fault. No matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt guilty. I recently discovered that this guilt runs deeper than his suicide. It's been a constant theme all throughout my life. "You don't deserve to be alive. There's something wrong with you. Go away and hide. You're defective. You don't deserve anyone's time and attention." 
    At some point in the trip, this guilt hit me like a freight train. I was writhing on my bed, sobbing like a child. I couldn't stop saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" 
    Here's the weird part. I split into two personalities. There was that one, the child, and there was the mother. The mother let the child sob while she comforted him. I put my hand on my leg and started rubbing it with my thumb, the way my mom used to do it. "It's okay, it's okay." the mother said. 
    Then, something snapped. I forgave myself. The tears washed the guilt away. It felt nice to not need anyone else but me to... LOVE THYSELF.
    That's right. I said it. 
    I'm not a new agey kind of guy, and I think it's an overused word. But now I understand the meaning of "self-love." 
    It can't be half-assed. It can't be faked. It can't be put into an affirmation.
    You need to feel it in your innermost being. 
    It's easy to forget. Civilization conditioned us to believe that love comes from outside sources. We spend all of this time seeking a girlfriend/boyfriend, achievement, success, enlightenment, and other things because we think they will provide us with the love we so desperately need. But these are finite resources, and as with anything finite, we fight to keep them. We get competitive, greedy, self-centered in order to keep the love we think comes from these sources. 
    The masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation because they believe love is scarce.
    But we are all sadly mistaken.
    After I forgave myself, love was gushing out of me like an unclogged hose. It was endless. I loved my body, my legs, my personality. I loved my voice, my hair, my dick. The love couldn't contain itself. I loved the bed I was lying on, the ceiling, the sheets. I loved the trees outside, the sky, the water. 
    Then I realized...wait for it...ALL is love. There's no difference between life and love. Go ahead. Laugh it up.
    Then I realized that the only obstruction to this abundance of love was...wait for it. Fear. We accept the love we think we deserve.
    Fear is the Guardian. When the Guardian is obliterated, love remains. Thus, in a paradoxical sort of way, love = death = life = God. In the state of love, every second is an extra second. A privilege, not a right. Life is a heavenly epilogue to a melodramatic farce.
    Life is God's masturbatorium. God just wants to jerk Himself off with his own love.
    All you want to do, is share it. There was so much love to give that I didn't know what to do with myself. So I took that walk outside, called my brother for once (I don't normally reach out to people). I complimented a girl in a shop. I looked all of the passers-by in the eye, hoping that they would at least receive some of the love I was trying to share. Most of the time, they looked away in a split second. But it didn't matter to me. I didn't need anyone to love me. I WAS love itself. OTHER NOTES.
    LSD is a very cerebral psychedelic. There weren't as many visualizations as shrooms. I was mostly in my head. I consider myself fairly creative, but this drug multiplies your creative capacity by 1000. I couldn't stop writing and talking. Insights were spewing out of me at a million miles an hour. 
    LSD is an opportunity to ask yourself deep questions, especially about your psychological issues. Here's a sample of some of the questions I asked myself:
    What do I want?
    Why do I isolate myself?
    What purpose does my constipation serve?
    What am I so afraid of?
And so on.
    You ever see the movie Limitless, with Bradley Cooper? It kind of felt like that. 
    The trip lasted more than twelve hours. I popped the tab at 10 AM, and I was still tripping at 1 in the morning.
    The Guardian is back. Circulation to my bottom half is cut off again. But at least now I know what I can work towards.
    This song was the theme to my trip. I listened to it more than 15 times: OUTRO.
    If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Words can only do so much justice. I can write for hours about this trip and it would have 1/100th of the impact compared to actually taking LSD. 
    My suggestion? Give it a try. Just know what you're getting into. Do the research. Be meticulous. And, most importantly, enjoy.
    
Cheers,
Brett