  Kind of strange why I started doing LSD. Lysergic Acid Di-ethylamide also known as 'acid'. But you folks aren't stupid, eh, you know all about that I guess. In case you do want want to know more - you should check out this website - www.erowid.org - detailed info about all sorts of psychedelia. Anyway, back to the point. I was around 21 when I dropped my first ever stamp. I was never forced to do it. I thought and I thought again before I dropped. But having been brought up on a steady diet of 60's and 70's rock and roll - music influenced by LSD - I thought that I would understand where the music was coming from if I dropped acid.
But, I was listening to hardcore psychedelic trance at the time. I popped my first ever trip at my friend Hairy D's (well he does have hair sprouting from his houlders) place. His (then) girlfriend and another friend (lets see what can I call him without being sued, nothing actually, so I'll just use initials) VS were there as well. If I remember correctly, I must have done one-third of a stamp called 'Hoffmann'. The stamp was named after Albert Hoffmann, the Swiss pharmacist who accidentally discovered the drug and on a package of 5x5 stamps you had a cartoon of Dr Hoffmann trying to ride his cycle home after becoming the first person to consume the substance.
What he had done that day was about 25-50 times more than what I had just done, yet the images in my head were spectacular. Of course, like an idiot the next day I thought that LSD is no big deal and decided to go to work. Some idiot was playing 'Backstreet Boys' or something else pretty loudly in office (it was a rather empty day) and I freaked out.
Therein lay the rub. There were not too many people I could have spoken to. Mobile phones were still rather expensive, and I didn't have one, so forget my friends. I couldn't have spoken to family and everyone else of my friends were sleeping. Not good. Anyway, thanks to rather fortuious circumstances I survived without jumping off the the building - I guess that was because I worked in the basement. Anyway, that was my first trip. There were several more to follow. The reason I am writing this is because I recently had my nth trip. I even lost count. But I did it yesterday after six months and the time before that was on New Years. Before that I had quit acid for over a year, sticking only to cocaine. Now that is having expensive tastes.
But after that first trip, I started doing this substance at a frantic pace. In the six months that followed I was doing acid every second weekend, if not every weekend. It was fun, a small little stamp and you were flying, seeing the music make shapes in your head and having surreal out-of-body experiences. Then there was Goa 2000-01. Those eight-nine days could fill up a 300-page non-fiction book. That is if I remember anything.
Every night my body was fuelled by a manic cocktail of LSD, Ecstasy and god knows what else. I was processing so many chemicals thre were times my brain used to forget where the hell I was. I used to wake up in the morning next to strange people, that is if I ever slept. There was a party on the morning of the first. All I remember is going to that party after a nice lunch and then popping some pill called 'Euro'. HD walked up to me after I had popped and told me that I should have only done half because it was very strong - but it was way too late. Boom! I have no recollection of the next five-six hours. The first memory I have of that day is some seven hours later when I was talking to Mr Sood.
That time was a blast. I kind of slowed down a bit after that. I knew that since I had a regular job and that getting busted would have meant too many red faces, it was too dangerous to continue. But, that was just slowing down. I did end up doing all sorts of drugs after that - Keta, Smack and I almost shot myself up with Heroin. Of course, the smoking was on before acid and never really did slow down even after I took it easy on the other substances. Substance Abuse? No. Drugs made me happy for the moment, and frankly they are mis-understood.
Yes, anything in excess is bad, but by keeping them illegal what purpose do you serve. Don't kids want to do drugs more because they're illegal? Hey, thats why I started smoking marijuana. Anyway, my tirade for legalisation will come later. My last acid trip was like a reintroduction to the stuff. I think I ended up doing a rather large dose because the guy who gave us the stuff was tripping so hard.
My friend who took us there sindhi dude was tripping so hard, and he had to DJ. If we were sober his DJ session would have been termed a joke or worse, but this time I had no bloody clue what the hell was going on. Those were a kick-ass six to seven hours. The dirve back in the morning was hilarious because I had no idea where the hell I going and somehow we ended up at the flower market in Mehrauli trying to work out what the hell was going on. Anyway, thats enough for now. I had fun with LSD - I don't condone drug use - but its not as screwed up as the government makes it out to be. 
