Experience:150mcg AL-LAD: First trip, intense Visuals and Good Vibes

• Age: 27
• Sex: Male
• Height: 72in/182 cm
• Weight: 135lbs/61kg
• Date: 08/2021
• Location: Pacific Northwest, USA

Only have experience with weed, but have always been interested in psychedelics and decided to try al-lad first because it was supposed to be a slightly gentler, more visual version of LSD. Was feeling very nervous and anxious about my first trip, but had an experienced trip sitter with me, and had done a lot of research beforehand. Setting was my house and backyard.

T+ 0:00 - Ingested one 150mcg AL-LAD tab sublingually.

T+ 0:15 - After fifteen minutes, swallowed the tab.

T+ 1:00 - After an hour, still feeling completely sober.

T+ 1:20 - First alert, a slight feeling of warmth and lightness in my arms.

T+ 1:40 - Come up progressed very fast after this. Body load was very uncomfortably stimulating. Trip sitter suggests we go for a walk and I agree. Feel like I'm floating down the street in an interesting way.

T+ 1:55 - Turned around and came back from the walk because I began feeling extremely anxious. Time and space distortions begin here- I'm having a lot of trouble judging distances, and time feels like it's moving extremely slowly.

T+ 2:10 - Visuals begin here, appeared to be a rainbow oil slick over my whole field of view. Objects appear distorted- I'm not able to use my phone because the words keep shifting and bulging around. I'm on the verge of having a panic attack at this point, and my trip sitter suggests we go out to the backyard. I take off my watch here to avoid distractions so all times from this point onward are an estimation.

T+ 2:25 - Very much peaking now. My trip sitter takes me out to the garden. I'm low key trying not to panic at this point, and the dried grass looks very sinister to me- like dead birds, skeletons, beaks poking up, etc. I have a hard time walking because of the body dysmorphia and total collapse of my depth perception. My trip sitter asks where my favorite spot in the garden is and I point to a shady area underneath a tree surrounded by ferns, and he takes me there and has me close my eyes. When I close my eyes, I see a brief image of whatever I had been looking at before, which then quickly distorts and breaks apart into a beautiful fractal landscape that fills my whole field of view. The fractals take the form of spirals, and specifically, fern fronds unfolding.

T+ 2:45 - My trip sitter leads me on a short guided meditation where they ask me to imagine the barrier between myself and the earth and all the life on it dissolving, and I feel it- it feels like I sink into the earth, and for a moment, I have a feeling that I've become one with the planet and the cycle of nature. Here is where my trip turned from difficult to positive- from this point on, my mood is high and remains there for the rest of the trip. Very much not the clearheaded mindset that a lot of people report from al-lad, but still a positive one, and still oriented enough to know what's real and what isn't.

T+ 3:30 - For the better part of an hour, I lie in the back yard and enjoy the closed eye visuals. As I continue chatting with my trip sitter, I have intense closed-eye visuals about whatever we're talking about. At one point we discussed the stoned ape hypothesis, and I could visually see images of ancient humans wandering the planes and picking mushrooms the found along the way. The fern fractals were also ever-present. Every now and then my eyes would crack open a little bit, and I'd get a shot of incredible intense blue or brilliant green that would fill my whole field of vision, turning the fractals all sorts of beautiful colors. I'd say I got to about level 3 closed eye visuals at times.

T+ 5:00 - An hour and a half later, still peaking, still in the back yard. At this point I've now opened my eyes and am no longer overwhelmed by the visuals now that I am in a positive headspace. I notice that I have intense after images- whenever my trip sitter moves, I see trails of discrete after images of them, which fade a moment later. The rainbow spiral geometry is still present over everything. Watching the trees sway in the wind is astonishingly beautiful- it looks like a spiral kaleidoscope, everything swirling and flowing, almost like water. At one point my dog comes running through the back yard, and I actually perceive her kicking up bright red sparks in her wake, which I almost couldn't believe. At another time, I saw a hummingbird (a real one, not a hallucination) hovering over my garage. As I watched, I could see the blood vessels in my eye against the blue sky, and my blood vessels appeared to be filled with tiny hummingbirds. Then, suddenly, the hummingbird appeared to split and radiate in all directions- it was like it was shooting out hummingbirds in a 3d sphere. I was sure that what I was seeing was all the possible future paths the hummingbird could take. As soon as it darted in one direction, all the illusory hummingbirds disappeared.

T+ 5:30 - Starting to come down now. Becoming much more lucid. Body dysmorphia (my arms and legs feel way too long) is still present, as are the visuals, but I'm much more clearheaded now. We head back inside and put on another nature documentary.

T+ 5:45 - Here, for just a moment, the visuals stop entirely- being suddenly thrown back into normal perception is so stark after spending so much time tripping. They come back after a few seconds, but less intense, and slowly fade over the next 30 minutes.

T+ 7:00 - At this point, all the visual effects have gone. However, the body load is still there- I'm tensing my jaw hard and my arms and legs feel very uncomfortable, exactly like I've had too much caffeine. I'm feeling a little anxious and vulnerable still, but I say goodbye to my trip sitter because I'm more or less sober mentally.

T+ 12:00 - The intervening five hours are me being totally sober and contemplating the trip, but the body load stuck around until fully the 12 hour mark, making me completely unable to sleep.

Submitted by Psychpnw

Overall, a very cool, positive experience. The come-up was difficult, but I attribute that more to my own inexperience and nervousness about trying a psychedelic for the first time than the AL-LAD itself. Extremely visual. Some people say they're clear headed on it, and that was not my experience- though I did not ever lose touch with reality entirely, I was most definitely not sober. Having a good trip sitter really helped me get the most out of this experience.

The body load was the one definite negative of this entire experience- I did not like it at all, and it stuck around until 12 hours after I'd taken the tab. Next time, I'd definitely do this first thing in the morning. But again, overall, this was a really good experience that showed me a lot of beautiful visuals, even if I didn't get any grand spiritual revelations.