The first time I took LSD it was the summer after I graduated from High School.  My girlfriend was a “bad girl” who got me into smoking pot daily and guided me as I experimented with many various drugs.  We took a hit of blotter acid on an August afternoon.  I tripped my face off as we wandered around King’s Point and then watched “Liquid Sky” at her house.  The experience was extremely positive, so I looked forward to tripping again.

I went away to college and eventually my girlfriend and I broke up.  We stayed friendly and the great distance between us prevented any physical contact.  This bad girl loved to get high, trip, do drugs and, eventually, that love took her out to San Francisco.  For me, I tried mushrooms, mescaline (known as microdots), weak blotter acid, and coke.  I had no fear of experimenting, and the Southampton College student body provided many places to purchase anything I was looking for.

But none of those trips were more than being really high.  Sometime I would get visuals, but mostly the psychedelic effects were limited to objects changing size and things feeling strange.  Those trips would be the backdrop of the most intense trip of my life, and my old girlfriend would be responsible.  Somehow, she had become friends with “Bear” the guy who made acid for the Grateful Dead.  She was hanging out with him and personally dipped the blotter paper in the acid for me.  It arrived in the mail the week before spring break in 1985.  Twelve hits of the strongest hallucinogen I had ever taken!

I gathered my girlfriend and my closest bong mates and we took the acid in the morning.  None of us were expecting the power and the strength of the drug.  It took almost no time to take effect and it lasted more than 12 hours.  We stayed in my tiny single for the first two hours smoking and watching the amazing visuals.  I had put Hans Georg’s “Changing City” series on my dorm room wall, and we all watched it move like a cartoon. The people were walking around, the cars were driving through the streets. We were all freaking tripping our faces off!

We quickly smoked all the pot we had in my room with all 7 of us crammed into my 10’ by 15’ room.  One of the trippers, Kenny, remembered that he had a bunch of ganja in his room, but it was clear across campus, and we were fucked up.  I told him we could do it and we were off.  The fifteen-minute walk took almost 45 as we fell to the ground laughing several times.  We were also invited to smoke a joint two in separate locations. 

An hour and a half later, Kenny and I returned to an empty room.  The trippers had split up to do other things.  I went and found my girlfriend, she was waiting for me.  I was given one rule by my bad girl ex, no having sex while on her acid.  I broke that rule many times.  Never in my life did the act of making love reach this level.  The sex was transformative and did things I had never even thought to try before.  My girlfriend came so hard I thought she was going to pass out.  I was told later that we were extremely loud. I don’t remember that, I just remember feeling like this sex was a religious experience. 

The group met at my room later and we were all still tripping hard.  We smoked the pot we had collected, and it was a lot, more than we could finish for the rest of the day.  Later, in an act of total bravery, we went to the cafeteria for dinner.  Only three of us made it inside, but we stole enough food for everyone to be full.  We drank some beer in the suite with a bunch of the people who lived in my dorm and at 10pm we all took a walk out to the Windmill. 

There was a full moon and it hung over the glass smooth bay and it looked like there were two moons. We all stared in disbelief, it really looked like there was two moons.  The night was warm, and the breeze was pleasant.  We were all coming down and the volume of everything we had smoked, drank, and did made us tired and ready for sleep.  I stayed a few extra minutes with my girlfriend and Kenny.  The view was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, and my eyes were filled with love.  Together, the three of us walked back to the dorms, my girlfriend and I into my room, Kenny into his.

My girlfriend fell asleep immediately, but I couldn’t.  Sleep would not come to me, so after an hour or two, I took a walk.  I found myself at the edge of the water.  It was the South Bay and was a twenty-minute walk from school.  I looked out over the water and thought about my evening.  I was such a nerd in high school, and I just had a day that put the best college movie to shame.  My reputation was cemented at Southampton, and for the remaining time I was there, I was known as the biggest partier on campus.  I tell people - not biggest, just best!