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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - ACID HUBRIS


Not sure if any of you read Vice Sweden's blog (or if you can), but a few months ago they put up a letter from one of their countrywomen about taking Bromo-Dragonfly just before it was outlawed over there. You can take a moment and read it if you want. We'll be here.
The whole thing made us a little skeptical. Not that the girl had actually taken it and had a crazy time—we believed that—there was just something off with the details. 24 hours? Crying at a beard? Maybe drugs work differently in Scandinavia, but we thought it bore all the trappings of classic acid-trip embellishment. So we asked Vice's Swedish editor to rustle us up a sampler to see for ourselves how far off the mark this girl had been. Then we moved on to some youtube video and forgot about it, but the gears were already in motion.

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Right before the holidays we received a care package with the above envelope, containing three tabs with Egyptian-looking Siouxsie-Sioux eyes on them. We gave them to one of our interns and told him, "Some Swedish girl thinks these are really intense, see what you think." Here is his report:

"I took two of the tabs at 10 PM the day after Christmas. The folks who sent it claimed that if it was going to work, you'd taste the chemicals, otherwise it'd just taste like paper. As soon as I dropped them it tasted like someone was swabbing my mouth with ammonia, so I assumed I was in for a pretty good time. About an hour later the chuckles set in and the beers I'd had earlier in the evening faded out of my headspace.

"By 3 AM I figured I'd already been as high as I was going to get. I kept zoning out in the middle of sentences, things twitched whenever I turned my head—it was fun, but I definitely wasn't mistaking the streetlights for my parents or ice-claws or anything. Some friends and I decided to head over to the 24-hour Krystal and of course, that's when the drug actually started taking effect—five fucking hours after I'd taken it, shoveling down the absolute bottom of the fast-food barrel in a hot car in the middle of one of Richmond's shittiest neighborhoods (that's where this is all taking place, BTW).

"Things still looked the same, but this heavy tingling suddenly began rising up in my throat—like when you start peaking on mushrooms but way quicker and waaaay more intense. Whenever I was sitting still and had my head back it felt awesome, but every time the car turned or hit a bump, the awesomeness instantly converted into the worst, strongest nausea of all time. It was like someone had forced their entire hand down my throat and was jacking off my gag reflex. We drove back to my friend's place, and as soon as I got out into the cold air I puked ferociously. After the first few heaves I got really nervous that my retching was going to wake one of the neighbors up and tried to walk around the side of the house backward while still barfing. I ended up launching myself ass-first into a bush and puking while caught splayed out upside down. It is an honest-to-god miracle that I didn't get any vomit on my clothes.

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"Right after I finished spewing, the gorge-tingle went away and I entered what I'd describe as the 'acid-phase' of the trip. Trees started breathing and undulating, I could see the different wavelengths lamps were projecting, etc. It would have been an all-right time earlier, but unfortunately by now it was almost 5 AM and I was too zonked out to actually enjoy it. So I decided to do what seemed like the smartest idea in the world. I tried to go to sleep.

"I really have no clue how that Swedish girl managed to get any sort of rest on this stuff, because the second I closed my eyes it was like a hundred new ones opened up inside my brain. The kinds of monsters and songs (each monster had its own song) my mind was coming up with were so nuanced and involved it felt like I was sitting at the very edge of space watching everything in the universe happen all at once. Jesus, that sounds corny. At one point my mind completely reassembled the room I was lying in, so when I opened and shut my eyes I was seeing the exact same thing. That's when things started getting sort of awful.

"It had been raining earlier, but now there was this superintense storm going which kept the sky completely dark until around 9 AM. My friends were all still sleeping, so all I could do was stare at my watch then stare back out the window and try to convince myself that I hadn't put out the sun.

"Eventually it got light out and my friends got up and we all went to get breakfast, but I was still tripping pretty hard. A little after noon, the throat-bulge returned and I basically underwent a whole new peak. I didn't puke this time, but I was so angry at still being high that everything I looked at turned into a subtle demon version of itself. Forks looked like crazy spears, coffee like boiling tar, eggs like cancer. Cars' grills were especially frowny.

"By this point I had more or less exhausted my buds' good will, so one of them dropped me at my car and I told him I'd just chill out and read until the craziness subsided. Ten agonizing minutes later I realized that I needed to get home as soon as possible. I cannot in good conscience recommend anybody drive on this stuff, not so much for all the moral reasons (although they're certainly there), but because it is singly the most terrifying experience I have ever undergone in my life. I would rather swim through a pool filled entirely with AIDS blood and pieces of glass than ever pilot a vehicle while the whole world is twitching around me again.

"Somehow I made it home alive, small-talked my parents for a couple minutes, then managed to get a little bit of actual sleep on the couch. When I woke up it was 7 PM—21 goddamn hours after I'd taken the Dragonfly—and I was still completely fried. How much of a worse trip can you ask for than one that never ends? I wasn't even freaking out or anything, I was just really, really annoyed. It was like I was a sober guy trapped in a tripping guy's body. What made the situation even better was I then got to go out and have dinner with my girlfriend and her family. I don't know how I was able to converse without giving up my game, and I sure as hell don't know how I was able to eat, but finally at 10 PM I was able to go home, lay down, and ride out the remaining four hours of the trip. Four.

I understand naturally occurring things like datura and whatever, but Dragonfly is one of those 2C-B-type "designer drugs" which means some asshole sat in a lab and decided to make something which feels like being on acid twice. Who the fuck wants to trip for that long at a time? Never again for me. Not unless I'm extremely bored."

BARRY HANSIT