Stories: Meditating on Acid

          The 3 of us were hanging out in Pablo’s garage, and I stayed mostly quiet as I sat on the couch. I watched Oscar and Pablo take swigs from the Smirnoff bottle. They drank and talked, and unlike me, they were having a good time, but after a while I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up to go inside the house. The 3 tabs of acid I took were hitting me hard, and I wasn’t on the same wavelength as those two. I’d rather be alone. 

          “I’m going to go meditate,” I said.  

          I didn’t wait for them to respond. I went inside the house and walked towards Pablo’s room. I opened the room's door and closed it behind me, and I sat down on the floor in front of Pablo’s TV. I got in a crisscross position, and I straightened out my back. I breathed in and out and focused on my breath. I could still hear Oscar and Pablo drinking and talking. They were loud as hell, but at this distance I felt much better. I felt like I made the right decision. I didn’t know how long I was meditating for, but at some point, the door opened and those two came in. I opened my eyes, and I turned my head towards them.

           “We’re gonna go out,” Oscar said with a drunk smirk.

           “Yeah, we’re going out,” Pablo repeated in his childish high-pitched voice.

           “I’m going to stay here and meditate,” I told them. 

           “For sure. For sure,” Oscar said.

           “Don’t get caught up,” I said, but I don’t think they were really listening as they smiled. They shut the door as they left, and I closed my eyes again and continued meditating. Maybe I should’ve talked them out of it, but I didn’t care enough at that point. I was already feeling the acid and I didn’t have the energy for it.

         I focused, and something in me burned after some time of breathing and focusing. I mean, I could’ve stopped meditating and I’d be satisfied with the amount of meditating I had done, but it wasn’t often that I took acid and was feeling this clearheaded, and it wasn’t often that I felt this burning in me to keep going. I opened my eyes and checked the time. I stared at the clock next to the TV for a bit, and then I closed my eyes again. It had only been about 40 minutes.

          Fuck it. Let’s see how far I could go.

          The closed eye visuals got intense, and I had lost sense of how much time had passed. It felt like it had been a while though. The visuals went from dancing geometrical patterns to something that felt like astral projection. I had a 3rd person point of view of what seemed to be Escondido city (where I was). It was vivid images of houses, streets, and of the population. I tried not to let this pseudo-astral projection distract me, because to me, this was still just a distraction like a thought, just more visually sophisticated.

          In mindfulness meditation you need to snap yourself out of thought tangents by returning to a focal point like the breath. Mindfulness is a vehicle towards equanimity, and amazing hallucinations don’t change that goal. So, I resisted my temptation to be in awe of what I was hallucinating. But then I felt like my mind was expanding and expanding to an extreme. I heard voices, and I had a sense that these voices were the voices of the people in the city. My field of vision increased as it spread beyond the city. Then my mind contracted as I breathed in. My field of vision decreased, and as my expanded field of vision collapsed into the tiny point of my breath, I felt like I absorbed all the people’s emotions and thoughts. I felt their fear. I saw bloody images, demonic images. I felt their sins and suffering. Still, I kept focus despite my increasing heart rate, and once again my consciousness expanded.

          There was catharsis with each expansion, like I was letting go of all the negative emotions and thoughts I was absorbing from what seemed to be the world. In letting go, I was acknowledging and understanding what I absorbed, and this went on for the rest of my time meditating in Pablo’s room. I couldn’t help but to tear up. I had immense gratitude. I knew I was lucky I got a chance to experience such a profound thing before my death, and it didn’t matter that acid was involved. To care about that kind of thing would be stupidly pedantic. Then I heard someone open the house’s front door. The door was slam shut. It must’ve been Oscar and Pablo (they've been coming in and out of the house since I started meditating). I opened my eyes and checked the clock that was next to the TV, and it was late. I meditated for over 3 hours. I heard someone’s footsteps moving closer and closer to the room, and then the room’s door opened, and it was Pablo, just Pablo, and he looked scared and someone was still ringing the doorbell. 

           “Dude,” he said with a heavy breath. “The cops are coming. The guy followed me.”

           “Who followed you?”

           “We were looking through cars.” Pablo started. “And when I tried opening a truck someone was there. We ended up running. We threw a bunch of the things we had, and he followed me and called the cops.”

           “And Oscar?”

           “He ran to the trails,” Pablo replied. 

           “Fuck man, fuck,” I replied having a hard time processing what he was telling me. I looked at Pablo and started thinking. “Go brush your teeth. We'll come up with something,” I said.

           “Yeah yeah,” Pablo responded with panic in his voice, and he went to the bathroom.

          I stood up and kept thinking. I began pacing back and forth in his room and tried coming up with a story. After a while,  I went to the bathroom and Pablo was brushing his teeth. He looked towards me and took out his toothbrush waiting for me to say something, and we came up with our bullshit story right there and then.

           “Okay, you’re going to tell the cop…and then tell him this…remember, okay? Got it?” We went over the story as carefully as we could.

           “Yeah yeah,” Pablo kept saying as he listened.

         As we memorized our story, I heard a knock on the door. We were hesitant, but we went to go open it. Once I got to the front door, I stood there nervous as hell, but I opened it and there was the cop. He was a white 30-something year old man with a stern look, and he was holding some stuff that those two threw away as they ran off. Behind was the guy that those two idiots tried stealing from, and he looked pissed. The cop started asking questions to both of us and I was doing my best to follow. Then it came to the point where I had to start explaining myself.

           “We were at the skatepark—” I started. “And there was this guy that we met there.” I didn’t use Oscar’s real name, but I told him he hitched a ride with us, and that we got dropped off. I told him all 3 of us skated to Pablo’s house, but that we got split up because I skated too far ahead of them.

          “I ended up just coming to his house, but they weren’t here.” I was speaking frantically, and I was kind of playing into it to make it seem more believable, but it was more method acting than outright faking it. Then I told him that Oscar peer pressured Pablo into stealing from cars. I noticed the cop look at Pablo.

          “This is fucked. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left him,” I said. The cop stared at us, and I looked back at the guy that was behind the cop, the one that called him in the first place, and he was watching us with a scowl.  

          “You have to be more careful,” The cop finally said. “What am I supposed to do when I get a call like this? Look, I can’t do anything here, but you’re going to get yourselves in trouble if you’re not careful with who you hang out with.” That guy’s scowl disappeared as his face switched to total shock.

          “I saw them opening the car!” The guy screamed behind the cop.

          “Sir, you need to relax,” the cop said as he turned towards him.

          I can’t remember what the cop said after, but basically, he kept telling the guy to calm down. As those two had a short back and forth, I realized we got away with it, that our bullshit story worked. I was so fucking relieved. The guy was furious after his exchange with the cop, but the cop started leaving and so did that guy.

          We went back inside, and I messaged Oscar to update him on what happened. I told him to be careful and that he should go home. I also told him that we pinned the blame on him for our story but that I used a fake name. He understood and wasn’t mad about it, and the next day we met up with him again. Oscar still had a laptop and some other stuff that he stole, and after a few calls we ended up selling the laptop for 100 bucks or something. We bought weed with the money and that was that. 

         To this day I have no clue how that whole situation would’ve played out if I didn’t meditate for 3 hours, because I was still tripping pretty hard after the cop left.  If I had to guess, I would say my decision to meditate saved me from a much worse time that night. We really lucked out, so I got to thank the universe for that one. 

Written by: Erick Carrada

*names were changed

*details were added from Pablo’s perspective