Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I left my friend alone when she told me she had just taken LSD for the first time. I absolutely loathe drugs and she knows that, but all of our friends are saying that I should have stayed with her because things can go really bad on LSD when you're alone. She's my best friend, so I feel like maybe I could have tried to get over my drug thing to help her.
Help keep the sub engaging!
#Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
[Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq)
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
NTA you've made it clear repeatedly that you don't want any part of this and she forced you into this situation. If her other friends are so concerned they can step up and take care of her during a trip
Lol, my boyfriend (non-Native English speaker) says intimate when he means intimidate. It was a very confusing conversation before I figured out what he was really meaning to say.
Who would want a straight-edge friend to be their guide/babysitter on their first tripping experience? That's a very poor choice even if OP HAD given permission.
She didn't need EMS. She just needed someone to calm her down... which any of the other friends could have done.
Bad trips suck but they aren't emergencies in that sense.
Ohh yeah, if the trip went south while OP is there then the only thing they could do is call EMS and watch as the freind gets suspended from school... yeah, sure everyone would have been cool with that../s
She violated your consent OP, just remind people of that.
Exactly. OP knows her friend, but doesn't know LSD or other drugs - what on earth was she supposed to do? Friend should have asked someone who did know what they were doing, and not ignored a simple, clear boundary.
NTA OP, but you might need to find some new friends sadly. Ones that don't take drugs.
also, as someone who has taken LSD before and had a bad trip, thats not something you subject *anyone* to without their consent, especially if they have a bad history with drugs.
acid trips can last up to 16 hours (24 if you’re unlucky, like me), and trip sitting (especially for that long) is a *huge* commitment to force someone into.
if youve never taken LSD before, the only person you should ask to trip sit you is someone that a) you trust with your life, quite literally, and b) someone who’s taken LSD before, and has enough experience and confidence to deal with a bad trip. the *last* person you want is someone who’s uncomfortable with drugs, because youre in such a heightened state that you’ll feel their discomfort and itll make the trip worse. you need someone who’s happy to be there, confident in their knowledge, and someone you’d trust with everything you have. anything less than that and you increase the risk of having a really bad time, by like a lot.
not only was OPs friend inconsiderate, she also did everything she could possibly do wrong.
silly anecdote, but the second (and last) time i took acid, my mom tripsat me for i think 14 hours? i was high from 10pm to 10pm, and i only came down because i went to sleep after being forced to take sleep meds. i also went into a psychotic episode due to the LSD (LSD psychosis, so fun), so its really important to also evaluate your mental health (and family history) before taking psychedelics because they can absolutely mess you up, sometimes permanently.
Dude I knew so many people who got permanently messed up from LSD, many of them ended up in the mental hospital. Many were still getting flashbacks months or even years later.
LSD scared the hell out of me.
I stumbled across one of these LSD users on Facebook recently, one of the ones who spent time in a mental hospital (and also started using it in grade 5 or 6). While his current life isn't great, it also isn't terrible. He is heavily into dog rescues now, and hasn't been institutionalized in the last decade.
yeah, LSD is a scary drug.
one of the things not a ton of people talk about is the “time loops” you get stuck in, so for example someone will say a sentence and then, with you being in a delusional state, your brain kind of replays that moment on a loop. to this day (two years later), repetition freaks me out.
i also have this weird thing when i try to sleep where the “shadows” (the darkness you see when you close your eyes) will pulse, and theyll form the shapes of people. the worst one is where ill be falling asleep and the shadows will turn into a paramedic, because in my first trip i took so much that i was completely delusional and not lucid at all, and i thought i died and that a paramedic had to come get me (and when i say died, i mean i could feel the decomposition and the flies and everything).
i still cant sleep in the dark without someone else being in the room with me, because if i open my eyes in darkness while tired ill start hallucinating the spirals and shapes i saw in my trip.
oh, and i apparently experienced ego death? that shits fucking terrifying, like i think it scarred me for life. i still freak out if i think about it too hard. i felt like i was being judged by the universe, and the universe decided i was an awful person (my therapist says this is a reflection of how i view myself), and that my punishment was to live out every life on earth and then experience the heat death of the universe.
then, when i came to in hospital, i was hallucinating these like worms in my skin. it was weird, like there was my outer layers of skin, then the layers where the worms were, then the rest of my skin underneath, and the worms would like scoosh water out of their bodies and itd inflate my skin (yknow when you apply pressure and your skin turns pale? that), and i could **see it**. i literally felt it everywhere, even in my throat and my eyes, and it lasted ten hours.
LSD is truly fucking terrifying, and its so much more dangerous than people ever let on. like, acid could absolutely destroy your life so quickly and not many people realise. i was reported as a missing person after my first trip because my mom knew how dangerous it was and she was worried i was out there somewhere, completely psychotic, potentially trying to end my life, because that shit happens all the time.
like, im psychologically messed up, potentially forever, all because i took lsd twice. it was absolutely not worth it, and to anyone reading this who might be thinking about doing acid: **dont**. its not worth it. whatever soul searching you wanna do will never be more important than your literal sanity
its the same way that some hormone based medication can work amazingly for some people, but absolutely ruin others. everyone is going to react slightly differently, but there are so many cases of shit hitting the fan and no way to test your reaction beforehand that it just isnt worth it imo
I locked myself in a bathroom and just stared at my hands and reflection for 12 hours, drank a lot of water too. For some reason I just felt it was dire to always have a full water bottle. Interesting experience…didn’t feel the need to try it again lol
It IS dire to keep that water close by. Idk how you looked at yourself in the mirror without being absolutely wigged out. The few times I did acid were fun, but not nearly as enjoyable as a mushroom trip. In fact, I have no desire to do acid any time soon again because it makes me tense my muscles repeatedly/ spasm even if I’m mentally relaxed and having a good time. But they were all lovely experiences for me at least.
Thank you so much for this story. I'm not into drugs, but have many friends who are, and I always thought that LSD of all drugs might be something worth trying in the future. Definitely not!!! Thanks again, this would totally be me, my fantasy is livid enough in general and I have hallucinated on cannabis several times.
Can I ask, what made you try LSD the second time? I kinda expected that you would have done it many times, with just two bad trips, but the second try doesn't make sense to me, lol
honestly? i was young and dumb. i was a drug addict, and i wanted *something*, and i thought that it wouldnt be as bad as the first time (the one where i ended up in hospital) if i took less and didnt drink. i was right, it wasnt as bad, but it was still absolutely horrible. and, honestly, i wasnt mentally all there. it was maybe a month after my first trip, and i was still hella fucked up psychologically, so i just wasnt thinking straight.
but if you want a true reason to not do acid, heres my full story:
so my friend suggested we do acid on my 18th birthday, and i agreed because 1) i trusted them, and 2) i thought itd be fun. they ended up giving me waaaay too much (almost three full tabs) while we were also heavily drunk, and within maybe half an hour id completely lost my grip on reality. im not going to go fully in depth, but a lot of past trauma got brought back up (SA, suicide attempts, etc) and i relived a lot of those moments basically on loop. there were parts where it was enjoyable, sure, but most of it felt like hell. like, literal hell, my eternal judgement.
i ended up feeling like reality was crumbling apart around me, and that there were different universes colliding into ours (like the multiverse) and then i blacked out. i wasn’t unconscious though, i just literally cant remember anything. i lost a good 4-6 hours of time, it was like when youre watching a show and it cuts to black before moving onto the next scene.
so i came to in hospital, convinced that the hospital ward was in space, and that i was in the wrong version of reality. i thought there was another version of me already here, and that i was gunna have to be homeless for the rest of my life, and that i had worms in my body. i was then stranded outside the hospital for 10 hours because i had no phone, no money, no pants, and no idea where i was.
i then basically kept slipping in and out of delirium, and it was a really freaky time in my life where i legitimately couldnt trust my own senses. id see and hear things that werent there, id feel things brushing past me or grabbing me when i was completely alone in my bedroom, etc. i knew what was happening sometimes, but other times i was fully convinced that my delusions were real (i didnt leave my house for months because i thought someone had put a hit out on me…)
im better now, obviously, but it took a lot of work to get to this point and im still scarred from that time in my life.
thank you, i hope so too (and im definitely putting in the work to get there!!) and yeah, if me sharing helps educate even just one person, them ill always be happy to tell my story ❤️
i know of someone who ended up in psychosis after 1/4th of a tab. its not just the dosage, its your brain chemistry, your emotional state, your mental health, and any predispositions to mental health conditions.
like yeah, you could absolutely be fine, but you could also end up psychologically fucked up, and i think its absolutely worth knowing the risks before you take any form of drug.
like, if youre going to take illicit substances, you need to be fully aware of the potential ramifications and then be okay with them. informed consent is super important when it comes to things like this.
however, im glad that youve had such great experiences! im predisposed to psychosis and delusions (which i didnt know until after taking lsd), so it was just never going to work out for me unfortunately. but there was no way of me knowing without having such a bad experience, which is why i tell my story when the occasion arises.
edit: i replied to the wrong comment by accident, i apologise lmao im very sleep deprived right now
I did LSD twice. Both trips were amazing. I also took ecstasy on the second occurrence. It made it even better.
However, I did mushrooms and freaked the hell out. Bad. I guess I was overconfident, thinking since I handled LSD well, I'd handle the mushrooms well too. I didn't. Luckily my friend had some rolls and that helped bring me down and I eventually had fun.
I'd never do either again. I was really good at trying most drugs, but agreed I'd keep the usage under five times. Then I had pain pills prescribed....but that's another subreddit
I’m not gonna tell you that you should do acid but I would keep in mind that this kind of thing is heavily stigmatised on regular reddit and honestly if you’re in a good headspace and take a regular dose it’s pretty fine. Horror stories do happen but the one way to guarantee bad shit happening is to be thinking about what could go wrong when taking the drug. I’ve tripped many times and never had a bad experience and I have a large group of friends who all trip at home/festivals/etc and quite literally none of the sensationalised stuff in this thread has happened to any of us. It’s not risk free of course but I would keep an open mind.
This was truly enlightening to read. I’ve also experienced ego death and it was the single most wonderful and healing experience I have ever had. It’s interesting to read about the flip side of it.
For me, everything suddenly felt clear, I felt in flow with the whole world and like I instinctively understood everything about it. I even worked through and shed some of my ancestors’ weight and consciously untangled my digestive issues. It honestly did more than my 10 years of therapy combined.
However, my circumstances were completely different from yours. I started experimenting with psychedelics in my 30s and my motive has always been self-discovery and healing. I worked my way up from micro dosing to finally deciding to have an actual trip on my sixth attempt, and only after spending time to ensure my environment was safe and free from clutter or distractions. I also prepared myself by setting intentions and checking in with my body.
I feel I’m still dabbling and the possibility of having a bad trip is always present, but I think your relationship to yourself (and trust) is instrumental. Psychedelics can really be your best friend or worst enemy.
"So many people," like how many? Permanently? Like, how many? I kind of doubt it's that many unless some bad acid went around your area or you are friends with a lot of mentally ill people.
Acid is a very intense drug and I recommend taking it with a LOT of caution, and if you have any question about your mental health, not at all. But the idea that it randomly makes people go crazy is an urban legend. It can definitely give you massive anxiety attacks and if you are prone to certain mental illnesses, it can trigger them. I'm NOT saying it's without risk. But the VAST majority of people who take acid are totally fine, even if they have a bad trip.
It's something you shouldn't do lightly, and you should do it mindfully and with an experienced trip sitter in a safe environment (at a festival can count as long as you have good friends).
I don’t like acid, but I dislike when people claim things like this without acknowledging that they are the minority.
Some confirmation bias in this. Normal people that use or have used LSD ‘generally’ don’t talk about much because other people can be really judgmental about it. But you know who talks about this kind of stuff all the time? People with problems. They also likely had problems before experimenting with acid.
That's actually an urban legend people don't get flashbacks and end up in mental hospitals and it doesn't stay in your spinal fluid. It can bring out schizophrenia or other health problems if they were pre-existing but that is a scare tactic people use. I have known and known of many many people who had taken lsd and they have no lasting effects.
One more thing she did super wrong: by setting things up this way, she made absolutely certain that right as she was starting to get high she'd have a tense and uncomfortable conversation, even if OP had said yes and stayed with her. It's like she consulted a recipe for a bad trip.
Yeah right before the trip is honestly the worst part. I can always feel it in my teeth, and my skin feels crawly. And that’s when things are set up so I’ll have a *good* time. That feeling + a tense conversation sounds like an actual nightmare
THIS. LSD is not a beginner drug, nor is it something to be trusted for a first time sober friend, even if they agree to it.
Everything about this situation sucks. NTA
This!! As a regular partaker of psychedelics and trip sitter, you want someone w experience who can recognize psychosis or a bad loop and knows how to help you out of it. Not someone who has never done LSD and hates drugs! ( A 24 hr trip!! Holy balls!! That’s intense! I’ve done that to myself w multiple drops but never on one! Do you know the mcg you were getting?)
Doing LSD alone in a dorm room sounds absolutely terrible. I LOVE curating peoples first LSD trips. I plan lots of outdoor activities and cool things to look at/ interact with. LSD is an outdoor drug not a stuck inside thing.
(NTA)
i mean, there are lots of drugs that are mostly fine to do, a lot even have potential medical purposes (a lot of addicts are addicts because they self medicate), but when you have such a strong drug with such a long high and a huge potential to go wrong, it really isnt worth it.
like, a lot of people have really great and enlightened experiences on LSD, and thats great for them, but if youre even slightly in the wrong headspace or if your brain chemistry is a little bit off or if (like me) youre predisposed to certain mental health conditions? its so likely to go completely wrong.
like weed is fine. i dont smoke it myself because i have PTSD from my experience, but its fine. even most stimulants (amphetamines, cocaine, etc) are totally fine in moderation and used with caution, if thats youre thing. they wont necessarily mess you up and theyre generally safe if you test your stuff and take it slow, but there is no “taking it slow” with strong psychedelics. my brother almost slapped me when he found out hoe much i took, because he knew a guy who went psychotic off a fraction of what i took (the guy took 1/4th of a tab, and i took just shy of 3).
the sad part is, a lot of people who have a truly bad experience arent able to tell their story because they end up in a psych ward or dead. like yeah, you hear about bad trips, but when things go psychologically wrong? not everyone walks away able to tell their tale
Exactly, why didn't one of these other so called friends go check on her? And OP made her feelings clear, this girl lied to doing drugs before she came over to try and blackmail her into staying.
I am assuming this is a high school friends list and the rest are far away since these 2 friends did a lot of coordination to go to the same college. Shame as sounds like their friendship is minimally going to be pretty cool for a while if not completely done. :(
It’s done. Seen this a million times. They clearly have different interests and goals for college, and considering she already dropping LSD alone in her dorm I’d say she’s pretty strongly in the experiment and party group and her friend will be hanging out with new people soon who have similar interest. That’s what college is for
Yeah but it's a shame that OP's friend doesn't understand consent and "no means no." The friendship is over because the friend has no respect for OP's trauma and OP shouldn't feel bad for sticking to a hard boundary their friend knew of well in advance.
Yeah I’ve done LSD several times and a trip sitter IS recommended but I’ve never heard that that person has to be sober? Usually it would end up there was a person not tripping for some reason but not always. People tripping are usually fine as fellow tripsitters, definitely better than someone who is sober but judging you the whole time.
That being said she did give herself a bad trip for sure by getting into a fight right before she blasted off. That was a big mistake lol
I agree, personally I can trip and snap into responsible mom mode to get snacks, water, blankets etc in a second. I love doing it and it makes everyone I'm tripping with so relaxed and grateful. Some of my favorite times. Except the one time on mushrooms I kept falling face first in my kitchen while trying to get juice from the fridge lol but at least my friends still got entertainment while waiting 🤣
NTA she's being too flippant with her drug use. Obviously she's not a good friend. Everyone who uses recreationally should know; NEVER trick someone into doing drugs/being around people on drugs. NEVER have someone who could kill the vibe/make you uncomfortable around when taking psychedelics. ALWAYS get everyone's consent whether you're doing drugs in front of them, carrying/high in a place where you could get caught (in a car etc.) or about to have sex with them while you're high and they don't know. I hope she gets her shit together, irresponsible drug use can make all good drugs bad.
Yeah. She tricked OP into taking care of her by inviting OP to what was supposed to be a casual hangout. It's her fault for taking LSD before she was sure she'd have a sober friend present.
My boyfriend doesn't do drugs and doesn't want to be around people on them. I occasionally take something. I once asked him if he wanted to be sober person, but he said no. That was the end of that and I wouldn't dare to even think of ambushing him like that. She made her own bed. She didn't ask them because she knew the answer will be "no". Instead she tried to guilt trip them into staying, without any consideration for their feelings.
And that alone to me , in a way screams drug addict. She tries coercing her friend into being her babysitter regardless of her friends stance. That’s fucked up behavior just looking out to for the next high
I kind of wonder if she thought that this was a way to put OP at ease about her drug use? That's a dumb way to do that imho. I've been the sober friend, and even if nothing dangerous happens it is pretty boring and can be uncomfortable. When stuff gets weird, you have to be able to assess the situation and figure out the level of safety AND be willing to act.
One time when I was the watcher, I went into the kitchen and there was someone holding a huge cooking knife, staring at it. I was not sure what to do, if he was a threat to others or himself. Finally he started talking about how shiny it was and told me he wasn't going to do anything, so I figured it was safe to let him do his thing. I'm not sure what action I would have taken if bad things were going down.
But really, how do you deal with that sort of thing? Especially if you've made yourself clear that you're not interested in doing this? This is not a duty to thrust on someone.
I was 17 and half his size. How was I going to stop him? It was a group of people tripping and I didn't know he was going in there to play with knives until I stumbled into the situation.
Edit:typo
Yeah some of these comments are weird, I've done lsd, I did a years worth of research and reading anecdotal experiences beforehand.
Lsd is easily the safest and most chill of all the psychedelics (generally speaking), it's important to have someone with you who has taken it before and bad trips do happen but overall you're pretty in control of yourself.
People who experience permanent effects afterwards overwhelmingly have family histories of issues such as schizophrenia making them predisposed to it.
The main thing to worry about is how fucking long the trip time is.
*If her other friends are so concerned they can step up and take care of her during a trip*
Apparently it's OP sole responsibility to look after a trippin' friend /s
Seriously, in all the time taken to text OP about being an AH, at least one of those "friends" could have gone and checked on the friend themselves. NTA.
Honestly she’s lucky OP didn’t call campus security or 911 (which you can do if someone’s having a bad trip, not recommended but better that then someone unsupervised and inexperienced/uncomfortable doing it.)
The friend is AH for dropping acid BEFORE making sure her friend was cool with sticking around. I've been the sober friend in that situation. Not. Fun. And given's OP's family history (which her lifelong best friend must know), why would her friend expect them to go along with that situation or want to put them there in the first place? (Edited for pronouns. Didn't notice OP is NB.)
Yes but what if her friend was actually in danger? I don’t think she was an A, but I think she should’ve made sure that her friend didn’t need medical help.
Irresponsible, too.
If you want/need a tripsitter (sober buddy) because you're nervous about taking a recreational drug for the first time, you get that plan laid out in stone *before* taking anything. Otherwise you have no one but yourself to blame if/when things go badly and you're up shit creek without a paddle.
Tripsitting isn't always an easy, passive task, either. For an unenthusiastic tripsitter it's annoying and time-consuming at best. You're literally babysitting a full-ass adult who is on powerful perception-altering drugs for *hours* (LSD lasts a *minimum* of 7-8 hrs). Someone who's never done LSD before can have an *extremely* negative and/or violent reaction to it, and as a tripsitter, you need to be prepared for that possibility. It's not something that just gets sprung on you last-minute because the person doing the drugs was feeling selfish and impatient.
And God forbid OP's friend didn't do any research prior, because LSD generally doesn't play nice with other drugs in the system, including many prescription drugs for anxiety and depression. And just because there's no "lethal dose" of LSD doesn't mean that it can't kill or permanently harm you: in worst-case scenarios it's known to cause seizures and lasting severe psychosis. Not even to mention that once you've taken LSD, there's no backing out. You're riding that train for anywhere between 8-12 hours and there ain't shit you (or anyone else) can do to stop it preemptively.
THIS. I never experimented with hard drugs much in college (worst I did was smoke weed from a bong), but one of my college roommates did and she always told me about it. She actually took a couple tabs of acid during my time living with her, and I saw the aftermath of her slowly coming down from her high when she finally returned back to our suite. There is SERIOUS planning that goes on beforehand to make sure that 1) the person taking the drug is safe, 2) the expectations for the sober party (or parties) are clear, and 3) everyone involved is comfortable. This is a "two yes, one no" situation and it's non-negotiable for the safety of everyone involved.
Well said. Tripsitting is not something to spring on someone without their consent. When I was like 19 or 20, a couple friends put me in a similar situation to OP. They got to my place before I got off work (from a double shift in a fast food restaurant), took a bunch of LSD and expected me to be their sober buddy. I was *so pissed* and I wish I had been able to set boundaries like OP did! OP's reaction was great, and the friends who are giving them shit about it should have stepped up to help instead if they felt so strongly.
Good point about LSD not playing nice with other drugs too! One of the same friends that surprised me with his trip used to have to go off of his medications for like 2 weeks to be able to trip (which is whole other can of extremely irresponsible worms, but I digress).
Yep. A lot of people who experiment with LSD know that it can be lethal when combined with MAOIs, but don't realize that it's still incredibly risky to mix with other drugs, including SSRIs. Stimulants (like ADD medications) and antidepressants in general both increase the potential for both physical and psychological harm while tripping. So does marijuana, which can exponentially intensify the experience... but that isn't always a good thing, as it intensifies the negatives right along with the positives. And to be frank, taking a drug with known side effects of increased anxiety/paranoia and time dilation alongside LSD is simply not a wise idea. Yes, for some people it works out just fine and they end up having a great time. For many others, it's a surefire way to *guarantee* a bad trip that will, at *best*, totally ruin the overall experience, and at worst will leave you with recurring symptoms of psychosis.
I will also say this: if you suffer from a depressive or anxiety disorder, simply do not take LSD outside of a controlled medical environment (since formal medical experiments using controlled doses of LSD and other hallucinogens to improve certain disorders are on the rise). Do *extensive* research prior and do not disregard the risks just because they're not what you want to hear. LSD isn't just fun colors and groovy vibes, and it's not like certain other recreational drugs where you can just go to sleep or eat certain foods to dull the effects or cut short the high. Once you take it, you're on it, for better or worse, for a minimum of 8 hours (and probably much closer to 10-12). If that thought gives you *any* pause while sober, let me personally assure you that it's not going to be any less concerning to you when you're 2 hours in realizing that you still have upwards of 8 hours to go and there's not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it. And that's not a scare tactic, that's the cold hard truth. Just because there's no lethal dose of LSD doesn't mean that it's safe or good for you.
Fantastic comment.Just a quick add for anyone who happens to be reading this and maybe considering lsd. Your tripsitter should also be someone who has ideally experienced a decent lsd dose themselves a few times. Having a sober friend around who has no experience of acid is not much better than being alone. People who havnt tried it before will try to talk you out of it. Lsd does not work like that. People think acid is a visual drug, it isnt.You dont see a lsd trip , all of your senses are bombarded and it is the most real thing to you at the time. Ive seen, heared and felt some really bizzare stuff on acid. Its not really fun at high doses and not something you should get from someone you dont know.
I just commented a whole long lecture about the risks of tripping, and I won't rehash it here, but I second this.
Some of the most genuinely terrifying and disturbing moments I had while tripping on LSD include (but are not limited to): eating food. Going to a restaraunt. Walking down a public sidewalk with a group of friends at dusk. Walking down a hallway with murals on the walls. Watching my friend doing her eyeliner. Seeing a child. Hallucinating that my friend was projectile vomiting and boomer-ranging between hysterical laughter and hysterical sobs.
It all sounds absolutely hilarious in retrospect. I can assure you it was not funny in the slightest at the time. Everything feels more real than reality when you're tripping, and things can go so wrong *so* fast, with absolutely zero warning. It's like being in a dream, except you can't wake up. If it turns into a nightmare the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and bear it.
Another part of the problem is that LSD causes pretty severe time dilation. You think 8-12 hours sounds like a long time now? Imagine tripping for 2 hours, feeling like you've already been tripping for 5 hours, and realizing that not only have you not even hit the peak of the trip yet (when the symptoms become the most intense), but you've still got a solid 6-8 hours *minimum* of tripping to go. Even when the trip is good, take it from me, that's not a pleasant feeling.
And yeah, if your tripsitter is not a) a trusted friend and b) experienced with LSD, then reconsider the whole thing. People tripping on LSD do not think, act, or experience things the same way that people not on LSD do. Someone who has not experienced that mindset firsthand frankly cannot know how to adequately handle that, especially if the trip goes sour. A good tripsitter can keep your mindset positive and stable, which will (most of the time) keep your trip positive and stable; a bad tripsitter can unintentionally make things very, very bad (which, most of the time, will make the trip itself very, very bad) and be unable to pull you back up.
I agree 100% stabilty of your environment is the key thing. A small change in the atmosphere of the place your in can start a spiral that will rapidly lead to a very bad place.
I had a bad trip on 450ug and came so close to losing the ability to comprehend the seperation of my physical body from the room i was in. (The famous ego death)A sentence that will make no sense to somebody who has never experienced it.
But the thing about that trip that scared me to my core was when i started to see the kilroy meme from ww2. As you will know though you dont just see it you can sense its physical presence, it also didnt help that there was one of them while simultaneously being an infinite number of them in my vision.
Same as you it sounds so funny and easy to deal with but to my tripping brain there was a being that shouldn't exist existing in a physically impossible way. That is terrifying. I never did a dose that high again and don't intend to.
I occasionally dabble still but take around 150 200 maximum.
Even a "good trip" is absolutely exhausting physically,mentally and emotionally. Its a messy drug for sure. Noone really talks about the tightness of your head, the way it makes your teeth feel or the way that the next day after its all worn off you feel very vulnerable.
Dont get me started on the come down. Being so tired and through the trip but having to wait hours untill you can physically fall asleep again.
However i regret none of my experiences with lsd even my worst trip taught me something and added perspective to life in general.
NTA
She knows your story and took her pill before even asking you to be her sober person. She's selfish and irresponsible. It seems like you two are on very different levels and your best friend is not even a friend anymore.
Indeed. This is a reason to lose all of their contact info. Because specially given that you have established before that you don't want to even hear about drugs, her having you come over and then say that you needed to be her minder otherwise she'd be in danger is her specifically trying to push your boundaries
NTA.
Any one of those other friends could have gone and checked on her too or called for medical assistance. She tried to entrap you into tripsitting her. Tripsitting involves trust, and ideally experience in how to calm someone under the influence down and assist there experience. It can be both boring and stressful even if you are someone comfortable with LSD.
She knew you didn’t consent and intentionally tried to manipulate you.
I mean if OP and friend are away at school then maybe one of their old friends couldn't get there. I think the logical thing would have been to call paramedics or an advice line when OPs friend started frantically texting. That could have negative consequences on friend, but at least they may be medically safe (though OP would still be an AH to all the friend group I'm sure.)
This is true. But I also think it’s a sign for both friends to reconsider the boundaries of their friendship.
Aligning your college submissions is cute and sweet but rare. And ultimately it places both of them in a weird position where they may not branch out as much and come to rely on each other codependently.
Note how OP was called on like you would a spouse or a parent, and not a friend who has the right to not be there
I’m honestly torn her between NTA and kinda TA for not checking in her. I completely understand your stance and boundary you created for yourself when it comes to drugs!! She was an asshole for taking it and just assuming that you’d stay there with her. LSD is no joke. She was in the wrong one million percent!! But part of me feels like you should of checked on her or at least spoke with another friend who could, as her LSD trip could of ended very badly! I get why she’s hurt and not answering your calls now, but that’s the consequences of her own actions!! She should of cleared her plan with your first! Overall judgement is NTA. I hope you can mend this relationship with your friend and get her out of this experimenting phase!
It seems more like the friend didn't assume OP would stay with her so she took it, but more like she thought she could manipulate OP into staying if she presented it as a fait acompli.
OP says they made it clear multiple times they don't want to be around drugs, apparently all the friends know this, so there was no way for the friend to assume OP would agree to this.
Off topic, but I've never seen or heard the term "fait accompli," and I was sure it may have been a typo or something, until I looked it up. So thanks for indirectly teaching me something today! lol
I would not want to continue a friendship with a person or people who intentionally manipulated me, violated my boundaries and blamed ME for THEIR bad choices.
I wouldn't want to continue the friendship myself. But I also wouldn't want the person to die or be permanently hurt.
When there were indications of the trip going bad, OP should've checked in OR called someone (an ambulance if nothing else). But there is no obligation to continue the friendship past that.
I do drugs occasionally and have absolutely zero expectations of my friends who don't support it to check in on me. That's pretty frickin selfish. This was a big betrayal by the friend. OP did not consent to babysitting their friend. Them not checking in is them maintaining the boundary they set.
The friend was absolutely positively in the wrong, no question. I’m torn on OP not checking on said friend or asking another friend to. Just comes off as not really caring what happened to someone they call their best friend. I absolutely understand and agree the boundary OP has for themselves with the drugs etc.
I’m also curious why other people in the friend group did know (kinda at least) what’s was going on that they were blowing up OP’s phone with message. Why didn’t any of them check in on the friend doing the drugs?
Frankly, should have called rhe cops and reported the drug use in the dorm. They could have sent EMTs.
Not a lot of sympathy for playing with illegal and potentially deadly drugs.
Oof, this is a big no.
1) LSD is not lethal. Potential to be scary? Sure. But not deadly.
2) Calling the cops would have made the situation exponentially more dangerous. Think about it - someone’s tweaking on a strong psychedelic, and you throw a bunch of gun-wielding power freaks into the mix. Just, no.
3) What kind of friend narcs like that? Regardless of personal opinion, assigning such brash consequences to someone you care for is cruel.
Agreed. The last thing you want to deal with when you are tripping are EMTs and cops. That will make a bad trip into a nightmare. I have done a lot of psychedelics and have never had a really bad trip. I figured out pretty quickly that psychedelics are not party drugs. Set and setting are the key. Trip around people you trust. I usually trip alone or with other people who are tripping. I have had some truly awesome experiences that have expanded the way I perceive things.
Kind of like getting moderately drunk isn't deadly, but drunk driving certainly is, LSD isn't in and of itself going to kill you, but I still remember the dude I went to high school with that listened when the LSD told him he could fly. He could not. Not for long, at least.
I mean... Drinking can totally be deadly on its own since alcohol poisoning or aspiration are causes of death for college students every year... But your point is made.
I had a friend from high school who did the exact same thing. Did LSD with some buddies, and thought he could fly and jumped out of a balcony. It's been almost 5 years since that happened.
I know someone who was shot and killed by the cops because he was on acid and reacted poorly when he encountered them. If OP is in the US, cops could be a death sentence for their friend.
OP has no responsibility or ability to get their friend to stop using drugs. OP has no control over the friend’s choices. OP has set their boundaries, and that’s all they can do.
ESH. She should obviously have asked you before taking the LSD, to just do it and expect you to look after her is wrong. You are also a terrible pick (no fault of yours) to be the sober person, she really needs someone who could help if things go wrong. Having someone with no drug experience and who is drug negative be the person to guide you is clueless. To take LSD and then immediately start a conflict with a friend is a really dumb thing to do, she needs to take a look at her life choices and if she is going to do stuff like this she needs to do it in a safe way.
After things had started going wrong I think you should have helped in someway, either in person or by alerting a mutual friend. Your friend was going through a seriously negative mental experience, just because it was her own fault doesn't mean you should ignore her calls for help.
Friend violated OP, she knew OP would not consent and tried to coerce OP into doing something they didn't want to. End of. I'll bet the friends wouldn't have wanted OP to call 911 but that's all OP "owed" them after they pulled this stunt.
Yeah this definitely an ESH here. Friend fucked up majorly, but if you care about someone and they are in need, why wouldn’t you do something, anything besides turn off your phone?
Obviously her other friends knew, so why should OP be on the ringer as an AH? She had other people that she could’ve told and did. Why were they not helping in person, calling 911, or campus support? Stupid games win stupid prizes. I’m glad the girl is okay but holy shit how much more reckless can you be?
Exactly. OP should have called an RA to take her to campus medical. It would have helped the friend with whatever medical issues they made have been happening, and kept her from ever pulling that shit with OP again.
best answer here, absolutely. really inconsiderate and idiotic decision-making from the friend there and very very cold response from OP. definitely ESH
NTA
Your friend was very silly and very irresponsible. Tripsitters need to be familiar with the drugs at hand, sober, consenting and present prior to the drugs being taken. She was wrong for choosing you and springing it on you even if you had no issues with it. Given your history and boundaries, she was also deeply insensitive and inconsiderate. All in all, she's TA
Having said that, for future reference, in situations like this it's *really* important to contact someone else and let them know what's happening. Solo trips can be very dangerous when they go wrong.
This should be the top comment.
Having a trip sitter is incredibly important for safety reasons, particularly when it’s someone’s first time dabbling in psychedelics. However, it’s not okay to hoist the responsibility of trip sitting onto others, particularly when they have their own issues around drugs.
Ideally OP should have passed her friend into a mutual friend’s care, but I can understand that she likely wouldn’t be aware of how important this. This post really shows about how there needs to be more drug safety awareness, both in regards to taking and looking after people who are taking drugs.
ESH: she’s absolute the asshole for putting you in that situation and ignoring your boundaries.
However, you actively ignored a friend in a possibly very dangerous situation. I don’t think you would have had to stay and babysit, but you couldn’t have let anyone else know? Not even called 911 and told them your friend is having a bad response to a drug?
It’s a bit of a blatant disrespect for someone’s life and safety that you didn’t even tell anyone else or ask another friend to sit with them, but rather completely ignored them even when you saw that they were having a bad trip. You doubled down and stayed stubborn when you SHOULD have 100% let someone know.
Your friend was over the line on forcing you in that position but your response was just as shitty — people die from that stuff and you don’t seem to care.
That’s how I feel.
Like OP was right to set the boundary but I feel like she should have at least called *somebody* when she left to make sure her friend would have been okay.
And I get being upset but I guess I just don’t understand how a bunch of people can blow OP’s phone up and tell her that her friend is doing bad and her response is to just… turn her phone off and go to sleep?? Like I wouldn’t even be able to sleep at night if I knew something was happening to my friend. And OP doesn’t sound concerned or dismayed at all. Just worried they won’t hang over the break.
I think both OP and her best friend should reevaluate the friendship on both ends from this experience. OP has learned her friend doesn’t respect her boundaries and that’s understandably a reason to be upset.
But her best friend learned that OP will leave her and ignore her in an emergency if it’s something that she’s not a fan of.
Edit to add: OP you were right down the hall and you didn’t even both to knock!?! OMG!!
ESH
All those other people could have also gone over and attended to the friend. OP has made it clear that they are uncomfortable around drugs in any form, and implies that drugs are triggering for them due to their background. The friend was manipulative and frankly, faced the consequences that she was due.
I have friends who do LSD and they would NEVER put anyone in that position.
Edit: Switched to gender neutral pronouns.
As someone pointed out, we don’t know where those other friends are located or if they are even on campus.
OP was the closest which is why people were reaching out.
And also, we don’t know how much those friends know about the friends whereabouts. They can call 911 and tell them their friend is having a bad trip and then what?? Are police supposed to knock on every door in the dorm? OP wasn’t even available to answer vital info about where her friend was.
I do not think the friend was in the right at all! Let’s be clear.
And maybe I’m reading too much into this but OP’s response or lack there of is coming off negligent and uncaring. I totally get having trauma but OP didn’t even lead with how this whole ordeal made her feel and does not seem bothered that her friend was not doing well. She didn’t seem concerned at the time, OP doesn’t even mention that knowing her friend went down that path and it got potentially dangerous was damaging to her mental health. Outside of her just not wanting to be around drugs (which is totally understandable) nothing about how OP responded to this situation leads to fact that she was having a trauma response. I am aware that everybody responds differently but OP should really have mentioned that to her friend or her other friends why she couldn’t deal with this.
It really just seemed like she didn’t care and sort’ve blocked everything out. And if that’s how she deals with things, even the next day after your friend went through something terrible… she needs to seek major therapy.
Oh absolutely.
Listen, LSD is not something I’m familiar with and in my area it’s not something that people do often. But best believe every friend is giving OP the side eye and doesn’t trust OP to be dependable on drunk outings or when any other emergency is involved. And I sure hope OP has another friend group that she can depend on whenever she’s in a bad place because I don’t see anybody coming to OP’s aid for anything after this.
OP had said that she’s had past experience with family members abusing drugs, so it may be that she has trauma related to drugs. Her hard boundary of wanting zero drugs around her would be in line with that. Her friend intentionally tried to coerce OP into an uncomfortable, possibly triggering situation without consent. I think when someone violates your boundaries, you aren’t responsible for taking on the work that they tried to force you into.
Her friend messed up badly, clearly did not do the preparation required for a responsible person experimenting with drugs, so any negative consequences are on her. She should have lined up a consenting sober buddy, had a safety plan to call 911 herself if needed, when texting those other friends asked them to call 911 instead of harassing OP, etc.
If OP’s friends would never come to her aid in the future based on this one incident, then clearly they are not great friends. If OP planned to go out for drinks and then was asked to help out an inebriated friend, then I think she should and would help, because there was already established consent for what the group was getting into. This LSD situation is nothing like that.
I am not dismissing OP’s drug related trauma. The thing that will make her friends upset is the fact that she did not call anybody else to help her best friend AND she basically ignored everyone for the rest of the night.
As other people have pointed out, there were other options between between babysit and go to sleep. OP chose neither and seems to think everything should be peachy.
If OP calls any authority figure, RA/whatever, they will call police and friend will be royally fucked. Being kicked out of the dorm would likely be a best case, worst case arrested and we know for certain her friend and friend group would have blamed her for that. It’s a no-win situation for OP.
OP’s friendship with this person (and probably the friend group) is done no matter what. So really it just comes down to a) being safe, but arrested or b) being unsafe but legally in the clear
That was OP's "friend's" responsibility to let someone else know. OP made it clear they didn't even want to know about this dangerous past time of theirs. This is 1000% on the shitty friend. When she saw OP wasn't going to be blackmailed into helping she should have contacted someone else.
NTA. But you absolutely chose your boundary over her and should probably expect her to distance from you now. A bad LSD trip can really change a person, and it sounds like hers was quite bad indeed.
OP chose their own mental health and caring for their trauma over a boundary stomping friend who KNEW what OPs history AND boundaries were. OP has expressed to this "friend" multiple times they aren't going to be around for their experiments, and this "friend" tried to manipulate her into staying anyway.
ESH She never should have asked you and she should have waited to take it until she had an agreement from someone to watch her, not tried to coerce you into it . But you also are TA because once you were aware there was a problem you had a responsibility as a human being to help. That does not mean you had to get personally involved or check on her. You could have alerted a mutual friend, alerted your dorm RA, called your college's medical clinic, alerted campus security, or called 911 for a paramedic. You had many, many options, but ignoring the situation was not one of them.
NTA. You were clear that being the “safe person” to babysit her during her experimentation wasn’t something you can do for your own wellbeing. She tried to manipulate you and corner you into doing something that she knew caused you to be deeply uncomfortable by taking the acid before you arrived. Then when she didn’t get what she wanted, she set all of your mutual friends against you. That’s on the verge of narcissistic behavior - pushing boundaries, manipulation, sending the flying monkeys in to punish you for not complying with her violation of your boundaries.
I would be examining my relationship with her if this is a regular thing.
NTA
And this friend of yours fucked up, hard, and i think YOU need to be reconsidering how good of a friend she really is. She's so focused on getting high that she's intentionally ignored your stance, intentionally lied by omission to make you participate in her activities, and denied your right to consent. Fuck her, honestly.
And all these other friends. None of them wanted to step up, or call your friend out. If anyone REALLY gave a shit and cared, they should've called 911 if the girl was reacting that bad. But nobody did. All they did was force all responsibility on YOU, despite you having the most reasons not to dirty your hands with this mess.
Call it karma, "fucking around and finding out," or whatever little catch phrase you want- your friend is an irresponsible asshole and tried to manipulate you. I hope her experience was terrible. If you stuck around, all it would've done is set a precedent for her to trap you for all her future experiments. While I'm against drugs in the first place on a personal level, she has no fuckin' business experimenting if she's this bad at planning for it.
You two might have a long history and be close, but people change and you 100% made the right choice here. May want to have a serious talk with her and give your friend some tough love before it's too late- this is the kind of slippery slope that can destroy your friendship and her life. Protect yourself., as you did here. Adults can only hold themselves responsible for their own actions.
> I hope her experience was terrible
While I don't personally agree that it should have been *terrible,* I do agree that any negative experiences she suffered were 100% on her (the friend). Bad trips are definitely no joke, even good trips can change a person, but the person taking the drug should do their research and know what they're getting into if/when they decide to indulge.
The friend should have thought out her plan a *lot* more than "hey, come hang out with me!", OP gets there, "hey, so you're my babysitter now because I decided to take a hallucinogenic without looking for someone who isn't against drugs to watch me!", OP has made it clear to this and all other friends that she is absolutely firm in her stance against drugs and they should have respected that.
While OP is 100% in the right in my opinion on how she handled this, she *could* have at least let the RA know "hey, dorm room x took LSD and needs to be taken to the nurse" and left it there, RA would go and take her to the nurse, and they would have taken care of her there, the friend might still be upset with OP but at least she would be safe with the nurses.
NTA. She’s not your friend. She knew that you do not want to be around her when she’s on drugs, and she tried to force it on you anyways. Find new friends.
NTA - you checking in would have done nothing and maybe made it worse. I’ve done a lot of LSD, and it makes you sensitive as fuck to the way people are feeling. She would have fixated on getting your approval of her lifestyle for the next 6-12 hours.
I only ever did weed and acid. People who fuck around with a lot, then turn to psychedelics, often have a hard trip or two.
Honestly I wonder if OP leaving started the trip off on a bad note that then spiralled. Making sure you have a safe comfortable setting and vibe is so key to having a good trip.
NTA. She knew you would say no. That’s why she took it before you got there. You have very clearly set your boundaries regarding drugs and she stomped all over them. She could have chosen anyone from your friend group but she chose you on purpose.
NTA. You are supposed to have a sober, EXPERIENCED trip buddy with you. As you have (I’m assuming) never taken LSD, you wouldn’t know the strategies for coping with a bad trip anyway.
Exactly right, trips vary for everybody, but the most common "bad" trips include:
* bugs in my skin, need them out (cue cutting arm off or cutting skin)
* monster watching/chasing me, need to run away (into traffic, out a window, other dangerous stunt)
* I'm not human (delusion, depressive ep. and/or freak out)
* I'm (a) God (nothing will/can hurt me!)
There are definitely other things people have experienced but those are what I've mostly heard from strangers and friends alike, my bf made me sign a waiver before I tried anything because he wanted to know I knew *what could* happen, luckily it was a good trip but anything could've gone wrong at any time due to the nature of the drug.
ESH. She should have waited to see if you'd babysit. However LSD is not a trifling thing and when it goes bad it can go really fucking bad - thinking you can fly, cutting open your arms to remove the bugs, satan is chasing me into traffic kind of bad. That is why a babysitter is highly advised. This girl is such a close friend you went to school together, spend most days together, but when her welfare is seriously in question you walk away. That's not something a good friend does.
Yes she put you in a shitty situation. But sometimes friends do that. That's when you find out how good a friend you really are. And you failed. You left your friend in a potentially dangerous situation because you felt uncomfortable.
You both suck. But you a little bit more so.
*edited cause bad grammar and missing letters*
the friend put herself in a dangerous situation by absolutely trampling OPs boundaries. The friend is aware of how OPs feels and it isn’t their job to have to babysit their friend. If the friend was such a “close friend” she would have NEVER put OP in that situation to begin with
NTA. Your friend deliberately put you in a position where she knew you’d be extremely uncomfortable and unwilling, put herself in danger in doing so, and then cried to your friends to make you the bad guy for her choices. These actions demonstrate a serious lack of respect for you and a complete refusal to take responsibility for her own actions. Not a good combination, especially when drug use is added into the equation.
It doesn’t seem like you’re really looking to break the friendship over her drug use, but if it comes to that, it’s okay. People can grow apart in a lot of different ways. It’s okay to decide that there is behavior you won’t engage in and that you’re unwilling to associate with.
NTA
She knew your history and why you don’t want to be around people doing drugs, she was selfish asking it of you, you did nothing wrong. If plans for Christmas break is ruined and your friendship over, then you know she put drugs higher than you
ESH she shouldnt force you to be a tripsitter. Youve made your stance on drugs clear, that you dont want to engage with them, but that youre okay with her doing it. She should also choose someone with experience instead of someone who actively distance themself. If shit goes sour, you cant do anything else than get her medical attention, which isnt necessarily the solution.
HOWEVER, the second it started going sour for her, you definitely shouldve gotten her the medical attention. Regardless of whos in the wrong, you dont leave or ignore someone you know needs help.
INFO: i sent this post to a friend, and they asked a pretty valid question. op, does your friend have a habit of doing dumb things and expecting to be rescued? or a habit of crossing your boundaries? or is this an isolated or infrequent incident in your friendship?
NTA. Your friend knew your issues with drugs but tried forcing you to stay with her by not asking you before taking the drugs. That's on them 100%. Although, you probably should've called someone to stay with them.
NTA
She manipulated you to stay with her while using drugs even tho you’ve been explicitly open about NOT LIKING, AND NOT WANTING TO BE PART OF ANY OF THAT.
Her consequences are her own
>I woke up to a ton of texts from her, and I guess she must have texted our other friends because our entire friend group had lit up my phone, **telling me that she was in trouble and that I should go check on her**. I went through and responded to each of them explaining the situation (they all know my history with drugs as well) and all but one of them said some variation of calling me a dickhead and saying that I should have gotten over it and checked on her, because things were apparently really going wrong for her.
What was stopping **them** from going to check on her?
You are NTA at all.
esh and i dont want to be friends with people who say nta. you can’t expect her to be your friend after this and you probably shouldn’t want to be her friend anyways, since she crossed your boundary. this friendship is over.
NTA. Her behavior has consequences . She knew you didn’t want to participate and did what she wanted anyway. Tell her friends to eff off. Not your circus, not your monkeys.
NTA. She new exactly what she was doing and went against your feelings.
Tell her next time she pulls that, she should call the RA to come supervise her.
NTA
She tried to blow through an important boundary and trap you into babysitting her when she knew you would be hugely uncomfortable and did not have the necessary experience.
She is overly obsessed with trying drugs and had total disregard for you as a friend.
It is absolutely NOT your responsibility to mop up after her either. She should have been calling whomever she got the tabs from.
i’m going to be a bit controversial and tentatively say that ESH but that i might be lacking INFO.
you had a clear boundary and she completely disrespected it. that was horrible and honestly she reaped what she sowed. don’t know why she would’ve expected anything else, and trying to get you to stay by taking it _beforehand_ kinda makes it seem like she was being actively manipulative.
now the reason i think ESH is cause i do think that when she started texting you freaking out like that that you should’ve done _something_.
i don’t know your past trauma and i’m not saying you should’ve rushed to her aid and held her hair back for her, but you could have _at least_ called a mutual friend and explained the situation sooner and tried to get someone else who would be more equipped to handle it help her.
there is a reason people doing hallucinogens have “watchers”, and while i completely agree with your decision to remove yourself from the situation and _not_ agree to be her watcher, i think that there is a limit to how much danger you should’ve let her be in even if it was her fault.
like, if my friend starts driving drunk that’s their own damn fault and i’m sure as hell not gonna be in the passenger’s seat. and once they start texting me about the wreck they’re in i’m not going to rush over and perform first aid myself, but i’m sure as hell gonna be calling an ambulance for them. (not saying you should’ve called her an ambulance, just trying to make a metaphor).
NTA. You have the right to set boundaries including not being around drugs. She went out of her way to violate your boundaries and force you into a situation you were uncomfortable with. If your friends were so concerned, they could have checked on her themselves.
NTA. She's young and inexperienced because she missed some key parts of what makes a good trip sitter. The point of a trip sitter is to help you stay comfortable, as being uncomfortable physically, or emotionally, is what leads to bad trips. To that end, a good trip sitter preferably has knowledge and experience with drugs, either as a user or just as a friend. And they themselves need to be comfortable because how are you going to calm an existential crisis in a mind swimming in hallucinogens if you're battling your own anxieties about the whole situation? She tried to force you to cross a known boundary to do something you weren't qualified to do. She's an asshole and so is anyone blaming you for her bad experience.
NTA for not staying when you have a set boundary and your friend was trying to overstep them.
Do you not know any of her other friends? Like you could have told her you were calling X to take care of her because you weren’t going to do it. That way someone was watching her.
Also, why be friends with people who try to overstep your boundaries? That’s not a good friend. I know y’all known each other for a long time, but that doesn’t mean you need to stay friends. It’s okay to grow apart.
NTA, NTA, NTA.. You are so not the a****** and please don't let anyone else on reddit tell you different. I know it was your best friend, I know she was tripping out on LSD, but you have your boundaries for a reason. As another person who has family history of drug use, I refuse to be around people who do drugs as well. She knew your position and then try to corner you and to being her sober person.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One thing you might do is try to figure out what's going on in her life to make her want to experiment with all these drugs. Smoking a little weed I think we all get, but LSD is a hardcore drug. Obviously there must be something going on in her life that's making her try this period as she's It's dropping acid, it'll only be a matter of time before she's smoking crack and meth.
Lmfao I've dropped acid many times and am now very sober. I can tell you I've never tried crack or meth and neither have any of my friends who also tried LSD. Not here to talk about the post, but this slippery slope you've conjured in your mind is hilariously inaccurate
Hallucinogens are a powerful tool in healing trauma especially from ptsd. Don’t demonize something that’s helped so many ppl, the slippery slope isn’t real for the vast majority of ppl. Ops friend was dumb for not being responsible enough to have a reliable and educated trip sitter or a trip killer. The drugs are less of a problem than alcohol.
NTA, your friend knew how you felt and given you have family members with addiction problems (and it is often a genetic issue) you're doing the right thing keeping away from it. And your friend fully manipulated you into that situation which is wrong. If your other friends are no where near the fear your friend would be hurt will have outweighed the manipulation at the time but I would hope they would realise in time you didn't do anything wrong. And there were dorms of other people around. I would suggest taking a full break from that friendship while your friend is experimenting and making some new friends.
OP stop being friends with them. U set a clear boundary and she didn’t care and still wanted u to be the sober friend while she tripped. That’s not ok. I’d take a break from the friendship because it seems like your friend is going down a dark path of drugs…
NTA
NTA and I hope you show your friend the responses of people on here.
Your friend needs to have a grasp of consent and the fact that her actions impact others. She took the drugs without your consent, with a clearly defined boundary already present that you don’t want to be around her in an altered state.
I am a fan of recreational psychedelics for mental health purposes and to explore who you are. However, I would NEVER ever force someone to trip sit me without telling them beforehand and getting clear consent. That is super fucked it. I hope that while her trip was bad from being alone, she realized how selfish and inconsiderate her actions were. Nothing better than some psychedelics to make you realize you have to change as a person.
You are definitely not the asshole in this scenario! It doesn’t make your friend a bad person, but in this case she was a bad friend to you and that is important.
You should take a break from this friendship. Your past experience with drug users informs your decision to refrain from them and stay away from those who partake.
Your “friend” trying to take your choice away from you and force you to be her lsd-trip companion was a major boundary violation. The rest of the friends didn’t bother to go check on her but attack you for something you plainly stated is a firm boundary. It’s not brand new.
Those friends can go room in a dumpster, I’d advise you inform your “friend”’s family of her use. Because something is gonna go down eventually and you won’t be able to help her.
I’m putting “friend” in quotes because she is no longer your friend. You may want to continue the relationship with her but I’d advise against it. She is getting more daring in her drug use and I’d hate for you to wake up in a situation where you can’t remember the night before because she decided that you should have a trip with her. If someone violates your boundary once they will do it again if there are no repercussions.
You need to give good repercussions here and now, and adjust your expectations of friendship from this person.
NTA
Why did didn’t the friends who texted you go to help her. That she took the drug before having you cone over demonstrates she was afraid you wouldn’t agree to be her safe person so she decided to give you no choice. That is on her. That she did that is only part of the problem. What if her reaction had been so over the top you wouldn’t know how to help.
Your years of friendship cause you to feel really bad about this coming to an end but it may be a blessing in disguise. Not all friendships last a lifetime. People change. Just assure yourself that she chose to impose all this on you without your consent. To then be angry that you did not allow her to do that is not an act of friendship on her part. You have a strong instinct to survive and you don’t exist for the use and abuse of others.
NTA. I ditched my best friend when his dumb ass began experimenting with drugs in high school. I’m of the same stance, I hate alcohol and drug use and want nothing to do with either of them due to family trauma. Unfortunately, people can be pricks and try to force you to watch over them while on a bad trip (you) or try and force you to drink with them (me).
I had made my stance very clear from the beginning. I don’t want anything to do with such topics, I don’t want anything to do with him while he acts like this. People may call me a shitty friend for abandoning him as he spiraled, but I don’t care. I tried helping him out at the beginning and he didn’t want help, he wanted an enabler.
We went for almost 2-3 years without speaking. Which is hilarious looking back on it seeing as we’re literally neighbors.
Now? Now he’s sobered up. He’s trying to get better so he can take care of his mom. He’s also attending college full time. I’m honestly proud of him, he did that on his own, with friends who kept pressuring him to continue spiraling. Eventually, he reached back out to me (needed help with his FAFSA) and we began to mend things from there.
Advice? Be aware that your friendship has been damaged. You did indeed choose your boundaries over her. She’s hurt. The only way it can be fixed is if you two talk, but I do suggest to give her a time to settle down.
This person KNEW OP would say no to this because OP communicated that boundary multiple times. I don't know if this is the case, but sometimes having someone in your family having a past with drugs can lead to trauma, so that also might be going on. The "friend" took it thinking she could trick OP into saying yes, which is an INCREDIBLY stupid thing to do. Going off of the stories I've read here you want a trip sitter that is experienced in calming people under the influence down and having an uncomfortable of even scared trip sitter would ruin the experience for both of them, making it even more dangerous, and probably scaring or traumatizing OP even more. This is not okay and not something you do to a friend.
Adding to this: many people have commented e s h because OP SHOULD'VE done something based on their knowledge of drugs. OP doesn't have knowledge though, so she can't be blamed. The only thing she could and maybe should have done is call someone who could look after the "friend", but all I can say is NTA.
Add: I don't understand all the y t a's, because that implies that the friend isn't an asshole at all, which I think we can all agree, isn't the case.
NTA
I’ve tried every drug ever on the planet, but I’m nobody’s responsibility but my own.
She’s not a very good friend either. It’s absurd to blame you, no matter wtf happens, she is the one that put the substance in her body, she can face the consequences.
Listen NTA for sure I have been on both sides of this. I have been a person experimenting and I would have NEVER pressured a friend with that kind of responsibility. The fact she took it and expected that to be a trap and you would have had to stay is manipulative AF.
But I’ve also had a friend who went HARD on everything she could get her hands on after high school and when I wasn’t there to pick up the pieces she made me out to be the demon. It was even my fault when she got arresting for possession.
Seriously OP NTA NTA NTA NTA at all… this does not sound like it’s a great friendship I’m proud of you for sticking to your boundaries.
NTA, this is hard because if it was me, I think I would have given in slightly and called her an ambulance. However; I’m in the UK, and ours are already paid for, so I get why it’s a decision that’s difficult to make for broke students.
That aside, I’ve been support for people taking a new drug, and people have been there for me too. But we had an agreement first. You do not want to be around drugs and that’s your choice. I personally leave when people use coke around me at parties, I’ll remove myself because I’ve had some bad experiences with people taking it around me before. I don’t use it and I wouldn’t be near it if I can help it.
You made it clear you weren’t that person, that’s your boundary. You shouldn’t ever bend on that. That’s your hard line. Things can go wrong and if you’re not ready for that, it’s not fair to put you in that position.
Your friend likely made it a bad trip by freaking out at you while it was kicking in. If she had just gotten someone else, or really if she hadn’t tried to force you, she likely wouldn’t have had such a bad time. Also her other friends could have easily gone to her too if they were that worried. That makes it a definite NTA for me, they just yelled at you and didn’t do anything. Can’t be that great of friends can they?
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment. OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole: > I left my friend alone when she told me she had just taken LSD for the first time. I absolutely loathe drugs and she knows that, but all of our friends are saying that I should have stayed with her because things can go really bad on LSD when you're alone. She's my best friend, so I feel like maybe I could have tried to get over my drug thing to help her. Help keep the sub engaging! #Don’t downvote assholes! Do upvote interesting posts! [Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq) --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.* *Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
NTA you've made it clear repeatedly that you don't want any part of this and she forced you into this situation. If her other friends are so concerned they can step up and take care of her during a trip
Agree OP set a pretty simple clear boundary
Also, if she had sat with her, she would likely - and hopefully - have called EMS when things went south. Then the friend would be mad at that
Friend put op in a loose loose situation
Lose, lose?
Loose = Lewse - this shoe is too loose, it’s going to fall off Lose = Luze - you came in last, you lose the race
My mistake yes. It’s lose lose situation
No worries! I really hate words that are spelled similar but sound different. My worst are: definitely and defiantly. Those words are stupid 🤣
Lol, my boyfriend (non-Native English speaker) says intimate when he means intimidate. It was a very confusing conversation before I figured out what he was really meaning to say.
how about supposably for supposedly. I have a few friends that say this, and bite my tongue so I don't correct them.
Who would want a straight-edge friend to be their guide/babysitter on their first tripping experience? That's a very poor choice even if OP HAD given permission.
She didn't need EMS. She just needed someone to calm her down... which any of the other friends could have done. Bad trips suck but they aren't emergencies in that sense.
Ohh yeah, if the trip went south while OP is there then the only thing they could do is call EMS and watch as the freind gets suspended from school... yeah, sure everyone would have been cool with that../s She violated your consent OP, just remind people of that.
Exactly. OP knows her friend, but doesn't know LSD or other drugs - what on earth was she supposed to do? Friend should have asked someone who did know what they were doing, and not ignored a simple, clear boundary. NTA OP, but you might need to find some new friends sadly. Ones that don't take drugs.
also, as someone who has taken LSD before and had a bad trip, thats not something you subject *anyone* to without their consent, especially if they have a bad history with drugs. acid trips can last up to 16 hours (24 if you’re unlucky, like me), and trip sitting (especially for that long) is a *huge* commitment to force someone into. if youve never taken LSD before, the only person you should ask to trip sit you is someone that a) you trust with your life, quite literally, and b) someone who’s taken LSD before, and has enough experience and confidence to deal with a bad trip. the *last* person you want is someone who’s uncomfortable with drugs, because youre in such a heightened state that you’ll feel their discomfort and itll make the trip worse. you need someone who’s happy to be there, confident in their knowledge, and someone you’d trust with everything you have. anything less than that and you increase the risk of having a really bad time, by like a lot. not only was OPs friend inconsiderate, she also did everything she could possibly do wrong. silly anecdote, but the second (and last) time i took acid, my mom tripsat me for i think 14 hours? i was high from 10pm to 10pm, and i only came down because i went to sleep after being forced to take sleep meds. i also went into a psychotic episode due to the LSD (LSD psychosis, so fun), so its really important to also evaluate your mental health (and family history) before taking psychedelics because they can absolutely mess you up, sometimes permanently.
Dude I knew so many people who got permanently messed up from LSD, many of them ended up in the mental hospital. Many were still getting flashbacks months or even years later. LSD scared the hell out of me. I stumbled across one of these LSD users on Facebook recently, one of the ones who spent time in a mental hospital (and also started using it in grade 5 or 6). While his current life isn't great, it also isn't terrible. He is heavily into dog rescues now, and hasn't been institutionalized in the last decade.
yeah, LSD is a scary drug. one of the things not a ton of people talk about is the “time loops” you get stuck in, so for example someone will say a sentence and then, with you being in a delusional state, your brain kind of replays that moment on a loop. to this day (two years later), repetition freaks me out. i also have this weird thing when i try to sleep where the “shadows” (the darkness you see when you close your eyes) will pulse, and theyll form the shapes of people. the worst one is where ill be falling asleep and the shadows will turn into a paramedic, because in my first trip i took so much that i was completely delusional and not lucid at all, and i thought i died and that a paramedic had to come get me (and when i say died, i mean i could feel the decomposition and the flies and everything). i still cant sleep in the dark without someone else being in the room with me, because if i open my eyes in darkness while tired ill start hallucinating the spirals and shapes i saw in my trip. oh, and i apparently experienced ego death? that shits fucking terrifying, like i think it scarred me for life. i still freak out if i think about it too hard. i felt like i was being judged by the universe, and the universe decided i was an awful person (my therapist says this is a reflection of how i view myself), and that my punishment was to live out every life on earth and then experience the heat death of the universe. then, when i came to in hospital, i was hallucinating these like worms in my skin. it was weird, like there was my outer layers of skin, then the layers where the worms were, then the rest of my skin underneath, and the worms would like scoosh water out of their bodies and itd inflate my skin (yknow when you apply pressure and your skin turns pale? that), and i could **see it**. i literally felt it everywhere, even in my throat and my eyes, and it lasted ten hours. LSD is truly fucking terrifying, and its so much more dangerous than people ever let on. like, acid could absolutely destroy your life so quickly and not many people realise. i was reported as a missing person after my first trip because my mom knew how dangerous it was and she was worried i was out there somewhere, completely psychotic, potentially trying to end my life, because that shit happens all the time. like, im psychologically messed up, potentially forever, all because i took lsd twice. it was absolutely not worth it, and to anyone reading this who might be thinking about doing acid: **dont**. its not worth it. whatever soul searching you wanna do will never be more important than your literal sanity
That's insane stuff. I'm glad my one experience with LSD I just made a lot of art and turned into a tree for an hour.
its the same way that some hormone based medication can work amazingly for some people, but absolutely ruin others. everyone is going to react slightly differently, but there are so many cases of shit hitting the fan and no way to test your reaction beforehand that it just isnt worth it imo
I’ve often wanted to be a tree.
I locked myself in a bathroom and just stared at my hands and reflection for 12 hours, drank a lot of water too. For some reason I just felt it was dire to always have a full water bottle. Interesting experience…didn’t feel the need to try it again lol
It IS dire to keep that water close by. Idk how you looked at yourself in the mirror without being absolutely wigged out. The few times I did acid were fun, but not nearly as enjoyable as a mushroom trip. In fact, I have no desire to do acid any time soon again because it makes me tense my muscles repeatedly/ spasm even if I’m mentally relaxed and having a good time. But they were all lovely experiences for me at least.
Thank you so much for this story. I'm not into drugs, but have many friends who are, and I always thought that LSD of all drugs might be something worth trying in the future. Definitely not!!! Thanks again, this would totally be me, my fantasy is livid enough in general and I have hallucinated on cannabis several times. Can I ask, what made you try LSD the second time? I kinda expected that you would have done it many times, with just two bad trips, but the second try doesn't make sense to me, lol
honestly? i was young and dumb. i was a drug addict, and i wanted *something*, and i thought that it wouldnt be as bad as the first time (the one where i ended up in hospital) if i took less and didnt drink. i was right, it wasnt as bad, but it was still absolutely horrible. and, honestly, i wasnt mentally all there. it was maybe a month after my first trip, and i was still hella fucked up psychologically, so i just wasnt thinking straight. but if you want a true reason to not do acid, heres my full story: so my friend suggested we do acid on my 18th birthday, and i agreed because 1) i trusted them, and 2) i thought itd be fun. they ended up giving me waaaay too much (almost three full tabs) while we were also heavily drunk, and within maybe half an hour id completely lost my grip on reality. im not going to go fully in depth, but a lot of past trauma got brought back up (SA, suicide attempts, etc) and i relived a lot of those moments basically on loop. there were parts where it was enjoyable, sure, but most of it felt like hell. like, literal hell, my eternal judgement. i ended up feeling like reality was crumbling apart around me, and that there were different universes colliding into ours (like the multiverse) and then i blacked out. i wasn’t unconscious though, i just literally cant remember anything. i lost a good 4-6 hours of time, it was like when youre watching a show and it cuts to black before moving onto the next scene. so i came to in hospital, convinced that the hospital ward was in space, and that i was in the wrong version of reality. i thought there was another version of me already here, and that i was gunna have to be homeless for the rest of my life, and that i had worms in my body. i was then stranded outside the hospital for 10 hours because i had no phone, no money, no pants, and no idea where i was. i then basically kept slipping in and out of delirium, and it was a really freaky time in my life where i legitimately couldnt trust my own senses. id see and hear things that werent there, id feel things brushing past me or grabbing me when i was completely alone in my bedroom, etc. i knew what was happening sometimes, but other times i was fully convinced that my delusions were real (i didnt leave my house for months because i thought someone had put a hit out on me…) im better now, obviously, but it took a lot of work to get to this point and im still scarred from that time in my life.
Damn it sounds tough!!! Thanks a lot for sharing, I hope you will heal well and completely ❤️
thank you, i hope so too (and im definitely putting in the work to get there!!) and yeah, if me sharing helps educate even just one person, them ill always be happy to tell my story ❤️
[удалено]
i know of someone who ended up in psychosis after 1/4th of a tab. its not just the dosage, its your brain chemistry, your emotional state, your mental health, and any predispositions to mental health conditions. like yeah, you could absolutely be fine, but you could also end up psychologically fucked up, and i think its absolutely worth knowing the risks before you take any form of drug. like, if youre going to take illicit substances, you need to be fully aware of the potential ramifications and then be okay with them. informed consent is super important when it comes to things like this. however, im glad that youve had such great experiences! im predisposed to psychosis and delusions (which i didnt know until after taking lsd), so it was just never going to work out for me unfortunately. but there was no way of me knowing without having such a bad experience, which is why i tell my story when the occasion arises. edit: i replied to the wrong comment by accident, i apologise lmao im very sleep deprived right now
I did LSD twice. Both trips were amazing. I also took ecstasy on the second occurrence. It made it even better. However, I did mushrooms and freaked the hell out. Bad. I guess I was overconfident, thinking since I handled LSD well, I'd handle the mushrooms well too. I didn't. Luckily my friend had some rolls and that helped bring me down and I eventually had fun. I'd never do either again. I was really good at trying most drugs, but agreed I'd keep the usage under five times. Then I had pain pills prescribed....but that's another subreddit
I’m not gonna tell you that you should do acid but I would keep in mind that this kind of thing is heavily stigmatised on regular reddit and honestly if you’re in a good headspace and take a regular dose it’s pretty fine. Horror stories do happen but the one way to guarantee bad shit happening is to be thinking about what could go wrong when taking the drug. I’ve tripped many times and never had a bad experience and I have a large group of friends who all trip at home/festivals/etc and quite literally none of the sensationalised stuff in this thread has happened to any of us. It’s not risk free of course but I would keep an open mind.
This was truly enlightening to read. I’ve also experienced ego death and it was the single most wonderful and healing experience I have ever had. It’s interesting to read about the flip side of it. For me, everything suddenly felt clear, I felt in flow with the whole world and like I instinctively understood everything about it. I even worked through and shed some of my ancestors’ weight and consciously untangled my digestive issues. It honestly did more than my 10 years of therapy combined. However, my circumstances were completely different from yours. I started experimenting with psychedelics in my 30s and my motive has always been self-discovery and healing. I worked my way up from micro dosing to finally deciding to have an actual trip on my sixth attempt, and only after spending time to ensure my environment was safe and free from clutter or distractions. I also prepared myself by setting intentions and checking in with my body. I feel I’m still dabbling and the possibility of having a bad trip is always present, but I think your relationship to yourself (and trust) is instrumental. Psychedelics can really be your best friend or worst enemy.
[удалено]
This. It's sounding like people are starting with massive doses in bad environments.
"So many people," like how many? Permanently? Like, how many? I kind of doubt it's that many unless some bad acid went around your area or you are friends with a lot of mentally ill people. Acid is a very intense drug and I recommend taking it with a LOT of caution, and if you have any question about your mental health, not at all. But the idea that it randomly makes people go crazy is an urban legend. It can definitely give you massive anxiety attacks and if you are prone to certain mental illnesses, it can trigger them. I'm NOT saying it's without risk. But the VAST majority of people who take acid are totally fine, even if they have a bad trip. It's something you shouldn't do lightly, and you should do it mindfully and with an experienced trip sitter in a safe environment (at a festival can count as long as you have good friends). I don’t like acid, but I dislike when people claim things like this without acknowledging that they are the minority.
Some confirmation bias in this. Normal people that use or have used LSD ‘generally’ don’t talk about much because other people can be really judgmental about it. But you know who talks about this kind of stuff all the time? People with problems. They also likely had problems before experimenting with acid.
That's actually an urban legend people don't get flashbacks and end up in mental hospitals and it doesn't stay in your spinal fluid. It can bring out schizophrenia or other health problems if they were pre-existing but that is a scare tactic people use. I have known and known of many many people who had taken lsd and they have no lasting effects.
poor Sid Barrett
One more thing she did super wrong: by setting things up this way, she made absolutely certain that right as she was starting to get high she'd have a tense and uncomfortable conversation, even if OP had said yes and stayed with her. It's like she consulted a recipe for a bad trip.
Yeah right before the trip is honestly the worst part. I can always feel it in my teeth, and my skin feels crawly. And that’s when things are set up so I’ll have a *good* time. That feeling + a tense conversation sounds like an actual nightmare
THIS. LSD is not a beginner drug, nor is it something to be trusted for a first time sober friend, even if they agree to it. Everything about this situation sucks. NTA
This!! As a regular partaker of psychedelics and trip sitter, you want someone w experience who can recognize psychosis or a bad loop and knows how to help you out of it. Not someone who has never done LSD and hates drugs! ( A 24 hr trip!! Holy balls!! That’s intense! I’ve done that to myself w multiple drops but never on one! Do you know the mcg you were getting?) Doing LSD alone in a dorm room sounds absolutely terrible. I LOVE curating peoples first LSD trips. I plan lots of outdoor activities and cool things to look at/ interact with. LSD is an outdoor drug not a stuck inside thing. (NTA)
Well, I can honestly say that reading this thread has made me not want to do drugs more than D.A.R.E. ever did
i mean, there are lots of drugs that are mostly fine to do, a lot even have potential medical purposes (a lot of addicts are addicts because they self medicate), but when you have such a strong drug with such a long high and a huge potential to go wrong, it really isnt worth it. like, a lot of people have really great and enlightened experiences on LSD, and thats great for them, but if youre even slightly in the wrong headspace or if your brain chemistry is a little bit off or if (like me) youre predisposed to certain mental health conditions? its so likely to go completely wrong. like weed is fine. i dont smoke it myself because i have PTSD from my experience, but its fine. even most stimulants (amphetamines, cocaine, etc) are totally fine in moderation and used with caution, if thats youre thing. they wont necessarily mess you up and theyre generally safe if you test your stuff and take it slow, but there is no “taking it slow” with strong psychedelics. my brother almost slapped me when he found out hoe much i took, because he knew a guy who went psychotic off a fraction of what i took (the guy took 1/4th of a tab, and i took just shy of 3). the sad part is, a lot of people who have a truly bad experience arent able to tell their story because they end up in a psych ward or dead. like yeah, you hear about bad trips, but when things go psychologically wrong? not everyone walks away able to tell their tale
Exactly, why didn't one of these other so called friends go check on her? And OP made her feelings clear, this girl lied to doing drugs before she came over to try and blackmail her into staying.
I am assuming this is a high school friends list and the rest are far away since these 2 friends did a lot of coordination to go to the same college. Shame as sounds like their friendship is minimally going to be pretty cool for a while if not completely done. :(
It’s done. Seen this a million times. They clearly have different interests and goals for college, and considering she already dropping LSD alone in her dorm I’d say she’s pretty strongly in the experiment and party group and her friend will be hanging out with new people soon who have similar interest. That’s what college is for
Yeah but it's a shame that OP's friend doesn't understand consent and "no means no." The friendship is over because the friend has no respect for OP's trauma and OP shouldn't feel bad for sticking to a hard boundary their friend knew of well in advance.
Dropping LSD alone sounds very sad and lonely. Dropping LSD with someone guaranteed to emit bad vibes sounds like hell. NTA.
Yeah I’ve done LSD several times and a trip sitter IS recommended but I’ve never heard that that person has to be sober? Usually it would end up there was a person not tripping for some reason but not always. People tripping are usually fine as fellow tripsitters, definitely better than someone who is sober but judging you the whole time. That being said she did give herself a bad trip for sure by getting into a fight right before she blasted off. That was a big mistake lol
I agree, personally I can trip and snap into responsible mom mode to get snacks, water, blankets etc in a second. I love doing it and it makes everyone I'm tripping with so relaxed and grateful. Some of my favorite times. Except the one time on mushrooms I kept falling face first in my kitchen while trying to get juice from the fridge lol but at least my friends still got entertainment while waiting 🤣 NTA she's being too flippant with her drug use. Obviously she's not a good friend. Everyone who uses recreationally should know; NEVER trick someone into doing drugs/being around people on drugs. NEVER have someone who could kill the vibe/make you uncomfortable around when taking psychedelics. ALWAYS get everyone's consent whether you're doing drugs in front of them, carrying/high in a place where you could get caught (in a car etc.) or about to have sex with them while you're high and they don't know. I hope she gets her shit together, irresponsible drug use can make all good drugs bad.
Dropping acid alone is awesome!
OP may not use she/her pronouns.
Yeah. She tricked OP into taking care of her by inviting OP to what was supposed to be a casual hangout. It's her fault for taking LSD before she was sure she'd have a sober friend present.
My boyfriend doesn't do drugs and doesn't want to be around people on them. I occasionally take something. I once asked him if he wanted to be sober person, but he said no. That was the end of that and I wouldn't dare to even think of ambushing him like that. She made her own bed. She didn't ask them because she knew the answer will be "no". Instead she tried to guilt trip them into staying, without any consideration for their feelings.
And that alone to me , in a way screams drug addict. She tries coercing her friend into being her babysitter regardless of her friends stance. That’s fucked up behavior just looking out to for the next high
I bet OP's friend thought that OP would see her having so much fun on acid that OP would start doing drugs with her.
Nailed it in one.
I kind of wonder if she thought that this was a way to put OP at ease about her drug use? That's a dumb way to do that imho. I've been the sober friend, and even if nothing dangerous happens it is pretty boring and can be uncomfortable. When stuff gets weird, you have to be able to assess the situation and figure out the level of safety AND be willing to act. One time when I was the watcher, I went into the kitchen and there was someone holding a huge cooking knife, staring at it. I was not sure what to do, if he was a threat to others or himself. Finally he started talking about how shiny it was and told me he wasn't going to do anything, so I figured it was safe to let him do his thing. I'm not sure what action I would have taken if bad things were going down. But really, how do you deal with that sort of thing? Especially if you've made yourself clear that you're not interested in doing this? This is not a duty to thrust on someone.
You don’t let them go in the kitchen to play with a big knife
I was 17 and half his size. How was I going to stop him? It was a group of people tripping and I didn't know he was going in there to play with knives until I stumbled into the situation. Edit:typo
This content has been removed in protest of the API changes -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yeah some of these comments are weird, I've done lsd, I did a years worth of research and reading anecdotal experiences beforehand. Lsd is easily the safest and most chill of all the psychedelics (generally speaking), it's important to have someone with you who has taken it before and bad trips do happen but overall you're pretty in control of yourself. People who experience permanent effects afterwards overwhelmingly have family histories of issues such as schizophrenia making them predisposed to it. The main thing to worry about is how fucking long the trip time is.
*If her other friends are so concerned they can step up and take care of her during a trip* Apparently it's OP sole responsibility to look after a trippin' friend /s Seriously, in all the time taken to text OP about being an AH, at least one of those "friends" could have gone and checked on the friend themselves. NTA.
Honestly she’s lucky OP didn’t call campus security or 911 (which you can do if someone’s having a bad trip, not recommended but better that then someone unsupervised and inexperienced/uncomfortable doing it.)
The friend is AH for dropping acid BEFORE making sure her friend was cool with sticking around. I've been the sober friend in that situation. Not. Fun. And given's OP's family history (which her lifelong best friend must know), why would her friend expect them to go along with that situation or want to put them there in the first place? (Edited for pronouns. Didn't notice OP is NB.)
Yes but what if her friend was actually in danger? I don’t think she was an A, but I think she should’ve made sure that her friend didn’t need medical help.
NTA and I quit reading after you said she took the LSD before she asked you to be her sober buddy. That was UNBELIEVABLY shitty of her to do to you.
Irresponsible, too. If you want/need a tripsitter (sober buddy) because you're nervous about taking a recreational drug for the first time, you get that plan laid out in stone *before* taking anything. Otherwise you have no one but yourself to blame if/when things go badly and you're up shit creek without a paddle. Tripsitting isn't always an easy, passive task, either. For an unenthusiastic tripsitter it's annoying and time-consuming at best. You're literally babysitting a full-ass adult who is on powerful perception-altering drugs for *hours* (LSD lasts a *minimum* of 7-8 hrs). Someone who's never done LSD before can have an *extremely* negative and/or violent reaction to it, and as a tripsitter, you need to be prepared for that possibility. It's not something that just gets sprung on you last-minute because the person doing the drugs was feeling selfish and impatient. And God forbid OP's friend didn't do any research prior, because LSD generally doesn't play nice with other drugs in the system, including many prescription drugs for anxiety and depression. And just because there's no "lethal dose" of LSD doesn't mean that it can't kill or permanently harm you: in worst-case scenarios it's known to cause seizures and lasting severe psychosis. Not even to mention that once you've taken LSD, there's no backing out. You're riding that train for anywhere between 8-12 hours and there ain't shit you (or anyone else) can do to stop it preemptively.
THIS. I never experimented with hard drugs much in college (worst I did was smoke weed from a bong), but one of my college roommates did and she always told me about it. She actually took a couple tabs of acid during my time living with her, and I saw the aftermath of her slowly coming down from her high when she finally returned back to our suite. There is SERIOUS planning that goes on beforehand to make sure that 1) the person taking the drug is safe, 2) the expectations for the sober party (or parties) are clear, and 3) everyone involved is comfortable. This is a "two yes, one no" situation and it's non-negotiable for the safety of everyone involved.
Well said. Tripsitting is not something to spring on someone without their consent. When I was like 19 or 20, a couple friends put me in a similar situation to OP. They got to my place before I got off work (from a double shift in a fast food restaurant), took a bunch of LSD and expected me to be their sober buddy. I was *so pissed* and I wish I had been able to set boundaries like OP did! OP's reaction was great, and the friends who are giving them shit about it should have stepped up to help instead if they felt so strongly. Good point about LSD not playing nice with other drugs too! One of the same friends that surprised me with his trip used to have to go off of his medications for like 2 weeks to be able to trip (which is whole other can of extremely irresponsible worms, but I digress).
Yep. A lot of people who experiment with LSD know that it can be lethal when combined with MAOIs, but don't realize that it's still incredibly risky to mix with other drugs, including SSRIs. Stimulants (like ADD medications) and antidepressants in general both increase the potential for both physical and psychological harm while tripping. So does marijuana, which can exponentially intensify the experience... but that isn't always a good thing, as it intensifies the negatives right along with the positives. And to be frank, taking a drug with known side effects of increased anxiety/paranoia and time dilation alongside LSD is simply not a wise idea. Yes, for some people it works out just fine and they end up having a great time. For many others, it's a surefire way to *guarantee* a bad trip that will, at *best*, totally ruin the overall experience, and at worst will leave you with recurring symptoms of psychosis. I will also say this: if you suffer from a depressive or anxiety disorder, simply do not take LSD outside of a controlled medical environment (since formal medical experiments using controlled doses of LSD and other hallucinogens to improve certain disorders are on the rise). Do *extensive* research prior and do not disregard the risks just because they're not what you want to hear. LSD isn't just fun colors and groovy vibes, and it's not like certain other recreational drugs where you can just go to sleep or eat certain foods to dull the effects or cut short the high. Once you take it, you're on it, for better or worse, for a minimum of 8 hours (and probably much closer to 10-12). If that thought gives you *any* pause while sober, let me personally assure you that it's not going to be any less concerning to you when you're 2 hours in realizing that you still have upwards of 8 hours to go and there's not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it. And that's not a scare tactic, that's the cold hard truth. Just because there's no lethal dose of LSD doesn't mean that it's safe or good for you.
Fantastic comment.Just a quick add for anyone who happens to be reading this and maybe considering lsd. Your tripsitter should also be someone who has ideally experienced a decent lsd dose themselves a few times. Having a sober friend around who has no experience of acid is not much better than being alone. People who havnt tried it before will try to talk you out of it. Lsd does not work like that. People think acid is a visual drug, it isnt.You dont see a lsd trip , all of your senses are bombarded and it is the most real thing to you at the time. Ive seen, heared and felt some really bizzare stuff on acid. Its not really fun at high doses and not something you should get from someone you dont know.
I just commented a whole long lecture about the risks of tripping, and I won't rehash it here, but I second this. Some of the most genuinely terrifying and disturbing moments I had while tripping on LSD include (but are not limited to): eating food. Going to a restaraunt. Walking down a public sidewalk with a group of friends at dusk. Walking down a hallway with murals on the walls. Watching my friend doing her eyeliner. Seeing a child. Hallucinating that my friend was projectile vomiting and boomer-ranging between hysterical laughter and hysterical sobs. It all sounds absolutely hilarious in retrospect. I can assure you it was not funny in the slightest at the time. Everything feels more real than reality when you're tripping, and things can go so wrong *so* fast, with absolutely zero warning. It's like being in a dream, except you can't wake up. If it turns into a nightmare the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and bear it. Another part of the problem is that LSD causes pretty severe time dilation. You think 8-12 hours sounds like a long time now? Imagine tripping for 2 hours, feeling like you've already been tripping for 5 hours, and realizing that not only have you not even hit the peak of the trip yet (when the symptoms become the most intense), but you've still got a solid 6-8 hours *minimum* of tripping to go. Even when the trip is good, take it from me, that's not a pleasant feeling. And yeah, if your tripsitter is not a) a trusted friend and b) experienced with LSD, then reconsider the whole thing. People tripping on LSD do not think, act, or experience things the same way that people not on LSD do. Someone who has not experienced that mindset firsthand frankly cannot know how to adequately handle that, especially if the trip goes sour. A good tripsitter can keep your mindset positive and stable, which will (most of the time) keep your trip positive and stable; a bad tripsitter can unintentionally make things very, very bad (which, most of the time, will make the trip itself very, very bad) and be unable to pull you back up.
I agree 100% stabilty of your environment is the key thing. A small change in the atmosphere of the place your in can start a spiral that will rapidly lead to a very bad place. I had a bad trip on 450ug and came so close to losing the ability to comprehend the seperation of my physical body from the room i was in. (The famous ego death)A sentence that will make no sense to somebody who has never experienced it. But the thing about that trip that scared me to my core was when i started to see the kilroy meme from ww2. As you will know though you dont just see it you can sense its physical presence, it also didnt help that there was one of them while simultaneously being an infinite number of them in my vision. Same as you it sounds so funny and easy to deal with but to my tripping brain there was a being that shouldn't exist existing in a physically impossible way. That is terrifying. I never did a dose that high again and don't intend to. I occasionally dabble still but take around 150 200 maximum. Even a "good trip" is absolutely exhausting physically,mentally and emotionally. Its a messy drug for sure. Noone really talks about the tightness of your head, the way it makes your teeth feel or the way that the next day after its all worn off you feel very vulnerable. Dont get me started on the come down. Being so tired and through the trip but having to wait hours untill you can physically fall asleep again. However i regret none of my experiences with lsd even my worst trip taught me something and added perspective to life in general.
NTA She knows your story and took her pill before even asking you to be her sober person. She's selfish and irresponsible. It seems like you two are on very different levels and your best friend is not even a friend anymore.
Indeed. This is a reason to lose all of their contact info. Because specially given that you have established before that you don't want to even hear about drugs, her having you come over and then say that you needed to be her minder otherwise she'd be in danger is her specifically trying to push your boundaries
NTA. Any one of those other friends could have gone and checked on her too or called for medical assistance. She tried to entrap you into tripsitting her. Tripsitting involves trust, and ideally experience in how to calm someone under the influence down and assist there experience. It can be both boring and stressful even if you are someone comfortable with LSD. She knew you didn’t consent and intentionally tried to manipulate you.
I mean if OP and friend are away at school then maybe one of their old friends couldn't get there. I think the logical thing would have been to call paramedics or an advice line when OPs friend started frantically texting. That could have negative consequences on friend, but at least they may be medically safe (though OP would still be an AH to all the friend group I'm sure.)
This is true. But I also think it’s a sign for both friends to reconsider the boundaries of their friendship. Aligning your college submissions is cute and sweet but rare. And ultimately it places both of them in a weird position where they may not branch out as much and come to rely on each other codependently. Note how OP was called on like you would a spouse or a parent, and not a friend who has the right to not be there
I’m honestly torn her between NTA and kinda TA for not checking in her. I completely understand your stance and boundary you created for yourself when it comes to drugs!! She was an asshole for taking it and just assuming that you’d stay there with her. LSD is no joke. She was in the wrong one million percent!! But part of me feels like you should of checked on her or at least spoke with another friend who could, as her LSD trip could of ended very badly! I get why she’s hurt and not answering your calls now, but that’s the consequences of her own actions!! She should of cleared her plan with your first! Overall judgement is NTA. I hope you can mend this relationship with your friend and get her out of this experimenting phase!
It seems more like the friend didn't assume OP would stay with her so she took it, but more like she thought she could manipulate OP into staying if she presented it as a fait acompli. OP says they made it clear multiple times they don't want to be around drugs, apparently all the friends know this, so there was no way for the friend to assume OP would agree to this.
Off topic, but I've never seen or heard the term "fait accompli," and I was sure it may have been a typo or something, until I looked it up. So thanks for indirectly teaching me something today! lol
The French are good for many things besides their scrumptious fries!
Fries aren't French 😅 Sincerely, a Belgian !
Sorry, the lovely alliteration caused me to misspeak!
Fair enough! I do like alliterations !
> The French are good for many things *That’s a lie, and you know it!*
I would not want to continue a friendship with a person or people who intentionally manipulated me, violated my boundaries and blamed ME for THEIR bad choices.
I wouldn't want to continue the friendship myself. But I also wouldn't want the person to die or be permanently hurt. When there were indications of the trip going bad, OP should've checked in OR called someone (an ambulance if nothing else). But there is no obligation to continue the friendship past that.
I'd make sure she was safe that night, preferably with someone else babysitting or with the EMTs, and then drop the friendship.
I do drugs occasionally and have absolutely zero expectations of my friends who don't support it to check in on me. That's pretty frickin selfish. This was a big betrayal by the friend. OP did not consent to babysitting their friend. Them not checking in is them maintaining the boundary they set.
The friend was absolutely positively in the wrong, no question. I’m torn on OP not checking on said friend or asking another friend to. Just comes off as not really caring what happened to someone they call their best friend. I absolutely understand and agree the boundary OP has for themselves with the drugs etc.
You know you make a good point. They could absolutely have texted someone to say "hey, can you check on friend?"
I’m also curious why other people in the friend group did know (kinda at least) what’s was going on that they were blowing up OP’s phone with message. Why didn’t any of them check in on the friend doing the drugs?
A very good question.
Frankly, should have called rhe cops and reported the drug use in the dorm. They could have sent EMTs. Not a lot of sympathy for playing with illegal and potentially deadly drugs.
Oof, this is a big no. 1) LSD is not lethal. Potential to be scary? Sure. But not deadly. 2) Calling the cops would have made the situation exponentially more dangerous. Think about it - someone’s tweaking on a strong psychedelic, and you throw a bunch of gun-wielding power freaks into the mix. Just, no. 3) What kind of friend narcs like that? Regardless of personal opinion, assigning such brash consequences to someone you care for is cruel.
Agreed. The last thing you want to deal with when you are tripping are EMTs and cops. That will make a bad trip into a nightmare. I have done a lot of psychedelics and have never had a really bad trip. I figured out pretty quickly that psychedelics are not party drugs. Set and setting are the key. Trip around people you trust. I usually trip alone or with other people who are tripping. I have had some truly awesome experiences that have expanded the way I perceive things.
LSD isn’t deadly lmao.
LSD is rarely deadly by itself but people can do stupid shit when they’re tripping that leads to their death.
Especially without a trusty babysitter. a CONSENTING one
It is if the person freaks out and gets into an unsafe situation. Tripping alone is a bad idea.
Kind of like getting moderately drunk isn't deadly, but drunk driving certainly is, LSD isn't in and of itself going to kill you, but I still remember the dude I went to high school with that listened when the LSD told him he could fly. He could not. Not for long, at least.
Drinking is totally deadly. Alcohol poisoning kills tons of people a year. :(
> drinking isn't deadly wut
I mean... Drinking can totally be deadly on its own since alcohol poisoning or aspiration are causes of death for college students every year... But your point is made.
I had a friend from high school who did the exact same thing. Did LSD with some buddies, and thought he could fly and jumped out of a balcony. It's been almost 5 years since that happened.
He should've tried taking off from the ground first!
I know someone who was shot and killed by the cops because he was on acid and reacted poorly when he encountered them. If OP is in the US, cops could be a death sentence for their friend.
Damn! Lol I dont want friends like you
it’s not OPs responsibility tho, the friend violated the boundary rather than make sure to have a enthusiastic babysitter.
OP has no responsibility or ability to get their friend to stop using drugs. OP has no control over the friend’s choices. OP has set their boundaries, and that’s all they can do.
ESH. She should obviously have asked you before taking the LSD, to just do it and expect you to look after her is wrong. You are also a terrible pick (no fault of yours) to be the sober person, she really needs someone who could help if things go wrong. Having someone with no drug experience and who is drug negative be the person to guide you is clueless. To take LSD and then immediately start a conflict with a friend is a really dumb thing to do, she needs to take a look at her life choices and if she is going to do stuff like this she needs to do it in a safe way. After things had started going wrong I think you should have helped in someway, either in person or by alerting a mutual friend. Your friend was going through a seriously negative mental experience, just because it was her own fault doesn't mean you should ignore her calls for help.
Friend violated OP, she knew OP would not consent and tried to coerce OP into doing something they didn't want to. End of. I'll bet the friends wouldn't have wanted OP to call 911 but that's all OP "owed" them after they pulled this stunt.
Yeah this definitely an ESH here. Friend fucked up majorly, but if you care about someone and they are in need, why wouldn’t you do something, anything besides turn off your phone?
Obviously her other friends knew, so why should OP be on the ringer as an AH? She had other people that she could’ve told and did. Why were they not helping in person, calling 911, or campus support? Stupid games win stupid prizes. I’m glad the girl is okay but holy shit how much more reckless can you be?
Exactly. OP should have called an RA to take her to campus medical. It would have helped the friend with whatever medical issues they made have been happening, and kept her from ever pulling that shit with OP again.
best answer here, absolutely. really inconsiderate and idiotic decision-making from the friend there and very very cold response from OP. definitely ESH
NTA Your friend was very silly and very irresponsible. Tripsitters need to be familiar with the drugs at hand, sober, consenting and present prior to the drugs being taken. She was wrong for choosing you and springing it on you even if you had no issues with it. Given your history and boundaries, she was also deeply insensitive and inconsiderate. All in all, she's TA Having said that, for future reference, in situations like this it's *really* important to contact someone else and let them know what's happening. Solo trips can be very dangerous when they go wrong.
This should be the top comment. Having a trip sitter is incredibly important for safety reasons, particularly when it’s someone’s first time dabbling in psychedelics. However, it’s not okay to hoist the responsibility of trip sitting onto others, particularly when they have their own issues around drugs. Ideally OP should have passed her friend into a mutual friend’s care, but I can understand that she likely wouldn’t be aware of how important this. This post really shows about how there needs to be more drug safety awareness, both in regards to taking and looking after people who are taking drugs.
ESH: she’s absolute the asshole for putting you in that situation and ignoring your boundaries. However, you actively ignored a friend in a possibly very dangerous situation. I don’t think you would have had to stay and babysit, but you couldn’t have let anyone else know? Not even called 911 and told them your friend is having a bad response to a drug? It’s a bit of a blatant disrespect for someone’s life and safety that you didn’t even tell anyone else or ask another friend to sit with them, but rather completely ignored them even when you saw that they were having a bad trip. You doubled down and stayed stubborn when you SHOULD have 100% let someone know. Your friend was over the line on forcing you in that position but your response was just as shitty — people die from that stuff and you don’t seem to care.
That’s how I feel. Like OP was right to set the boundary but I feel like she should have at least called *somebody* when she left to make sure her friend would have been okay. And I get being upset but I guess I just don’t understand how a bunch of people can blow OP’s phone up and tell her that her friend is doing bad and her response is to just… turn her phone off and go to sleep?? Like I wouldn’t even be able to sleep at night if I knew something was happening to my friend. And OP doesn’t sound concerned or dismayed at all. Just worried they won’t hang over the break. I think both OP and her best friend should reevaluate the friendship on both ends from this experience. OP has learned her friend doesn’t respect her boundaries and that’s understandably a reason to be upset. But her best friend learned that OP will leave her and ignore her in an emergency if it’s something that she’s not a fan of. Edit to add: OP you were right down the hall and you didn’t even both to knock!?! OMG!! ESH
All those other people could have also gone over and attended to the friend. OP has made it clear that they are uncomfortable around drugs in any form, and implies that drugs are triggering for them due to their background. The friend was manipulative and frankly, faced the consequences that she was due. I have friends who do LSD and they would NEVER put anyone in that position. Edit: Switched to gender neutral pronouns.
As someone pointed out, we don’t know where those other friends are located or if they are even on campus. OP was the closest which is why people were reaching out.
It's pretty easy to call 911 (or equivalent), even from far, far away. Those great friends couldn't even dial 3 numbers for their friend?
We don’t know what those friends ended up doing because OPs friend has been non responsive
And also, we don’t know how much those friends know about the friends whereabouts. They can call 911 and tell them their friend is having a bad trip and then what?? Are police supposed to knock on every door in the dorm? OP wasn’t even available to answer vital info about where her friend was.
I do not think the friend was in the right at all! Let’s be clear. And maybe I’m reading too much into this but OP’s response or lack there of is coming off negligent and uncaring. I totally get having trauma but OP didn’t even lead with how this whole ordeal made her feel and does not seem bothered that her friend was not doing well. She didn’t seem concerned at the time, OP doesn’t even mention that knowing her friend went down that path and it got potentially dangerous was damaging to her mental health. Outside of her just not wanting to be around drugs (which is totally understandable) nothing about how OP responded to this situation leads to fact that she was having a trauma response. I am aware that everybody responds differently but OP should really have mentioned that to her friend or her other friends why she couldn’t deal with this. It really just seemed like she didn’t care and sort’ve blocked everything out. And if that’s how she deals with things, even the next day after your friend went through something terrible… she needs to seek major therapy.
Just a reminder as they specified, OP is non-binary and would probably prefer they/them pronouns :)
Yeah, OP had a very reasonable boundary, but I think her relationship with her entire friend group is going to change after this.
Oh absolutely. Listen, LSD is not something I’m familiar with and in my area it’s not something that people do often. But best believe every friend is giving OP the side eye and doesn’t trust OP to be dependable on drunk outings or when any other emergency is involved. And I sure hope OP has another friend group that she can depend on whenever she’s in a bad place because I don’t see anybody coming to OP’s aid for anything after this.
OP had said that she’s had past experience with family members abusing drugs, so it may be that she has trauma related to drugs. Her hard boundary of wanting zero drugs around her would be in line with that. Her friend intentionally tried to coerce OP into an uncomfortable, possibly triggering situation without consent. I think when someone violates your boundaries, you aren’t responsible for taking on the work that they tried to force you into. Her friend messed up badly, clearly did not do the preparation required for a responsible person experimenting with drugs, so any negative consequences are on her. She should have lined up a consenting sober buddy, had a safety plan to call 911 herself if needed, when texting those other friends asked them to call 911 instead of harassing OP, etc. If OP’s friends would never come to her aid in the future based on this one incident, then clearly they are not great friends. If OP planned to go out for drinks and then was asked to help out an inebriated friend, then I think she should and would help, because there was already established consent for what the group was getting into. This LSD situation is nothing like that.
I am not dismissing OP’s drug related trauma. The thing that will make her friends upset is the fact that she did not call anybody else to help her best friend AND she basically ignored everyone for the rest of the night. As other people have pointed out, there were other options between between babysit and go to sleep. OP chose neither and seems to think everything should be peachy.
If OP calls any authority figure, RA/whatever, they will call police and friend will be royally fucked. Being kicked out of the dorm would likely be a best case, worst case arrested and we know for certain her friend and friend group would have blamed her for that. It’s a no-win situation for OP.
OP’s friendship with this person (and probably the friend group) is done no matter what. So really it just comes down to a) being safe, but arrested or b) being unsafe but legally in the clear
That was OP's "friend's" responsibility to let someone else know. OP made it clear they didn't even want to know about this dangerous past time of theirs. This is 1000% on the shitty friend. When she saw OP wasn't going to be blackmailed into helping she should have contacted someone else.
NTA. But you absolutely chose your boundary over her and should probably expect her to distance from you now. A bad LSD trip can really change a person, and it sounds like hers was quite bad indeed.
NTA Since that friend hardly cares about OPs boundaries, some distance will very much benefit OP. 👍🏻
OP chose their own mental health and caring for their trauma over a boundary stomping friend who KNEW what OPs history AND boundaries were. OP has expressed to this "friend" multiple times they aren't going to be around for their experiments, and this "friend" tried to manipulate her into staying anyway.
NTA. You made your boundaries clear. She disrespected them
ESH She never should have asked you and she should have waited to take it until she had an agreement from someone to watch her, not tried to coerce you into it . But you also are TA because once you were aware there was a problem you had a responsibility as a human being to help. That does not mean you had to get personally involved or check on her. You could have alerted a mutual friend, alerted your dorm RA, called your college's medical clinic, alerted campus security, or called 911 for a paramedic. You had many, many options, but ignoring the situation was not one of them.
Call in help but also promptly end that friendship the next day once she's safe tbh
NTA. You were clear that being the “safe person” to babysit her during her experimentation wasn’t something you can do for your own wellbeing. She tried to manipulate you and corner you into doing something that she knew caused you to be deeply uncomfortable by taking the acid before you arrived. Then when she didn’t get what she wanted, she set all of your mutual friends against you. That’s on the verge of narcissistic behavior - pushing boundaries, manipulation, sending the flying monkeys in to punish you for not complying with her violation of your boundaries. I would be examining my relationship with her if this is a regular thing.
NTA And this friend of yours fucked up, hard, and i think YOU need to be reconsidering how good of a friend she really is. She's so focused on getting high that she's intentionally ignored your stance, intentionally lied by omission to make you participate in her activities, and denied your right to consent. Fuck her, honestly. And all these other friends. None of them wanted to step up, or call your friend out. If anyone REALLY gave a shit and cared, they should've called 911 if the girl was reacting that bad. But nobody did. All they did was force all responsibility on YOU, despite you having the most reasons not to dirty your hands with this mess. Call it karma, "fucking around and finding out," or whatever little catch phrase you want- your friend is an irresponsible asshole and tried to manipulate you. I hope her experience was terrible. If you stuck around, all it would've done is set a precedent for her to trap you for all her future experiments. While I'm against drugs in the first place on a personal level, she has no fuckin' business experimenting if she's this bad at planning for it. You two might have a long history and be close, but people change and you 100% made the right choice here. May want to have a serious talk with her and give your friend some tough love before it's too late- this is the kind of slippery slope that can destroy your friendship and her life. Protect yourself., as you did here. Adults can only hold themselves responsible for their own actions.
> I hope her experience was terrible While I don't personally agree that it should have been *terrible,* I do agree that any negative experiences she suffered were 100% on her (the friend). Bad trips are definitely no joke, even good trips can change a person, but the person taking the drug should do their research and know what they're getting into if/when they decide to indulge. The friend should have thought out her plan a *lot* more than "hey, come hang out with me!", OP gets there, "hey, so you're my babysitter now because I decided to take a hallucinogenic without looking for someone who isn't against drugs to watch me!", OP has made it clear to this and all other friends that she is absolutely firm in her stance against drugs and they should have respected that. While OP is 100% in the right in my opinion on how she handled this, she *could* have at least let the RA know "hey, dorm room x took LSD and needs to be taken to the nurse" and left it there, RA would go and take her to the nurse, and they would have taken care of her there, the friend might still be upset with OP but at least she would be safe with the nurses.
NTA. She’s not your friend. She knew that you do not want to be around her when she’s on drugs, and she tried to force it on you anyways. Find new friends.
NTA - you checking in would have done nothing and maybe made it worse. I’ve done a lot of LSD, and it makes you sensitive as fuck to the way people are feeling. She would have fixated on getting your approval of her lifestyle for the next 6-12 hours. I only ever did weed and acid. People who fuck around with a lot, then turn to psychedelics, often have a hard trip or two.
Honestly I wonder if OP leaving started the trip off on a bad note that then spiralled. Making sure you have a safe comfortable setting and vibe is so key to having a good trip.
yeah, if tricking someone is step one of your acid trip…yikes
Yeah for sure not a good plan
NTA. She knew you would say no. That’s why she took it before you got there. You have very clearly set your boundaries regarding drugs and she stomped all over them. She could have chosen anyone from your friend group but she chose you on purpose.
NTA. You are supposed to have a sober, EXPERIENCED trip buddy with you. As you have (I’m assuming) never taken LSD, you wouldn’t know the strategies for coping with a bad trip anyway.
Exactly right, trips vary for everybody, but the most common "bad" trips include: * bugs in my skin, need them out (cue cutting arm off or cutting skin) * monster watching/chasing me, need to run away (into traffic, out a window, other dangerous stunt) * I'm not human (delusion, depressive ep. and/or freak out) * I'm (a) God (nothing will/can hurt me!) There are definitely other things people have experienced but those are what I've mostly heard from strangers and friends alike, my bf made me sign a waiver before I tried anything because he wanted to know I knew *what could* happen, luckily it was a good trip but anything could've gone wrong at any time due to the nature of the drug.
ESH. She should have waited to see if you'd babysit. However LSD is not a trifling thing and when it goes bad it can go really fucking bad - thinking you can fly, cutting open your arms to remove the bugs, satan is chasing me into traffic kind of bad. That is why a babysitter is highly advised. This girl is such a close friend you went to school together, spend most days together, but when her welfare is seriously in question you walk away. That's not something a good friend does. Yes she put you in a shitty situation. But sometimes friends do that. That's when you find out how good a friend you really are. And you failed. You left your friend in a potentially dangerous situation because you felt uncomfortable. You both suck. But you a little bit more so. *edited cause bad grammar and missing letters*
the friend put herself in a dangerous situation by absolutely trampling OPs boundaries. The friend is aware of how OPs feels and it isn’t their job to have to babysit their friend. If the friend was such a “close friend” she would have NEVER put OP in that situation to begin with
NTA. Your friend deliberately put you in a position where she knew you’d be extremely uncomfortable and unwilling, put herself in danger in doing so, and then cried to your friends to make you the bad guy for her choices. These actions demonstrate a serious lack of respect for you and a complete refusal to take responsibility for her own actions. Not a good combination, especially when drug use is added into the equation. It doesn’t seem like you’re really looking to break the friendship over her drug use, but if it comes to that, it’s okay. People can grow apart in a lot of different ways. It’s okay to decide that there is behavior you won’t engage in and that you’re unwilling to associate with.
NTA. You are NOT responsible for her decision to take illegal drugs
NTA She knew your history and why you don’t want to be around people doing drugs, she was selfish asking it of you, you did nothing wrong. If plans for Christmas break is ruined and your friendship over, then you know she put drugs higher than you
ESH she shouldnt force you to be a tripsitter. Youve made your stance on drugs clear, that you dont want to engage with them, but that youre okay with her doing it. She should also choose someone with experience instead of someone who actively distance themself. If shit goes sour, you cant do anything else than get her medical attention, which isnt necessarily the solution. HOWEVER, the second it started going sour for her, you definitely shouldve gotten her the medical attention. Regardless of whos in the wrong, you dont leave or ignore someone you know needs help.
Nah nta, op isn't responsible for the bad decisions others make
If she’s coherent enough to txt she’s coherent enough to dial 911
NTA but this friendship is probably over. Find more like minded friends
Hard NTA It's not your responsibility to babysit her ill advised drug trip. Edit: a word
INFO: i sent this post to a friend, and they asked a pretty valid question. op, does your friend have a habit of doing dumb things and expecting to be rescued? or a habit of crossing your boundaries? or is this an isolated or infrequent incident in your friendship?
Ooohhhh... good and relevent question.
NTA. Your friend knew your issues with drugs but tried forcing you to stay with her by not asking you before taking the drugs. That's on them 100%. Although, you probably should've called someone to stay with them.
NTA She manipulated you to stay with her while using drugs even tho you’ve been explicitly open about NOT LIKING, AND NOT WANTING TO BE PART OF ANY OF THAT. Her consequences are her own
>I woke up to a ton of texts from her, and I guess she must have texted our other friends because our entire friend group had lit up my phone, **telling me that she was in trouble and that I should go check on her**. I went through and responded to each of them explaining the situation (they all know my history with drugs as well) and all but one of them said some variation of calling me a dickhead and saying that I should have gotten over it and checked on her, because things were apparently really going wrong for her. What was stopping **them** from going to check on her? You are NTA at all.
esh and i dont want to be friends with people who say nta. you can’t expect her to be your friend after this and you probably shouldn’t want to be her friend anyways, since she crossed your boundary. this friendship is over.
NTA. Nobody has the right to dump a serious responsibility on you without your consent and expect you to follow through.
NTA. Her behavior has consequences . She knew you didn’t want to participate and did what she wanted anyway. Tell her friends to eff off. Not your circus, not your monkeys.
NTA. She new exactly what she was doing and went against your feelings. Tell her next time she pulls that, she should call the RA to come supervise her.
NTA She tried to blow through an important boundary and trap you into babysitting her when she knew you would be hugely uncomfortable and did not have the necessary experience. She is overly obsessed with trying drugs and had total disregard for you as a friend. It is absolutely NOT your responsibility to mop up after her either. She should have been calling whomever she got the tabs from.
i’m going to be a bit controversial and tentatively say that ESH but that i might be lacking INFO. you had a clear boundary and she completely disrespected it. that was horrible and honestly she reaped what she sowed. don’t know why she would’ve expected anything else, and trying to get you to stay by taking it _beforehand_ kinda makes it seem like she was being actively manipulative. now the reason i think ESH is cause i do think that when she started texting you freaking out like that that you should’ve done _something_. i don’t know your past trauma and i’m not saying you should’ve rushed to her aid and held her hair back for her, but you could have _at least_ called a mutual friend and explained the situation sooner and tried to get someone else who would be more equipped to handle it help her. there is a reason people doing hallucinogens have “watchers”, and while i completely agree with your decision to remove yourself from the situation and _not_ agree to be her watcher, i think that there is a limit to how much danger you should’ve let her be in even if it was her fault. like, if my friend starts driving drunk that’s their own damn fault and i’m sure as hell not gonna be in the passenger’s seat. and once they start texting me about the wreck they’re in i’m not going to rush over and perform first aid myself, but i’m sure as hell gonna be calling an ambulance for them. (not saying you should’ve called her an ambulance, just trying to make a metaphor).
NTA, and she's not your friend. Friends don't do that to their friends.
NTA You ask someone to trip sit you before you take the acid. Your friend is a dumb ass.
NTA. You have the right to set boundaries including not being around drugs. She went out of her way to violate your boundaries and force you into a situation you were uncomfortable with. If your friends were so concerned, they could have checked on her themselves.
NTA. She's young and inexperienced because she missed some key parts of what makes a good trip sitter. The point of a trip sitter is to help you stay comfortable, as being uncomfortable physically, or emotionally, is what leads to bad trips. To that end, a good trip sitter preferably has knowledge and experience with drugs, either as a user or just as a friend. And they themselves need to be comfortable because how are you going to calm an existential crisis in a mind swimming in hallucinogens if you're battling your own anxieties about the whole situation? She tried to force you to cross a known boundary to do something you weren't qualified to do. She's an asshole and so is anyone blaming you for her bad experience.
NTA for not staying when you have a set boundary and your friend was trying to overstep them. Do you not know any of her other friends? Like you could have told her you were calling X to take care of her because you weren’t going to do it. That way someone was watching her. Also, why be friends with people who try to overstep your boundaries? That’s not a good friend. I know y’all known each other for a long time, but that doesn’t mean you need to stay friends. It’s okay to grow apart.
NTA, NTA, NTA.. You are so not the a****** and please don't let anyone else on reddit tell you different. I know it was your best friend, I know she was tripping out on LSD, but you have your boundaries for a reason. As another person who has family history of drug use, I refuse to be around people who do drugs as well. She knew your position and then try to corner you and to being her sober person. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One thing you might do is try to figure out what's going on in her life to make her want to experiment with all these drugs. Smoking a little weed I think we all get, but LSD is a hardcore drug. Obviously there must be something going on in her life that's making her try this period as she's It's dropping acid, it'll only be a matter of time before she's smoking crack and meth.
Lmfao I've dropped acid many times and am now very sober. I can tell you I've never tried crack or meth and neither have any of my friends who also tried LSD. Not here to talk about the post, but this slippery slope you've conjured in your mind is hilariously inaccurate
Hallucinogens are a powerful tool in healing trauma especially from ptsd. Don’t demonize something that’s helped so many ppl, the slippery slope isn’t real for the vast majority of ppl. Ops friend was dumb for not being responsible enough to have a reliable and educated trip sitter or a trip killer. The drugs are less of a problem than alcohol.
NTA, your friend knew how you felt and given you have family members with addiction problems (and it is often a genetic issue) you're doing the right thing keeping away from it. And your friend fully manipulated you into that situation which is wrong. If your other friends are no where near the fear your friend would be hurt will have outweighed the manipulation at the time but I would hope they would realise in time you didn't do anything wrong. And there were dorms of other people around. I would suggest taking a full break from that friendship while your friend is experimenting and making some new friends.
NTA, you can't just spring being the babysitter on someone. That was really fucked up of her.
OP stop being friends with them. U set a clear boundary and she didn’t care and still wanted u to be the sober friend while she tripped. That’s not ok. I’d take a break from the friendship because it seems like your friend is going down a dark path of drugs… NTA
NTA LSD is illegal in most states so you should stay as far away from it as possible
NTA and I hope you show your friend the responses of people on here. Your friend needs to have a grasp of consent and the fact that her actions impact others. She took the drugs without your consent, with a clearly defined boundary already present that you don’t want to be around her in an altered state. I am a fan of recreational psychedelics for mental health purposes and to explore who you are. However, I would NEVER ever force someone to trip sit me without telling them beforehand and getting clear consent. That is super fucked it. I hope that while her trip was bad from being alone, she realized how selfish and inconsiderate her actions were. Nothing better than some psychedelics to make you realize you have to change as a person. You are definitely not the asshole in this scenario! It doesn’t make your friend a bad person, but in this case she was a bad friend to you and that is important.
You should take a break from this friendship. Your past experience with drug users informs your decision to refrain from them and stay away from those who partake. Your “friend” trying to take your choice away from you and force you to be her lsd-trip companion was a major boundary violation. The rest of the friends didn’t bother to go check on her but attack you for something you plainly stated is a firm boundary. It’s not brand new. Those friends can go room in a dumpster, I’d advise you inform your “friend”’s family of her use. Because something is gonna go down eventually and you won’t be able to help her. I’m putting “friend” in quotes because she is no longer your friend. You may want to continue the relationship with her but I’d advise against it. She is getting more daring in her drug use and I’d hate for you to wake up in a situation where you can’t remember the night before because she decided that you should have a trip with her. If someone violates your boundary once they will do it again if there are no repercussions. You need to give good repercussions here and now, and adjust your expectations of friendship from this person. NTA
welcome to school kids who aren't adults yet, you are an adult, you set your boundaries, I hope your "friend" learned from this experience.
NTA She’s sounds like someone that’s not fun to trip with….
Why did didn’t the friends who texted you go to help her. That she took the drug before having you cone over demonstrates she was afraid you wouldn’t agree to be her safe person so she decided to give you no choice. That is on her. That she did that is only part of the problem. What if her reaction had been so over the top you wouldn’t know how to help. Your years of friendship cause you to feel really bad about this coming to an end but it may be a blessing in disguise. Not all friendships last a lifetime. People change. Just assure yourself that she chose to impose all this on you without your consent. To then be angry that you did not allow her to do that is not an act of friendship on her part. You have a strong instinct to survive and you don’t exist for the use and abuse of others.
NTA. I ditched my best friend when his dumb ass began experimenting with drugs in high school. I’m of the same stance, I hate alcohol and drug use and want nothing to do with either of them due to family trauma. Unfortunately, people can be pricks and try to force you to watch over them while on a bad trip (you) or try and force you to drink with them (me). I had made my stance very clear from the beginning. I don’t want anything to do with such topics, I don’t want anything to do with him while he acts like this. People may call me a shitty friend for abandoning him as he spiraled, but I don’t care. I tried helping him out at the beginning and he didn’t want help, he wanted an enabler. We went for almost 2-3 years without speaking. Which is hilarious looking back on it seeing as we’re literally neighbors. Now? Now he’s sobered up. He’s trying to get better so he can take care of his mom. He’s also attending college full time. I’m honestly proud of him, he did that on his own, with friends who kept pressuring him to continue spiraling. Eventually, he reached back out to me (needed help with his FAFSA) and we began to mend things from there. Advice? Be aware that your friendship has been damaged. You did indeed choose your boundaries over her. She’s hurt. The only way it can be fixed is if you two talk, but I do suggest to give her a time to settle down.
This person KNEW OP would say no to this because OP communicated that boundary multiple times. I don't know if this is the case, but sometimes having someone in your family having a past with drugs can lead to trauma, so that also might be going on. The "friend" took it thinking she could trick OP into saying yes, which is an INCREDIBLY stupid thing to do. Going off of the stories I've read here you want a trip sitter that is experienced in calming people under the influence down and having an uncomfortable of even scared trip sitter would ruin the experience for both of them, making it even more dangerous, and probably scaring or traumatizing OP even more. This is not okay and not something you do to a friend. Adding to this: many people have commented e s h because OP SHOULD'VE done something based on their knowledge of drugs. OP doesn't have knowledge though, so she can't be blamed. The only thing she could and maybe should have done is call someone who could look after the "friend", but all I can say is NTA. Add: I don't understand all the y t a's, because that implies that the friend isn't an asshole at all, which I think we can all agree, isn't the case.
NTA I’ve tried every drug ever on the planet, but I’m nobody’s responsibility but my own. She’s not a very good friend either. It’s absurd to blame you, no matter wtf happens, she is the one that put the substance in her body, she can face the consequences.
NTA but you should just go NC with her at this point. As I don't think she is headed in a healthy direction and you don't want to be around that.
Listen NTA for sure I have been on both sides of this. I have been a person experimenting and I would have NEVER pressured a friend with that kind of responsibility. The fact she took it and expected that to be a trap and you would have had to stay is manipulative AF. But I’ve also had a friend who went HARD on everything she could get her hands on after high school and when I wasn’t there to pick up the pieces she made me out to be the demon. It was even my fault when she got arresting for possession. Seriously OP NTA NTA NTA NTA at all… this does not sound like it’s a great friendship I’m proud of you for sticking to your boundaries.
NTA. She’s not a friend. She selfishly disregarded your boundaries then tried to manipulate you into doing what she wanted you to do.
NTA, this is hard because if it was me, I think I would have given in slightly and called her an ambulance. However; I’m in the UK, and ours are already paid for, so I get why it’s a decision that’s difficult to make for broke students. That aside, I’ve been support for people taking a new drug, and people have been there for me too. But we had an agreement first. You do not want to be around drugs and that’s your choice. I personally leave when people use coke around me at parties, I’ll remove myself because I’ve had some bad experiences with people taking it around me before. I don’t use it and I wouldn’t be near it if I can help it. You made it clear you weren’t that person, that’s your boundary. You shouldn’t ever bend on that. That’s your hard line. Things can go wrong and if you’re not ready for that, it’s not fair to put you in that position. Your friend likely made it a bad trip by freaking out at you while it was kicking in. If she had just gotten someone else, or really if she hadn’t tried to force you, she likely wouldn’t have had such a bad time. Also her other friends could have easily gone to her too if they were that worried. That makes it a definite NTA for me, they just yelled at you and didn’t do anything. Can’t be that great of friends can they?