Act 2 - The Disconnect

Act 2 - The Disconnect

A couple of weeks later, we took another dose of liquid acid: the same two drops as before, but this time, with a wholly and devastatingly different outcome.

The circumstances under which we took the LSD this time were far from ideal, to say the very least; in retrospect, our decision was quite foolish. The night before, a Saturday, we had taken some designer drugs. While we’d had a great time, we let Saturday transition deep into Sunday without any sleep. For some inexplicable reason, we were adamant about having another acid trip that Sunday, yet we kept postponing it until well past midnight. By the time we finally ingested the dose, exhaustion had already firmly kicked in for both of us.

I found I lacked the energy to dance, and felt that even a simple conversation became a strained, laborious effort. Increasingly, it felt as though we were in the same room, yet not truly together in it. I distinctly sensed my words weren’t reaching Yaşar at all; he, quite uncharacteristically, spoke mostly in his mother tongue, a language I only partially understand, which only amplified the growing distance between us. I clearly remember looking Yaşar in the eyes at one point and the thought piercing me, “Who is this man?”

A severe and agonizing disconnect had emerged, one that ultimately led me to question our entire relationship. This deeply unsettling feeling persisted for many days after the trip concluded.

Over time, the acute intensity of this feeling gradually eroded, and we rationalized it, attributing it to simply a ‘bad trip’ caused by the ill-chosen circumstances. However, it would ultimately take a third acid trip together for us to gain a much deeper, and far more disturbing, understanding of the real reasons behind this perceived disconnect.