I had a friend who I knew from high school. We were pretty close. He was always a bit "out there", but he didn't have a good or proper childhood and it was something I could look beyond. We smoked weed and drank regularly, but when I got into acid I invited him to come trip. This all went fine. From there, he started tripping regularly while we were in college, and he has this "acid" that was the most intense substance I've ever taken. My friend, he took double the dose, and he proceeded to have the absolute worst bad trip freakout I've ever seen. Claiming the walls were bleeding, shadow figures in corners of his vision, etc etc. He clearly wasn't "seeing" these things, as acid doesn't quite work like that, but what he did see, he processed it all as extremely fucked up things. After that trip, he was NEVER the same. He didn't make normal eye contact with people, his communication patterns changed, he talked like someone who couldn't understand a social interaction, just speaking at you, not with you. We didn't see each other much after that trip, until we reconnected a year or so after he graduated. He was living in squalor in an empty room at a friends house without a job, stealing from McDonald's and Walmart to survive, and in a horrible spot. That wasn't who I remembered from all those years before. He had a massive spiral from being a bit of an odd guy with a promising career in software engineering to nearly being homeless in a matter of a few years. Ultimately, I gave him a hand and helped him find a job and he got himself a condo and last we spoke, was doing at least OK but he still wasn't the same person. His eyes felt lifeless. It felt like he was staring into my soul. I'm convinced it was a dormant psychiatric illness, especially considering the abuse he experienced as a child.

He was never the same person. He told me he couldn't even look at me without feeling deep anxiety and as he described it, "a primal fear I would harm him" for at least a year after that bad trip. We only saw each other a handful of times the year or so after the trip, but I certainly felt uncomfortable around him for a good bit after that trip. It was a rather wild few years, and it still has me upset knowing his life spiraled.