You have to be able to trust those people who are with you with your life because that's just what you're doing. Your life is in their hands.

If you are the only person taking LSD, there must be someone there who has taken LSD to act as a guide. If 2 or more people are tripping together and it's their first trip, there must also be someone around who is not doing it, but still experienced with LSD. If you are the only person doing it and none of the other people with you have ever done it, then no matter how well you know, like and trust those people, this is not the right situation because they know nothing about LSD. You also must not do it if there is any person there who you have any negative feelings about or who gets you uptight in any way. You don't want any loud, pushy, aggressive or argumentative people around. Problem people can ruin your trip and ruin your mind.

There are other things that need to be understood before you try LSD for the first time. During the trip, you may come to the realization that your whole concept of reality coming in was all wrong. You may see that how you were living your life, your social role, identity or ego and everything that you took so seriously and worried about, is all meaningless. Be prepared to have all your assumptions about life revolutionized. Realize that in taking LSD, you are going into the unknown, putting all your blue chips on the line and it takes a lot of courage.

If you are tripping with another person, realize that you'll be opening yourself up completely to the other person by giving up all of your psychological defenses. When you are tripping, you are beyond all games and there is no holding anything back. It will all come out and it's all right.

In preparing for your trip, especially if it's your first one, it's also a good idea to read positive books about LSD to get more confident about it in order to offset all the negative propaganda. Another recommendation is that you familiarize yourself with the philosophy and religions of Asia, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, etc. It may shock you to find out that what those religions are all about is what LSD is all about. That's right. The Eastern religions are not about going to church or temple, they are not about written doctrine and dogma and they are not about a belief. Those religions are about an experience, an experience of awakening, a religious experience of awakening to reality and finding out who you really are and you won't believe who you really are. LSD is not only such an experience, but the ultimate Mother of all experiences.

The Eastern religions are very different from the religions that we are familiar with. So what is it about those other religions and the philosophy behind them that you should familiarize yourself with before taking LSD? There are two ideas that will give you a feel for it. One is to think about the cells of your body. There are billions of them. They come and go. A given, individual cell may die, but you and your body go on living. Think of people as those cells. People come and go, live and die, but when an individual person dies, the world or universe goes on. The cell's real identity is the entire universe and so is your real identity.

The other idea that gives a feel for the Eastern tradition is to think about how you have dreams while sleeping. When you are having the dream, you think that it's for real. Then you wake up and realize that it was only a dream. Think of your lifespan on earth as the dream and when you die, you wake up to the real thing. With LSD, you can experience that real thing, your true, ultimate Self and do it now, years before you die and then you come down from the trip and realize what a joke this world is because those running the world don't know anything about any of this. When you have experienced the Ultimate, it isn't easy to accept having to come back to this world and all its insanity and be told by a bunch of know-nothings that you are the one that's crazy.