96 Tabs of Acid. Twelve monogamous encounters. Three “three-ways”. Two “fours ways”. We are finally prepared to write an article about sex on acid.

In January 2019, Vice published an article entitled “I Had Sex on Acid”. It’s short and well written. But woefully under-researched. One encounter? Really? So, in the name of unscientific research and ensuring that “overkill” remains our middle name, Trippingly recruited some (all?) of our contributors to document and compile their experiences of sex on acid.

We asked people to create an audio or video recording (cheap reality show confessional style preferred) immediately after the sexual encounter, while still tripping, to capture near real-time reactions. Within twenty-four hours, the couples then memorialized their experiences in writing.

The results varied remarkably. One of Trippingly’s chief contributing couples, a self-described highly sexualized pair, reported that sex was sufficiently uninteresting on LSD that they had nothing to report after six months and many trips. Another couple, mostly monogamous, reported multiple encounters, in multiple configurations: the two of them plus an extra woman one time, an extra man another, and an extra couple (their next door neighbors), a third time. Finally, in one long-term couple, the woman found herself reliving past trauma whenever sexuality arose, something that had never been a problem for her before.

Some General How-To Takeaways

Most couples reported that sex worked best at the first onset of the trip, or after the peak has subsided significantly. Sex during the peak was sufficiently challenging, it was hard to get the job done. Almost no couples described sex near the peak as being hot, sexy or the like. Hilarious or absurd were terms that were commonly used, although fun and connecting were used just as frequently.

Technique wasn’t a strong point during LSD-fueled encounters, and even oral sex was often more challenging to accomplish than expected. However, those who enjoyed sex on acid reported that the classic positions provided all the entertainment needed to make the encounters worthwhile.

A Note on Consent and Judgment

We do not believe one can give meaningful consent while on a psychedelic trip of any potency. Therefore, we believe all sexual boundaries should be fully discussed and consented to prior to intoxicating. We also believe acid trips are a poor time to start a new sexual relationship or to expand the boundaries of an existing one.

Because of the way psychedelics impact our brain functions, our judgment remains impacted for days after a psychedelic trip. Therefore, for at least 72 hours after any trip, we don’t make major life decisions. This includes breaking up with our partners, quitting jobs or (preview of coming attractions…) starting a first polyamorous relationship with a next door neighbor.

Over the course of the following weeks we will be adding the accounts of each or our couples. First up, Lisa and Max.

Lisa and Max

Lisa and Max are a couple in their late 20s. Both are experienced trippers that have been dating for two years.

Max: We each decided to do a light LSD dose - 105 ug each. We have had sex on LSD many times, but often the encounters have been short, with one or both of us too incapacitated to focus on the interaction. This time we decided to dedicate our trip to sex, all in the name of research. Our first encounter began two hours after dosing, before the peak. Lisa was feeling a moderate impact of the drug, while I (Max) was feeling mild effects. We focused our this first encounter on foreplay, with lots of kissing and some oral teasing. It lasted 45 minutes. Lisa reports her experience:

Lisa: Kissing felt wonderful and sensual. I felt beautiful, which is not how I usually perceive myself while on LSD! I still felt well coordinated, and our kissing was passionate and all over our bodies. When Max went down on me, my high increased noticeably, with intense closed-eye visuals corresponding to the motion of his tongue on my body. I orgasmed within a few minutes, quicker than usual, and the experience was intense and I wanted to have Max inside me, but we opted to wait until later in the evening for that.

Max: I also found the experience highly pleasurable, and very sensual. Giving and receiving oral sex was wonderful, and it was easy to maintain an erection. Lisa was quick to reach climax with considerably less than usual intense pressure from my tongue and fingers. Receiving oral sex felt highly connecting and the visual of watching it was intense and arousing, although I was not approaching climax during the encounter.

At hour four we were both feeling the peak of the acid, and returned to the bedroom. While our first encounter felt very sexy, this time we both were laughing and having a hard time being serious. We likely would have abandoned the encounter had we not been preparing for this article. Foreplay was a bit of a wreck, with giggle attacks interrupting sensuality, however, once I was inside Lisa, we both had a wonderful experience.

Lisa: While kissing lost the sensuality of our first encounter, I was very aroused and was looking forward to sex. As Max entered me, it felt very odd, but not unpleasant. I remember thinking “this feels very literal”, and wanting to write down that phrase as it seemed very significant at the time, although after the trip I am not sure what was intended. Perhaps that I could very distinctly feel Max entering me and being inside me, as opposed the more generalized feeling of pleasure I normally feel.

As sex became more intense, I kept laughing, because it felt wonder and bizarre all at once. Visuals were incredibly psychedelic, with the sunlight through our bedroom window having a multi-colored strobe effect. I felt uncoordinated, but still sexy. We stopped briefly for Max to try to get me off with his tongue, but I found it impossible to concentrate sufficiently to reach orgasm. I was enjoying him being inside me, so we returned to sex. He finished on my belly because we had been asked whether there was more than average cum during LSD fueled sex. I can’t say for sure, but it seemed like a lot. Overall it was a very fun and pleasant experience and felt very connecting.

Max: The first thing I noticed was feeling very uncoordinated, but that didn’t stop me from wanted sex badly. After our aborted foreplay, I entered Lisa from behind while she was bent over the bed. She was extremely wet, which allowed the sex to last much longer than it otherwise would have. We were both laughing and joyous during the encounter, yet it also felt very reproductive to me - reproductive in the sense that I felt very much like the point of this encounter was for me to impregnate Lisa (my vasectomy renders that quite unlikely!) During the sex, the harder either of us went, the more intense my visuals were. At one point Lisa was riding me and her hair appeared to fluctuate between glowing golden locks, and beautiful strands of fine flowing copper wire. While in missionary style, we were deeply staring at each other and her eyes were changing colors from the deepest blue to emerald green in a memorizing manner. Right before I came, it felt profoundly important that I not pull out as planned and instead fill her. But at my climax I did pull out and intensely came. The first shot was much larger than usual and shot much farther than usual. My orgasm felt beautiful and natural. A wonderful experience, that I hope we frequently repeat.

Our takeaways: On the relatively low dose of LSD we took, sex remained fairly simple to accomplish, even at the peak. It was sensual at times, and goofy at times, but always enjoyable. At a higher dose we both suspect that our attention span might interfere with coordination and focus, but at this dose, it was a blast.

Adam and Kylie

Adam and Kylie are both new to psychedelics, having had several mushrooms trips, and a single LSD encounter prior to the events detailed below. They are each in their mid-20s and have been dating one year.

Kylie: We each took the same dose as our first experience. I was at 125 ug and Adam took 150 ug. Prior to the trip we had set up a video confessional in our tiny 2nd bedroom and had the questionnaire Trippingly provided us and notebooks ready to write down our thoughts mid-encounter. We had not had sex on acid prior to this encounter, and we were excited to give it a try.

Our plan had been to try sex right when we first felt the effects of the acid, but we became distracted and our first encounter occurred when we were both starting to peak. By the time we were in the bedroom, we were both pretty excited and decided to go straight for penetration, with me on top. My first reaction was being very aware of being able to feel the size of Adam’s cock, especially the head, as he entered me. It felt like a lot. Not painful, but oddly detailed, being able to feel nuances of his anatomy inside me that I wouldn’t normally notice.

I noticed that I felt unusually wet, which Adam confirmed. Emotionally the act felt natural, but very unemotional. Often I found myself thinking, “this is interesting”, or “how odd”. Because I was so focused on my own experience, I noticed that the encounter wasn’t feeling particularly connecting with Adam, unlike our normal sex. But I was enjoying it, feeling a bit like a research scientist or documentarian, thinking about how I would be able to describe the session.

At one point I decided I should try to have an orgasm, which I can usually do without much problem when I’m on top. This time, however, I couldn’t coordinate my movements enough to get anywhere close to climaxing. I suggested we change positions, and we tried missionary briefly before settling on doggie style. I closed my eyes, and being more passive, started to get lost in the experience. We had been going at it for around 15 minutes and I was peaking with very strong closed eye visuals.

The encounter started to feel intensely pleasurable, especially as Adam picked up the pace significantly. I began to think about him finishing inside me and wanted to become pregnant. To create new life. These are not normal thoughts for me during sex. As Adam was close to finishing I opened my eyes, and was having fairly strong hallucinations. Repeated patterns of islamic iconography, and beautiful geometric patterns. As he orgasmed I could feel with great detail his penis inside of me, and his cum filling me, which felt very connecting.

Adam: By the time we went to the bedroom, I was peaking hard and was seriously questioning whether I would be able to stay hard or even manage to have sex if hard. Perhaps out of an abundance of optimism, after kissing for a few minutes I start going down on Kylie. She is very wet, and I am very uncoordinated, and it’s pretty clear that this isn’t the right approach.

She then goes down on me, hoping to coax my semi-erect member into action. Her skill levels seem far greater than mine were, and I am very hard and very much enjoying her work. She pushes me back on the bed and climbs on top, in a more “take charge” way than normal for our encounters and begins riding me.

My first impressions are that she is very wet, and being inside her feels very warm and pleasurable. The view of her on top of me is also very arousing, even though her skin is changing a variety of colors and at one point even appearing to age and then revert to normal. As she continued on top of me, I noticed that she seemed very much in her own mind, not making eye contact, which was very out of character. Perhaps oddly, I felt objectified. Perhaps more oddly, this was very much working for me.

I began to see her pelvis glowing red where I was inside of her, and began to see her bones glowing red inside of her (someone showed me a sex scene from Battlestar Galactica after hearing this description, and it was spot on to what I was experiencing). At points, the outline of her body was glowing almost metallically, and very beautifully. Perhaps because Kylie was so wet, the penetration was less intense feeling than normal, but vey pleasurable.

We decided to change positions, first to missionary style for a few minutes and then to doggie style. With he bent over, I had less strong visuals on her body, but became very focused on how thin her waist is compared to her round butt. I found myself watching me enter he intently, and felt very aroused by the details of body reacting to my entering her. I had been going very slowly, and she asked me to go hard. She told me she wanted me to finish and to “fill her up”, which and a minute later I did.

My orgasm felt different than typical, but very pleasurable. Climaxing felt more of an all body experience. I could feel the ejaculation being voluminous, which as soon as I pulled out was obviously accurate. Emotionally I felt energized and purified. Kylie looked to me very powerful. At the end, before and during climax, the sex felt significant. I remember thinking that this is why we are here, to reproduce (a very unlikely outcome for this encounter).

After the encounter, Kylie mentioned her focus on reproductive urges and experiences during sex, and this probably triggered thoughts in my head for the next hour or so, that my sperm was inside of her, trying to create a new human. This felt connecting and pushed my overall trip strongly to a “mother nature” vibe, where I found myself thinking about the life cycle of birth and decay. I crawled on the ground, looking for little bugs, poking around and eventually finding a partial egg shell. In the tree above I notice for the first time a small nest with chicks in it, which filled me with a feeling of love.

Take-aways (Adam and Kylie): This was a positive experience for both of us. After this initial encounter, we tripped several more times and incorporated sex into each trip. While the most interesting experience was the initial encounter in the middle of our peak, the most enjoyable sex actually occurred much later in our trip, around 8 hours after dosing, and more coordination returned. We experimented with toys, which worked well later in the trip. Power dynamic play, which we do periodically with great success while sober, didn’t work well at all on LSD. We’re looking forward to trying different doses and mixing up our encounters in future trips. Thanks for including us in this project.

Ashley and Ming

Ashley and Ming met six years ago at Burning Man, and became close friends. They started a romantic relationship two years ago, and have used psychedelic mushrooms during their play throughout their relationship.

Ming: I have incorporated magic mushrooms into my life for almost twenty years, initially purely recreationally. For the past seven years I have also incorporated ayahuasca and mushrooms into my spiritual practice. I have always enjoyed sexuality and sensuality during mushroom journeys, often ending my trip with a sexual encounter.

Ashley and I are both Cisgender females, however, during sexual encounters I have always channeled what feels to me to be a masculine energy. This has been such a striking part of my life, that for a time I questioned my gender identity, however, I have settled into understanding that I deeply identify as a woman (and am described often as a “lipstick lesbian” in my community). And I enjoy leading aggressive and sometimes rough (although not sadistic) play sessions, including during psilocybin influenced encounters. While I have significant experience with magic mushrooms, and have participated in a half-dozen aya ceremonies, I had not tried LSD until a year ago, and had not had sex on LSD prior to preparing for this article.

Ashley: I met ming during my first LSD experience, through a mutual friend, and this lead to an increasingly close relationship over several years. We transitioned our close friendship into a romantic relationship, which has been my first long-term same sex relationship. Prior to ming, I had enjoyed several on-going sexual relationships with women, however, my primary sexual partners had always been men. Women tended to be a side path into a different energetic realm. My life with Ming has colored my view of binary female versus male energy, in a lovely way. Our sex typically involves strap on play, or other penetrative toys, rough hair pulling and not gentle, but loving, spanking.

Ming: LSD right from the start of our LSD experience I was feeling a strong desire for sexuality with Ashley. We had talked about sex extensively the morning of our journey, and I had been looking forward to play, finding it challenging to restrain from sex prior to taking our tabs. As soon as we both felt substantial onset of the acid our clothes came off and play began. Very unlike our typical play, I felt deeply routed in a deep nurturing and sensual energy. For nearly an hour we touched sensually, without toys. We both climaxed multiple times from oral sex. During play, Ashley used eyeshadow on my body, which looked amazing, especially the rich gold tones she used on my breasts, glowing magically.

Ashley: Our sex started with deep kissing, which is in line with most of our play sessions. However, the kissing continued for a long time, extending from our lips to all over our bodies. Touch felt both playful and deeply connecting. Ming used her fingers on my labia, and brought me quickly to climax without any penetration, which is highly unusual, as I typically need g-spot stimulation to orgasm. She continue with her mouth, again bringing me to climax, which caused increasingly intense visual hallucinations, with colors swirling from her dark hair and extending over my body.

I also went down on her, and although I felt clumsy in my technique at first, I soon felt as though my essence was melting into Ming’s, and when she reach orgasm, I felt a rush of deep pleasure starting from my head and upper body, reaching down to my pussy. We later joked that I had a sympathetic orgasm, and that was very much what it felt like.

Ming: We rejoined our friends who were sharing the trip with us and rejoiced for several hours, and again returned to the bedroom around 7 hours after the acid first hit us. We wanted to explore our more typical sexual dynamic, using a strap-on. This was less successful than normal. I found it very challenging to even suit up in the harness and then when I started fucking Ashley, we both found our preferred rhythm to be hard to maintain. However, when we reverted to using a dildo along with oral sex and a small vibrator we found our grove. While it’s less frequent for Ashley to use a dildo on me, I requested she do so to be able to test that experience on psychedelics. My first impression was that it felt larger than normal, although neither in a good nor bad way. At this phase of our trip, my visuals were minimal, but when I closed my eyes, I saw distinct geometric patterns that appeared to morph in rhythm to the penetration I was experiencing. I leaned in heavily to this and soon felt my entire body pulsating in unison with slow moving dildo, which felt energizing and magical.

Ashley: Our second session continued much of the same energy as our first. More deeply sensual than our normal encounters, although I found it highly pleasurable to have my nipples bit and pinched in an impactful way. Penetration with toys felt good, but stimulation of my clit was far more powerful, and much of the encounter involved using a wand on pussy, even as I was focusing on using toys with Ming.

Takeaways: The biggest surprise was the distinct change in energetic energy between us. The most intense moments of the sex involved no or light vaginal penetration, and focused clitoral stimulation. Had we had body paints we would have loved to use them, and will do so in a future encounter. Orgasms came quickly and repeatedly for both of us, and at times felt as a whole body release. Sexuality notably heightened visual hallucinations, and overall the experience felt deeply connecting for us both. While much of the non-sexual parts of the trip felt playful and childlike, our sex felt romantic and soulful. A very positive experience for us both.