Larger Than Life

Psychedelics produce altered states of consciousness that magnify normal reality.

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“That’s a very tiny piece of paper”. “Yeah, but It’ll do the job”. “Alright, Jimmy, You never set me wrong, yet”. Jeff places the tiny bit of paper on his tongue and swallows. Jimmy hands him a pill. “Take this with the acid”. “What’s this”? “Dramamine, it’s for travel sickness, funny, huh? Dramamine works for LSD trips the same as it works for train and planes”.

Jeff smiles. “What else”?

“You’ll feel a little sick in the next hour, or so. Nothing to worry about. The Dramamine will kick in ‘bout then, you’ll be fine. Next, in another hour or so, the world will start changing. Things that usually stand still will begin to shimmer. The pattern on the rug might float above the floor. The walls will look like they’re melting. Small things, ordinary things, will get bigger and a lot more interestin’. You’ll see, feel, hear and taste like you never thought possible”.

“It’ll be easy to overdo everything. Don’t”!

Jimmy cautions Jeff, “Much-too-much is a common problem for most first-timers. The beer tastes so good you drink a six-pack in a half hour. Then you throw up. The acid doesn’t change the normal operation of your stomach or any other part of your body. LSD makes your senses stand up on end. It don’t make you superman. You have to pay attention”.

Later, after more experience, Jeff reflects on Jimmy’s advice, ”You have to pay attention”. He knows what Jimmy meant; “attention” wasn’t quite the right word.

When the LSD takes over, you can’t do anything but pay attention. Decisions have to be made before, or later. The vibrating intensity of now overwhelms thought. You’re immersed in a world more alive than you ever suspected. Boundaries lose their limits. What you thought separate becomes only nominally separate. Some flux of energy, some dance of atoms, dissolves hard edges into a single flowing reality.

The effect is mystical. Quantum physics tells us it’s the real reality.

Every particle truly is connected to every other particle. The Universe is a single creation. You just had no way to notice that before you took the acid. The main function of the brain is to screen reality. If the brain didn’t block most of the stimuli you’re constantly bombarded with all the time, you’d become crazy and incapable of any action, which is just what happens when you drop acid.

The middle part of the trip will put you in outer space. You won’t be going anywhere or doing anything, except paying attention.

The useful benefits come when you’re back on Earth.

Not for everyone though. The benefits are wasted on those who are only out for kicks. Those who are emotionally unstable should never take LSD.

Jeff had a different way to use the drug. He used it to learn.

While most of his generation “experimented” with drugs, Jeff really did. He didn’t take written notes, but he did consider after every trip what he had experienced, and how what he had learned might enrich ordinary realty.

He concentrated first on music.

Once the queasiness faded, Jeff put on a record He was a little jittery. The room had taken on a grotto-like beauty. The afternoon light broke around the edges of things with an iridescent haze. The pattern on the oriental rug seemed to rise off the floor. The walls seemed to be slowly melting.

The needle sizzled when it gently touched the record. The music filled the room as geometric shapes. Jeff could not only hear the chords, but he could also see them as wide sweeping sheets of sound. A river of single notes soared above in synchronized dance with the sheets of chords. Below, rumbling bass rolled thickly in dark harmonious support.

Jeff had played this record many times before, but it was never like this. He’d never noticed that music could be seen as well as heard. He’d never noticed the spectrum of sound was as individually colored as the spectrum of light.

None of this was hallucination.

There is a rare sensory phenomenon called synesthesia. People (synesthetes) see, feel, taste, touch, and hear simultaneously what the rest of us experience as unconnected senses. That seems similar to Jeff’s musical experience with LSD, except that with Jeff, it ends when the LSD wears off. With synesthetes, it’s is an everyday affliction, or blessing.

Are synesthetes on a permanent acid trip? Did lysergic acid diethylamide turn Jeff into a temporary synesthete? Not quite. Synesthetes do not slip into the ozone. After Jeff’s magical mystery tour of music he did slip into the ozone. It’s much like drifting in outer space, with no form but only void. It lasts for hours. It’s not always pleasant. It’s the main reason emotionally unstable people should never take acid.

Travel in the ozone strips identity. You’re not certain there’s anything left of you. You’re not sure there ever was a “you”. Profundity gambols promiscuously with the mundane. Cartoon characters dance with monsters and saints. Quotidian realities reveal nexus to cosmic mystery.

It’s disconcerting, sometimes it’s scary.

Some of it’s nonsense.

The clutter of ridiculous images probably comes from the residue of cultural garbage that has accumulated in our heads. Years of sitcoms, formulaic movies, and Walt Disney romanticism, have confounded cogent thought with trivial association.

This will take some time to sort out.

Some hours later, Jeff descends from the ozone. The room is still iridescent and pulsing in slow motion. The music, which was set on continuous replay, is still geometrically glorious. The only difference; not as intensely as before.

Jeff tries to pry the nonsense of his ozone trip from what might be useful revelation.

Jeff moves to the front of his apartment to sit and think. He watches the traffic below. The traffic light changes from red to yellow to green with overwhelming bursts of color that saturate street, buildings, and cars. The cars start and stop in robotic obedience to the lights. They do this even when there’s only one car at the light. Jeff watches in fascination.

To most, it’s an everyday sight; just returned from the ozone; it’s spectacle.

Dawn is breaking. Jeff is feeling almost normal again. He decides to go out for breakfast. The ground meat in the sausage is squirming a little. The scrambled eggs quiver. Jeff pretends not to notice. He eats them, anyway. He notices the other customers pretending too, not about the movement in the food, but to each other. Their conversations sounds phony, calculated.

Jeff leaves a tip and goes to the counter to pay the bill. He exchanges a few pleasantries with the cashier. They both sound like they’re reading lines from a play.

If people could hear themselves speak, they probably wouldn’t talk at all.

Jeff decides it’s an effect of the acid. It is, but it is not hallucination. The main effect of LSD is amplification of reality. We really do ”strut and fret our hour upon the stage”.

Acid makes it apparent. Once noticed, it’s impossible not to notice.

The popular belief is that taking LSD makes people imagine crazy things that aren’t really there. The truth is opposite. LSD puts a magnifying glass to what was always there. When the trip is over, everything experienced remains, only not nearly as dramatically.

This is the value of the so-called hallucinogenics.

Mescaline, peyote, psilocybin, and the most popular and mildest of them all, cannabis (also known as marijuana, weed, pot, grass, ganja, etc.) all do much the same thing – They interrupt the brain’s normal function of screening stimuli so there’s never too much at any one time. This is a useful brain function. It allows daily life to proceed without incapacitating confusion. It’s also why taking hallucinations should be reserved for times when you’ve nothing else that needs doing.

LSD - Lysergic acid diethylamide was cooked up in a lab, the other “hallucinogens” grow naturally from God’s good earth. People have been ingesting them for millennia. Any real problem would have shown up by now.

Drug problems are mostly limited to human manipulation. Peruvian natives chewed coca leaves for centuries with only benevolent results. That changed for the worst when the coca leaves were processed into cocaine, then into crack. The same is true of opium when processed into heroin.

LSD is probably the only man-made hallucinogen that is safe, though because of its power it should always be used carefully.

Since hallucinigens don’t produce hallucinations, but only exaggerations, Psychedelics is a more accurate word for these drugs. Psychedelics produce altered states of consciousness that magnify normal reality.

Marijuana is the modest country cousin to the other psychedelics/hallucinigens.

Jeff continued his research into mind-altering substances for several years. He had settled on once a month for acid trips. More than that resulted in lesser effect. He also tried mescaline, which is the active ingredient of the peyote cactus, and psilocybin, which is the active ingredient of psilocybin mushrooms - also known as magic mushrooms.

Mescaline and psilocybin are similar to LSD, though not as strong. They do have their own charms. Mescaline is more colorful, psilocybin is more meditative.

These are Jeffs well researched opinions.

Some years after Jeff’s first trip, his friend, Jimmy, graduated collage and moved to another state. That, and increasingly adulterated street-drugs, caused Jeff to abandon his research. Also, he’d discovered all he had set out to discover.

Jeff still used marijuana a few times each week, but it wasn’t for research. Marijuana was now a comfortable companion for relaxation and introspection.

It was a humble reliable amplifier of reality.

Quiet and useful.

Nobody ever robbed a gas station while high on marijuana.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com