5. LSD-Day

But, I imagine, what you’ve come here to read is not New Age gibberings or strange tales of plump holy Indian women with apples, or long ago pointless love stories, or even of sheep-chasing Israelis, but of my strange and curious re-acquainting with the world of what I’d love to call “edible spiritual tools” but what pretty much everyone else calls “drugs.”

And so, ladies and gentle rugs, I give you...

But wait: there’s got to be a back story – there’s always a back story – and where does this one begin? Yes, with the infamous – to me, and maybe two other people – mad five-tab night running round Wembley in my boxer shorts going acid crazy. I’ve thought and talked about that a lot over the years. For a long time I described it as “the best and worst night of my life.” I guess it had a pretty big impact on me, changed something in my reality that perhaps bore fruition several years later, after some pretty dark times, with my so-called ‘spiritual awakening’ down in Mexico. Indeed, Shawn once told me he thought that was the first time I experienced God and I do believe he was right. If that was the case: powerful stuff.

Anyways, I tried LSD once more after that, in New York, but by ‘99 I was all into my spiritual path and had sworn off not only drink and drugs but also meat and caffeine. These days I’ve also become abstinent from all refined sugar products and chocolate: not through any spiritual reason or anything, just that they don’t work for me, the pros far outweigh the cons, and they no longer feel good. The more I’ve got into this path – of spirituality, of a life lived with awareness, in the pursuit of happiness – the more I’ve realised what a great guiding principle that it. Saves a lot of hassle and wonderings. It’s just what works at any given moment. Things that worked in the past stop working further on down the line. Things that work for other people, that make them feel good, maybe don’t work for me. And vice versa. Personal choice and it varies from person to person, from time to time. Nothing writ in stone or pronounced down from up on high.

But that was me: I’ve built a nice sense of identity out of my straighted-edgeness. It’s healthy for body, mind and soul – and maybe for ego too. I suppose it could be said I became a bit rigid in it – but then again, I did try alcohol and meat every three years or so, to kind of update my feeling about them, but I could never find the appeal. Alcohol just made me feel giddy and off balance and then a little bit woozy and sad. Meat tasted – surprise surprise – like dead animals, and eating dead animals feels a bit weird to me. I don’t miss it one bit. Though I did miss fish and eggs during my year as a vegan. My body definitely thanked me when I got back onto those.

Drugs, on the other hand – well drugs were a whole other matter. Seemed to me like a loser thing to do. Born out of misery and a desire to escape. Bad habits and mental degradation. People I certainly wasn’t attracted to and didn’t want to emulate. Pot-smokers all seemed quite dark and dull, and being stoned didn’t look like anything appealing. Just makes you stupid, dulls awareness and probably has some long-term ill-effects. I did meet some people maybe ten years back who took acid and mushrooms – this was down in Canterbury, a bit of a hippy hotspot – but though I kind of interested in the substances, given past experiences, again the people weren’t the kind of people I wanted to follow, a bit messed up and dark. I figured that was sign enough to shun it and left it well alone.

Things changed for me with iboga, I guess. It was 2008 when I first heard of it but not till 2011 that I actually got around to trying it. I dilly-dallied over that for a long time, really reluctant to dabble with ‘an artificial substance’, even though it was purely in the name of spiritual exploration. Everything I read seemed good but I’d been so against that kind of thing for so long I found it hard to let myself go with it, even though something about it felt very right. In the end, I suppose you could say I prayed over it: though the reality was that I just thought about it lots, and then believed that signs and synchronicities were telling me it was okay. I kept seeing the words “root” and “root healing” everywhere. And I had a dream about encountering iboga in a really wonderful way. I took it as a green light and did it. It was great.

Still, that was iboga. And, sure, maybe I’d give ayuahasca and peyote a go now – that door had been opened: a door that I’d kept closed when given the opportunity to try both a couple of years before – but everything else felt somehow different to me. Weird, then, that I went from that place to necking nine tabs of LSD in just under eighteen months...

It starts with coming back to Leeds, and a two-pronged attack. Number one, I befriend these two students – squash buddies, initially – who have dabbled in a number of different substances. They’re pretty clean-living, switched-on guys. Very aware, very happy, in touch with their emotions and interested in the possibilities of spiritual realities and we really click. I like these guys. And though they go out and take ecstasy they still turn up for squash the next day and play a decent game and there doesn’t seem to be any comedown, any dependence, any of that darkness. They’re doing it sensibly. They’re not trying to run away from anything. And we talk about these things a lot.

Number two, I get all obsessed with the Beatniks, and read tons of books, and then move on from there into the early hippy days and in particular Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. And, of course, LSD is a big part of their trip, and really, perhaps, the prime driving force behind the whole hippy movement. I read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test again and start to wonder. And then I watch the movie Magic Trip and it really fires my imagination.

There’s a scene in there where they’re off by a lake in Canada, I think, and one of the women narrators is talking about them taking this drug called IT-290, “even better than acid, very calm.” Kesey calls it, “the Rolls-Royce of psychedelics. Well that piqued my interest: I’d never heard of IT-290. Some months later I googled it and found that, wowie zowie, it was a legal substance you could still buy online. These days they call it AMT. And then I looked into it further – mainly reading Erowid reports – and I figured it must be something different. People were describing horror trips – hospitalisations – freak outs: AMT didn’t sound like IT-290 at all. Disappointing.

Still, I couldn’t get it out of my head and a few months back, on the toss of a coin, I thought, what the hell, and bought some. At the very least I could test it on my friends. But then on the toss of another coin I ate a fairly healthy dose one evening – about 42mg – and to my pleasant surprise I found I liked it. It was calm. It was mellow. Nothing much happened really, except a general feeling of happiness, of focus, of contentment. I took it at 7.30 and by 11 I was tired and went to bed. Then at midnight I woke up to a gentle pattern of visualisations in front of my closed eyes – very organic, yet geometrically, mathematically perfect – and lay there for a few hours having nice thoughts and feeling good. Nothing mindblowing. Nothing scary. A good introduction. But –

“We’re gonna need a bigger dose,” as Rob Schneider said to Bobby Short in that film about the fish.

I tried it another time – same amount; didn’t want too much as it was fairly late in the evening – and it had the same effect: nothing unpleasant or different to how I normally operate, just a general feeling of contentment and quietitude. I tidied my flat and then sat and sewed for a few hours and then went to bed. Didn’t keep me up this time either. Kind of odd because that’s far from what the people on Erowid were describing. But I have my theories to explain that...

1. The thing about mind-expanding drugs: It’s all about the size of your mind to begin with, right? Listen, I’m not gloating but the fact is that I’ve done a whole bunch of stuff in the spiritual and the psychological and the emotional realm of things and, among many other wonderful effects that all that has on you, making your mind expand is certainly one of them. When John Milton told me after my 28-day vision quest, “you won’t need drugs where you’re going,” I don’t think he was telling me that I shouldn’t take them – at least, I don’t think that now; I thought exactly that for years – I think he was merely pointing out that they wouldn’t have much effect. About one of the wonderful stories one can read on LSD is this one, told by Ram Dass/Richard Alpert about one of his first meetings with his guru, Maharajji:

“In 1967 when I first came to India, I brought with me a supply of LSD, hoping to find someone who might understand more about these substances than we did in the West. When I had met Maharajji (Neem Karoli Baba), after some days the thought had crossed my mind that he would be a perfect person to ask.

The next day after having that thought, I was called to him and he asked me immediately, “Do you have a question?”

Of course, being before him was such a powerful experience that I had completely forgotten the question I had had in my mind the night before. So I looked stupid and said, “No, Maharajji, I have no question.”

He appeared irritated and said, ”Where is the medicine?”

I was confused but Bhagavan Dass suggested, “Maybe he means the LSD.” I asked and Maharajji nodded. The bottle of LSD was in the car and I was sent to fetch it.

When I returned I emptied the vial of pills into my hand. In addition to the LSD there were a number of other pills for this and that – diarrhoea, fever, a sleeping pill, and so forth. He asked about each of these. He asked if they gave powers. I didn’t understand at the time and thought that by “powers” perhaps he meant physical strength. I said, “No.” Later, of course, I came to understand that the word he had used – “siddhis” – means psychic powers.

Then he held out his hand for the LSD. I put one pill on his palm. Each of these pills was about three hundred micrograms of very pure LSD – a solid dose for an adult. He beckoned for more, so I put a second pill in his hand – six hundred micrograms. Again he beckoned and I added yet another, making the total dosage 900 micrograms – certainly not a dose for beginners. Then he threw all the pills into his mouth. My reaction was one of shock mixed with fascination of a social scientist eager to see what would happen. He allowed me to stay for an hour – and nothing happened.

Nothing whatsoever.

He just laughed at me.

The whole thing had happened very fast and unexpectedly. When I returned to the United States in 1968 I told many people about this acid feat. But there had remained in me a gnawing doubt that perhaps he had been putting me on and had thrown the pills over his shoulder or palmed them, because I hadn’t actually seen them go into his mouth.

Three years later, when I was back in India, he asked me one day, ”Did you give me medicine when you were in India last time?”

“Yes.”

“Did I take it?” he asked. (Ah, there was my doubt made manifest!)

“I think you did.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh! Jao!” and he sent me off for the evening.

The next morning I was called over to the porch in front of his room, where he sat in the mornings on a tucket. He asked, “Have you got any more of that medicine?”

It just so happened that I was carrying a small supply of LSD for “just in case,” and this was obviously it. In the bottle were five pills of three hundred micrograms each. One of the pills was broken. I placed them on my palm and held them out to him. He took the four unbroken pills. Then, one by one, very obviously and very deliberately, he placed each one in his mouth and swallowed it – another unspoken thought of mine now answered.

As soon as he had swallowed the last one, he asked, “Can I take water?”

“Yes.”

“Hot or cold?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He started yelling for water and drank a cup when it was brought.

Then he asked,” How long will it take to act?”

“Anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour.”

He called for an older man, a long-time devotee who had a watch, and Maharajji held the man’s wrist, often pulling it up to him to peer at the watch.

Then he asked, “Will it make me crazy?”

That seemed so bizarre to me that I could only go along with what seemed to be a gag. So I said, “Probably.” And then we waited.

After some time he pulled the blanket over his face, and when he came out after a moment his eyes were rolling and his mouth was ajar and he looked totally mad. I got upset. What was happening? Had I misjudged his powers? After all, he was an old man (though how old I had no idea), and I had let him take twelve hundred micrograms. Maybe last time he had thrown them away and then he read my mind and was trying to prove to me he could do it, not realizing how strong the “medicine” really was.

Guilt and anxiety poured through me. But when I looked at him again he was perfectly normal and looking at the watch. At the end of an hour it was obvious nothing had happened. His reactions had been a total put-on. And then he asked, “Have you got anything stronger?” I didn’t. Then he said, “These medicines were used in Kullu Valley long ago. But yogis have lost that knowledge. They were used with fasting. Nobody knows now. To take them with no effect, your mind must be firmly fixed on God. Others would be afraid to take. Many saints would not take this.” And he left it at that.

When I asked him if I should take LSD again, he said, “It should not be taken in a hot climate. If you are in a place that is cool and peaceful, and you are alone and your mind is turned toward God, then you may take the yogi medicine.”

I didn’t read that until after my recent acid experience. I wish I’d read it before though: it says so much about LSD, and the ways to use it, and the reality of the saint. His mind is already stretched to the infinite: it is like dropping a large rock into the middle of the ocean: it causes no noticeable effect on the whole. But our minds are like puddles, small and cute, and would be obliterated by that rock...which is basically what happens.

Still, spiritual practice has given me something. Which takes me to my next point:

2. Man, those people on Erowid are some major first-class nutters! I mean, there are one or two that talk a bit of sense but, almost every single one of them is some combination of: young; American; troubled; and totally reckless when it comes to mind-altering substances. I swear, it doesn’t matter what they take, invariably half-way through they will either “smoke a bowl” or try to go to the store to buy some beers. Half the time they’re mixing drugs anyway – just throwing in a casual bit of ketamine or something for good measure. And almost always they’re hanging out with friends, at some party, buzzing around in cars, up all night. It’s no wonder they have some bum trips and end up in emergency rooms. They’re just not doing it right.

Here’s what I wanted to do with the LSD: take it alone; not go outside; not interact with others; not look at things and get into hallucinations and visuals; not get silly; not listen to music; not write or play guitar; just be inside myself in real observatory and internal way and do it calmly and soberly and try and let it give me something wonderful and long-term and real. I wanted to take it early in the morning, so I wouldn’t mess up my sleep (he says, now typing at 3.45am!) and to mainly just sit inside a nest I had made in my tent, which I’d put up at the end of my bed. Honestly, all that other stuff – watching your hand leave trails and giggling with your mates – is just a waste of good LSD.

But I digress: the main point is the quality of one’s mind. The guys on Erowid seem like they’ve got a lot of shit going on inside. Personally, I’d want that shit worked out of me before I did something like this. Or maybe it helps: I dunno. But I’ve come to the conclusion that substances like LSD aren’t scary, it’s people’s minds that are scary: all you get is your own mind coming back at you. People get paranoid and afraid and freakout because they’ve got paranoia and fear inside themselves already. Also, it’s powerful medicine and you have to have a real strong and collected mind to deal with and understand some of the things that arise. I had a moment where I could see the floor start to form itself into bugs – and I just knew if I had a different mind those bugs would have come alive and maybe started crawling all over me. But because I had no interest in that sort of thing, and knew they weren’t bugs anyway, just visual distortions, I looked a little closer, watched them all disappear, and got back to my meditations. That’s where the real gold is. Because of the work I’ve done over the years there wasn’t a single moment of bad in the whole thing. Which is in stark contrast to what I experienced some eighteen years ago. Just like when I went to the monastery and spent a week in my own head and saw that it was all good, taking that acid really does appear to have shown me that my psyche is pretty much cleaned.

I think the old heads had a term for all this: “set and setting.” Set being your mindset and setting being your physical location. It all depends what you’re after, I suppose, but a calm and clear mind is a must as far as I’m concerned. I even held it in my hands and said The Twenty-Third Psalm over it and asked for good and kind angels and spirits to be with me, nothing of bad, only light and love. Why not? It can’t hurt. And maybe there is something in that setting your intention stuff after all. As for location: well, yeah, it’s a bit kind of duh to be away from “bad vibes” and not out there on the street with scary stuff around, etcetera. But, then again, it’s not like I didn’t do that in my silly boy youth. ;-)

And so we go to the trip. How it came about, I don’t recall right now: it was, I guess, a gentle guiding rope of hippies and AMT and modern-day students that drew me in, finally, after all these years, to that moment of sitting in Harry’s kitchen, after many conversations over many months, knowing full well that he had nine hits in his refrigerator – and all the talk about me saying, “I think I’d need a lot” – to finally a week ago on Sunday him saying, “well do you want it?” and me saying, “yes.” He gave me six. They were in a bit of tinfoil. I took them home and tossed a coin and the coin said, “no.” Fair enough, I thought: I was tired from reffing and it was past dark. And then in the morning I sprang out of bed, 7.30am, tossed the coin again and when the coin said, “yes,” without hesitation popped them in my mouth.

Six hits. I guess people usually think twice before doing that. But I knew I’d need a lot. And I knew I’d done five before, way back when. And I was pretty sure that it wasn’t as strong now as it was in the nineties. But mainly: if you’re going to do something you might as well do it right. I’d seen Harry and his friend maybe six hours after they’d had one each and it didn’t look like anything. Not zonked out of their gourds at all. For me, I’d rather have it big and strong once every ten years than mild and easy and frequent. Like the iboga: double dose or not at all. So six went in and then I got to tidying my flat and awaiting the onset. I felt it pretty quick.

This, now, is where I should get wildly typing (and typing wildly, if you will have it, James Joyce) after that rather tepid and overly long build-up which I hope you’ve all skipped over anyways. What boring words for such a wonderful experience! The thing was...well the thing was, in a nutshell, it was one of the best days of my life. I saw colours and patterns and shapes I’m flabbergasted to know exist somewhere inside myself. Spirals and unfathomable geometry and Inca-style shapes stretching out into infinity, the colours so deep and bright and alive – standard acid colours, really – incrementally and gradually moving through the spectrum and flowing along the whole intricate rollercoaster patterns of lines and shapes. It occurred to me that these colours and patterns have really only been widely seen since computers have been around – so how much more amazing must they have been for people in the fifties, first seeing them, such as the adorable housewife in this video.

The colours and patterns, though, for me – as well as the lovely, lush, whale song-type sounds – were just the beginning, the basic level of the experience. The background music, as it were. The real thing was the inner journey: the voyage into the infinite. This is where words fail me: this finite, limited computer of the brain – wonderful though it is – unable to describe the depth of the ecstasy – the bliss – the realisations – the – goddamn, I almost typed truth there but –

Well what is it about that acid reality that feels so much more real than everyday reality? That sense that even though you’re going out of your mind, what you’re experiencing is what life is really all about. I got the sense of –

Everything was so small, and so big. Everything I could think of – if I stretched my mind to its limits and encapsulated everything that it had ever experienced and held and known – it stretched to the edge of the universe – and then shrunk right back down again and I saw that it was an atom in a grain of sand on the toe of an unbelievably tall statue of a goddess who was in herself –

This whole universe of ours. It was just as I’d imagined it as a child. So big, so small, so –

And all the things I’d ever done. And all of the above just imponderables, really – but what stays with me, and seems of lasting benefit, was how small in the vastness of infinity was everything I’ve ever got bent out of shape over. All my huffings and puffings over women. All the palavers we make about sex and who’s sleeping with who and how we want to keep people and things all to ourselves. It was all so unbelievably funny! I laughed at it as though it was a grain of sand that I’d somehow made the most important thing in my life. I laughed a lot – not silly laughing, on the whole, though there was some of that – but because it was like I was getting the cosmic joke all over again. That this life we’ve all bought into and had sold to us since the birth of our bodies – about what it’s supposed to be, about what we’re supposed to do – well, that it just wasn’t anything like that. But no sadness in how wrong we’ve gone, just hilarity that practicality the entirety of a supposedly smart species could make such a mistake. I knew in that moment that we were born to be kings and that we’d made ourselves paupers. I understand then Amma’s parable about how we come to the king (God) who will give us everything – all his treasures, the whole kingdom – and ask only for a lump of coal. To be honest, it didn’t even seem as grand as a lump of coal: more like a turd. But no judgment in that, just humour. Ee, it really was grand.

I remember contemplating the goal of current British life – to buy your own house; to pay off the mortgage – and it seemed so tiny and ridiculous in the face of all that shining jewellery. I creased up and chortled wildly at the irony of it all.

Everything I was seeing – the shapes and colours – I felt were echoed by man in some way or another, in the delicate stonework of churches, in fireworks, in geometry and paintings, in crowns and jewels and gold – but it all fell short.

The music I was hearing was so perfect, so harmonious...at one point I did pick up my guitar – but even the slightest sense of disharmony was so unappealing, so lacking in comparison.

Harmony was a big part of it. It seemed to me that the natural world, and the inner world – was it the kingdom of heaven? – were so full of harmony, so untainted...and that nearly every man had done, had put into the world, lacked it, was devoid. Such internal beauty and such outward ugliness. War and arguments and concrete and traffic. Everything covered over in brick. And why so much grey when you have such a range of colours available to you?

But not real time for negativity: I was overwhelmed with the sheer physical ecstasy of the whole thing as well. What an experience! Gratitude poured from my being. What a gift. Such ecstasy and bliss. Such...

Well, words, of course, are failing to do it justice. I don’t know why I’m even trying – but I guess I can’t help it, there’s something in me that’s still drawn to this. In fact, even in the midst of it I was struck by an urge to record, to share, and even though I tried – well, I was quickly taken to the realisation that it was impossible, reminded of the experience of the Buddha upon enlightenment: “man, I’ve gotta share this with people – but, wow, they’re never gonna believe it.”

It’s true. I don’t feel it now ‘cos it’s a week ago and I’ve stayed up way too late and it was artificially induced but, holy cow, I really believe in that internal world of ecstasy and bliss and beauty and love. It was all right there. Right here. There was nothing bad about it. And everything in this life that I’ve hitherto known absolutely paled in comparison. I saw my life as a turd – lovingly, gently, ‘cos I didn’t know what it was, I was a growing boy – and I saw how I’d been trying to polish it all these years. Trying to fit in. Trying to make what seemed unworkable work, because that’s what everyone else was trying to do and what was expected of me. I’ve polished it to some extent but – well, “it’s no measure of mental well-being to be considered sane in an insane world – and all I’ve been doing is polishing a turd and, as is natural in such an occupation, I’ve ended up covered in shit. ;-)

In those moments of infinity and overwhelming beauty and ecstasy and the ever-spiralling realisation that even that was just the beginning, that there was no end to this infinite reality of growth and experience and bliss – wow, did I want to make some changes. Nothing meant anything to me. I wanted out of my flat, my life, my possessions. I wanted to be off there somewhere in the world again, away from things, concentrating on the real job in hand, perhaps at the feet of a guru or perhaps just in my canyon in Mexico – me and my navel and the search for that paradise within. Why dwell in greyness and sniffling grey cold when you can be anywhere you choose?

Well, Christ, everything I thought and felt and experienced was just the wonderful hippy parody. Everything was funny. But I’m not talking my thumbs or the pattern on the wall: I’m talking consensus reality – the world – everything I’ve ever thought and every thought of everyone else I’ve ever heard. Now I know why the gurus smile so much: what occurred to me, right there in the middle of my greatest ever physical ecstasy, was that whatever I was experiencing was like 0.000001% of what they felt ALL THE TIME. No wonder Amma’s happy. Good God: it boggles the mind. It was such a really good day.

Sex. Sexual energy. Felt it lots. My ex came over later and we slept together. If anyone had walked in the room they’d have thought she was the one who was high. I felt pretty normal by then – but then when I was with her I got a sense of just exactly how much acid had been coursing through my veins, and I guess she got a contact high off that or something (I had three more at about 2pm, just feeling like I needed to go a bit deeper). She told me she had clarity and peace for like two days after. It really did get transmitted. But earlier in the day, man: wow, anybody coulda had me: the sexual energy was enormous. Blokes could’ve bummed me and I wouldn’t have cared, would have loved it. Everything was wide open and all my paltry notions of boundaries and limitations were gone. I feel like trying everything I ever dreamed of. I feel like bringing the infinite into this world.

All this does no justice to any of it. It was heaven. It was bliss. It was staggering and startling and just so, so amusing. And, really, it was just the beginning. I tried not to call anyone but I couldn’t help but want to reach out. But then everything I said did nothing to express it – like this – and my words collapsed under the impossibility of it all. I did feel, somewhere in the middle of it, that I squandered an opportunity to reach an even greater depth. It was probably just at the moment where reality was really about to go bye-bye – and being on my own, and being unsure, and being filled with silly stories about death and irresponsibility – I know better now – I turned back and wasted time and precious experience in phone shenanigans and confusions about how to leave the door. I wasn’t sure what would become of me – my body locked away and rotting behind a door no one could get into? Or my body comatosed and exposed in a flat left wide open to marauders and criminals.

So, yeah, despite best intentions I squandered it a bit and maybe didn’t go as deep as I wanted – to reach that place of ‘dot-ness’ that I reached in ’95. To re-understand the totality of that long ago experience: the dot-ness being the ultimate and the ultimate puzzle too. I went beyond – and maybe beyond the beyond – but I didn’t go beyond that, didn’t step outside infinity.

I think I need to do it again. Maybe stronger. Maybe nine or ten in the beginning. Good ones. And be away from all phones, all people, all things to distract me from the task in hand. No eggs or guitars or windows to stare through. Best thing would be a cave. Total dark retreat. Or my tent on a windless moor. Reaching out is all well and noble – but it does stop one reaching in. And now I know for sure that all those urges of wanting to share, record, preserve are just poppycock. There’s nothing you could say, nothing that could really impart. All I’d say is do it. Really, you’d be mad not to. As long as your head’s in the right place, of course. Or maybe not. Mine wasn’t the first time and I do think, ultimately, it brought me good. Just...

Well, typing it hasn’t been perhaps the smartest thing I’ve ever done. But it is what it is. I’d guess you can’t put a dampener on anything truly wonderful and real. But as time goes by...

Yes: I’ll get onto the next bit now. The last bit. The bit before I finally go to bed. It’s 5.14am. It’s kind of strange that I’m still doing all of this...