Prelude, December 31, 1971
It was new year's eve. I was sixteen years old (two weeks shy of seventeen) and a senior in high school. Since the age of fifteen, my friends and I had been using LSD and other psychedelics off and on. I had probably tripped at least 20 or 30 times by then.
Our 'set and setting' had always been one of 'cool'. It was just about the rushes, the visuals, the being stoned. There was no real exploration; there was instead a rigorous program of social control that would earn you a reprimand if you seemed to drift off into anything too "far out". And there certainly wasn't any introspection. Underneath it all, of course, was a deep fear of losing control.
That night I had been apparently ditched by one set of friends who had made some plans without me - that would have been my first choice - so I was instead with another group: one a bit more avowedly inclined to a genuine "hippie" world view (as opposed to the more prevalent "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" mentality of my crowd). I was up for action and had some acid or maybe it was mescaline. I persuaded one of my friends to drop with me. We had never tripped together before, and he seemed reluctant, but I prevailed - only we snorted it (it must have been acid) and after ten minutes he changed his mind and tried to blow it all out of his nose. We had no experience with this batch and there was a vague suspicion that it was on the weak side.
Anyway, we wound up going to a party … it seemed to me that I was not getting off. My memory of the party is primarily one of sitting with two or three other guys and drinking a half gallon of Almaden wine between us and smoking "several" joints. Eventually midnight rolled around, there was champagne, a hash pipe was passed around. I remember I had to pee so I went outside. Naturally, it was cold - I think this gave me a bit of a shock. Around this time, I realized "gee, I guess the acid did kick in" but I was so otherwise drunk and stoned that it was just another part of the toxic brew I had concocted.
I remember a girl being pushed down the stairs, then her nose bleeding. Something about the whole scene in that dark corner led me to think they were using smack. It was creepy.
Finally, somewhere between midnight and one, my gang seemed to be leaving, heading back to my friend S.'s house. I grabbed one of my friends and together we drove back. The party had been on the far side of town. I was driving my parent's car; and I realized I was completely out of it; the car seemed to be driving itself, and we had no idea where we were - each fork in the road seemed the same; there seemed to be almost no connection between my brain, the steering wheel, and the road, yet at length, we managed to arrive safely, somewhat surprised and impressed. The horse knows the way, I guess.
I remember being inside for a bit, then going outside to try and join a circle of friends who were smoking a joint (my friend's parents were home, they were "cool" but not so cool we could smoke pot in the house).
There were four or five of them in circle standing in the snow about twenty feet from the house. I strode forward eagerly: and then, about eight feed away from them, I lunged to the ground, vomiting … more or less at their feet. (A classic "hurl".)
I continued vomiting and was brought into the house, into the bathroom. My friends brother very kindly held me and comforted me.
It was an unbelievably miserable situation. I couldn't stop vomiting - I simultaneously wanted to be taken to the hospital and given morphine so I could pass out, and was terrified that that would happen. By now all the hallmarks of the psychedelic were present in the sense of hyper awareness - the drug was breaking through the alcohol stupor.
At the same time, something in me was hanging on … I had just read John Lilly's "The Center of the Cyclone" which I had received for Christmas just a week ago. He discusses his own LSD journeys including serious 'bad trips'. One thing he stressed is the necessity to not "black out" during extreme negative experiences: to remain conscious so that one can learn and imprint the lessons of the hell experience.
And so I hung on, clinging to the toilet until the vomiting had exhausted itself. My friends' parents kindly put me to bed, where I stayed for three days, and also very kindly told my parents that I had probably just "mixed beer and hard liquor" that night. During those three days was semi delirious. In a way it was like a modern-day re-enactment of a three day "temple sleep" initiation. Apparently, on the third day, I rose.
But the whole thing was really, really awful.
Spring
It was either late February or early March when my friend R. planned to host the closing night cast party for the high school players spring production ("David and Lisa"). This party was going to be different than most cast parties, in that his parents were going to be away, vacationing in Puerto Rico.
I had tickets to see that night's performance, and a date with my new girlfriend, K. - the first girlfriend I had been really sexual with, although we hadn't "done it". She had been sick with the flu and I hadn't seen here in about a week. She was also a few years younger than the friends I generally hung around with.
The day of the closing performance came, a Saturday. I and a couple of other friends were at R.'s house that morning. Since his parents were away, it was of course our "hang-out" magnet. Some of our girl friends (not girlfriends) were there. They were all stoners and acid users like us. In our senior year, we had begun co-ed tripping, as opposed to the earlier boy-gang tripping when we started in 10th grade.
Sometime that morning, someone had the idea that we drop at the party that night. Someone knew a kid who had hundreds of tabs (or barrels) of orange sunshine. I remember we scraped together some money and drove to where he was, down the beach a mile or so. I remember him counting out the twenty or so hits we bought from a baggie chock full of orange barrels.
I think when we got back, some of the girls must have wanted to drop right away - they were just hanging out and weren't go to the show that night. It seemed like a good idea, and I suppose that since it was still early I figured I could get it together to pick up my girlfriend later, although I suppose I also didn't really think about it but rather just went with the moment. So much for my date with K. I suppose I thought I would be stable by the time I was supposed to meet her … oh well.
None of us had done this particular batch before, so we didn't really know what to expect. The girls may have done half a tab each but I did a whole.
I remember watching TV, I think a Marx Brothers movie was on, lying on the couch in the little TV area adjacent the kitchen. After fifteen or twenty minutes I began to experience the typical wave of nausea and dread.
Meanwhile one of the girls, G., had gone upstairs to lie down in the dark listening to music while she got off. I went upstairs. I don't recall my state walking upstairs, but as I walked in the door, I suddenly felt my head swimming with thoughts that had become living, elemental beings, rushing up my spine and bubbling out of my head. I felt as if I were one step away from floating out of body.
I had never experienced anything like it in my whole life, yet it seemed immediately valid - something was happening to my inner psychic structure. It was, of course, very disorienting … I wandered over to the empty bed. I was in my friend R.'s bedroom; he had a pair of twin beds. G. was lying on the other bed.
I sensed the presence of what seemed to be a dream, alongside of my awareness of the darkened room. I felt the presence of otherworldly beings who seemed to be shifting through the images of a futuristic, science-fiction dream.
My eyes were closed, but I could "see" in the space above me on the bed. It seemed a group of beings were huddling around me, looking at me, consulting each other. I had the distinct impression I was being examined by a team of doctors who were trying to figure out how to "fix" me. I'm not sure what the defect was - that my soul had suddenly spilled out of my body, or some deeper fault. I was reminded of being in the hospital - I had been injured badly or sick several times as a child, requiring hospitalization.
Then I started to "dream" - that is, experience an imagination. It seemed that my body was a tree. The branches were dense and leafy, and glowing with light. It seemed the branches of the tree must have been my brain, the trunk my spinal column. My awareness moved to the ends of the branches of the tree, like a wind creating a wave through the branches, or like a squirrel running to the ends of the tree.
Then something really incredible happened (… although things were already pretty incredible): I was aware of G. lying in the other bed a few feet away from me. Suddenly, my dreamy awareness of her became like a wave rolling towards me: all at once, her image was before me, as if she had popped into my head - only now of course, my "head" was spilling out of me --formed of light, partaking of the radiance of our tree-bodies. Somehow her thoughts communicated themselves to me, as if they were her spoken word, and she "said" (that is, thought) words to the effect "isn't this cool!", smiling and glowing, a rush of enthusiasm bursting out of her - the "this" being the shared consciousness-of-light, the dawning expansion. I can call it dream-like to describe its flavor, but it seemed absolutely real; more real than anything.
I dropped the vision. I stood up. I was suddenly aware of multiple, disconnected planes of my being, levels of myself, domains of energy: part of me was a pimply hormone-laced teenager, on drugs in a dark room next to a pretty teenage girl (and scared to death of it); part of me was an eternal spirit who had just realized a timeless, light-filled soul connection - that may have been only a dream … and part of me was just a confused and ill-prepared bystander, trying to make sense of it all.
"G. … " I spoke. She turned and answered.
"What?"
I felt her presence. What did I want? What did she want? Did we experience something together, or was that only me? I thought "Is this a sexual situation?" The contact had an element of gender-polarity and delight. The spirit form that had burst upon me was definitely presenting its feminine aspect. At the same time, I was pretty sure that the fleshy load I was dragging behind me was probably NOT an object of desire to the consciousness that would answer my words.
"Nothing … " I said, trailing off. I stood up and began to wander. I can't put what follows into any exact sequence.
I went downstairs to the kitchen; I saw M. She smiled appreciatively at my stoned and confused appearance. Suddenly, I felt as if my body would no longer cohere; that I was composed of unconnected particles that at any moment would simply fall into a pile of dust. The fact that I still appeared to cohere at all was simply a habit.
"What's keeping me together?" I asked M. It was an anxious question. Puzzled but amused, she smiled and gestured with her flattened hand, cutting the air in front of me like a knife and tracing a line from the top of my head down to my feet, right along my vertical axis.
"You're - you!" she said, emphatically and with some slight exasperation. And she laughed. She led me through the sliding glass doors onto the large lawn in back of the house.
Her eyes sparkled with energy. Everything was throbbing with energy. Although it was dark, everything had a subtle, electric glow. It seemed to me that both she and G. were possessed of greater knowledge of this expanded state I was now in, full of bewilderment. I imagined (or hoped) that they would guide me through what seemed to be turning into a journey of initiation.
The lawn was littered with golf balls. R.'s father would practice back there. M. picked one up, and threw it in the air. It created intense and powerful "trails", and seemed to impart an echo of that energy to each of the balls I could see lying, small glints of light in the dark field. It seemed there were dozens and dozens of them, and they were all possessed of some elemental energy. It seemed as if I were surrounded by psychedelic crickets in the form of golf balls.
I wandered back inside. I was seriously, seriously confused and deranged. I felt myself coming to pieces; I could no longer cohere internally.
I walked back upstairs, towards R.'s room. The record player was playing - "Bitch" from Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones. A very raunchy song, if ever there was one: dripping with sex, and incidentally a real favorite of G.'s.
As I walked down the hall, it seemed that I was hearing noises from L.'s room (she was R.'s younger sister). It was the last door on the right before R.'s bedroom door at the end of the hall. Somehow, I began to imagine that an orgy had begun in L.'s room - an orgy of such energy that I could feel it outside the hall. I could feel the sexual-psychic energy of my friends emanating from the room; I could feel it intersecting, interacting, copulating, interpenetrating.
I felt excluded; I felt afraid; I felt drawn to it. I opened the door - nothing, only some of the other people hanging out in there - maybe my friend T.'s younger brother.
I think I began to wander between L.'s room and R.'s, which was still dark. I seemed to take into my soul the whole "Bitch" side of Sticky Fingers - take it on, identify with it, but not sure how. I especially felt the song "Dead Flowers" was about me, about me dying - I began to feel that I was dying. And "Sister Morphine" - I got myself all tangled into the self-destructive guilt of drug use (in my case, LSD, but it seemed like the same thing). I would hear the words "… the scream of the ambulance" and think it referred to me; that an ambulance was coming for me. I remember feeling a sense of deep loss in my connection to mother if I was dying - that it would make my mother very sad. I didn't want to do that.
The side kept playing over and over - I would wander in and out, becoming more lost, confused, and depressed.
At one point, in L.s room, G. and M. started talking to each other in a very excited, gibberish way - at least, it seemed like gibberish to me, but at the same time, it seemed that they were speaking a language that encoded deep levels of meaning; and as they spoke and gestured, energy would flow back and forth between them and inside them, traversing multiple levels of their being and touching each with a communication payload before circuiting back. It seemed they were engaged in a deep and very enjoyable communication.
At length I wound up lying on the floor in Leslie's room. I had a series of "imaginations" that haunted me. I felt like my life was something that had been propelled, like a rocket ship, out of the spiritual world, out of the void, out of the source of creation - propelled to a certain destination, with a set amount of fuel - psychic fuel - and that the rocket had veered horribly off course, and the fuel was spent. The target may have been extra-terrestrial; away from the earth, perhaps even the moon - in those days (1972) we were still moon travelers.
I thought I would need to be reborn - and the thought of living through my infancy and childhood filled my with dread, as the dread of an onerous task. I had waited so long to get to the age I was (17) -- I didn't want to have to give up and start over -- wait another thousand years, even! I then though I would become a tree "again" - that my consciousness would sleep (like a tree) for a thousand years, existing, growing unconsciously, before I had another chance to be reborn.
It had grown later, others were wandering in for the party, although the cast had not arrived yet. M.'s older brother and some of his friends (they were in a band together) came in for a moment, saw me wasted on the floor, and started smiling and laughing - it was friendly, compassionate, and seemingly knowing. I thought "these guys are more experienced with acid then me; they've been through this". I suppose it gave me some hope but I wondered if they really knew what I was going through.
T.'s younger brother and his friend came in. To my expanded, clairvoyant, sight, they seemed like nothing other than two minor luciferic imps. I could see raw, sulfuric horny teenage sexual energy pouring out of them. They actually seemed to have little horns. Meanwhile, they had decided to start messing with my head. They must have sensed that they were acting out scenes from my unconscious, and played along with it. It's hard to say whether I should call it good natured or spiteful. I don't recall what they said, exactly, but it was very threatening and seemed to refer directly to the mounting existential dread and anxiety that I was feeling.
I lay on the floor, all but paralyzed and all but catatonic. There was a large sliding glass door behind me, to a balcony. It was very dark outside: and the darkness out the window assumed cosmic proportions - I was staring into some infinite, black void of existence - a soul space wherein all souls were contained. One could see across the voidness into the souls of others: one could feel that there was a spiritual connection between all souls in this darkness.
And then from the far distance I felt the approach of some infinitely distant, higher being - a being whose gaze embraced the interior of all souls on earth below, through the darkness. I felt its gaze approaching my soul, as if it were scanning the souls of millions and millions of beings, coming closer. In some way, I was beckoning it, yet at the same time, it terrified me: I felt (I knew) that I would be obliterated if it should pierce me directly with its gaze, if it came closer. And so I bid it away; or rather, I turned away from it.
It seemed to me that this was God.
And then in the corner of the room, there was a hanging chair. It was formed of wicker, as a basket; it was egg-shaped, and was suspended from the ceiling by a spring.
In turning away from the higher being, I found the chair - suspended in the room like a large egg - had somehow become the embodiment of the penetrating, annihilating force that I feared - that it was standing before me, threatening me, rebuking me. I felt one with it: something flowed between us: it tore open the three dimensional space of the room and leaked in the void, the space, my soul.
I was both fascinated by it and turned away. I can still see it, "staring" at me. I now interpret it quite clearly as the "guardian of the threshold" the "double" or "shadow" self.
Eventually, I was able to stand again, and begin to speak somewhat more coherently - the acid was beginning to wear off, although I would be up all night. The party was now going in full swing, and a bunch of other people dropped acid that night - although I have no idea what any of them experienced. I probably smoked some pot, listened to some music - whatever.
By morning, I felt cleansed and renewed, but still mostly confused, and of course, crashing.
I'm pretty sure I mad some babbling attempt to communicate what I had seen, which, of course, went nowhere.
I know when morning came around, a few of us - including G. - gathered in R.'s older brother's room and tried to summarize something. It seemed that others were sensing that something had transpired for everyone overnight. Maybe I tried to say something about finding a way to acknowledge we all had a soul connection. There was a shared sense of something having happened, and I remember G. saying "maybe David's right" - about what, I'm not sure.
