Albert Hofmann

Ironically enough, three days after my post on the topic of mind-altering substances (Sunday, April 27) ..Albert Hofmann, a Swiss Pharmacologist and foremost expert in the field ..passed-away. He was 102. On April 16, 1943 ~ Albert accidentally ingested the first batch of LSD ever made. He was looking for medication to help improve blood circulation. The event altered the course of his life. He became an expert on psychoactive ingredients in plants all around the world ..including the psilocybin mushroom used in South American Indian ceremonies. He took more than 50 ‘acid trips’ himself ..claiming: “Before then, I had always believed there was only one reality ..under LSD, however, I discovered other realities that were just as real ..if not more real ..than the one I’d been living.” I pay homage to Dr. Hofmann ..a true modern-day pioneer. Although we usually think of ‘pioneers’ as people who discover new frontiers on land or in space ..I think it applies just as much to those who explore the uncharted territories of the mind.

Further investigation

Continued from [link]

That fall, I returned to school with a topic for my ‘senior thesis’ ..I wanted to find a ‘neuro-scientific’ basis for hallucinatory experience. My academic advisors were pleased ..it seemed like I was doing something ‘grounded’ for a change. However, I had another purpose in mind ..I wanted to describe the benefits of the ‘peyote ceremony’ that is practiced in South American Indian cultures ..and suggest how it might be a useful way to understand the behaviour of people like Charlie. I was also beginning to detect a cycle in my own life. It fluctuated between a need for order and stability ..followed by fits of rebellion against order and stability. I think this cycle is universal ..and I thought that the Indian cultures had found a less destructive way to deal with it.

Humans crave information and novel experience. Our senses are receptive to an infinite number of possibilities. However, the higher brain centers are designed to narrow-down these options in order to give us a stable state of consciousness. The peyote ceremony is, in a sense, a ‘guided’ exploration into alternate states of consciousness. The active ingredient in Peyote disables the filters of the brain and allows more sensory information to pass through ..which results in an experience of extra-ordinary reality. The peyote ceremony ends with a period of guided ‘re-entry’ that allows participants to integrate these extra-ordinary experiences with the reality of everyday life. I wanted to show how these guided peyote sessions could serve as a model for treating mental illness (without the peyote of course) .. and how they could also prevent the ‘crash-landings’ ..and reduce the havoc that characterizes recreational use of hallucinogens in the US.

In the end, my instructors liked the ‘neurological-model’ I described ..however, they didn’t think much of the case I made for the virtue of peyote ceremonies. One of them did ask how much of it was based on personal experience.

See for yourself ~>[Senior Thesis].

Crazy Charlie

While other members of my peer-group were spending summers at the mall ..I was hanging out with my college buds in Laguna Beach ..it had a cool point-break and was ‘the place’ for mind-altering recreation. So, while followers of fashion were racking up credit card debt .. I was sitting on the beach soaking up the elements. One evening ..after a day in the surf ..we were sitting around a fire. I remember watching Charlie ..standing in about two feet of water .. calling to somebody out there ..like waayyy out there .. yelling: “Can you hear me ..?” “Can you hear me ..?” “Yeah ..I thought so”. Then he fell to his knees and hollered “Caam uhrn” (which I later learned meant ‘thank you’ in Vietnamese). I asked my Compañeros what Charlie was on. They said ‘nothing’ ..because they knew better than letting him near anything that might contribute to his condition. But, at that moment, I would have given anything to see what he was seeing ..because he looked so tuned-in. He was living with something I didn’t have ..calm in the face of the unknown. After that, my own ‘training’ ..dealing with theories of ‘rational behaviour’ ..seemed like a web of vague ideas .. real life passed through it like water ..the only thing keeping it together was .. vanity. Here we were trying to help people overcome their delusions ..when I couldn’t even tell what kept me from accepting my own delusions as real. I’m not so sure there’s that much difference between ‘delusions’ and my own ‘simulated’ view of reality.

Continued ~>[link]

Crazy Charlie (continued from below)

He beat the rap ..the cops just wanted to know if he was OK ..or if they were dealing with a homicide or something. The driver had no idea who Charlie was ..he’d picked him up hitchhiking. Now, I’ve known Charlie since I was in college ..when he was a Vietnam vet going to school on the GI bill ..and I was a kid fresh out of high school without a clue. Charlie was studying psychology because he wanted to understand some of the things the army had put in his case file before he was discharged. I told him I’d like to see some of those things too. So, one day he brought it to school for me to read. It said things like: “..subject suffers from unresolved Oedipal complex and separation anxiety ..which accounts for distrust of authority.” I thought; man, this sounds medieval ..it has no relevance to modern-day psychology ..and makes no mention of ‘post-traumatic-stress’ ..which, I suspected, was a lot more relevant to Charlie’s case. I may not have known much back then ..but I could clearly see that Charlie was still fighting a war.

Crazy Charlie

Charlie was in a car crash yesterday. Now the police are looking for him so they can charge him with leaving the scene of an accident. He was hurt ..broke his arm in fact ..but he still managed to walk away. I asked him why he didn’t just sit there and wait for the ambulance like anybody else ..he wasn’t driving ..so, it didn’t matter what condition he was in. He tells me he went to Macy’s ..put on a new pair of Calvin Klein underwear ..then took a cab to the hospital. What the fuck ..?! He goes: “Shit man, my shorts were all ripped up ..my mother told me always make sure I’m wearing decent underwear just in case something like this happens ..there were holes in my underwear, man ..I couldn’t let nurses see me with holes in my underwear.” “Gotcha ..now look, I’m not contradicting your mother or anything, but I do believe a broken arm beats holy underwear in this situation.” He goes on and on ..and I go uh huh ..uh huh ..uh huh ..you were holding ..uh huh ..I see ..uh huh ..by the way, what kinda’ medz they give you ..? He shows me a bottle of codeine and a bottle of valium. Apparently he was pretty shook when they saw him ..he’s still pretty shook. I took the bottle of valium .. shook a couple into my hand ..then put them in my pocket and gave it back ..boy did he howl. Look, I said ..we’re going downtown ..I’ll vouch for your mental condition ..tell them that you’re guilty of nothing more than following your mother’s advice ..they only want to get a statement ..I guarantee you that they’ll drop the charges and stop the chase; otherwise, I’ll give you these back ..deal ..? Deal. OK, wow ~ there is nothing worse for a paranoiac than to be pursued in real life ..it confirms their suspicion about all those other times.

The return

I double-check the figures ..sign ..make an envelope for the state return ..and dash off to the post office expecting to see after-hour carriers waiting outside. But there’s nobody. Shit, they usually have canvas bins sitting out till midnight ..I used to just toss my returns out the car window without having to break much. I park and go inside where there’s a line wrapped around the place. I discretely approach the counter from the side so I can ask what happened to the bins ..but, before I utter a sound, she takes the bundle out of my hand ..stamps each one ..tosses them somewhere behind her and says ‘all done’.

I go to Java Jones, sit outside and listen to a narrator inside my head explaining what just happened. I’ve been out-of-touch with reality for so long now that I have to rely on second-hand information. It also feels like there’s a ‘panel of judges’ listening and giving me scores for good or bad performance. I receive pretty good marks for finishing my returns on time ..mediocre marks for arriving at the post office late ..and dismal marks from the German judge who took points off for all the things I neglected to do while preparing my taxes ..(!?) I mount a forcible argument ..but people are beginning to stare ..so I get up and head for a tavern to settle this. On the way, I pass through a farmers market ..buy a flat of strawberries ..haggle over the price of avocados .. replenish my supply of fruit and vegetables ..then just sort of meander around stupidly for a while. My arms hurt from all the stuff I’m carrying .. but I haven’t heard a peep from any of the judges.

Space wanderer

The same forces that bind the atomic particles of my eyes also hold together the planets and stars in outer space. A slight shift in balance would turn those forces into photo-energy ~ and the universe would dissolve into light. Now, as awesome as that might sound ~ you can bet that any extraterrestrials, who are watching, will be knocking on the door the instant they see us tipping that scale. I look out my backdoor ~ there’s a creek and a small wooded area ~ and so many waves of energy bombarding me; I can’t catch them all ~ only the ones that my senses are programmed to receive ~ and even those get filtered ~ sent to neuro-clusters ~ and filtered some more ~ discarding what I haven’t got sense enough to understand ~ and preserving the rest as ‘conscious experience’. Scientists tell me that space is not a vacuum ~ it’s a fabric ~ when I step outside and walk down the street ~ it clings to me and starts to build up ~ like mud on my boots after a rainy day. I explain this to my friends and they get me a pair of goggles. But even those don't help much when I'm trying to see through the debris that, psychologists say, builds up on the lenses of my mind everyday.

Weekend update

I am a news junkie ~ I get my fix over coffee and breakfast ~ which is probably why I'm no longer married ~ after a night disconnected from the world at large; I wake up feeling like a vigilante ~ I need to see what’s coming over the horizon ~ like a drop in the price of a dollar ~ causing a jump in the price of gasoline ~ or an act of lunacy by the federal government ~ holding up my medz in Canada ~ once I’ve scanned the event-horizon; I settle down and become conscious of local conditions ~ like the surf report ~ or my neighbor's cat prowling the creek right now ~ I kneel down and feed the little guy ~ showing gratitude for keeping the rodent population down ~ it's a self-sustaining ecology around here ~ which is why I gave up trying to intervene years ago ~ after the deer ate whatever I tried to grow ~ causing my former neighbor ~ an ex-navy seal ~ to shoot them with a shotgun full of dimes ~ he told me not to be alarmed ~ it only hurts like hell ~ he was a heavy-drinking fucking hard-ass kind of guy ~ he'd greet me in the morning drinking vodka ~ put it down ~ climb a tree carrying a chain-saw ~ and we’d have wood for the next couple of weeks ~ last I heard, he was in South Carolina ~ running a security company or something ~ I guess I feel safe enough now to be looking back on these things ~ I take a drink from my water bottle ~ and spill most of it on my shirt ~ I try to wipe it off with the back of my hand ~ looking around to see if anyone's watching ~ when I see a dove strolling across the deck ~ oblivious to my presence ~ so I keep as still as I can wondering if it lost the ability to fly ~ when a blue jay swoops down and attacks ~ and they disappear in a furious ball of flying feathers ~ so I return to the paper ~ trying to figure out where I left off ~ when the blue jay returns and stares at me menacingly ~ as though I'm next.

Music theory

Roger used to lie under the flight path at LAX and mimic the sound of jet planes on his electric guitar ~ trying to be like Woody Guthrie who captured the sound of railroad cars on his folk guitar. Although he couldn’t jump a plane and ride it the way Woody could a freight train ~ he must have dialed into something receptive in the social psyche ~ Roger went on to become a major force in the world of music with tunes like ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘Mr. Spaceman’ ~ I love the guy. He’s also a major contributor to my ‘theory of music’ ~ It is my belief that popular music, like other forms of art, comes about by mimicking advances in the field of transportation and technology. Sound absurd ..? Not when you consider that Art Deco ~ a popular style of architecture and design in the 1920's and 30's ~ was influenced primarily by the look of an ocean liner. I don't think it's a coincidence that 60's rock music arrived on the heels of airline and space travel ~ I can hear it in the sounds of Roger McGuinn and Jimi Hendrix ~ or that advances in data processing and satellite communications preceded New Wave music ~ I can hear it in the sounds of Devo and Pet Shop Boys.

BB in a boxcar

My head is pleasantly empty ..no mixed messages or quarreling narratives ..just a cool breeze passing through ..I can even hear myself breath. I know there’s a lot of stuff I should be thinking about ..planning a trip to Mexico ..helping Laura ..watching Karla ..paying taxes ..making house repairs ..and a thousand and one things that I can’t remember ..and I’m not sure I want to. I’m going to try to just sit here and enjoy the ‘wonder’ of uncertainty ..instead of dreading it like I usually do. I realize that goes against my nature ..but I’m not so sure that ‘worry’ is one of nature’s better qualities. I look around and notice how my eyes magnify the debris nearest me ..cracker crumbs ..chipped paint ..smudged tabletop ..and a bunch of other crap I forgot about ..makes me feel like a walking contaminator ..like ‘Pig Pen’ from the Peanuts comic strip. I go outside and immediately feel better ..for some reason when I'm out here the debris doesn't bother me.