Program Notes
Guest speaker: Various
Date this lecture was recorded: April 11, 2017
Today’s program features some stories that the Psymposia Team recorded in Athens, Georgia on their Blue Dot Tour.
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
00:00:22 ►
Salon 2.0. And I hope that you had a chance to watch some of the live video feed that the Symposia team streamed from their stage at the just now concluded Psychedelic Science Conference.
00:00:36 ►
And while the main conference proved to be the largest conference about psychedelics that’s ever been held,
00:00:45 ►
psychedelics that’s ever been held, well, the Symposia stage, which was available for free,
00:00:51 ►
held three days of speakers that I think rivaled the biggest psychedelic conferences that have been held in the past. It’s going to be fun listening to the reports of this event during
00:00:56 ►
the weeks and months ahead. So imagine my surprise, because I know how much work’s involved
00:01:02 ►
in producing something like that, but just now I
00:01:05 ►
received an email from Symposia’s Lex Pelger with today’s program attached. And for the record, it’s
00:01:12 ►
a short program, but it comes from a recording session in Athens, Georgia that was held on the
00:01:18 ►
11th of this month while the team was making its way to California on their Blue Dot Tour.
00:01:23 ►
And I should add that I’m looking forward to meeting up with the Blue Dot Tour myself in a few
00:01:28 ►
days when they host an event in San Diego. So now let’s join Lex for an
00:01:32 ►
abbreviated session of Salon 2.0 from on the road.
00:01:37 ►
Hello I’m Lex Pelger and I’m sitting here on the abandoned stage at the MAPS
00:01:43 ►
conference. Just finished packing up all the boxes and books.
00:01:47 ►
It was a long weekend, but it was really beautiful.
00:01:50 ►
Just last night we had a great set of storytelling sessions here.
00:01:55 ►
And you can see all that stuff and everything else on our live stream feed at the top of our Facebook page.
00:02:01 ►
So that’s part of the reason that there’s no production with music and things like that
00:02:05 ►
this week but i think that’s appropriate because this is a storytelling night and the best part
00:02:09 ►
about storytelling nights are they’re lo-fi and so now is our first submission from symposia from
00:02:15 ►
our blue dot tour of some stories from athens georgia and it just picture a beautiful lovely
00:02:23 ►
night under a full georg Georgia moon around the campfire
00:02:27 ►
with a bunch of people who are used to telling stories to each other and learning from each other.
00:02:32 ►
I hope you enjoy.
00:02:52 ►
this one time when i was living with two of my old roommates um and we were like it was like a friday night and we didn’t go out and we just stayed home and like sat on the couch and did
00:02:58 ►
what we thought was ketamine but we were pretty sure at like looking back that it was probably actually mxe um and we watched the
00:03:05 ►
stop motion photography documentary um flowers and then deserts and then forests and then oceans
00:03:13 ►
because it was amazing but like the the weird thing with i thought with this experience particularly
00:03:18 ►
was like um it was to me very much similar to the kind of experience you would typically see on a movie or on television when someone takes a drug or a psychedelic or a mushroom.
00:03:33 ►
In Tenacious D, when they go and they’re playing with Sasquatch in Magic Land, it was very much like that.
00:03:40 ►
in Magic Land.
00:03:43 ►
Like, it was very much like that.
00:03:45 ►
It was like we were on our couch.
00:03:47 ►
The screen seemed like it blew up to the size of our entire living room,
00:03:49 ►
and we were, like, immersed entirely
00:03:51 ►
in the whole, like,
00:03:52 ►
in the stop-motion photography.
00:03:54 ►
And it was just one of the most immersive
00:03:57 ►
kind of drug experiences I’ve ever had.
00:03:59 ►
And then the other thing I want to talk about,
00:04:01 ►
which is actually more on the lines
00:04:03 ►
of, like, psychedelics,
00:04:04 ►
was one of the first times I ever tripped, we went up to Lake Winfield Scott out in, up in, you know, the North Georgia mountains.
00:04:15 ►
And this was probably like four or five hours into the trip.
00:04:19 ►
So I was like starting to kind of like regain some kind of cognizance of what was going on around me.
00:04:24 ►
And we just like gone hiking, came back andance of what was going on around me and we had just
00:04:25 ►
like gone hiking came back and we’re like almost going back to the campsite and i remember like
00:04:30 ►
sitting by the lake and looking up in the sky and there was this giant hawk flying overhead like
00:04:36 ►
and just like looking for prey and stuff and i was just stared at it for a couple seconds and then
00:04:40 ►
started almost like getting like the sense that I was inside of its head
00:04:45 ►
and started like getting this almost like third person perspective of the hawk flying overhead
00:04:50 ►
while I’m simultaneously on the ground so it was like I was seeing through the hawk’s eyes while I
00:04:56 ►
was seeing through my own eyes and I don’t really know how to like put any words to it but it was
00:05:00 ►
just like one of the wildest things and I I think the thing that really made me realize is like our brains are incredibly powerful.
00:05:07 ►
Whether or not like whatever it’s doing, like your brain can create things that are like amazing.
00:05:12 ►
And yeah, so those are my two really standout experiences, at least in my mind.
00:05:18 ►
So yeah, thanks. okay so um this was i was probably like 20 or 21 this was like one of the first times i ever did
00:05:43 ►
dmt and it was the second time that I like
00:05:46 ►
really blasted off and so I was sitting outside like propped up against my house and like looking
00:05:51 ►
at the tree line and everything and I like went under and as soon as I went under I had to pee
00:05:56 ►
like so bad I couldn’t stand it and uh I had the reflex to just pee like whatever I’m outside who
00:06:03 ►
cares and my brain’s just like you’re’s just like, you’re not supposed to.
00:06:07 ►
Like, you’re not supposed to pee in the rest of the toilet, right?
00:06:09 ►
Okay.
00:06:10 ►
And then I just heard those words, like, echo in my head, supposed to, supposed to.
00:06:14 ►
And then it was just, like, into this whole other world of, like, it was purple and green and there were, like, entities and stuff.
00:06:21 ►
And, like, I didn’t know their customs.
00:06:22 ►
And so I was, like, fucking up all over the place, you know, and, uh, like, you’re not supposed to do that,
00:06:28 ►
you’re not supposed to do that, and then I, like, and then I was, like, whatever, and I just pee,
00:06:31 ►
and it was, like, the most liberating thing ever, you know, like, to just freaking pee,
00:06:35 ►
and then, like, like, blast it off even more into hyperspace, and it was just, like,
00:06:40 ►
this, like, I don’t know, it was hilarious, and, like, I don’t know, I didn’t think that,
00:06:44 ►
like, peeing while
00:06:45 ►
you’re tripping would be so liberating but it totally was um and like I don’t know it was kind
00:06:50 ►
of a lesson of like how much you know how much we keep ourselves uncomfortable without even realizing
00:06:56 ►
it because we’re like trying to fit into like the social norms that we’re supposed to be in like yeah
00:07:00 ►
you can’t walk around peeing everywhere but you know you know I mean it
00:07:06 ►
was just like a lesson that stuck with me and like even like after that I feel like I was a lot more
00:07:10 ►
like aware of my body and like random discomforts and what they meant and things like that and
00:07:17 ►
yeah um yeah I’ve had a lot of DMV experiences that were really meaningful I’ve had uh like
00:07:24 ►
contact with the same entities multiple times over several years,
00:07:28 ►
which is, like, pretty cool, too.
00:07:29 ►
So, yeah, it’s my story.
00:07:31 ►
Wow.
00:07:32 ►
Nice.
00:07:36 ►
Wow.
00:07:37 ►
Thanks for sharing.
00:07:51 ►
All right, so this is not going to be like a super learning experience from psychedelics,
00:07:56 ►
but it will have a beginning, middle, and an end, and I’ll call it the three beers.
00:08:03 ►
So for those of you that know me, I’m a pretty big Papadosio head. They’re by far my favorite band. And they did a three-night
00:08:05 ►
run a couple weeks ago, and I had tickets for the Saturday show for months. I was like super stoked
00:08:13 ►
for it. And I convinced my friend Tori to get a ticket, and then on the day of the show, my
00:08:19 ►
roommate went and bought a scratch-off lottery ticket, won like 75 bucks. He was like, all right, I guess I’m going now.
00:08:26 ►
So the three of us head down to Atlanta, and we all took a little bit of acid.
00:08:31 ►
And then since he had won a bunch of money, he just offered,
00:08:36 ►
oh, I’ll buy you guys some cheese dip and margaritas.
00:08:39 ►
So we go, and we have like a nice little appetizer before the show.
00:08:43 ►
Head into the show, and I’ll get some beers.
00:08:47 ►
Coming up on the acid, the show’s going.
00:08:50 ►
And we go outside so Davis can smoke a cigarette.
00:08:54 ►
And we’re standing there and all of a sudden my foot’s just wet.
00:08:58 ►
And I look down and Tori had just kind of like, whoop,
00:09:01 ►
spilled her beer all over my foot.
00:09:04 ►
So that’s beer number one that’s why we’re
00:09:08 ►
coming up and then so for those of you that haven’t been to variety playhouse they’ve got a
00:09:14 ►
little pit in the front the pit fills up pretty quickly so once it fills up they give you a little
00:09:18 ►
playing card and you can go get another beer but to to get back in, you have to give them the playing card back.
00:09:27 ►
It’s like a voucher system.
00:09:30 ►
And so Tori left to go get a beer.
00:09:31 ►
This was during the opener.
00:09:36 ►
And she comes back as I’m leaving to go to the bathroom, and I look at her, and I was like, I’ll be right back.
00:09:39 ►
And she, like, pushes into me and says, I think we should keep going.
00:09:43 ►
And at this point, I’m, like, kind of tripping, and I was, like, very flustered. I was like, what do you mean I think we should keep going. And at this point I’m like kind of tripping
00:09:45 ►
and I was like very flustered. I was like, what do you mean you think we should keep going? I’m
00:09:49 ►
going that way. And she’s just like pushed past me. And in this whole process, another, like at
00:09:56 ►
least half a beer goes all over me. But at this point it’s all down my legs and my pants. And I
00:10:01 ►
was wearing super thin harem pants. So my legs legs are soaked and while my mind is trying to process what is happening another guy comes out of nowhere and
00:10:12 ►
shoves me out of the way and at this point I’m really flustered I’m like what is going on and
00:10:16 ►
I see her grab her and just go uh-uh and then I see he has security on the back of his shirt
00:10:23 ►
and I watched her just get escorted out of the venue.
00:10:27 ►
And at this point, I was tripping, and she had my car keys.
00:10:31 ►
And so when she got kicked out of the venue, I had to go talk to the people letting everyone in
00:10:37 ►
and just be like, hey, I don’t know what just happened, but she has my keys,
00:10:41 ►
and I need those to get home.
00:10:43 ►
Just help me out.
00:10:44 ►
So I go outside and ask her what happened.
00:10:46 ►
And she got kicked out just because they basically said, oh, you don’t have a card, so you can’t get back down.
00:10:54 ►
She was like, no, I was just here.
00:10:56 ►
And they wouldn’t let her back down, so she just shoved her way in, thinking she would get by super sneakily.
00:11:02 ►
Obviously didn’t.
00:11:09 ►
she would get by super sneakily obviously didn’t and so I had to go back inside talk to the manager of the whole venue and convince them while I’m like yeah I was like definitely I was definitely
00:11:18 ►
tripping at this point and I’m just talking to the manager like I don’t know why she got kicked out i was there now i’m outside and
00:11:25 ►
during this whole time my roommate who we just left i left him to go find tori and he’s also
00:11:34 ►
tripping and so he goes outside to smoke a cigarette and is talking to a bouncer guy
00:11:39 ►
just kind of freaking out and the guy’s like what we don’t kick people out here and the bouncer disappears and so then in the process davis takes what he thought was ketamine but now we know it definitely
00:11:50 ►
wasn’t because he was very very trippy he was not in a k-hole he was very stimulated so
00:11:57 ►
it could have been we have no idea but um yeah so we ended up getting her back inside and we kind of just
00:12:08 ►
like went up to the top and the balcony and just sat down for like 30 minutes processing what had
00:12:15 ►
just happened and so then the rest of the show is great we all got back down in the pit fast forward
00:12:21 ►
a couple hours later and we’re back at our house and it was probably four or five a.m
00:12:28 ►
and we really just want to go to bed at this point so we’re just like hey we’ll just drink a couple
00:12:32 ►
beers and go to bed right so davis is sitting on the floor and i really have no idea how this
00:12:39 ►
happened but tori like spinned around and in the process lost her balance and fell on top of Davis.
00:12:45 ►
His beer goes everywhere.
00:12:47 ►
So that is beer number three at the end of the story.
00:13:01 ►
Hey, everybody.
00:13:11 ►
Hey everybody, my name is Josiah, and this is not about illegal substances or medicines or anything. I am a lucid dreamer, and I remember my dreams at least one a week.
00:13:19 ►
And by remember, I mean I interact with the dream, and I’m able to shape it,
00:13:23 ►
and I’m able to understand that the situation that I’m in isn’t one that I don’t have any control of.
00:13:29 ►
And that’s like really, really cool.
00:13:31 ►
And you notice a trend in my dreams.
00:13:36 ►
I’m always either running away from something or chasing something.
00:13:41 ►
And the thing is ephemeral.
00:13:46 ►
or chasing something and the the thing is ephemeral it’s not a i’m not like chasing a girl or a person or a vision or an image or a destination or even like a point in my life that
00:13:52 ►
i want to be to it’s just always some like drive like need to get somewhere do something or escape
00:13:59 ►
something or be some place that isn’t wherever i was now. And it’s like the pulse that like moves the dream forward
00:14:06 ►
and like gives it a plot line or something.
00:14:09 ►
You know, otherwise you’d just be sitting on a couch in your dream,
00:14:12 ►
like not doing anything.
00:14:16 ►
And I think about my dreams and I used to keep a journal.
00:14:21 ►
I’m just too lazy in the morning.
00:14:23 ►
It fell out of routine.
00:14:27 ►
But if you ever get a chance
00:14:28 ►
to write down your dream
00:14:31 ►
and start to notice similarities and causalities
00:14:33 ►
and what those might say subconsciously about your life
00:14:38 ►
and about where you are and where you want to go,
00:14:50 ►
it can be really, really inspiring and, like, really learning for yourself and, like, make you understand a little bit better, like, why you’re here
00:14:55 ►
and why you want to do these things that you want to do
00:14:58 ►
and, like, why you want to push forward.
00:15:01 ►
It’s just dreams are dope.
00:15:04 ►
Yeah, keep a dream going.
00:15:06 ►
Because it’s super cool.
00:15:07 ►
They tell you a lot about yourself
00:15:09 ►
that you wouldn’t even know that you knew about yourself.
00:15:12 ►
The things that you pick up in subtle conversations
00:15:14 ►
that you don’t really realize until after a conversation,
00:15:17 ►
that’s kind of how dreams are.
00:15:18 ►
You have a dream and it’s like a conversation within yourself
00:15:21 ►
where your brain and your experiences
00:15:24 ►
are the only
00:15:25 ►
definable factors like shaping that reality and uh and then just what you make of that
00:15:31 ►
is what you will but it’s all it’s all up in here thanks guys
00:15:35 ►
i can’t take classes before like noon because i wake up at 9.30 and it’s like, oh my god, that dream was amazing.
00:15:47 ►
I gotta get back. Like, I gotta get back. I gotta get back in it.
00:15:51 ►
Reality sucks right now. I gotta get back in it.
00:16:00 ►
I just thought I would tell something a little darker.
00:16:04 ►
um I just thought I would tell something a little darker so I actually like this instance I wasn’t tripping I was like trip sitting um and it was for
00:16:16 ►
a couple of my friends um we had been in like band all day I think we had had a game and afterwards
00:16:22 ►
it was like somebody’s birthday so there were a bunch of people over and a couple of my friends dropped.
00:16:29 ►
Um, and it was good in the beginning.
00:16:31 ►
We like, we’re upstairs and looking at like, um, this light machine.
00:16:37 ►
Do you remember that?
00:16:37 ►
It was like all the little laser, like, uh, you’ll know in a minute.
00:16:44 ►
Uh, I don’t know. It’s like this laser light thing that one of
00:16:46 ►
our friends had had and we were like staring at it it was awesome and i like felt the love from
00:16:51 ►
everyone tripping and then we went downstairs and there were a lot of people there and there
00:16:55 ►
were a lot of people drinking and then everyone like that was tripping started to feel a little
00:16:59 ►
weird and then everything like there’s literally no like catalyst for why it was a bad night it just ended
00:17:06 ►
up everyone like had bad vibes so we would like go outside and I would be like oh let’s do this
00:17:12 ►
let’s watch a movie that’s happy and fun or like let’s play a board game like let’s do something
00:17:17 ►
like trying to push it in a better direction but then one of my friends was like oh no let’s listen to uh to pimp a butterfly and uh all of
00:17:26 ►
kindred’s like really dark shit and i was like okay um like trying to steer it out of this
00:17:32 ►
like abyss that we were going into but they did it anyway and so we were like all sitting
00:17:37 ►
in the living room and i was like sitting in a chair and my friends that were tripping were
00:17:42 ►
like sitting around the stereo listening to music and all of a sudden um this one guy who I didn’t super know very well I had met him a couple of
00:17:51 ►
times he was always super nice to me like very friendly genuine good guy and like I had heard
00:17:57 ►
that he felt drugs a little more than everyone or he like seemed to get like very into whatever he was
00:18:07 ►
doing at the time and um he just like had we had like held hands earlier he was like I told him at
00:18:14 ►
the beginning I was like you know if you need anybody I’m here for you blah blah all this stuff
00:18:17 ►
and like all of a sudden he just like looks at me and we make eye contact and I like smile at him
00:18:22 ►
and then he like crawls over to me and like
00:18:25 ►
starts touching me like putting his hand like up my thigh like trying you know and so I’m not
00:18:33 ►
tripping so I’m like oh shit like how do I handle this how do I like make it so he doesn’t freak out
00:18:38 ►
but also like you know I’m freaking out I’m like oh I don’t know what to do like and so I just like
00:18:44 ►
take his hands off me and like get up and’t know what to do like and so I just like take his hands off me
00:18:45 ►
and like get up and go outside smoke a cigarette and then I come back in and he’s like curled up
00:18:50 ►
on the sleeping bag or like the big bean bag on the inside he didn’t talk for the rest of the night
00:18:57 ►
and it was like a lot for me because I felt like I ruined it for him but it was like I had to still be
00:19:07 ►
I don’t know I had to like respect myself in the situation so it was like really hard and I had a
00:19:14 ►
lot of feelings about it afterwards because there have been like a lot of instances where stuff like
00:19:17 ►
that has happened to me and we never talked about it and for a long time I’m like one of those
00:19:23 ►
people that needs like closure I like very closure. I, like, very much like
00:19:26 ►
to have, like, an ending or, like, conversation, like, something that happens where we, like, talk
00:19:30 ►
about it, and then it’s over, and I can, like, move on, but I guess that instance taught me that, like,
00:19:38 ►
not everybody knows what they do all the time, and, like, you don’t have to have that conversation to forgive them so yeah wow thank you for sharing
00:19:50 ►
i wasn’t tripping in the story but it’s kind of a short story about like a good trip sitter versus a bad trip sitter.
00:20:08 ►
Or a not so good trip sitter.
00:20:11 ►
Which is like some people just shouldn’t be them, you know.
00:20:15 ►
And I feel like you kind of find that out later on.
00:20:18 ►
But I’m from Michigan and two, like when I was in high high school two of my friends were tripping.
00:20:26 ►
They wanted me to trip-sit them, but they also wanted another girl to trip-sit because she drove and I don’t drive.
00:20:35 ►
But it was all good and having a good time and it was really kind of a little strange
00:20:41 ►
because the other girl that was trip-sitting was just being really weird
00:20:45 ►
about it the whole time and she didn’t really know what to do and just kept asking them like really
00:20:49 ►
kind of like a lot of questions like she was interrogating them just being like how is it like
00:20:54 ►
what are you doing like blah blah just all this stuff that was really intense and just like tell
00:20:58 ►
me everything and I just kept kind of being like it’s just don’t, you know, it’s just like, don’t do that.
00:21:14 ►
But at some point later in the night, they like trip, they started tripping like late evening. And then way later that night towards midnight, he was like, I want to go to the beach.
00:21:20 ►
And we live like 45 minutes away from the beach.
00:21:23 ►
And he was like, I know this place that you can park nearby and then we can walk through the woods and go to the beach and we live like 45 minutes away from the beach and he was like I know this place
00:21:25 ►
that you can park nearby and then we can walk through the woods and go to the beach and it’ll
00:21:29 ►
be a really fun time and I was like I don’t know what place you’re talking about but if you
00:21:33 ►
know like how to get there then we can go you know and so we went and it was really dark and
00:21:39 ►
we parked on a road that we had no idea where we were and then we started walking in the woods and
00:21:44 ►
he was like this is gonna be great and I was like that’s awesome you have a good time
00:21:47 ►
and we were walking through the woods in the dark for like two minutes tops when all of a sudden the
00:21:54 ►
lights of like a jeep come up this dirt road next to us and these cops get out and they were like
00:22:00 ►
park rangers and I had no idea that we were in a national park. And they started asking all these questions.
00:22:06 ►
They made us stay there with them, and then at one point,
00:22:08 ►
she was like, we should run, and I was like, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
00:22:15 ►
Doesn’t really have a, she’s not chill.
00:22:21 ►
She kind of started freaking out, and then they were like,
00:22:23 ►
you have to get in the car with us, and we’re going to go back to, like, the station that we have that’s, like, at the headquarters of the National Park.
00:22:31 ►
So it’s still in the woods.
00:22:32 ►
It’s not, like, a police station, but there were, like, cops there.
00:22:35 ►
And it was kind of scary.
00:22:37 ►
And at the point, we were, we got to the station, but I don’t know why they didn’t bring us outside.
00:22:43 ►
They just had us sit in, like, the bed of the truck on the edge and at that point it had been like a little while after
00:22:50 ►
they took the acid and they just started peeking if i could really tell and they just kind of nudged
00:22:57 ►
each other and they’re like oh my god dude i can’t be here right now and on the other side like on
00:23:02 ►
one side of me i’ve got two of my friends that are tripping really hard, and they have no idea what’s going on, and on the other side of me,
00:23:08 ►
I have, there’s supposed to be a trip sitter, and she’s just, like, freaking out in, like,
00:23:12 ►
a full panic attack, like, we’re gonna go to jail, we’re gonna go to jail, we’re gonna go to jail,
00:23:16 ►
they’re gonna look at them, and they’re gonna know that they’re tripping, and oh my god,
00:23:19 ►
you know, and it was just very stressful for them at least situation but eventually I like
00:23:30 ►
kind of tried to answer all their questions and I was like let’s just not you know make this a big
00:23:37 ►
deal just like go on with the tickets then we’ll be fine and I just had to like sit there like
00:23:43 ►
calming down to people that were tripping and then one person that wasn’t tripping but is really bad trip sitter
00:23:47 ►
yeah but the moral of the story is some people should figure out whether they’re a good trip
00:23:57 ►
sitter or not before they trip sit but the story before reminded me of that not because you’re a
00:24:03 ►
bad trip sitter but because it just reminded me of, like,
00:24:06 ►
trip sitting is, like, a whole thing.
00:24:10 ►
Yeah, that’s it. That was it.
00:24:12 ►
Wow. Awesome.