047 - Philadelphia and Baltimore Storytelling

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Various

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Psychedelic-Society/?cookie-check=LCE9Q8hgE4U0dDDDate this lecture was recorded: April 2017

Thank you to the Philadelphia Psychedelic Society and to Psychedelic Seminars in Baltimore for two beautiful locations to hear these stories. As two of my favorite stops on the Blue-Dot tour, I’m glad to be sharing these stories about the power of psychedelics. -Lex Pelger

The Philadelphia Psychedelic Society

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The Chronicles of Lorenzo - Volume 1

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon

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2.0.

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And to begin today, I’d like to thank two fellow salonners who have made direct donations to the salon to help offset some of our monthly expenses.

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And these two wonderful people are Justin E. and Apta G.

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I hope I pronounced that right. A-P-T-A, Apta G.

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That’s a new name for me.

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Anyway, I really appreciate your donations. They’re a big

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help. Additionally, I would like to welcome the following salonners as new supporters of my

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writing on Patreon, and they are Austin B., Dovidas, did I get that right? D-O-V-Y-D-A-S,

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Dovidas, Dovidas, sorry about that, Dovidas P., Andrew H., Wesley H., Austin B., Blake N., And this now brings us up to 106 patrons who collectively contribute $606 a month,

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which means that we have now hit our first goal.

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And so I want to thank all of my monthly supporters as well,

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because, well, each month I’ve been using a little of thank all of my monthly supporters as well, because, well,

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each month I’ve been using a little of their contributions here in the salon as well.

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And besides having their names placed in the front of my new books, as the patrons who are

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supporting the direct release of my new works into the public domain, well, I’ve been posting

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excerpts of one of my new books each week, as well as posting some of the Terrence McInnes soundbites that I’ve collected over the years.

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Plus, each Monday night, I open a Zoom conference where any of my patrons can join.

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And last night, we had a really interesting conversation in which we talked about some of the high weirdness that can often arise during a psychedelic experience.

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weirdness that can often arise during a psychedelic experience.

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And just so you know, each week we have several salonners who aren’t interested in adding to the conversation, but they show up and listen in.

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Hopefully they’re also getting some benefit from the time we all spend together online.

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And so far I haven’t focused our discussions on Monday nights on anything in particular,

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but instead we just see where the conversation leads us,

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and with an eclectic crowd such as ours,

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we’ve had some truly interesting discussions.

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Hopefully you’ll be able to join us as well.

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It only takes a commitment of $1 a month

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to join in these weekly conversations

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and to access everything that I post on Patreon.

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And over time, I plan on making this

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the best dollar

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anybody spends each month. So I hope to see you there. And now let’s join Lex Pelger as

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he introduces today’s program. I’m Lex Pelger, and this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

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And this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

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Hello, everyone.

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We’re coming near to the end of the psychedelic storytelling episodes from the Blue Dot Tour.

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Today is a double feature with the best stories from our early stops in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

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I feel that these stories are especially strong because both of these cities have a vibrant community gathering around psychedelics. You can feel a supportive atmosphere where people feel safe to share. A number of these tales today are cautionary. They contain reasons why these drugs need to be treated with respect

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and why they are not for everyone. As always, I feel like one can learn more about how psychedelics

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really work from these stories than from a whole pile of peer-reviewed literature. I know that both methods of approach are vital to the mainstreaming

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of psychedelics, but for those of us who are experienced, learning from the others seems like

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one of the richest ways to learn. I also know that some of you aren’t into these episodes as much,

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so take heart. There’s only one very special episode left. Then we’ll have to wait

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until I go back on the road again with a baby strapped to my chest to have more of these events

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and more of these stories. And so that leads to an announcement that I have today from another papa,

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the gentleman behind the Psychedelic Anthology series, who goes by Eternum, which is Latin for

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eternity. He writes to us today,

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The Psychedelic Anthology is a seven-part anthology and collection of real-life psychedelic experiences shared from all over the world. This anthology challenges the negative stigma

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surrounding sacred medicine, such as LSD, ayahuasca, and mescaline, by sharing the very

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profound and transformative experiences that may occur right under the influence of these

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substances.

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The first two volumes have been released and are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Volume 2’s introduction was provided by Dennis McKenna.

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I am currently working on Volume 3 and seeking stories as we speak.

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Deadlines for stories is July 31st, 2018.

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They must be a minimum of 1,000 words, and they can be submitted at thepsychedelicanthology.com.

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So I encourage everyone out there to please check out this collection. And now, on to

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today’s stories.

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So my story begins in, I guess it was junior year of college. My previous year of college dealt with a lot of LSD and mushrooms.

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And since I had moved to a state college, main campus of Penn State,

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I lost all my connections.

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So I was looking for other ways to cure this.

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And I learned about ethnobotanicals, just the idea of legal alternative highs.

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So, I went online and I bought like a giant starter pack.

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The whole kitchen table was full of everything from San Pedro mud, cacti, to at the time salivary was still legal

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and

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Amanita Mascara, Blue Lotus

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everything

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SSRIs, everything

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so I was just experimenting

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with stuff

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the masculine from the cacti was amazing

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it gave me like

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actually the first time I did it I had brain orgasms

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where I was sitting in the dark pondering the realities the mysteries of the universe amazing. It gave me, like, actually the first time I did it, I had brain orgasms, where

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I was sitting in the dark pondering the realities of the mysteries of the universe, and every

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time I had a little epiphany, I could feel the different centers of my brain light up,

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and it felt like I was having an actual orgasm in that area. So that was neat. The next weekend,

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I decided to do some Amanita.

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I wasn’t quite sure about how much to do.

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I’d read about some issues with liver toxicity and stuff,

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so I went halves on it.

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I should have went home, but I went halves.

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I wasn’t really doing anything.

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I waited two hours, three hours.

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Man, I should definitely be at least peeing by now and feeling something.

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So that’s what else I have here.

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I filed through the drawer, and I picked out the salvia derivium.

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So I found the salvia.

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Now, it had a whole baggie of different kinds.

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It was the leaf, 5X, 10X, and 20X.

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And I was like, well, I’ve smoked a lot, so I’m just going

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to try the 20X. So I packed the bubbler full, went into the bathroom, turned the fan on,

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take my first hit right away, take the second one, hold it in, put the bubbler down, and

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I start feeling tingling back in my head. And I’m like, all right, cool, now we’re getting

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somewhere. So I go sit on the couch, I’m just ready to wait for it to happen. As soon as I breathe out, I feel a suction on my face.

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It was, instead of turning left, it was straight up and out,

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where I actually went, and the next thing I knew,

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I was staring down at my body from the ceiling,

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and I was like, shit.

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And the weirdest thing was, after I said shit,

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very naturally, the next sentence was, was i did this i did it again wait what did i do again how the hell do i why am i up here how do i get

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back down there and this whole whole instance was like it wasn’t scary it was more like uh i had

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nothing to do i was popped out of my body and I’m standing there like, now what? I got nothing.

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Until I realized, right before I figured out how to get back in, there was this very calming

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presence behind me, like a semi-circle of very familiar people that have your back.

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And I thought about it for just a split second, and then all of a sudden it was like the planets

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aligned and I got sucked right back into my body but on the way in I wasn’t coming from the ceiling

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I was coming from like what you would say outer space I shot in through uh like aerial view I

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could see the entire town I could see someone getting pulled over half a block away I could see the entire town. I could see someone getting pulled over half a block away. I could hear, I could see, like, babies crying in a couple apartments over, in the cribs.

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And it was just like, wham, I’m back in.

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And I was freaked.

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I feel the tingles.

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Yeah, like, I’m going to fall back out.

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I’m not anchored to my body yet.

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So I hopped up and ended up just sprinting five miles to my girlfriend’s house.

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I was too messed up to find my phone.

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I’m like, I’m just going to go there and knock on the door.

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It was an 1130 night, sprinting through a dark golf course.

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I almost tripped over a skunk.

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So that was my first experience with Salvia.

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And every time I did it after that, I that um like i call it a dollhouse effect

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where if i don’t take enough to pop out i get enough to pull back to where i feel like i’m

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looking in on a dollhouse of my life and i can see me and everything else but it’s very disconnected

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and i guess that’s it for this hour

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well my name’s Don

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and I’m going to tell you about my first trip

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right after high school

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nearly 40 years ago.

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It was the worst experience of my life.

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It totally split my mind and personality.

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And it hasn’t healed till this day.

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So it’s not a good story, but it’s an interesting one.

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not a good story, but it’s an interesting

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one.

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I was with a friend of mine

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who had tripped before,

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but he was straight that

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night.

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And it was the worst place of all

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to do anything, because it was

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a boardwalk at Ocean City.

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And

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I took about,

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I guess it was supposed to be a four-way tab and i took half of it so i

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guess it was like fantastic

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and I just had surges, rushes over me

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and it was like great.

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I could never have a bummer, you know.

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I just feel so wonderful, you know.

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And I got out in the boardwalk

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and walked out on the beach

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and I was like floating on the rocks,

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the jetty going out, and then sitting in the sand.

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I could feel the sand go through my fingers like liquid,

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and I could watch the reflection of the water come out of the sand,

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and it was all wonderful.

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reflection of the water come out of the sand and it was all wonderful but i started getting these thought floods of like epiphanies about my personal life and my my psychic makeup and i

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started psychoanalyzing myself and i was like making so much progress. Like, well, this is why I’m this way. I can change it to be like that.

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And one thought after another,

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and then I just kept going and going,

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which was a mistake.

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I should have just kept flowing.

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But the more I tried psychoanalyzing myself,

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the more I started separating from myself

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into a conscious ego,

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the more I started separating from myself into a conscious ego and the processes going on in my brain.

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And then all of a sudden, everything just stopped.

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And it was like my whole personality just sort of came to an end.

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And I guess I thought, like, this is what they mean when you forget who you are.

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And I guess I thought this is what they mean when you forget who you are.

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Because I consciously had an ego,

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and I was thinking I was perfectly lucid as far as my logical thought processes,

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but my personality itself, my emotive self just wasn’t there. I had no desire, no sense of who I was, what I wanted in life.

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And I thought, oh my God, this is what crazy people must be like,

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but they don’t find their way back.

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And as soon as I had that thought,

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I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten caught in thought

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traps, but I couldn’t get out of that thought. I’m a crazy person. I can’t get back into myself.

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I can’t remember who I am anymore. And as soon as I thought that, I started thinking, well, I could be anybody then. And I started getting rushes of whole personalities,

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like well-formed personalities, not just little glimpses,

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but like what it would be like to be Jesus Christ,

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what it would be like to be Hitler,

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and thousands of people in between.

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And it wasn’t just my mind that was following along these lines,

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it was my body too.

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For every thought and every mental image that I have,

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I’d have a physical sensation of being that person too.

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So it was like my body was like…

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Like thousands of personalities were like shooting

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through my body at one time, you know, like just morph, I was morphing back and forth.

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And I just tried to run down the boardwalk to get away from it. And I saw like the other

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friends that I was with, and they started, they said, Hey, Don, how are you feeling?

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All right, you know?

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And I just looked at them aghast,

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and I knew that they weren’t doing that, you know?

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But I was seeing them act like this, you know?

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And that made it worse,

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because I couldn’t stop what they were acting like.

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And then I could watch them talking to each other,

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and I realized they weren’t really communicating to each other.

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They were talking to their own image of the other person

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because we’re all separate beings within ourselves, and when we talk to another person, we rarely talk fully consciously knowing that that is another soul in another universe, actually.

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and we have to try to get through to that person as another, you know what I mean,

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a whole separate person.

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We just take it for granted

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that they’re seeing the same world that we are,

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and so this person was talking at that person,

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and the other person was responding at the other person,

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but they weren’t really communicating.

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And everybody I looked around was like talking at each other,

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like talking heads, you know.

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And everybody was so alone, I felt, you know,

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and I felt totally isolated.

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And it all just reached a crescendo. And I

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clamped down on myself. And then all of a sudden, I felt like I died, like a part of

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my body, my mind just kind of shrunk. And all this hallucinations and stuff stopped.

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And all this hallucinations and stuff stopped.

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But I felt like I was totally withdrawn from myself further. And I clamped down unconsciously on all of my emotions, all of my weird thoughts.

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All that stuff I clamped down on and I just

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the rest of the night I hung out

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at the place where we were staying

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and I talked

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I could see that there was this one guy

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who was kind of putting off good vibes

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that he was like an older person in college

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and I said well I’m going to hang out near him because I could tell that he was more down to

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earth and not like a phony person you know and I tried to stay close to people like that around. And I just fell asleep finally.

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And the next day I woke up and I was still separated from the world.

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And to this day I still am.

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I still feel like I’m stuck in a trip, sort of, that stops moving.

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And I still don’t feel like I’m really with you all here, you know.

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I still feel one step removed.

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And it got me interested in Eastern philosophy and the search for God and everything else.

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And if I want to thank that trip for that, I can thank it.

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But I tripped several times after that, a good amount of times for the next 10 years,

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because I felt I had to figure out what happened to me so I could put myself

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back together. But I was really more or less reinforcing that feeling of separation that I got

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from the trip, you know. So I just stopped doing it. I’m still hopeful that I could try small amounts of mushrooms to kind of

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get used to the initial stages of getting off and consciously kind of try to work into

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it and take a breath and switch my focus of consciousness and trust myself a little more.

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That’s where I’m at, and that’s my story,

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and that’s what taking LSD did for me.

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So it’s a cautionary tale.

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I’m not totally against it

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because I know what good it can do.

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I know that I did it to myself actually by taking too

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much and by

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taking my mind apart with my inner tools.

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So I’m not against

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it at all. I’m very interested.

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That’s where I’m not against it at all I’m very interested but that’s where I’m at so

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applause

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applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause I wanted to segue off of heroic doses and psychotic breaks.

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My first trip, I was probably 15, and it was an interesting journey of trying to acquire any kind of psychedelics with me and two close friends, Colin and Bryce.

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Kalen and Bryce. So I think our first beret was trying to get any kind of acid. I had a day at the beach and tried to do it and sat at the beach for eight hours sober. So

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found out later that the person who got it from her name was Patches. So it was funk

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acid and she made up for it in a big way with a big jar of blue mushrooms. So we planned

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our day better the next time.

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And now to this place called the Albany Bulb

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in North Berkeley, California.

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It is a funky little island

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made out of industrial refuse.

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It’s been grown over.

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It’s called the Bulb because it’s like this peninsula shape

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that bulges out.

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And there’s some homeless encampments on it. There’s some interesting

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art structures that have been built on it, but we thought it was a good enough place to be

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dumb teenagers and trip for the first time. We were especially dumb teenagers and didn’t know

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much about dosing, so I think we each took about a half ounce of mushrooms each. so math correctly, I guess that’s 14 grams. I think I had a fantastic

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day in comparison to my buddies who were with us. So the team of characters was me, a friend

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of Kaylin, my boyfriend at the time was named Bryce, and he has bipolar schizophrenic, so

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that really came into play later in the day. And another

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friend, Ariana, who had secretly not taken her mushrooms and left without any of our

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notice about two hours into the trip, and we’re like, oh yeah, we’re missing one. So

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she got off easy. I guess she had better things to do. My trip was alright. It was a beautiful

00:22:46 ►

spot to be in. We hung out by this spot called the castle and it was like built out of plaster

00:22:52 ►

and concrete and rebar and a spray paint and we brought some spray paint to play on it.

00:22:57 ►

I had a good enough time becoming one with this door jam and feeling the nooks and crannies

00:23:03 ►

into it and smashing some glass

00:23:06 ►

and forgetting how to talk and thinking I was an eagle.

00:23:10 ►

So that was probably the deepest I got into mine.

00:23:13 ►

At another point, Kaylin had disappeared, and that became another quest during the journey

00:23:19 ►

that wasn’t solved until days later.

00:23:23 ►

But the crux of it was really dealing with my boyfriend at the time,

00:23:27 ►

who was having a complete break,

00:23:28 ►

talking to a lot of creatures and beings that weren’t there,

00:23:34 ►

getting in violent physical fights with them,

00:23:36 ►

which was violent physical fights with himself,

00:23:38 ►

and eventually me just having to get out of my not being able to speak

00:23:44 ►

and console him. Um, I guess it didn’t,

00:23:48 ►

it didn’t really end so happily. Um, I had to get us both on the train back home, um,

00:23:55 ►

while receiving like a million calls on Kaylin’s phone, um, cause it left like all his belongings

00:24:02 ►

there, um, dealing with like his crazy girlfriend. He’s like, where the hell is he?

00:24:05 ►

Is he okay?

00:24:06 ►

We thought he drowned or went in the water.

00:24:08 ►

Turns out later he just went to go talk to his dad.

00:24:11 ►

So, I don’t know.

00:24:13 ►

It was an interesting experience,

00:24:15 ►

and my first time experiencing that,

00:24:20 ►

Bryce’s psychotic side,

00:24:23 ►

which later came out a lot

00:24:25 ►

on its own without the aid of any

00:24:27 ►

psychedelic

00:24:28 ►

enhancements

00:24:30 ►

so yeah

00:24:32 ►

that was my first trip

00:24:34 ►

wow So before this experience, I had tried LSD probably a handful of times

00:24:55 ►

for the pretty lights, for the pretty colors,

00:24:57 ►

until this experience when LSD decided to do me.

00:25:02 ►

We were in my apartment with my roommate at the time, and it was three of us who took

00:25:10 ►

the LSD together, my best friend Kirsten and myself. The dosage, I don’t remember what

00:25:18 ►

exactly it was, but it was a lot more than I had taken previously, so I was expecting

00:25:24 ►

something different, something new, but

00:25:25 ►

nothing from like what had happened this time. So we were in my apartment and my apartment had

00:25:32 ►

this huge shag carpet in the middle of it. And during the come up, me and Yanel decided to roll

00:25:40 ►

around on this carpet because it just felt so good it felt so amazing on our skin i’m rubbing

00:25:46 ►

my fingers through yanelle’s hair because she has this awesome crazy hair and she i’d love the way

00:25:51 ►

it would feel through my fingers and just everything about her um we also had this uh

00:25:59 ►

gustav clint painting on our on our wall i don’t know what it’s called or which one it was, but it’s the one

00:26:05 ►

with the mermaids. And we had brought it down because I was falling in love with this mermaid.

00:26:11 ►

She was so beautiful. And you know how everything starts getting like the breathing effect or the

00:26:17 ►

dancing, everything starts to look like it’s dancing. Well, this mermaid was dancing with me

00:26:21 ►

and I’m laying sideways, like laying down, staring

00:26:25 ►

at this mermaid, and she just keeps pulling me closer and closer and closer, saying, follow

00:26:30 ►

me, follow me, and I’m just like, yes, I’ll follow you anyway.

00:26:34 ►

And I eventually kind of like caught myself, I’m like, what am I doing?

00:26:39 ►

I’m talking to this painting, this mermaid isn’t real.

00:26:42 ►

And so, and knowing I had taken a higher dosage than

00:26:46 ►

usual I texted another one of my best friends Delma to come over um this girl was like a sister

00:26:52 ►

to me and so I was like hey I uh just took a higher dosage than LSD can you please come

00:26:57 ►

over and help me through this trip uh I’m gonna need some guidance so eventually she comes over

00:27:04 ►

she had just come got of a run and I pull her down into the shed carpet with me and you know I’m going to need some guidance. So eventually she comes over.

00:27:06 ►

She had just got of a run,

00:27:09 ►

and I pull her down into the shed carpet with me and Yanel.

00:27:12 ►

I start doing the same thing to her.

00:27:14 ►

I’m rubbing my fingers through her hair.

00:27:18 ►

And, I mean, mind you, she was all sweaty and smelly,

00:27:21 ►

but I was loving it, just the scent of a woman,

00:27:25 ►

of admiring her for the beautiful woman that she is.

00:27:31 ►

And at some point, we’re still holding each other,

00:27:36 ►

and our energies, our souls, our life forces,

00:27:40 ►

whatever you want to call it, start spiraling up,

00:27:43 ►

and we’re going up and up and intertwining at the same time. And I opened my eyes and I was conscious in this other reality

00:27:50 ►

where I was looking out the eyes of Delma.

00:27:53 ►

I was looking out of my own eyes.

00:27:54 ►

I was looking out of the eyes of Janelle.

00:27:57 ►

And I felt this complete sense of unity.

00:28:00 ►

It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.

00:28:03 ►

It was just so surreal, so beautiful.

00:28:09 ►

And it lasted only a couple of seconds, but then I immediately came back down into the

00:28:14 ►

carpet, and I opened my eyes, and I’m staring at Dama, and I’m speechless because I didn’t

00:28:19 ►

know what to say. I didn’t know what that was. I all I kept saying was did we just was that I didn’t

00:28:26 ►

understand what it was and I look over at you know and she’s crying I’m looking over at Dama

00:28:32 ►

and she just keeps shaking her head saying yes yes and I’m like are we talking about the same

00:28:36 ►

thing do you know what just happened and she just says yes yes And I’m like, what? What? Yes. Like, yes to what? Like, what was that?

00:28:46 ►

I couldn’t, I didn’t understand.

00:28:48 ►

And I got up to go find Kirsten to see what she was doing.

00:28:53 ►

And she tells me she saw the look on my face as I got up.

00:28:56 ►

That turned to complete worry because I just, I didn’t understand what that was.

00:29:02 ►

And she’s just like, it’s okay, Jonathan.

00:29:06 ►

You’re tripping.

00:29:07 ►

You’re just on LSD.

00:29:09 ►

And I’m like, no, no, no.

00:29:10 ►

I was awake in reality.

00:29:11 ►

This is a dream.

00:29:12 ►

This is a dream.

00:29:13 ►

I was awake in the reality.

00:29:18 ►

And then by this point, another friend comes over into the apartment because our apartment was like a hub for everybody to come into at any time they wanted to.

00:29:22 ►

And she walks in, and I’m staring at her,

00:29:25 ►

and again, I was just so confused.

00:29:27 ►

I didn’t understand why there were so many different names

00:29:30 ►

for this one person that I was looking at.

00:29:32 ►

I was like, why do I call you best friend or Nehesi,

00:29:36 ►

and somebody else calls you daughter,

00:29:38 ►

and somebody else calls you girlfriend.

00:29:39 ►

I didn’t understand why there were so many different names for her.

00:29:42 ►

I was like, we are one.

00:29:43 ►

Why would I ever distinguish you as something else?

00:29:47 ►

And she was just like, what are you doing?

00:29:49 ►

I wanted to see something.

00:29:53 ►

Interesting enough, it was also the first time

00:29:54 ►

I started seeing auras around people.

00:29:56 ►

And I’ll never forget, I saw this beautiful yellow aura

00:29:59 ►

around the Hesi.

00:30:00 ►

And to this day, I call her my little daisy in the field

00:30:03 ►

because she’s just a beautiful person

00:30:05 ►

but I spent the rest of that afternoon trying to like wake up because I swore I was in a dream and

00:30:13 ►

I wanted to go back to the reality I wanted to go back to that reality where we were all one and

00:30:17 ►

everything was all one and because we were in my apartment I would climb into my bed and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to fall back asleep and wake up in reality.

00:30:27 ►

And my friends would stare at me from the living room like, Jonathan, what are you doing in the bed?

00:30:32 ►

I’m like, oh, I’m just going to wake up in a little bit, you guys.

00:30:34 ►

Don’t worry.

00:30:37 ►

And I mean, eventually I came out of the trip and I realized like that was something different and I was actually awake in reality

00:30:45 ►

but that is what sparked my curiosity into um you know the psychedelic experiences and what I had

00:30:52 ►

just experienced and um started doing a bunch of research making sure that I wasn’t the only one

00:30:57 ►

who experienced that even though Domo was like yes I experienced that too um but yeah, so that was my first time, what I call my spiritual awakening. And ever

00:31:09 ►

since then, I’ve definitely had many more experiences of otherworldly experiences really

00:31:16 ►

where they keep on convincing me that the reality really is out there and a reality

00:31:23 ►

where we are all one and there is no separation between you a reality where we are all one and there is no there is

00:31:26 ►

no separation between you and i because we are all one so thank you guys I’m Isaac.

00:31:46 ►

This was last year.

00:31:53 ►

I was at the other end of a very stressful transition in time in my life.

00:31:59 ►

And I was, as a side effect of that, in a very manic and anxious state. It was not because of psychedelics, though.

00:32:01 ►

It was my living situation and all that.

00:32:04 ►

It was pretty bad.

00:32:06 ►

So one of the most annoying things that came from all that

00:32:11 ►

was the sensory overload sound.

00:32:15 ►

So one of my intentions that I brought into a mushroom experience

00:32:22 ►

was to face that and figure out what was going on,

00:32:25 ►

try to fix it or whatnot. So I found myself at a park that was next, there was like a train track

00:32:33 ►

went through. What was interesting is several times, you know, I’m hiking around and the loud

00:32:41 ►

train horns go through. And rather than getting in that frazzled state

00:32:47 ►

that’s like nails on a chalkboard, I was laughing.

00:32:51 ►

And, you know, so there was a lot of healing done from that.

00:32:55 ►

And the same part, like 20 minutes later,

00:32:57 ►

there was a guy randomly cracking sticks on a bench,

00:33:01 ►

and I don’t know, so it was the train and the stick thing,

00:33:04 ►

you know,

00:33:05 ►

it really helped when it came to that sound issue. So after that, I mean, it basically

00:33:10 ►

99.9% cured me of the sound issue. Sometimes I’ll still go into certain places, but for

00:33:18 ►

the most part, it got fixed pretty easily. So I don’t know, I got lucky, I guess. Just another quick story is I was on a

00:33:27 ►

hillside, and I had been hiking, listening to the whole of Beethoven’s Ninth, and I’d heard it before,

00:33:33 ►

so I knew how it ended, and the timing of the Ode to Joy part, so I had sat down before that part happened. Um, just, I don’t know, just being in the moment and relaxing.

00:33:47 ►

Um, and so I guess it was a moment of synchronicity. Like I, you know, I also knew

00:33:54 ►

that it was going to happen this way. So I was extra attentive to it. Um, but just,

00:33:59 ►

so just before that big uproar of the ode to joy, it gets really calm and quiet. So at that moment,

00:34:05 ►

the wind stopped, and it was really still and quiet around me. And then at the exact

00:34:13 ►

moment it happened, a big gust of wind came. So I just thought that was cool. And, you

00:34:18 ►

know, I could feel that it was going to happen. And I don’t know, it’s kind of cool. Yes.

00:34:38 ►

There are two favorite trips that I’ll share with you.

00:34:41 ►

The first one, and if you ever wanted to try this,

00:34:46 ►

please have a very trustworthy and sober trip sitter with you.

00:34:47 ►

I took a bubble bath.

00:34:50 ►

It was a pretty deep bubble bath.

00:34:58 ►

I smoked and watched the dancing geometric visuals for a little while.

00:35:02 ►

Then I just kind of sank back and was relaxing.

00:35:06 ►

Then I went underwater and held my breath for as long as I could.

00:35:10 ►

And then I just, as I usually do, just kind of slip into kind of a dream world. And for however long the trip lasted, I was swimming with humpback whales under the sea out somewhere around Hawaii or something like that. That’s what I felt like where I was,

00:35:26 ►

but I’ve always been fascinated by whales and there’s something about them that’s really

00:35:31 ►

profound to me. So I thought it was really awesome that I was swimming with humpback whales. Like I

00:35:36 ►

just could not get over how like, this is just great. I, you know, it was in the bathtub felt

00:35:42 ►

like I was in the ocean and then, um then as the water cooled off and slowly drained on,

00:35:49 ►

it kind of just lowered, hadn’t pulled the plug out or anything,

00:35:53 ►

I got, it sort of, my eyes started to come down, and I felt like I was lying in a creek.

00:36:01 ►

I had my eyes shut, and the water was running over me,

00:36:04 ►

and the person that was with me

00:36:05 ►

was just kind of gently splashing water on my stomach and there was this really amazingly

00:36:12 ►

serene sunset where and I was in a creek and it was like as everything started to wear off and

00:36:20 ►

like realizing staring at the bathroom light above the sink but it’s just so beautiful and I’m staring at the bathroom light above the sink, but it’s just so beautiful,

00:36:26 ►

and I wish anybody could have seen it. It was great. So that was the end of that trip,

00:36:34 ►

and I guess the next one that I’ll share was really the only one at DMT that ever really

00:36:39 ►

gave me kind of a, not a life-changing experience, but kind of, I don’t know, insight into, I

00:36:48 ►

don’t know, my own future or something like that.

00:36:51 ►

So last summer, I had recently gotten divorced.

00:36:56 ►

I was married for nine years.

00:36:59 ►

I have a nine-year-old, and for most of my 20s, I’m 31 now, I felt like there had been a lot of, I had

00:37:07 ►

made a lot of decisions that kind of eliminated paths in my life that I would have liked to

00:37:11 ►

have chosen, and that I had been very isolated, and that once I got divorced, it was a huge

00:37:19 ►

shift in my life, and I didn’t know, I was on the edge of homelessness, I didn’t know

00:37:23 ►

where I was going to be in a year, what was going to happen to me, what I wanted to do, what I was able

00:37:28 ►

to do, yada, yada, yada.

00:37:29 ►

So this one night in August, I was outside with a friend out in the countryside, and

00:37:36 ►

it was a beautiful night.

00:37:37 ►

It was, there were clouds covering one half of the sky.

00:37:42 ►

The moon, it was a full moon, and it was blindingly bright.

00:37:45 ►

So it was hitting the clouds, and they were just really, like, icy and light and pretty.

00:37:51 ►

And it was also windy.

00:37:52 ►

There was a very warm wind that just kind of kept sweeping through the trees

00:37:58 ►

and kind of blowing them forward, and it was really relaxing.

00:38:11 ►

and it was really relaxing. So I take a hit of DMT and I held it in and just let that silky, beautiful smoke just drift out and everything gets a little bit fuzzy. And all of a sudden,

00:38:17 ►

there was a gust of wind that came and it appeared all of a sudden like the light from the moon was blasting nuclear rays of light.

00:38:27 ►

And that was what was blowing the trees forward.

00:38:30 ►

And then so I was lying on my back and watching the geometric designs

00:38:34 ►

and enjoying the fact that I understood the size of the universe and all that good stuff.

00:38:40 ►

And I was looking up at a star.

00:38:42 ►

I think it was Venus.

00:38:43 ►

And there was kind of like a sparkly thread-like net around it.

00:38:49 ►

And it just, without words, kind of informed me that this is something really beautiful that you can’t have.

00:38:56 ►

And I was just satisfied that I wouldn’t ever be able to get to that place to see that star,

00:39:04 ►

which in the moment, you’re not really thinking it’s beautiful.

00:39:07 ►

It could be vaporized if you get close to the star.

00:39:10 ►

So anyway, it just kind of tapered off,

00:39:14 ►

but then I was accepting of the fact that there are things that I can’t have,

00:39:18 ►

but I can still appreciate them for what they are,

00:39:22 ►

even if I won’t ever have them.

00:39:24 ►

So I kind of was thinking about how, yes, I’ve made bad decisions early in my 20s,

00:39:31 ►

throughout my 20s, and the path that I could have taken, that I wanted to have taken,

00:39:38 ►

could have ended in really positive things and could have led to very happy lives or whichever way I had gone, but

00:39:46 ►

I couldn’t have them, and I couldn’t just appreciate what they are for other people

00:39:52 ►

to have them, but I guess in that moment, I realized that despite all of that, I had

00:39:58 ►

a new boyfriend, and his family had taken me in like I was part of their family, and I have a nine-year-old who’s healthy,

00:40:07 ►

and I just began to look from that night on as maybe I can look at this as a new life instead of

00:40:13 ►

the end of my life, and it was just a very reassuring and kind of life-altering experience that I don’t normally have on DMT.

00:40:26 ►

And I’m grateful for it.

00:40:28 ►

And I don’t think I’ll, based on the other experiences,

00:40:32 ►

that I’ll have any other major life-changing experiences like that.

00:40:37 ►

I just, you know, look forward to maybe tomorrow going and smoking it

00:40:42 ►

and, like, hanging out with Bob Dylan while he’s singing

00:40:45 ►

Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues again. So that’s it. Thank you.

00:41:01 ►

If you do have someone that you’re really close to and can go to these deep psychedelic places with,

00:41:08 ►

especially that you’ve known over a course of time,

00:41:10 ►

I feel like you can level up in your psychedelic game.

00:41:14 ►

So I learned a new thing a couple months ago

00:41:16 ►

when I was in Thailand with my partner.

00:41:19 ►

And kind of after this big trip in the ocean,

00:41:23 ►

it was magical.

00:41:24 ►

We were pulling each other trip in the ocean, it was magical, we were like, like pulling each other

00:41:26 ►

around in the water, um, but our eyes met at one point, we were like laying kind of sideways, and

00:41:32 ►

he was in this dark half-light, um, and our eyes met really parallel, is the best way I can put it,

00:41:40 ►

um, and I, something happened, and I freaked out

00:41:45 ►

as my

00:41:47 ►

first reaction I think I saw like some

00:41:49 ►

eyes and teeth just like

00:41:50 ►

fly out of his face so then I was like no no no no wait

00:41:53 ►

let’s try that again

00:41:54 ►

so we sat there and both

00:41:57 ►

really concentrated on locking

00:41:59 ►

eyes

00:41:59 ►

and I did that for like

00:42:03 ►

45 minutes

00:42:03 ►

and I came and began to describe like how deep the journey

00:42:08 ►

into someone else’s face can go. First it started just morphing into other faces, and familiar

00:42:14 ►

things, and scary things, and having to confront that with the person that you love, turning into

00:42:19 ►

all these horrifying deep dark fears, and then it became beautiful um like his beard turned into

00:42:26 ►

like waves of the ocean i could go into it um and swim with it um and eventually i like

00:42:32 ►

looked in between or it’s really hard to like lock eyes and then see past the eyes

00:42:39 ►

um but that happens and i would end up between his eyes, kind of in the third eye area, and this, like, tesseract, impossible geometry form started appearing, and it got deeper and deeper and matrix-y and, like, infinite darkness, and I felt like it was the closest to seeing someone else’s soul, and he pretty much had the exact parallel experience that I did.

00:43:07 ►

So we haven’t tried it again so intensely,

00:43:10 ►

but I just want to throw that out there.

00:43:12 ►

It’s a really cool activity to try out.

00:43:14 ►

And that’s my addendum. So I’m going to tell an ayahuasca story.

00:43:30 ►

About three years ago, I was at a crossroads of life.

00:43:38 ►

And I’ve been a musician my adult life and taken a rather strange course and watched my entire, you know, my peer group move on to family, career, and all that kind of stuff.

00:43:54 ►

And the deeper you go into leading an unconventional life, you take big risks, but you kind of expect there to be a payoff at some point, right?

00:44:07 ►

For it to congeal into some sort of form that makes sense.

00:44:11 ►

So mid-40s, this still wasn’t happening.

00:44:14 ►

And I started having the feeling like,

00:44:17 ►

was there some class that I didn’t show up for?

00:44:20 ►

Like, what the fuck did I miss that everyone else around me seems

00:44:25 ►

to have gotten? So, um, so I went to Peru and, uh, and during the first, uh, the first

00:44:34 ►

three sessions of ayahuasca, um, and the second night, the first night was very mild. The

00:44:40 ►

second night, and I didn’t know what to expect, 30 people in a room, and about halfway through the session, this guy starts trying to bolt from the room.

00:44:50 ►

Turns out his wife had had a stroke.

00:44:55 ►

She was a programmer and a hedge fund manager, really brilliant woman, and she had had a stroke and lost her short-term memory.

00:45:02 ►

and she had had a stroke and lost her short-term memory.

00:45:08 ►

So he was in the position of having to basically teach his wife,

00:45:11 ►

the way you would teach a child, how to reestablish a short-term memory.

00:45:19 ►

So in the midst of his trip, he was reliving that moment of trauma,

00:45:21 ►

and he thought she had died.

00:45:24 ►

She was back at their apartment.

00:45:26 ►

He gets up, tries to bolt out of the room, and go back to his apartment and call her parents in Australia and tell them

00:45:31 ►

your daughter’s dead. You don’t leave the space in an ayahuasca session. And going back

00:45:37 ►

to your, who had the friend that split? You had the friend that split. You don’t leave

00:45:42 ►

the space when you’re tripping with people. It’s bad for them, right? So it began about a two-hour experience of the shaman trying to get this guy down to the ground, and he was a little powerful dude who wanted to leave.

00:46:05 ►

the whole group, 30 of us, were kind of like tapping into this dude’s trauma and feeling his pain and at the same time acting as kind of like healing mirrors to his experience.

00:46:13 ►

And this guy was at the top of his lungs screaming out,

00:46:17 ►

My baby! My baby! I lost my baby!

00:46:22 ►

I just got goosebumps just now.

00:46:21 ►

I lost my baby.

00:46:24 ►

I just got goosebumps just now.

00:46:29 ►

So when you’re feeling that kind of trauma and all the boundaries are lost between you

00:46:32 ►

and it goes right into your soul

00:46:34 ►

and it starts bringing up all your trauma

00:46:36 ►

and all your darkness too.

00:46:38 ►

And the whole room was going through this

00:46:41 ►

and it got to a point where it was getting so dark

00:46:44 ►

and so death and so death

00:46:45 ►

and so um terrifying frankly that the only defense i could have uh against it was to just um say i’m

00:46:56 ►

love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love i’m love over and over

00:47:02 ►

again for about like i said an hour and a half two hours i am love, I am love, I am love. Over and over again for about, like I said, an hour and a half, two hours, I am love,

00:47:05 ►

just fighting this darkness and trying to keep it back

00:47:07 ►

and trying to give support to him.

00:47:09 ►

And there’s this weird feeling on ayahuasca

00:47:11 ►

where you really kind of feel that you’re all in it together

00:47:15 ►

and everyone is feeling what you’re feeling

00:47:17 ►

and you’re feeling what they’re feeling

00:47:18 ►

and it’s this soup of this collective transformation.

00:47:23 ►

So finally the shaman gets his energy down, gets him to the ground, and right at that

00:47:30 ►

moment, from right behind my left ear, I guess what I was looking for was like, what did

00:47:37 ►

I miss?

00:47:37 ►

What did I miss?

00:47:38 ►

What did I miss?

00:47:38 ►

What have I done wrong?

00:47:39 ►

How did I fuck this up so bad for so long?

00:47:43 ►

I was like, how did I fuck this up so bad for so long?

00:47:47 ►

And right behind my ear, this really soft voice said,

00:47:50 ►

there is nothing wrong with you.

00:47:51 ►

There’s nothing wrong with you.

00:47:56 ►

And it was just so comforting.

00:48:00 ►

And it was like that little secret that you’re waiting to hear.

00:48:04 ►

And when it drops on you, you’re like, oh, shit.

00:48:05 ►

There’s nothing wrong with me.

00:48:06 ►

And it made it very clear,

00:48:07 ►

you’re not done, you’re not perfect,

00:48:09 ►

you’re not finished,

00:48:10 ►

but there’s nothing wrong with you.

00:48:12 ►

And it was kind of,

00:48:14 ►

how many people have told you that in the past?

00:48:16 ►

You’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you.

00:48:17 ►

You’re making your own way.

00:48:19 ►

And you know it intellectually,

00:48:21 ►

but this was a somatic body knowledge,

00:48:24 ►

like a super deep appreciation of the biological intelligence and love of the universe.

00:48:33 ►

And it was kind of like, it was a deeper version of that bumper sticker,

00:48:36 ►

like, God, don’t make no junk.

00:48:38 ►

It was kind of like that thing, but on a super visceral level.

00:48:41 ►

So as soon as that happened, then this parade of generations

00:48:47 ►

starting like farther back than I even knew

00:48:49 ►

just started coming up behind me

00:48:51 ►

of my whole family lineage

00:48:53 ►

and all my friends and all my friends’ kids,

00:48:57 ►

and they just came walking by me.

00:48:59 ►

And to each one of them, I got to say,

00:49:02 ►

thank you, I love you.

00:49:03 ►

Thank you, I love you.

00:49:04 ►

Thank you, I love you. Thank you, I love you. thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you,

00:49:07 ►

thank you, I love you,

00:49:07 ►

back as far as I could remember

00:49:10 ►

and farther and into the future.

00:49:14 ►

And it ended with the vision of my living room

00:49:19 ►

and there was a child in it

00:49:22 ►

and I was childless at that point.

00:49:25 ►

And I felt the feeling like, holy shit, I’m ready.

00:49:28 ►

I think I’m ready.

00:49:29 ►

Warning, don’t drink ayahuasca.

00:49:32 ►

You’ll want to have a kid.

00:49:36 ►

So right after that, then, it proceeded to, after it showed me that,

00:49:41 ►

I’m like, holy shit, I’m going to have a kid.

00:49:45 ►

Then it gave me, which is one of the things I love

00:49:48 ►

about ayahuasca, is that it basically just

00:49:50 ►

gave me a laundry list then. It’s

00:49:52 ►

so practical. I don’t know if anyone’s

00:49:54 ►

had an experience, but it’s a very practical experience.

00:49:56 ►

It’s like, here’s

00:49:58 ►

what, when you go home,

00:50:00 ►

send flowers to this person and that person.

00:50:02 ►

You owe them flowers. Tell your grandmother

00:50:04 ►

this.

00:50:05 ►

Do this and this with your business.

00:50:07 ►

I’m a musician and work

00:50:10 ►

on that. Leave that behind. Music is

00:50:12 ►

this. So super practical vision.

00:50:14 ►

So that was the first year, three years ago.

00:50:16 ►

Come home, tell my wife.

00:50:18 ►

She was chomping at the bit to have a

00:50:20 ►

child but I was like, how the fuck do you do this?

00:50:22 ►

I want to have my life together. How do you have

00:50:24 ►

a kid? I’m so ill-prepared for this.

00:50:27 ►

But then I came home

00:50:28 ►

with that, like, I think I can do this. Let’s do

00:50:30 ►

this. Let’s start. So we begin the process of trying

00:50:31 ►

to have a child. That was three years ago.

00:50:34 ►

Oh, and at the very last session

00:50:35 ►

of that week,

00:50:38 ►

a voice came in the head. It was like,

00:50:40 ►

dude, Daniel Jabbour

00:50:41 ►

had started this psychedelic society in

00:50:44 ►

San Francisco, and it said, you’ve got to start one of these.

00:50:46 ►

You’ve got to do it.

00:50:46 ►

People need to know this.

00:50:47 ►

You’ve got to do it.

00:50:48 ►

So that’s where this came from.

00:50:50 ►

So then I went back the next year, continued to work on it.

00:50:55 ►

The benefits of that, my life is just blooming,

00:50:58 ►

letting go of neurotic shit

00:51:00 ►

and just kind of accepting that intrinsic goodness of nature’s

00:51:10 ►

creations, just that

00:51:12 ►

it doesn’t want to create fucked up

00:51:14 ►

shit, and if you think you’re fucked up,

00:51:16 ►

you’re kind of wrong. There’s an

00:51:18 ►

intrinsic goodness to this whole thing.

00:51:21 ►

So,

00:51:23 ►

we have been trying to have a kid.

00:51:24 ►

Sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes it doesn’t

00:51:27 ►

work out. You spend your whole life trying not to make it happen. Then when it’s time, like,

00:51:32 ►

fuck, it doesn’t work. So in the process of trying to have a child, my wife went off her

00:51:39 ►

antidepressants. That introduces an interesting angle into trying to be intimate with someone is when

00:51:48 ►

someone’s trying to come off an antidepressant. That’s challenging. So I go back down to Peru

00:51:54 ►

again, and now it’s under the auspices of, all right, I’m trying to have a child. I’ve taken

00:52:00 ►

care of me. I’ve turned a corner in my life. But I can only do so much with my partner.

00:52:08 ►

Like, you can’t fix another person.

00:52:10 ►

And so, first session, relatively mild.

00:52:15 ►

Second session, some major breakthroughs into, you know, some life stuff.

00:52:19 ►

And in the third session, I still hadn’t shored up this, like, what can I do for the person I love?

00:52:24 ►

How do I help the person I love? I can’t fix them this like what can I do for the person I love how do I help the person I love I can’t I can’t fix them but what can I do I must be

00:52:29 ►

able to do something so it was a super big dose that night I remember going up

00:52:35 ►

and kneeling in front of shaman and he gave it to me and and this details too

00:52:41 ►

good to leave out and at the danger of dropping names,

00:52:47 ►

this guy who was sitting next to the shaman

00:52:50 ►

whose name rhymes with

00:52:53 ►

Schmenes McFenna.

00:53:00 ►

I was drinking and I heard him go,

00:53:02 ►

God, because it was such a big dose.

00:53:06 ►

And I was like, fuck, if I’m going to get some work done, man, this is the night it’s going to be done.

00:53:11 ►

So, super high energy that night.

00:53:15 ►

And at some point I was just rocking back and forth, rocking back and forth.

00:53:19 ►

Could not come out of it.

00:53:20 ►

The night’s ending.

00:53:21 ►

At the end of the night, the shaman sings everyone to sleep.

00:53:24 ►

And kind of puts you in your bed and says a prayer over you. And your energy

00:53:27 ►

dials down to a point where there’s 25 people in a room all basically asleep at the end

00:53:33 ►

of the night. It’s 4 o’clock in the morning and you start at 6 or 7. But everyone’s down.

00:53:39 ►

Their energy’s down. And I’m still rocking back and forth because I’m trying to like,

00:53:43 ►

how can I help this woman? How can I help this woman? We’re trying to have a child. How can

00:53:47 ►

I see beyond this future, or beyond this moment into the future? And so one of the things

00:53:56 ►

that I realized, I had this insight into this concept of the golden rule. What can I do for her?

00:54:07 ►

And I realized that in my own life,

00:54:14 ►

if I’m doing something and someone notices it and compliments it,

00:54:16 ►

it instantly sabotages it.

00:54:19 ►

Because I leave the act of doing it, I get into my head,

00:54:22 ►

and then I start self-analyzing in that whole nine yards.

00:54:25 ►

As long as no one says anything, I’m in the flow and I’m fine.

00:54:28 ►

I had assumed that

00:54:29 ►

most people operate that, so I was

00:54:31 ►

not very

00:54:33 ►

forthcoming with compliments to

00:54:35 ►

this woman that I love. I was thinking that she

00:54:37 ►

didn’t, because I didn’t need it, she didn’t need it, right?

00:54:40 ►

So it’s this golden

00:54:41 ►

rule thing, do unto others as

00:54:43 ►

you would have them do unto you

00:54:45 ►

but like that doesn’t make sense

00:54:47 ►

because we’re all different people

00:54:49 ►

so I’m struggling with this

00:54:50 ►

and trying to find some

00:54:51 ►

like what can I do for her

00:54:52 ►

so then I had insight

00:54:54 ►

instantly there came this

00:54:55 ►

I think in Jonathan Livingston Seagull

00:54:59 ►

there’s this concept of the platinum rule

00:55:01 ►

which is do unto others

00:55:03 ►

as they would have done unto them, right?

00:55:05 ►

Not like you do it for them, but what they would want.

00:55:08 ►

But that still

00:55:09 ►

goes wrong, because what if someone is

00:55:11 ►

a, you know,

00:55:14 ►

a masochist?

00:55:16 ►

You know what I mean? Like, if someone wants pain,

00:55:17 ►

are you doing them a favor by giving them pain?

00:55:19 ►

That doesn’t work either, right?

00:55:22 ►

And so then, instantly,

00:55:24 ►

this diamond flashed, you know, like you’re seeing

00:55:26 ►

this, my eyes are closed and I’m seeing this, and I see this diamond and I had the concept, oh shit,

00:55:32 ►

the diamond rule. There’s a better one. Golden rule, platinum rule, diamond rule. And the diamond rule,

00:55:40 ►

it instantly, you know, flashed in my, was do unto others as they would have done

00:55:45 ►

unto them, but with imagination.

00:55:48 ►

So you’ve got to

00:55:49 ►

play your part in it too.

00:55:51 ►

So, to just do a quick

00:55:53 ►

right before

00:55:56 ►

I left, she was going through a real tough

00:55:57 ►

time at a real low

00:55:59 ►

and basically I left for Peru

00:56:02 ►

with her basically saying to me

00:56:04 ►

I’m so sorry you’re stuck with me, with someone who’s going through this depression.

00:56:09 ►

So it was that idea of just her feeling terrible and in a really low spot.

00:56:14 ►

I’m so sorry you’re stuck with me.

00:56:15 ►

So I saw this diamond, the diamond rule.

00:56:20 ►

And instantly, I was like, I have to buy her a diamond and recommit to this marriage.

00:56:26 ►

So we had been going about a year and a half trying to have a kid.

00:56:30 ►

And we’re coming right up on the point where it was time to get science involved.

00:56:35 ►

And so I came out of that session and shared the next morning.

00:56:42 ►

I basically said, well, this last night’s session is going to cost me a couple thousand dollars.

00:56:46 ►

I have to buy my wife a diamond

00:56:49 ►

and recommit to this marriage.

00:56:51 ►

So soon as I got home,

00:56:54 ►

went, got a diamond ring,

00:56:57 ►

and approached her and said,

00:57:00 ►

listen, took her side in a moment

00:57:01 ►

and said, listen,

00:57:02 ►

I’m recommitting to this marriage.

00:57:05 ►

I’m not stuck with anyone.

00:57:06 ►

None of us are stuck with anyone.

00:57:08 ►

I have been through relationships

00:57:10 ►

and said goodbye to them before,

00:57:12 ►

and it’s okay.

00:57:13 ►

Everyone lives,

00:57:14 ►

and we’re allowed to let go of people in this life

00:57:16 ►

and find other people.

00:57:18 ►

I’m not stuck.

00:57:19 ►

I’m here because I want to be here,

00:57:20 ►

and I’m recommitting to this marriage.

00:57:28 ►

So that was August of last year.

00:57:37 ►

And in October, we got pregnant. And in June, I’m having a little girl. Something shifted in that moment that I gave her that ring and let her know that I was not stuck with her,

00:57:41 ►

but I wanted to be with her. And it came out

00:57:47 ►

of that ayahuasca experience.

00:57:49 ►

Thank you.

00:58:04 ►

So I was in my early 40s.

00:58:12 ►

I just had a child a year before and had 10-year-old twin, all daughters, twins.

00:58:23 ►

When I started experiencing rib pain, was getting more and more fatigued over a number of months,

00:58:26 ►

I thought, well, maybe this is postpartum depression.

00:58:28 ►

I’m just going to wait.

00:58:29 ►

Maybe I’ll go see somebody.

00:58:31 ►

And then I bumped my leg,

00:58:34 ►

and there was this massive hematoma that formed.

00:58:37 ►

And because my background was a physician,

00:58:40 ►

I knew something was up bad.

00:58:43 ►

And I had, like, a somatic. I got sick to my stomach, called the doctor, and within a couple of

00:58:50 ►

days I had the diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia. It was pretty advanced. I had almost

00:58:57 ►

no platelets. They basically told me from the lab, drive very carefully to the ER because any sudden

00:59:06 ►

movement you could bleed.

00:59:07 ►

You could bleed in your head, in your heart, in your organs.

00:59:10 ►

It was that severe.

00:59:12 ►

I was admitted and underwent very intense in the hospital chemotherapy, full body radiation

00:59:22 ►

therapy and a bone marrow transplant and that was followed by several years of

00:59:29 ►

lots and lots of blood transfusions

00:59:32 ►

infections, hospitalizations

00:59:35 ►

I was in a wheelchair, in diapers

00:59:38 ►

IV poles everywhere in the house

00:59:42 ►

oxygen tanks everywhere in the house

00:59:44 ►

and to imagine that I was there and here I am now IV holes everywhere in the house, oxygen tanks everywhere in the house.

00:59:51 ►

And to imagine that I was there and here I am now is really a miracle.

00:59:52 ►

It’s really a miracle.

00:59:57 ►

The issue is, though, when you go into that place, it’s basically an ego death because all you’re focused on is taking the next breath.

01:00:06 ►

You know, you’re no longer identified as a mother or a doctor or a teacher or a friend or anything.

01:00:12 ►

You’re just kind of a blob trying to stay alive.

01:00:17 ►

And it made me get really introspective about, well,

01:00:25 ►

if I’m not defined by all these external things, who am I?

01:00:31 ►

And that evolved.

01:00:34 ►

I mean, it was like being on substance,

01:00:39 ►

because I was in, I was inside, experiencing my life

01:00:44 ►

from the inside, while all this chaos was happening

01:00:47 ►

around me and to my body. And there were several near-death moments where I really thought

01:00:58 ►

that was going to happen, it was going to end. And in that space inside myself, I realized that I could

01:01:13 ►

just create whatever I wanted. Create however I wanted to be.

01:01:29 ►

And so it began.

01:01:31 ►

The recovery began, and physically I began to heal miraculously

01:01:36 ►

with very little chance of survival.

01:01:47 ►

but there was a spiritual healing that needed to happen

01:01:50 ►

it was really a traumatic experience

01:01:53 ►

I had had previous traumatic experiences

01:01:57 ►

growing up

01:01:58 ►

and so I sought help

01:02:03 ►

from a rabbi and that was somewhat helpful, from therapists, not helpful, and then I saw the advertisement for the study and volunteered.

01:02:23 ►

and volunteered. And in two sessions, my life completely changed.

01:02:28 ►

I left a marriage that gave me the feeling of suffocation

01:02:36 ►

like it felt when I was on a ventilator.

01:02:39 ►

And I thought, if I stayed in this marriage,

01:02:42 ►

I’ll probably get sick again.

01:02:46 ►

And I started a completely different relationship

01:02:55 ►

with my body.

01:02:56 ►

I started eating healthy.

01:02:59 ►

I started exercising regularly.

01:03:04 ►

I started paying attention to my body’s needs and my emotional needs

01:03:11 ►

and my spiritual needs.

01:03:15 ►

From there, it just continued to evolve and evolve and evolve. And I’ve been working on my own with plant medicine

01:03:26 ►

since in a guided way, which I think is key,

01:03:33 ►

in a very sacred way.

01:03:36 ►

And it just worked for me.

01:03:43 ►

It just worked for me.

01:03:52 ►

It was such a blessing to have that available,

01:03:54 ►

to be exposed to it in the way that I did,

01:04:01 ►

and to continue to hold it in a really sacred way. I don’t call it drugs.

01:04:03 ►

I call it plant medicine, Because that’s what it is.

01:04:10 ►

that’s my story. Stick it to it.

01:04:15 ►

Thank you.

01:04:29 ►

So I was at someone’s apartment.

01:04:32 ►

I showed up randomly.

01:04:35 ►

Somebody told me about this.

01:04:37 ►

I was like, okay, you’re just going to go to this guy’s apartment. It’s on the eighth floor of this random building in New York City.

01:04:41 ►

Have fun.

01:04:43 ►

You probably won’t have fun.

01:04:44 ►

It’s kind of challenging, but just go for it.

01:04:46 ►

I show up, and it’s like, everyone’s seeing art is so diverse in terms of, like, background, age.

01:04:53 ►

There was a guy there with his son, so there was someone who was 18.

01:04:57 ►

There was someone, I think, up to 75.

01:04:59 ►

We were all just strangers shoved in this room about to take this crazy experience together.

01:05:05 ►

It was my first time doing ayahuasca.

01:05:08 ►

And we didn’t know what to expect.

01:05:10 ►

The person, I was lying on a couch, and there was a guy who was sitting with his back against the couch right where my head was going to be, where I was lying.

01:05:20 ►

So we started chatting, and he shared that he was a lifelong sailor and that he was only there

01:05:26 ►

because he was researching vomiting and he didn’t really care about getting high. He just heard that

01:05:33 ►

ayahuasca makes you vomit. And since he researched his vomit, he thought that he should try it out.

01:05:38 ►

I’m not even kidding you. Honestly, why this guy there? He was like 60 years old. And I was like, honestly, why this guy there? He was like 60 years old. And I was like, well, you know it’s like a really intense psychedelic trip, right?

01:05:49 ►

And he was like, yeah, but I just want to see if I’ll vomit.

01:05:51 ►

I’m like, okay, cool.

01:05:55 ►

He also told me that if you put a nickel and a penny in your mouth at the same time,

01:05:59 ►

it creates a taste that makes your brain trick you into vomiting.

01:06:03 ►

So don’t do that unless you want to try that.

01:06:02 ►

that makes your brain trick you into vomiting.

01:06:04 ►

So don’t do that unless you want to try that.

01:06:08 ►

That’s just more like evidence for the story about why this guy was there.

01:06:10 ►

So he was there for that.

01:06:14 ►

So basically the way we were sitting,

01:06:17 ►

it was like our heads were going to be next to each other

01:06:19 ►

for this experience.

01:06:20 ►

And I knew, I don’t think he had taken a psychedelic before.

01:06:22 ►

He was like, oh, I took acid once in the 60s.

01:06:25 ►

And I’m like, I think it’s different than that.

01:06:26 ►

Like, we may kind of be interacting with each other inadvertently.

01:06:31 ►

And he’s like, okay, so we introduced ourselves.

01:06:33 ►

My name is Catherine, is my full name.

01:06:34 ►

And he was very warmed by that.

01:06:36 ►

He said, oh, my mother’s full name, my mother’s name is Catherine.

01:06:39 ►

I was very close with her.

01:06:40 ►

That makes me feel safe and comfortable that you’ll be right next to me.

01:06:44 ►

And then I just thought he was a nice guy. I was like, okay, you seem cool. I like that you’re here

01:06:49 ►

too. So we drank the ayahuasca, lights went down, everybody’s kind of in their own thing.

01:06:57 ►

And at one point, like there’s two parts of this trip that I specifically wanted to share. At one point I had this really intense urge for like love and comfort and I thought that holding

01:07:12 ►

somebody’s hand is a really beautiful kind of affectionate thing that people

01:07:18 ►

can do with each other and it’s not so intimate that it’s like it’s not like oh

01:07:22 ►

this is a lover or something but you can hold hands with a parent with a friend um somebody you just met you shake hands but

01:07:30 ►

like really holding hands tonight so I had the urge to hold somebody’s hand but I felt like I

01:07:34 ►

don’t know these people that well like I thought like maybe this guy I just met would go hold his

01:07:39 ►

hand but I’m like oh he’s just here to vomit like I don’t I don’t want to like impose intimacy on him. And then there’s

01:07:46 ►

kind of this like weird age gender dynamic. I was like, I don’t want it to seem like,

01:07:51 ►

I don’t want to seem it like it’s too intimate or anything. So I just kind of let it go.

01:07:55 ►

Um, so that passed. And then I had another thing that stuck with me, which was, um, I

01:08:01 ►

had an experience where I was looking at a baby in my arms.

01:08:08 ►

It was like a vision of holding a baby.

01:08:10 ►

But I realized that I was, I, Catherine, was the baby,

01:08:15 ►

and I was seeing me through my mother’s eyes.

01:08:18 ►

And I could feel this intense fear and love and confusion that she felt having me as a baby.

01:08:30 ►

And I felt it myself, which was really cool, I guess, for empathy.

01:08:35 ►

It was also really emotional to kind of not just know her stories.

01:08:40 ►

I’m her only child, and I know that when she had me me she was very afraid about taking care of a kid so

01:08:48 ►

It was cool to feel that

01:08:50 ►

When that passed the whole trip was over we went and like they kind of tied up the ceremony

01:08:55 ►

Went to the kitchen. We had some like vegetable soup

01:08:59 ►

Sat around and I overheard the vomit guy

01:09:03 ►

Which is not the sailor sailor. I overheard the vomit guy, which is not, the sailor, he’s a sailor, I overheard the sailor

01:09:08 ►

telling somebody about holding someone’s hand, and I was like, what, and then, like, I’m gonna

01:09:14 ►

interrupt you, I was like, what, and he was like, oh, like, halfway through my experience,

01:09:19 ►

first of all, he was, like, in awe of the whole thing, he was like, I never expected that, like,

01:09:24 ►

I had, he told me he

01:09:25 ►

was really grateful that I was behind him. He felt like a mother energy there. And he’s like,

01:09:29 ►

I know it’s weird. You’re like half my age, but I felt like motherly warmth coming from you. Um,

01:09:35 ►

and he’s like, and I, at one point I just wanted to hold somebody’s hand and he said the same

01:09:39 ►

thing. He was like, I didn’t want to reach up and feel like I was coming on to you. I’m this older

01:09:43 ►

guy. I’m like asked to hold your hand, but I really wanted to hold your hand. I was like, I didn’t want to reach up and feel like I was coming on to you. I’m this older guy. I’m like, I have to hold your hand, but I really want to hold your hand.

01:09:45 ►

I was like, that’s crazy.

01:09:48 ►

I wanted to hold your hand.

01:09:49 ►

And it was just kind of a sweet story.

01:09:52 ►

And we had soup together, and he gave me his book.

01:09:54 ►

And yeah, that’s the end of my story.

01:09:58 ►

Thank you. Yeah, Mike read my article in the City Paper and asked if I would come and talk about it.

01:10:15 ►

And the premise is sort of, I did a study at the end of 2014,

01:10:31 ►

and one of the experiences I had was that, you know, I’m 34, so I always thought of psychedelics as, even though I had done mushrooms, I was young, 14, 15, 16.

01:10:36 ►

It was always at a party or somewhere, so I was just getting, you know, completely fucked

01:10:41 ►

up and puking, you know, sort of typical shit you do whenever you’re a teenager.

01:10:46 ►

But one of the sessions at Hopkins, it was a very sobering experience,

01:10:52 ►

and I thought that was counterintuitive,

01:10:53 ►

but especially to people like my parents

01:10:56 ►

and people that their ideas of psychedelics come from 1960s,

01:11:02 ►

psychedelia, flower children, Kate Ashbery, Charlie Manson,

01:11:05 ►

things like that. So I thought that was an interesting idea that, oh, Jesus, this is

01:11:10 ►

a really sobering thing. It’s a horrifying thing. And that maybe if that was more well

01:11:17 ►

known, it wouldn’t be such a threatening thing. So the first session at Hopkins was really fun. I thought it was ketamine,

01:11:29 ►

but it wasn’t. They just unblinded the study. It was actually psilocybin. But it was really

01:11:34 ►

intense because I had never done psychedelics with a blindfold, and the music in particular

01:11:39 ►

was very powerful because it guides you. It sort of controls what you’re thinking and guides

01:11:46 ►

the whole tone of the whole thing. And the first one, it was almost like this Lion King

01:11:52 ►

experience where I felt like I was born into a new world and there were these beasts looking

01:11:56 ►

over the cliffs at me and I was like I was being born and it was amazing. But the second

01:12:01 ►

one, I lived so close to Hopkins I could walk.

01:12:07 ►

And I think I had to be there at 9 or something.

01:12:09 ►

But the water pipe burst in my house.

01:12:13 ►

And it was a disaster.

01:12:14 ►

There was water everywhere.

01:12:16 ►

And these people came.

01:12:17 ►

The landlord called these people in.

01:12:19 ►

And these five or six people came in in the morning.

01:12:21 ►

And so it wasn’t a good morning.

01:12:22 ►

I didn’t eat.

01:12:23 ►

And I got there.

01:12:23 ►

And I was like, fuck, I don’t even want to do this. And so I was sort of like, all right,

01:12:29 ►

just give me the, you know, let me get, I didn’t say this, but I was like, give me the

01:12:31 ►

pills, and let’s do it, and I’m going to have a buzz, and then we’re going to get, you know,

01:12:35 ►

and then we’ll get it over with. And so they give you the, or I took the capsules. We looked

01:12:40 ►

at a book, as was protocol, and I didn’t realize this until afterwards,

01:12:45 ►

but in one of the books there was a painting of the Garden of Eden, and there was a snake in the picture.

01:12:51 ►

So I took the capsules, my stomach was hurting,

01:12:55 ►

and I started having all these visions of jokers and all these intimidating things in my field of vision,

01:13:03 ►

and I was like, oh no, I didn’t want to do this and I was thinking maybe if I asked for a sandwich it’ll it’ll sort of

01:13:10 ►

smother it and it’ll go away and I think I did ask for food and they’re like it ain’t anywhere

01:13:14 ►

near lunch and then I started seeing snakes and then and then I thought that a snake had bitten

01:13:22 ►

me and that’s what was causing me.

01:13:25 ►

I thought, oh, the venom’s running through my veins, and I’m going insane because I forgot who I was.

01:13:29 ►

And then I was like, what the fuck am I doing here, and where am I?

01:13:32 ►

And then a few weeks before that, I was with my friend Caleb, who’s here tonight.

01:13:38 ►

And our friend introduced us to this snake handler from Cecil County.

01:13:42 ►

And he had over a hundred snakes in his

01:13:45 ►

house. And this guy was hysterical. A few days before this, he had been bitten by, I think it

01:13:51 ►

was a gaboon viper. And he was extremely angry at his neighbor, who was home at the time, who he was

01:13:58 ►

saying, fuck this motherfucker up. This guy’s from Cecil County. He’s like a redneck type of dude.

01:14:03 ►

Because this gaboon viper had bitten him. This guy was in his 60s.

01:14:06 ►

And he’s out on the floor. The neighbor comes in, calls the ambulance.

01:14:11 ►

They life flight him to Philadelphia to where the antipenem is at.

01:14:15 ►

And it saved his life, but he wanted to die.

01:14:18 ►

And so he was extremely angry.

01:14:20 ►

So I started mixing up this snake with this snake story.

01:14:23 ►

And I started saying, hey, Mary, I think it was this snake guy.

01:14:27 ►

Remember the snake guy?

01:14:29 ►

Because I thought she knew my friend Hugh Campbell, but actually she knows his brother but didn’t know Hugh.

01:14:34 ►

And she was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I was so paranoid that I thought, oh, they’re trying to act like they don’t know me.

01:14:42 ►

And then I thought, oh, they’re filming this.

01:14:46 ►

And now, and I’m going to ruin the whole study,

01:14:50 ►

because now they know that I know them.

01:14:51 ►

And this is a violation of the protocol.

01:14:55 ►

And I just fucked everything up.

01:14:57 ►

So then it just fueled me into a maelstrom of fear and paranoia.

01:15:02 ►

And I was like, oh, god.

01:15:04 ►

And then I started experiencing the

01:15:07 ►

pain of all these different people. I knew my, my, my grandma was in the hospital. I thought

01:15:11 ►

she was going to die, but she didn’t. And my mom is taking care of her. And so I felt that was in

01:15:15 ►

this just extreme emotions of feeling other people’s pain, like a religious experience.

01:15:20 ►

And I was like, God, life is miserable. And like, oh, my poor grandmother, she’s suffering

01:15:25 ►

in the hospital. I’m laying here. This is terrible. And this year, this was, I don’t

01:15:31 ►

know, the summer of 2014, I had separated from my wife in February. And so I had to

01:15:37 ►

drop out of school. I just totally fell apart and felt horrible and I couldn’t really function.

01:15:42 ►

You know, I just was sort of drinking and like and what am I going to do? I dropped out of school.

01:15:46 ►

I was writing. I really just lost

01:15:48 ►

all sense of direction.

01:15:49 ►

I was having these visions of all these people

01:15:52 ►

and like, oh, this is horrible.

01:15:53 ►

Then I was thinking

01:15:56 ►

about somebody who I thought was a friend.

01:15:58 ►

I was like, geez, this guy’s

01:16:00 ►

a loser. His life has really fallen apart.

01:16:02 ►

I was like, it’s not Caleb.

01:16:04 ►

Then like

01:16:04 ►

100 miles an hour, I’ve been in it’s not Caleb. And then like,

01:16:07 ►

100 miles an hour, like a car, I’ve been in some pretty serious cars, and it was like a car wreck.

01:16:10 ►

Immediately I recognized it was myself.

01:16:12 ►

And I was like, oh, fucking

01:16:14 ►

shit. I was like,

01:16:16 ►

oh no. And I didn’t think I could face

01:16:18 ►

it. I realized it was like, oh my god,

01:16:19 ►

I broke up with my wife. I was like, what?

01:16:21 ►

Why? And I was like, I’m in school,

01:16:23 ►

and I had written this article in the city paper, and it was banned from the city paper. They censored it because of the things I was saying. I was like, what? Why? And I was like, I’m in school, and I had written this article in the city paper,

01:16:25 ►

and it was banned from the city paper.

01:16:27 ►

They censored it because of the things I was saying.

01:16:28 ►

I was like, what is wrong with me?

01:16:29 ►

I was like, I’m like a crazy person.

01:16:31 ►

I could see myself completely objective,

01:16:34 ►

like other people saw me, you know?

01:16:36 ►

Like, unglossed by delusion.

01:16:37 ►

Or I thought that.

01:16:39 ►

And that was why I said,

01:16:43 ►

psychedelics are a sobering experience. Because I saw myself objectively, and it was horrifying. It was humili leave. And also, I’m very close with, I should

01:17:06 ►

say, I’m very close with my dad, and I thought

01:17:08 ►

when I was thinking this, I go, this can’t be me

01:17:10 ►

because my dad would have said something. He would have been like,

01:17:12 ►

look, you’ve got some problems, you can do it.

01:17:14 ►

But he’s such a nice person, he never really

01:17:16 ►

confronted me. So,

01:17:18 ►

I thought my dad surely would have told me.

01:17:20 ►

So then it’s over, and I’m like down in the

01:17:22 ►

doms, and I talk to Mary and Teresa,

01:17:24 ►

and the whole team, and Roland, and they were like, look, this is a very harsh judgment.

01:17:28 ►

You can’t, nobody can deal with this level of scrutiny. And I was like, oh God, you know,

01:17:33 ►

if you see yourself in this way, it’s not easy to get over. And so then they came in,

01:17:39 ►

the day was over and they said, yeah, Caleb can’t pick you up today.

01:17:48 ►

His work is something about his work.

01:17:50 ►

And I was like, oh, see, he doesn’t even want to be friends with me anymore.

01:17:51 ►

He knows this.

01:17:52 ►

And he’s like, look, this guy’s a loser.

01:17:54 ►

I don’t want to be friends with him anymore.

01:17:57 ►

And then they gave me my phone, and it was five missed calls.

01:17:59 ►

Bobby Kitchens, who’s my dad.

01:18:00 ►

And I was like, oh, shit.

01:18:03 ►

I was like, as soon as I leave here, they’re going to say, what are you doing?

01:18:04 ►

You’re doing drugs in the middle of the day. Your wife left they’re going to say, what are you doing? You’re doing drugs in the middle of the day.

01:18:06 ►

Your wife left you.

01:18:08 ►

It’s like, what are you doing?

01:18:10 ►

This is crazy.

01:18:13 ►

So yeah.

01:18:18 ►

But the fear part of it, and this lessening of fear that all the, if you’ve seen all these latest articles and the scholarly literature from the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the

01:18:23 ►

whole experience is lessening fear and terror.

01:18:27 ►

If you experience that, there really is a lessening of fear,

01:18:29 ►

because when you return to what someone called the reassuring banality of everyday existence,

01:18:34 ►

things don’t seem that fucking bad, because eventually your delusions and your ego comes back.

01:18:39 ►

And if you think of your ego as like a databank of stories,

01:18:43 ►

rather than, I think people conflate

01:18:46 ►

ego with pride and don’t think of ego as a set of operating instructions, as Terence

01:18:53 ►

McKenna says, so that you know to put food in your mouth, not the other person’s. So

01:18:59 ►

that lessening, I mean, there really was a tremendous lessening of fear once I faced all these things,

01:19:06 ►

and all of these things that were probably beneath my level of subconscious,

01:19:11 ►

beneath my level of awareness that I was unwilling to face,

01:19:14 ►

where I’m just very good at blocking things out.

01:19:18 ►

So I’m not usually in that realm of emotion much.

01:19:21 ►

I just sort of am operating on a daily basis like, whoa, whatever, you know.

01:19:22 ►

that realm of emotion much. I just sort of am operating on a everyday basis like,

01:19:23 ►

whoa, whatever, you know.

01:19:26 ►

I think that’s really, I can’t

01:19:28 ►

remember if there was another part to the story or not,

01:19:30 ►

but

01:19:30 ►

that’s all I remember

01:19:33 ►

for right now.

01:19:34 ►

Thank you.

01:19:48 ►

Alright, so I’ve got All right.

01:19:53 ►

So I’ve got, I wanted to read because reading is fun. And so I went through my session notes from springtime in 2009

01:20:02 ►

when I went to the BPRU and volunteered for,

01:20:06 ►

the study was called 609 a lot of revealing information there and I had known a

01:20:15 ►

handful of people in town here who had got under when the study and everyone

01:20:21 ►

had really wild reports everyone was was saying they were giving every drug

01:20:26 ►

that they could think of.

01:20:28 ►

But no one knew what it was, what was going on.

01:20:31 ►

So just kind of rundown of how it all went there.

01:20:36 ►

I’d wake up in the morning.

01:20:37 ►

A really busted cab would come and get me.

01:20:41 ►

Hopefully, I would get bubbles.

01:20:43 ►

He was like the really great guy to come and climb.

01:20:46 ►

You know, there’s, yeah, right?

01:20:49 ►

It was so good.

01:20:51 ►

But it seemed like half the cab drivers also volunteered for certain,

01:20:55 ►

not the psychedelic ones, but they’re in some sort of rehabilitation.

01:20:59 ►

So it was a good, you know, those are the guys taking you over the river.

01:21:03 ►

Get there around 8.30

01:21:05 ►

and, you know, fill out forms

01:21:08 ►

and, you know, I’d do

01:21:10 ►

tests, you know, just sort of,

01:21:11 ►

you know, I guess I’d fill out forms and then I’d be

01:21:14 ►

given four unmarked green pills,

01:21:17 ►

hang around for 45

01:21:18 ►

minutes talking, flipping through books,

01:21:20 ►

chatting it up,

01:21:22 ►

feel something come on,

01:21:23 ►

maybe not feel something come on, put on eye shades, put on some music,

01:21:27 ►

lie back down on the couch.

01:21:29 ►

I think it was about an hour to an hour and a half,

01:21:33 ►

the music would stop.

01:21:34 ►

And I’d be faced with very two humans that are looking at me.

01:21:39 ►

And they start asking questions.

01:21:41 ►

Do you feel a drug effect?

01:21:42 ►

Does the room look different?

01:21:45 ►

What was happening when you were lying down?

01:21:47 ►

What kind of drugs do you think you’ve gotten?

01:21:51 ►

And from there, I would stand on one foot, one arm.

01:21:55 ►

And as a very tall, lanky person,

01:21:57 ►

that’s actually quite difficult without drugs.

01:22:00 ►

So add a little in there, it would get successively harder.

01:22:06 ►

Then another one of the tests, this is the one I really liked.

01:22:12 ►

There’s a circle board, and there’s an array of lights,

01:22:17 ►

and there’s a button.

01:22:19 ►

And the name of this game is you press the button,

01:22:23 ►

and as soon as you press it, another light appears.

01:22:25 ►

So you’ve got a minute to cycle through that

01:22:28 ►

and see how quick you are.

01:22:29 ►

That’s the human guinea pig carnival game there.

01:22:34 ►

So that’s a good one.

01:22:36 ►

Then I go sit in front of the computer,

01:22:39 ►

screen after screen after tasks, asking questions, memorizing numbers,

01:22:48 ►

you know, what is this?

01:22:52 ►

Yeah, it’s like recognizing numbers,

01:22:55 ►

hand-eye coordination ones, sequences.

01:22:58 ►

And the really good one was getting presented

01:23:04 ►

with banal words that asked you if it was natural or artificial.

01:23:12 ►

That was a, you know, it’s a good one.

01:23:16 ►

And so after all that, I go back down, lie down on the couch, and go down for another hour, hour and a half, come back

01:23:27 ►

up, do it again. And that’s how it went. Eight or nine sessions, no idea what the drugs are.

01:23:35 ►

So I’m just going to start reading these. So I also just kind of, I recently went through

01:23:42 ►

them all and just kind of updated because I’m not a very good writer

01:23:46 ►

and I skip words and say things wrong,

01:23:48 ►

so I went through and kind of changed the language

01:23:50 ►

and cut out a lot of the garbage too.

01:23:54 ►

So I’m not gonna read everything,

01:23:56 ►

but I’m gonna read some that are pretty fun.

01:23:59 ►

Okay, thank you.

01:24:00 ►

All right, session number two.

01:24:02 ►

This is great, I really enjoyed this. I can usually call visions alone with my eyes closed. Add eye shades and music, that will take me right there. Oh yeah, this is a very low dose of some mystery substance I received today. Yeah, hello.

01:24:26 ►

Slowly in the session, the background fuzz of light in my mind’s eye started shifting into recognizable forms, and thus some sequence of narrative unfolds. Fuzzy moss, green and

01:24:32 ►

vibrant, moss wall, clear and sharp. Excitedly, my rational awareness steps in and tries to

01:24:38 ►

codify this experience, and then the moss wall disappears back into static form. Deep breathing, and I let the music take me deeper.

01:24:47 ►

The moss wall grows back again, more alive with each breath.

01:24:51 ►

It cracks and breaks into two sections.

01:24:54 ►

Split down the middle, a reverse tower of darkness erupts out of the wilds.

01:24:59 ►

The music is rich and deep and swelling.

01:25:01 ►

Each passage creates a form.

01:25:03 ►

The sound swells and a wall is created.

01:25:07 ►

Another swell and then there’s a floor.

01:25:09 ►

Another swell and then there’s another wall.

01:25:12 ►

Another wall.

01:25:13 ►

Walking in this valley,

01:25:14 ►

this cave is electric in my space-time.

01:25:17 ►

Fear nothingness and walk on the edge.

01:25:19 ►

Be moved.

01:25:20 ►

Swelling more and more,

01:25:21 ►

the music builds up in intensity to a peak.

01:25:24 ►

And with it arises

01:25:25 ►

a clear, bright, blinding moon in the sky.

01:25:28 ►

My mind-body is firmly looking out of a cave.

01:25:34 ►

Returning back to human mode, during the computer tasks, I notice something.

01:25:37 ►

It catches my eye.

01:25:40 ►

Looking at a garbage can over my left shoulder, and I’m thinking of the garbage can.

01:25:44 ►

Yeah, it’s the shape of a can.

01:25:48 ►

Garbage can.

01:25:51 ►

Garbage can.

01:25:53 ►

Garbage.

01:25:54 ►

Can.

01:25:56 ►

Shape.

01:25:57 ►

Oval.

01:25:58 ►

Sort of small.

01:25:59 ►

It’s a can.

01:26:00 ►

Garbage can.

01:26:00 ►

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

01:26:02 ►

Yeah, I’m in the middle of a computer desk.

01:26:03 ►

Hello.

01:26:04 ►

Turn my head back, and I start clicking away. Session 3.

01:26:12 ►

It’s been maybe half an hour since

01:26:16 ►

I does and I’ve been sitting quietly reading and waiting. My arms start to get sensitive

01:26:20 ►

and tingling. Inside my chest I feel slow building of energy.

01:26:24 ►

It’s the first real warm day of

01:26:25 ►

spring, and man, am I inside this big, soul-sucking cubicle matrix complex with sealed-up windows.

01:26:32 ►

No nature, no fresh air, nothing to break the code of controlled environment climate.

01:26:40 ►

The tinkling gets stronger, and I pull the eye shades down and put on the headphones

01:26:43 ►

and give a thumbs up.

01:26:47 ►

Preparing for some sort of, uh, something.

01:26:51 ►

Yeah, you know, the odds of just getting better, of getting a real kick to my organism.

01:26:54 ►

Instead of the previous two sessions where of, do I feel something?

01:26:56 ►

I guess I do. Do I really?

01:26:58 ►

Well, yeah, sure, maybe I do.

01:27:00 ►

Well, if I think I do, I must.

01:27:01 ►

And if I don’t, I won’t.

01:27:05 ►

But maybe I’m just really meditating here, fulfilling expectations.

01:27:10 ►

So I focus on the buzzing warmth in my chest, and it slowly rises up my spine,

01:27:15 ►

climbing to the very top of my skull. I wait for a second and realize, well dang,

01:27:20 ►

this ain’t no psychedelic drug today. Shit, my consciousness is jammed into the very top part of my brain, and now thoughts are pouring into it and being spun around like a ferris wheel.

01:27:24 ►

I feel my blood pumping right in the middle of my ears. Man, this is a real cerebral kind of state.

01:27:29 ►

My body doesn’t feel especially loose and zippy, like I feel when I’m jamming on coffee or trucker

01:27:34 ►

speed. But maybe I’ve been dusted by one of those social mind levelers for people who do not resonate

01:27:39 ►

well with the linear wave of rationalist capitalist society. Oh, no.

01:27:46 ►

I don’t mind thinking fast.

01:27:49 ►

Maybe my coffee was just extra good this morning,

01:27:51 ►

and I’m tripping on the power of coffee.

01:27:54 ►

Man, this music sucks.

01:27:55 ►

These eyeshades are stupid.

01:27:57 ►

I’m annoyed at this situation.

01:27:59 ►

I’m ready to get up.

01:28:00 ►

Sure would be great to go outside.

01:28:02 ►

I can’t wait for the computer tasks.

01:28:04 ►

My eyes are wide open,

01:28:07 ►

and all I see is the blackout world in the eyeshade.

01:28:08 ►

Time is a horrendous beast.

01:28:11 ►

Finally, great, I’m up doing tasks.

01:28:12 ►

Here we go.

01:28:15 ►

It’s the task where you see long strings of random numbers,

01:28:18 ►

and as soon as you type it on a keyboard, another sequence of numbers appears.

01:28:24 ►

And I have to do this, try to do this for five minutes, and I have to decide when the five minutes up.

01:28:26 ►

Ha-ha, game on.

01:28:28 ►

My mind starts to count.

01:28:30 ►

One, two, three, four, up to 60.

01:28:36 ►

And then I create a notch in my head.

01:28:38 ►

Then I find the part of my brain that takes the visual input

01:28:41 ►

of the black and white pixel arrangement,

01:28:43 ►

decode it into numbers, and then shoot the electricity down to my hand muscles

01:28:47 ►

and connect to the keypad numbers.

01:28:48 ►

I’m totally jamming this one.

01:28:51 ►

My body is rocking to the seconds count, 23, 24, 25, 26.

01:28:57 ►

And my foot is tapping to the string of numbers,

01:29:00 ►

8735, 48365732.

01:29:04 ►

I’m jamming so hard.

01:29:05 ►

My body is in auto-bypass mode.

01:29:08 ►

I’m going so good, I start to drift off.

01:29:10 ►

While I’m doing this, thinking about what I’m going to be doing later in the evening.

01:29:17 ►

Session four.

01:29:27 ►

Extended beyond the walls of the flesh body,

01:29:29 ►

a stone tossed into water,

01:29:32 ►

ripples manifest a layering internal architecture.

01:29:35 ►

Looking around with mind-sight vision,

01:29:38 ►

I locate and experience my psyche body.

01:29:40 ►

It is a luminous, fibrous substance.

01:29:43 ►

I go deeper in, and I feel the star clusters wrapped in crystalline webs, crawling like

01:29:48 ►

a spider on these pulsating waveform webs, pulling me inward into deep valleys and then

01:29:53 ►

pushing me outward over above beyond. Pulling to the center dissolves everything back into

01:29:59 ►

non-identified waves. I play the internal balance act, trying to get a proper lift off. Shift to heart-centric

01:30:05 ►

awareness. Brain banks are loosely activated to keep a focused narrative, not too laser

01:30:11 ►

sharp, not too controlling. I got this. Okay, now let’s kick in the guts and push. A superimposed

01:30:18 ►

image appears, a loaf of bread forming, and then there’s a knife. And it’s slowly cut into pieces. Cut away

01:30:26 ►

and free, I’m flying over mountains, forests, and natural landscapes of earth and beauty.

01:30:31 ►

Zipping across planet earth at high speeds, a wall appears and I slam right into it. Solid

01:30:37 ►

shapes flicker into a succession of forms. As each one appears, I push it aside. It is

01:30:43 ►

replaced by the next. Sumerian gods,

01:30:46 ►

golden Egyptian thrones, Moses in the burning bush, Jesus, Kali, gray aliens and robes.

01:30:53 ►

Every encounter I reject, and it is replaced by the next. These are not my gods. Like flipping

01:30:59 ►

through a deck of cards. It comes to thought that I’m hitting the morphic field of the mystical

01:31:05 ►

states for. I’ve been filling that out at the end of every session. This is just the

01:31:10 ►

byproduct set up by the design of the study trying to map out what is a spiritual experience.

01:31:17 ►

These are not my gods. Or maybe perhaps this is the resident of the past people who have

01:31:21 ►

been in this room sticking around in the ether. Or maybe this has encoded my DNA

01:31:26 ►

that I’m just tapping into it and accessing it

01:31:28 ►

and cycling through, burning it up and updating.

01:31:31 ►

These are not my gods.

01:31:32 ►

I feel no connection, no authentic relationship

01:31:34 ►

to these manifestations.

01:31:36 ►

They seem like cheap magic tricks.

01:31:40 ►

Session five.

01:31:46 ►

Spinning. Spinning.

01:31:47 ►

Spinning out.

01:31:48 ►

Spinning.

01:31:49 ►

Lifting in a clockwise swirling motion.

01:31:51 ►

Twisting me around like a cosmic corkscrew.

01:31:53 ►

Pretty decent dose here.

01:31:55 ►

Control is something that needs to take a back seat.

01:31:58 ►

I focus on this swirling wormhole.

01:32:01 ►

Superimposing a string from the top of my head down my spine to my feet.

01:32:06 ►

Superimposing on top of that a string of planet Earth’s tilted axis.

01:32:12 ►

Both of these bodies become one, the Earth and the human.

01:32:15 ►

I am now vibrating like the swirling of the magnetic poles.

01:32:19 ►

This twisting energy forms into two vines wrapped around each other.

01:32:23 ►

Like an upside-down jack-in-the-beanstalk, I climb down the vines and in through the. Like an upside down jack in the beanstalk,

01:32:25 ►

I climb down the vines and in through the roots.

01:32:28 ►

And poof, it’s all gone.

01:32:30 ►

The vortex is gone.

01:32:31 ►

Everything is crystal clear and still.

01:32:35 ►

I can still locate my body lying down on the couch,

01:32:38 ►

but my consciousness is not tied to the organism

01:32:40 ►

as I normally am.

01:32:42 ►

I can move freely within it, stopping at various areas

01:32:46 ►

and interact with it.

01:32:47 ►

I instantly feel a tightness in my back

01:32:49 ►

that is connected to my chest

01:32:51 ►

and goes down to my gut.

01:32:53 ►

I focus on my hands,

01:32:54 ►

and they start to distort in size,

01:32:56 ►

becoming very large and very small

01:32:57 ►

at the same time.

01:32:59 ►

I am the hand in the Mickey Mouse gloves

01:33:01 ►

and the glove itself.

01:33:03 ►

Exploring my body more,

01:33:04 ►

it becomes plastic

01:33:05 ►

anywhere my consciousness goes.

01:33:08 ►

It’s push and pull, Laffy Taffy body stretches.

01:33:12 ►

That session was really cool.

01:33:14 ►

What happened in it, too, I started just going

01:33:17 ►

through my body, like every area of it.

01:33:20 ►

And since there was this really interesting plastic malleability

01:33:24 ►

to it, I noticed my liver. Eventually, because there was this really interesting plastic malleability to it, I noticed my liver.

01:33:27 ►

Eventually, because there was this tightness

01:33:29 ►

and it was in my gut, and then I went down into my liver.

01:33:32 ►

And then I saw this narrative unfold

01:33:33 ►

that I had been drinking alcohol because I had been really

01:33:37 ►

nervous because I was about to do a solo tour across Europe.

01:33:41 ►

And so I was just drinking.

01:33:44 ►

I don’t know.

01:33:44 ►

I don’t really drink that much.

01:33:46 ►

Or I didn’t at the time.

01:33:48 ►

And my body was like really kind of like messed up for me.

01:33:52 ►

So I thought that was a really good session.

01:33:55 ►

So I just kind of like explored my body

01:33:57 ►

and went through that, you know,

01:33:58 ►

which is, you know, a really great.

01:34:01 ►

Okay.

01:34:01 ►

Session number seven.

01:34:06 ►

It is now a week later and I’m finally writing this.

01:34:09 ►

I think everything is settled, and this is my best attempt to articulate it.

01:34:13 ►

I’m very humbled in knowing that some things I’m struggling to understand

01:34:17 ►

and some things will be unknowable.

01:34:19 ►

At this point, I have absolutely no idea what is in those four little blue pills.

01:34:25 ►

Seriously, it could be anything, or they could be giving me absolutely nothing.

01:34:29 ►

Okay, well, I know I’m getting something, but let’s not confuse the boat with the river here.

01:34:35 ►

Or Emma, are we thinking of the boat and the river analogy,

01:34:37 ►

just the creation of a larger boat nestled inside another river?

01:34:42 ►

Or is that a smaller boat in a smaller river?

01:34:46 ►

You know, when all these factors break down,

01:34:47 ►

what is really happening here form into some sort

01:34:49 ►

of soup of total experience. Chemical,

01:34:51 ►

elemental, actions, consequence,

01:34:54 ►

personal, historical, intuition,

01:34:56 ►

logic, intention.

01:34:58 ►

Well, what am I doing? I’m volunteering

01:34:59 ►

to alter my consciousness by taking

01:35:02 ►

unknown to me substances.

01:35:04 ►

And these substances are creating common enough states

01:35:06 ►

that they differ sometimes in very subtle ways.

01:35:10 ►

So I’m navigating these chemical imprints

01:35:12 ►

and bringing back information to the best of my ability.

01:35:14 ►

Is this some sort of scientific shamanism?

01:35:17 ►

Collecting the fractured soul shards of our culture?

01:35:21 ►

What is going on?

01:35:24 ►

I’m lying down. The music becomes a blank wall of stimulation.

01:35:28 ►

White noise. Nothingness. Just like my eyes. Black holes. Goodbye. The clear mind. The

01:35:36 ►

hollow earth. The flaming heart. Lava under the crust. Planetary consciousness. I am the

01:35:43 ►

earth, the moon, the planets, the sun burning

01:35:46 ►

expanding consciousness swallowing up each one

01:35:48 ►

the sun becomes my heart, the solar system my mind

01:35:52 ►

my spine is connected to energy even larger and unknowable

01:35:55 ►

faster and faster I’m shooting out

01:35:58 ►

past universes and galaxies

01:35:59 ►

a galaxy is out to the edge of the cosmos

01:36:02 ►

as everything expands and becomes greater

01:36:04 ►

my singular self is becoming smaller burning away to a tiny crisp A galaxy is out to the edge of the cosmos. As everything expands and becomes greater,

01:36:06 ►

my singular self is becoming smaller,

01:36:09 ►

burning away to a tiny crisp.

01:36:12 ►

It feels great to shed the shell of the self.

01:36:14 ►

It is such a small little thing.

01:36:17 ►

Pure awareness is manifesting as a void,

01:36:19 ►

the edge of all possible knowns.

01:36:22 ►

It’s a line we cannot pass into a singular entity.

01:36:24 ►

It’s the limits of human understanding.

01:36:25 ►

Let’s let it rip.

01:36:27 ►

Let’s pull out all the stops,

01:36:29 ►

returning back to what has never begun.

01:36:33 ►

Okay, what happened next is unclear to me at this moment in time.

01:36:35 ►

What happened right after I know,

01:36:38 ►

what happens leading up to it,

01:36:39 ►

I can recall somewhat in my memory,

01:36:42 ►

but there’s a point where I’m unable to.

01:36:44 ►

I’m not really sure what transpired.

01:36:46 ►

So anyways, I’m approaching a point where everything is wrapped in a blanket of nothing.

01:36:51 ►

Eagerly excited to enter it.

01:36:53 ►

Or I try to.

01:36:54 ►

Well, I don’t really know.

01:36:56 ►

If I can know, if I tried or if I didn’t try, well, then there’s this thought.

01:37:01 ►

I don’t know.

01:37:01 ►

Everything’s really confusing.

01:37:03 ►

It’s strange and complex.

01:37:04 ►

Time is not linear.

01:37:06 ►

Or maybe my mind has been scrambled.

01:37:09 ►

MKUltra never ended.

01:37:11 ►

I am aware that I am aware of myself.

01:37:14 ►

Wait, don’t dissolve.

01:37:15 ►

Dissolve.

01:37:16 ►

Wait, Twig.

01:37:16 ►

You can step away if you have to.

01:37:19 ►

No, you have to sit up a minute and start talking to the researchers like a good monkey man.

01:37:23 ►

You’ve got to push all those buttons.

01:37:23 ►

You have to sit up in a minute and start talking to the researchers like a good monkey man.

01:37:24 ►

You’ve got to push all those buttons.

01:37:30 ►

But how do I fit the entire unknowns of existence in this tiny, tiny speck of a body?

01:37:34 ►

This is a very, very hard logic problem.

01:37:35 ►

Or that’s the problem.

01:37:36 ►

It’s not logic at all.

01:37:37 ►

It’s cosmic logic.

01:37:42 ►

I have to find the room with my body and get in it.

01:37:43 ►

Wait, of course.

01:37:43 ►

Wait, wait.

01:37:44 ►

I’m in the middle of my body.

01:37:45 ►

It’s right here in the middle. I’m in it. Wait, of course. Wait, wait. I’m in the middle of my body. It’s right here in the middle. I’m in it. But I’ve expanded so far out and it’s so small and tight. Okay,

01:37:52 ►

I’ve got to go in a little at first. Whoa, it’s all distorted and filling up. How much

01:37:56 ►

can I stuff in here? Whoa, I’ve got way too much space junk in here. My heart starts pumping

01:38:02 ►

faster and faster as I become aware of the music. It’s a really

01:38:05 ►

heavy segment of building and testing me.

01:38:08 ►

Well, that’s not helping.

01:38:11 ►

Okay.

01:38:12 ►

Get back to the center. This is a battle.

01:38:14 ►

I turn on my side and pull

01:38:16 ►

off the headphones and eye shades,

01:38:18 ►

reaching for the garbage can. I need to puke

01:38:19 ►

this motherfucking cosmos out.

01:38:22 ►

I retch.

01:38:24 ►

Out, but I don’t retch out.

01:38:26 ►

Don’t throw up, I retch out with my lungs.

01:38:28 ►

Retching breath.

01:38:29 ►

It happens again and again and again.

01:38:31 ►

No actual puke.

01:38:33 ►

I feel a hand on me and some encouraging words.

01:38:35 ►

I put my hand on that hand and it really helps pull me back.

01:38:39 ►

The simple things are the best.

01:38:41 ►

I’m blown wide open.

01:38:43 ►

Everyone and everything in the room is flat like holograms, surrounded

01:38:47 ►

by everything that is, the real, the essence pouring out and cycled in and getting swallowed

01:38:51 ►

up into infinity. I am a piece of paper, a doodle representing something much more interconnected

01:38:57 ►

and unknowable. The pull back into the cosmic reality is so great. I have to use almost every ounce of my energy

01:39:05 ►

to stay in this flat world.

01:39:08 ►

I sit at the computer terminal.

01:39:10 ►

You know I’m really enjoying every second of this.

01:39:14 ►

I come to the ones about subjective feelings

01:39:16 ►

and drug effects.

01:39:17 ►

They’re just impossible to answer.

01:39:19 ►

I can feel any way I want.

01:39:21 ►

Headachy?

01:39:21 ►

Sure.

01:39:22 ►

Tired?

01:39:22 ►

Yeah.

01:39:23 ►

Energetic?

01:39:24 ►

Totally.

01:39:24 ►

Sleepy? Sure. Okay. High? Yeah.

01:39:27 ►

I just answer straight down the middle. Neutral.

01:39:31 ►

The natural or artificial section is extra trickster-y

01:39:36 ►

right now. So I have to construct a viewpoint to answer

01:39:39 ►

if something is artificial based on how other people view reality of realness.

01:39:45 ►

Because everything is natural, you know?

01:39:48 ►

Next thing, next, trying to memorize the words for later recall becomes even more ridiculous.

01:39:54 ►

I’ve just melted my psyche down to gold

01:39:56 ►

and blew it to an infinite amount of interlocking hyperdimensional rotating pieces

01:39:59 ►

arranged in a divine logic,

01:40:01 ►

and you want me to see if I can remember tangerine, apartment, or vest?

01:40:09 ►

This is fun.

01:40:11 ►

I have to hold onto the flat earth

01:40:13 ►

as the numbers on the computer monitor

01:40:16 ►

are shooting back spiraling at every concept attached to it.

01:40:20 ►

Finally, I preserved, and it was rewarded.

01:40:23 ►

I got to journey back in and back out again, lying down on the couch, closing my eyes,

01:40:28 ►

putting the eye shades on.

01:40:30 ►

I’m looking down and I see my body lying on the couch.

01:40:34 ►

Like a magnet next to a loose iron filling, this energy is flowing through my heart and

01:40:38 ►

out into the world with no end.

01:40:40 ►

I see the room in the building and everyone who has interacted with these studies.

01:40:44 ►

We are doing good work. I see my life and the projects and what everyone who has interacted with these studies. We are doing good work.

01:40:46 ►

I see my life in the projects that I have undertaken and accomplished.

01:40:49 ►

Yes, yes, wow.

01:40:50 ►

Baltimore, you insane vortex power city.

01:40:53 ►

Here we all are.

01:40:55 ►

Wow.

01:40:55 ►

I’m floating above Baltimore.

01:40:57 ►

A wave is shooting out and spiraling up to me.

01:41:00 ►

Inside of it, history, time, place, fate.

01:41:03 ►

It’s all inside and funneling down into the city.

01:41:05 ►

It’s the perfect storm of the nap.

01:41:07 ►

Baltimore, you untameable beast, a holy city like no other.

01:41:11 ►

The veil is very thin here.

01:41:12 ►

Balance, paradox, a holy city where thought manifestation

01:41:16 ►

is very thin.

01:41:18 ►

Get holy or die trying.

01:41:20 ►

The phoenix is rising out of the smoldering ashes

01:41:22 ►

of the underbelly of the great beast.

01:41:24 ►

This is the end. This has only begun.

01:41:27 ►

Thank you.

01:41:40 ►

I got into a car crash last Friday.

01:41:43 ►

My friend told his car.

01:41:45 ►

And we were going into Washington, D.C.

01:41:48 ►

And we were going straight.

01:41:50 ►

It was like a green light.

01:41:52 ►

And then a guy came over and just, we smashed into him, like, on, like, probably 45 miles an hour.

01:41:56 ►

And we spun.

01:41:58 ►

The whole front of the car was destroyed.

01:41:59 ►

My side was, like, caved in.

01:42:01 ►

But not one scratch was on us.

01:42:03 ►

I was caved in, but not one scratch was on us.

01:42:11 ►

And on impact, since we were going so fast and we just stopped instantly,

01:42:15 ►

it was like the space was distorted around us.

01:42:16 ►

It was like that touch of death.

01:42:20 ►

It was like you know for that single second and you forget it.

01:42:24 ►

And then you’re back in that moment with all our glasses flying around and the airbags coming out and um you know you’re just questioning you know why am I still here

01:42:28 ►

like why did I not just die did I just die that’s how it was like I was like am I dead right now I

01:42:33 ►

just couldn’t really believe I was still standing there and funny thing about it is like we got out

01:42:40 ►

well my friend was like very distraught. He was really upset about his car, but the insurance took care of it during school.

01:42:49 ►

But after all that was over, we then went to still take the acid that we were going

01:42:54 ►

to take that night to rethink what we just experienced.

01:43:00 ►

In that experience, it was very interesting.

01:43:08 ►

We got back. We were just like, we really had a second chance. So it’s like, every choice that we make from this moment on, it matters. There’s no going back. We have to do whatever we were here to do.

01:43:17 ►

And so we got in, we took a gel tab, it was like the strongest, it was like just one gel tab. It was very strong. And then we smoked a little bit of pot. And then we watched two movies. We

01:43:28 ►

watched Batman vs Superman and we watched End of Self. And in that time, it was just

01:43:36 ►

like, you know, that is very interesting, that whole death kind of state. I think life is about being here in this moment and learning everything you can and trying to impact the world.

01:43:49 ►

Because some people might think life is meaningless, but even if the question does get answered and it might not be what we thought,

01:43:57 ►

the people here, what we impact here matters to the people that are here when we’re gone.

01:44:04 ►

So we have to take

01:44:05 ►

care of the earth. We have to, you know, start thinking of things differently. And I thought

01:44:11 ►

that was important, but it was also just like, death is just a point of observation. It’s not

01:44:16 ►

really like how it seems. Things appear to be dead, but they’re really not. They carry on.

01:44:20 ►

And it really showed me that I wasn’t separate from my external like outer space is my inner

01:44:27 ►

space and everything is interconnected but we have this subjective experience that I

01:44:34 ►

think is important because everybody has an identity.

01:44:36 ►

Everybody is expressing themselves like uniquely one time.

01:44:41 ►

It only occurs one time.

01:44:42 ►

The fact that everybody is in this room like know, you’re one in a million chance.

01:44:46 ►

And everybody is, that’s important, that’s impactful.

01:44:49 ►

And it just, that whole experience of car accident

01:44:54 ►

and the trip really put me down into myself.

01:44:56 ►

And like, it sucks that that had to happen for me to realize.

01:45:04 ►

But you know, it’s all right here at Forest, like, every day,

01:45:07 ►

but it’s just when we’re ready to take it in, when we decide to.

01:45:12 ►

So, yeah, that’s basically all I really have to say.

01:45:15 ►

Thank you.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

047 - Philadelphia and Baltimore Storytelling

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Program Notes

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