DOSE:

2 hits

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

I Report on a Specific Danger

Abstract:
I, Wodin-One-Eye, still believe that LSD offers a unique avenue for Lamarckian human evolution: changing one's own DNA to an improved form. This property is (IMHO) unique to LSD and is not shared with the other major psychedelics. However, the process involves a specific danger: when the first stage is accomplished, which is marked by a “cosmic trip” of a particular character, a waiting period (which I estimate at one month) is required before taking more LSD. Failure to observe the waiting period (that is, taking more LSD the next day) resulted for this user in a trip to “Plastic Fantastic Land”, an extremely undesirable result. This is probably the “bizarre psychosis” mentioned in some of the stuffy and uncomprehending literature written by idiots in white coats. I recount my experience of Plastic Fantastic Land and offer some observations and conclusions. It seems to me most important to warn younger users of the specific mechanism by which I stumbled into Plastic Fantastic Land (where, I assure, I would not desire to go again).

Experience: LSD Day One: I see God.
I was a musician from infancy. When in 1974 I discovered that listening to music was enhanced by LSD, I determined to learn to play music on LSD. Over the course of a half-dozen trips in 1975, I was led by Spirit to choose a set and setting of a week alone (November '75) in a remote family cabin on a lake. After several days alone I took 500 micrograms (?+-) on the Thursday, before dawn, some 30 hours after the lunar eclipse (lunar phase, I believe, could be a factor influencing trips) and four weeks before the winter solstice.

As I sat in the kitchen waiting, the morning sun came over the horizon; across the lake somewhere someone started a bulldozer motor, and the vibration of the sound entered my left big toe and vibrated my body and lifted me to my feet. I grabbed my guitar and rushed outside to sit on the porch in the sun. My eyes crossed and I entered a complex hallucination in which I heard an orchestra tuning. When the vibration was at maximum, a bee flew from right to left across my field of vision, and my right eye followed it, turning 90 degrees to the left into my nose where it remained. My left eye remained straight ahead looking at the fingerboard. I began to play. In my right eye, a hallucination formed: God, the angels, and all of my male ancestors stood and listened. At my left, I saw my deceased mother being carried down to the lake in her coffin. Also at my left, I heard the Goddess moving (not speaking, not visible). I momentarily broke the spell to look to my right and see if anyone was really there – there wasn't. I snapped back into the hallucinatory space and continued to play for perhaps hours?? and learned a great deal about music which I was able to retain, although it took many years to work out the details. I will not dwell on the many beautiful details of this few hours in Paradise. Toward the end, I got out a music stand and some sheet music. Then a Wind came and blew the sheet music off the stand, and said, “Now!” I put the music and the guitar away and went out in the sailboat.

The cabin possessed a styrofoam sailboard about 10 feet long. The rudder attachment was broken, and on the day before I had crudely repaired it and taken it out in a mild breeze. Now, the Wind blew, and I took the boat out again. Not a sailor, I did not know to tie a loop in the rope which held the sail (1/4” nylon twine). I held the rudder with right hand and wrapped the rope around my left hand. The Wind took me rapidly out into the lake, sailing against the wind. The rope cut into my hand. It became very difficult to hold on, and so, I quit. I had the thought, “I should go practice music some more!” I turned the boat around. At this moment, embarrassing to recount, I had a sexual release and wet my pants. I could no longer control the boat, and was blown about for the entire rest of the day by the Wind. At the end of the day, at sunset, the wind died when I was 50 yards from shore near the cabin, and I paddled in.

Experience: Day Two: I visit Psychedelic Hell
The next day, I understood that the Wind had intended to take me somewhere. So, I took another two LSD tabs, same as the day before. But it was pouring rain. I sat in the kitchen and played the blues tripping. Then I thought, “this won't do!” and I went outside. Suddenly the Wind came back and blew the clouds away – and, bingo, I was in Plastic Fantastic Land (to be described below). I got the boat out again and went out on the lake. The wind and waves were rough and shortly the rudder broke off and the boat capsized. When I righted it, the mast and sail came loose and sank. I paddled to land miles down the shore. I was barefoot, and it took me the rest of the day to walk home on the dirt shore road carrying the boat. During this walk, my head was divided in half: two separate entities inhabiting my brain, and not too happy with each other. My left testicle seemed to be painfully pulling away from my body. I got home at evening and wept.

Plastic Fantastic Land is attested by two sources known to me: a series of drawings by Robert Crumb published in Zap Comix in the early '70s shows the visual imagery: trapezoidal interlocking acid patterns inhabited by reptilian humanoids, completely hallucinatory and non-living. The state is also accurately described by Marty Balin's Jefferson Airplane song, “Plastic Fantastic Lover”. Although Balin dodged the question of its meaning when asked, it appears to me that he and his lover had a cosmic trip together, probably making love, decided to take more LSD the next day, and went to Plastic Fantastic Land. It is not a nice or desirable place. My experience matched the elements of these two artistic renderings of PFL, leading me to believe that this has been a common experience, which arises because of this hubris: wanting to have the same trip again, which I now believe to be a serious spiritual error. No matter how cosmic the trip, taking more LSD the next day (although often reported to be useless due to tolerance) after such a cosmic trip, may lead to Plastic Fantastic Land. What it definitely won't do is recapture that cosmic trip.

In Plastic Fantastic Land, my brain felt divided into two separate entities. This was clearly related to the eye-crossing state of the day before, and to something involving the relation of right- and left-brain via the corpus callosum. In retrospect, I believe that I had on the first day re-organized the structure of both my brain and my chromosomes or DNA. (Cf. Barbara McClintock's work on spontaneous chromosome rearrangement in maize.) However, on the second day, the created structure of the day before was simply melted and destroyed by taking more LSD. It is my belief that I would have consolidated the gains from this experience by waiting for some time (a month or more: maybe a year?) before tripping again, and that I could have built on the experience. I don't believe that there is any permanent brain damage from PFL that is not recoverable through rest, exercise, good diet and meditation. However, the psychological effect of a visit to Plastic Fantastic Land is devastating, and this is also a challenge to recovery. Sadness at Paradise Lost stayed with me for many years, and I never again was successful in achieving a set and setting that would support another such experience. For months to follow, whenever I smoked cannabis, I flashed back to PFL.

The following spring, I had an unfortunate experience: severe mercury poisoning. This was unforeseen, and from an unexpected source – I will not say more about this so as not to generate controversy. It was a private tragedy. I was brain-damaged, and lost much musical ability as well as the ability to play chess well, and many other lesser details. My family, needless to say, blamed LSD, as the mercury poisoning was invisible and unrecognized. It took many years to recover, and during this time I also blamed LSD for this sudden dysfunction (which took several months to develop to its maximum), although I was at a loss to explain the mechanism. It took me 40 years to (a) recognize my symptoms as those of mercury poisoning, and to (b) unravel the difference between the effects of LSD and mercury poisoning. This I finally achieved by taking more LSD in my old age, which allowed me to definitively say, LSD did not cause this-and-this particular type of dysfunction. However, I admit that this is a subjective opinion. On the other hand, I believe that hidden mercury poisoning is quite common and may be responsible for some symptoms blamed on drug use. For instance, before that, I never had “reefer madness” style hallucinations, but afterwards I had them whenever I even smoked cannabis. In the event, I was compelled to stop taking LSD: I entered a yoga ashram and stayed several years.

Conclusions:
After such a cosmic trip, a recovery period is necessary. Good diet (including saturated fat! IMHO!), rest, meditation and hatha yoga appear to be beneficial. Lacking a coherent recovery program at that time, I became a burnout, but this, I believe as stated above, was seriously complicated by mercury poisoning, and the effects of that lasted so many years that I was unable to pursue these questions any further. In sum, I believe that the “cosmic trip” is an evolutionary opportunity for both the individual and for mankind, but that it involves necessary learning processes for such ignorant young dummies as I was, and that these learning experiences must be repeated in order to learn how to ride that tiger. There was an immediate pitfall which I fell headlong into, which was not to sensibly wait before taking more LSD. If one could avoid that dumb trap, it might be possible to build on a series of learning experiences and find out what Spirit really wants to offer us. I have also taken, later in my life, mushrooms and ayahuasca, and I find no hint that they offer the same unique DNA-shaking and DNA-changing trip that LSD did on that occasion, but then, neither do they lead to Plastic Fantastic Land, making them much safer. I also consider it highly probable that some of what I experienced with LSD may have had to do with stage-specific brain developments in late adolescence, which no longer occur or can no longer be stimulated in older people such as I am now.

Exp Year: 1975	ExpID: 111456
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 824
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