When I returned to consciousness, I was totally disoriented. Durian and Heinrich must have carried me to my bed, where I lay for some days languishing in deep gloom. My body was racked with discomfort and the nausea remained with me. Even several days later I was still unsteady and found it difficult to walk or take hold of objects.
This account is inevitably sketchy and incoherent. One consequence of henbane narcosis is memory failure, so all that I was left with are one or two particular hallucinations and a general sense of the physical effects. This may be for the best. I shudder to think what nightmarish images I have forgotten.
The Decadent Gardener, 1998
Hunter S. Thompson
Drug Frenzy at the Circus-Circus
HE CAME BACK with the ether bottle, uncapped it, then poured some into a Kleenex and mashed it under his nose, breathing heavily. I soaked another Kleenex and fouled my own nose. The smell was overwhelming, even with the top down. Soon we were staggering up the stairs towards the entrance, laughing stupidly and dragging each other along, like drunks.
This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel . . . total loss of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue – severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally . . . you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can’t control it.
You approach the turnstiles leading into the Circus-Circus and you know that when you get there, you have to give the man two dollars or he won’t let you inside . . . but when you get there, everything goes wrong: you misjudge the distance to the turnstile and slam against it, bounce off and grab hold of an old woman to keep from falling, some angry Rotarian shoves you and you think: What’s happening here? What’s going on? Then you hear yourself mumbling: ‘Dogs fucked the Pope, no fault of mine. Watch out! . . . Why money? My name is Brinks; I was born . . . born? Get sheep over side . . . women and children to armored car . . . orders from Captain Zeep.’
Ah, devil ether – a total body drug. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. The hands flap crazily, unable to get money out of the pocket . . . garbled laughter and hissing from the mouth . . . always smiling.
Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas. In this town they love a drunk. Fresh meat. So they put us through the turnstiles and turned us loose inside.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1972
Human kind cannot bear very much reality
T. S. Eliot
Alexander and Ann Shulgin
The Chemistry Continues
QUALITATIVE COMMENTS: DMT
(with 150mg, orally) ‘No observable psychic or vegetative effects.’
(with 250mg, orally) ‘It was inactive.’
(with 350mg, orally) ‘Completely without effect either physiological or psychological.’
(with 100mg, via the buccal mucosa) ‘Numbness at the site, but no central effects.’
(with 20mg, intramuscularly) ‘I began to see patterns on the wall that were continuously moving. They were transparent, and were not colored. After a short period these patterns became the heads of animals, a fox, a snake, a dragon. Then kaleidoscopic images appeared to me in my inner eye, fantastically beautiful and colored.’
(with 30mg, intramuscularly) ‘There was eye dilation and, subjectively, some perception disturbances.’
(with 50mg, intramuscularly) ‘I feel strange, everything is blurry. I want my mother, I am afraid of fainting, I can’t breathe.’
(with 60mg, intramuscularly) ‘I don’t like this feeling – I am not myself. I saw such strange dreams a while ago. Strange creatures, dwarfs or something; they were black and moved about. Now I feel as if I am not alive. My left hand is numb. As if my heart would not beat, as if I had no body, no nothing. All I feel are my left hand and stomach. I don’t like to be without thoughts.’
(with 75mg, intramuscularly) ‘The third or fourth minute after the injection vegetative symptoms appeared, such as tingling sensation, trembling, slight nausea, mydriasis, elevation of the blood pressure and increase of the pulse rate. At the same time, eidetic phenomena, optical illusions, pseudo-hallucinations, and later real hallucinations, appeared. The hallucinations consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs, and later I saw wonderful scenes altering very rapidly. The faces of people seemed to be masks. My emotional state was elevated sometimes up to euphoria. At the highest point I had compulsive athetoid movements in my left hand. My consciousness was completely filled by hallucinations, and my attention was firmly bound to them; therefore I could not give an account of the events happening to me. After three-quarters to one hour the symptoms disappeared, and I was able to describe what had happened.
(with 80mg, intramuscularly) ‘My perceptual distortions were visual in nature and with my eyes closed I could see colored patterns, primarily geometrical patterns moving very fast, having sometimes very deep emotional content and connotation. My blood pressure went up and my pupils were dilated.’
(with 30mg, smoked) ‘I spread it evenly on a joint of Tanacetum vulgare and melted it with a heat lamp. In about thirty seconds a strong light-headedness started, with a feeling of temporal pressure. Some yellowing of the visual field. There was nothing for me to do because I had to turn complete control over to the drug. Off the plateau in three to four minutes and the fact that the radio was on became apparent. I was out in a few more minutes.’
(with 60mg, smoked) ‘We did it together. Swift entry – head overwhelmed – elaborate and exotic. Slightly threatening patterns – no insight slight sense of cruelty and sharpness between us, but enjoying. His face, as before with MDA, demonic but pleasantly so. He said he saw my face as a mask. He asked me to let him see my teeth. I laughed – aware that laughter was slightly not-funny. Heavy, massive intoxication. Time extension extraordinary. What seemed like two hours was about thirty minutes.’
(with 60mg, smoked) ‘Rapid onset, and in a completely stoned isolation in about a minute for about three minutes. Slow return but continued afterglow (pleasant) for thirty minutes. Repeated three times, with no apparent tolerance or change in chronology. Easily handled. The intoxication is of limited usefulness but the residues are completely relaxing.’
(with 100mg, smoked) ‘As I exhaled I became terribly afraid, my heart very rapid and strong, palms sweating. A terrible sense of dread and doom filled me – I knew what was happening, I knew I couldn’t stop it, but it was so devastating; I was being destroyed – all that was familiar, all reference points, all identity all viciously shattered in a few seconds. I couldn’t even mourn the loss – there was no one left to do the mourning. Up, up, out, out, eyes closed, I am at the speed of light, expanding, expanding, expanding, faster and faster until I have become so large that I no longer exist – my speed is so great that everything has come to a stop – here I gaze upon the entire universe.’
(with 15mg, intravenously) ‘An almost instantaneous rush began in the head and I was quickly scattered. Rapidly moving and intensely colored visuals were there, and I got into some complex scenes. There were few sounds, and those that were there were not of anyone talking. I was able to continue to think clearly.’
(with 30mg, intravenously) ‘I was hit harder than I had ever been when smoking the stuff. The onset was similar, but the euphoria was less.’
Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved: The Continuation, 1997
William Burroughs
Junky – 1
PEYOTE IS A small cactus and only the top part that appears above the ground is eaten. This is called a button. The buttons are prepared by peeling off the bark and fuzz and running the button through a grater until it looks like avocado salad. Four buttons is the average dose for a beginner.
We washed down the peyote with tea. I came near gagging on it several times. Finally I got it all down and sat there waiting for something to happen.
The herb dealer brought out some bark he claimed was like opium. Johnny rolled a cigarette of the stuff and passed it around. Pete and Johnny said, ‘Crazy! This is the greatest.’
I smoked some and felt a little dizzy and my throat hurt. But Johnny bought some of that awful-smelling bark with the intention of selling it to desperate hipsters in the US.
After ten minutes I began to feel sick from the peyote. Everyone told me, ‘Keep it down, man.’ I held out ten minutes more, then headed for the WC ready to thrown in the towel, but I couldn’t vomit. My whole body contracted in a convulsive spasm, but the peyote wouldn’t come up. It wouldn’t stay down either.
Finally, the peyote came up solid like a ball of hair, solid all the way up, clogging my throat. As horrible a sensation as I ever stood still for. After that, the high came on slow. Peyote high is something like Benzedrine high. You can’t sleep and your pupils are dilated. Everything looks like a peyote plant. I was driving in the car with the Whites and Cash and Pete. We were going out to Cash’s place in the Lomas. Johnny said, ‘Look at the bank along the road. It looks like a peyote plant.’
I turned around to look, and was thinking, ‘What a damn silly idea. People can talk themselves into anything.’ But it did look like a peyote plant. Everything I saw looked like a peyote plant.
Our faces swelled under the eyes and our lips got thicker through some glandular action of the drug. We actually looked like Indians. The others claimed they felt primitive and were laying around on the grass and acting the way they figured Indians act. I didn’t feel any different from ordinary except high like on benny.
We sat up all night talking and listening to Cash’s records. Cash told me about several cats from ’Frisco who had kicked junk habits with peyote. ‘It seems like they didn’t want junk when they started using peyote.’ One of these junkies came down to Mexico and started taking peyote with Indians. He was using it all the time in large quantities: up to twelve buttons in one dose. He died of a condition that was diagnosed as polio. I understand, however, that the symptoms of peyote poisoning and polio are identical.
I couldn’t sleep until the next morning at dawn, and then I had a nightmare every time I dozed off. In one dream, I was coming down with rabies. I looked in the mirror and my face changed and I began howling. In another dream, I had a chlorophyll habit. Me and about five other chlorophyll addicts are waiting to score on the landing of a cheap Mexican hotel. We turn green and no one can kick a chlorophyll habit. One shot and you’re hung for life. We are turning into plants.
Junky, 1977
John Symonds
Chloroform
I JUST NOW quoted J. A. Symonds. [He] also records a mystical experience with chloroform, as follows:
‘After the choking and stifling had passed away, I seemed at first in a state of utter blankness; then came flashes of intense light, alternating with blackness, and with a keen vision of what was going on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. I thought that I was near death; when, suddenly, my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me . . . I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke from the influence of the anesthetics, the old sense of my relation to the world began to return, the new sense of my relation to God began to fade. I suddenly leapt to my feet on the chair where I was sitting, and shrieked out, “It is too horrible, it is too horrible, it is too horrible,” meaning that I could not bear this disillusionment.
‘Then I flung myself on the ground, and at last awoke covered with blood, calling to the two surgeons (who were frightened), “Why did you not kill me? Why would you not let me die?” Only think of it. To have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very God, in all purity and tenderness and truth and absolute love, and then to find that I had after all had no revelation, but that I had been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain.
‘Yet, this question remains, is it possible that the inner sense of reality which succeeded, when my flesh was dead to impressions from without, to the ordinary sense of physical relations, was not a delusion but an actual experience? Is it possible that I, in that moment, felt what some of the saints have said they always felt, the indemonstrable but irrefragable certainty of God?’
From: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James, 1902
Mike Jay
Blue Tide – 1
LOUISE AND I buy some isopropyl alcohol, borrow a friend’s coffee grinder and set to work.
First, we roast the seeds slowly in a pan. Above a certain temperature, the harmaline will break down, but a gentle application of heat evaporates some of the dyes and makes the seeds blister and spit like popcorn. Then we put the roasted seeds in the coffee grinder and produce a reddish-brown powder. This looks like ground coffee and smells surprisingly delicious, roasted, nutty and slightly spicy. It looks as if it might smoke well with tobacco, so we try it. It burns rather hot, tending to congeal into little burning coals, but it tastes very pleasant, rather like the incense. It’s a little rough on the throat, but the main problem with this method is that you’d have to smoke an unfeasibly large quantity of it to approach the 300mg or so which constitutes an active dose. We need to work further with an oral preparation.
We fill a coffee filter with roasted harmal grounds and drip isopropyl through it slowly. The liquid which emerges at the other end is a dark ruby red, an interesting echo of the Avestan description of haoma juice as reddish-brown: clearly this method is bringing the red dye out with it too. We wait for the alcohol to evaporate and are left with a red, sticky oil. This presumably contains all the alcohol-soluble alkaloids in the plant and none of the inert plant material.
We christen this ruby oil ‘red mercury’. It certainly has a higher concentration of harmaline than the seeds: probably approaching about 50 per cent by weight. It can be smoked in a glass pipe, heating it gently from the outside so as not to break too much of the harmaline down. It can also be put into gel-caps and swallowed, making ingestion far easier. But the nausea and the effects remain largely inseparable. An active dose is always accompanied by the smell of harmaline on the skin, in the pores of the fingers, and the churning stomach which soon becomes numb, distant and is forgotten.
I make some enquiries on the Internet while I’m engaged in this, offering my work-in-progress suggestions and casting around for anyone who can answer my questions. Eventually I’m referred to someone else who’s engaged in similarly arcane practices. He’s making a drink he calls ‘rue brew’ from Syrian rue seeds, and is having an interesting time working with it. Eventually we speak on the phone. He’s called Greg, he lives in north London and he invites me to dinner.
I set out for the evening an hour or so before a partial eclipse of the sun. Up Ladbroke Grove, the roofs are crammed with people wearing shades and waving pinhole squares of cardboard. The effect is somehow apocalyptic, like an H.G. Wells fantasy about an approaching comet. It’s high summer, and the sun beats down with a force which seems all the stronger for its unwonted human scrutiny.
I arrive at Greg’s just as the eclipse is approaching. We sit out in the street to watch it. While everyone else is fiddling with smoked glass and mirrors, Greg has a better idea. He disappears into the house and reappears with a multifaceted quartz crystal. Tilting it towards the sun, we see the eclipse reduplicated across the crystal’s face in dozens of perfect miniatures.
Greg turns out to be a trader and marketer of natural Third World foodstuffs, responsible for bringing items like mung beans into the health-food shops and subsequently into the supermarkets. He’s very excited about harmal, reckons somebody should get in there now, start planting and buying futures. He thinks it has the potential to produce a natural, organic, mildly psychoactive coffee substitute with a huge global market.
We sample his ‘rue brew’, which is basically the roasted, ground seeds drunk black
with honey or sugar. It’s not unpleasant, but the bitterness of the harmaline still seeps through the sweetening. He drank it on a daily basis for several weeks, and found that it produced a mild but pervasive dreaminess, unobtrusive in normal life but noticeable whenever he shut his eyes to dream or meditate. He found himself in a state where he could function perfectly normally, but whenever he chose to he could drift off on the blue tide of dreams. After a few weeks, though, he began to notice his urine becoming greenish-yellow, and stopped drinking it out of concern that its constant presence was impairing his kidney functions. He thinks this was probably to do the presence of cheese, yoghurt and other tyramine-containing foods in his diet, which is of course a potential problem with any food or drink which is also an MAOI. But he too is fascinated by the harmal visions, and has continued using it on an irregular basis with no ill effects.
Another person who’s been using it on a daily basis is Skip, who’s waiting for a hip-replacement operation and spending most of his time bedridden on various heavy pain medications. He gets into the habit of drinking a cup of it before going to bed, and spending his previously uncomfortable and semi-conscious nights floating off into its world of visions. He reports that, in several half-waking states, he’s found himself returning to the same visionary worlds, corridors and cities peopled by entities whose presence he feels rather than sees. Many are pleasant, but some are not: he reports visiting one particular ‘Lovecrattian space’ where he finds himself in partial sleep paralysis, moving involuntarily through icy blue caverns and corridors with people frozen into the walls, knowing that if he stops moving he’ll freeze too. This space seems to be occupied by entities which he calls ‘the Daa’, and the ‘daa daa’ sound which always seems to echo round the caverns.