12/29/2023 0 Comments Peek a phone answers![]() ![]() Start peeling back the evolution of tripsitting and pretty soon you're looking at larger shifts. So the medical workers came armed with Thorazine, a powerful antipsychotic that resolves a frightening drug experience much as a ballistic missile resolves a ground skirmish. (At San Francisco's Human Be-In two years earlier, Owsley “Bear” Stanley famously distributed some 300,000 tabs of white lightning to the crowd.) But Woodstock promised all new levels. Acid had already become a feature of festivals. Such was the mindset on a rainy Friday in 1969, when a soggy battalion of medical workers began fanning out across Max Yasgur's upstate New York farm. To the extent that anyone attempted to alleviate such psychic distress, efforts centered around obliteration. Historically, the options available to someone in rough shape ranged from indifference to county lockup. Insofar as the decade-of-therapy-in-a-day adage holds true for the millions of people using psychedelics every year, that strikes me as a remarkable disruption of our psychological status quo. But what these substances lack in booze-level numbers they make up for in the sheer depth of their impact. ![]() It's not like everyone's out there having experiences like Greenberg's the planet's drug of choice will probably always be alcohol. Instead of willing the nightmare to end, what if I'd somehow pushed through? Why were those ideas so scary? What unresolved concerns were trying to surface in my cretin mind? Terrifying as the ordeal had been, it had undeniably contained information-the kind you don't get access to every day. A kind of irresolution began to haunt me. Only later, in the months and years that followed, did I realize I had feelings besides relief. Kidding! I'm fine! By dawn I had fully returned to consensus reality. I lay on my rooftop a long time, willing my sanity to return. For the next God-knows-how-long, the poor woman assured me the stories in my head were chemical-induced delusions-nightmares, essentially. I suppose some residue of college was working itself out: For four years I'd poked recklessly at ideas and traditions and constructs with no regard for consequences now, staggering around Lower Manhattan, I saw the flimsy Potemkin reality I'd been so eager to expose, entire ecosystems of meaning drained of substance.Īt some point my friend and I made it back to the apartment I shared with my girlfriend. The world, suddenly, was a hollow facade of itself. Then, and with apologies for being 22 at the time, I slipped into what I can only call a post-structuralist crisis. Vast processions scrolled through my mind, as ornate and elaborate as Chartres. It worked! In Frontiers in Pharmacology terms, the reduction of my serotonergic control, ascendance of my dopaminergic system, and expansion of functional connectivity in my primary visual cortex was “producing a more unified brain, with connections between disparate regions that normally lack communication with each other.” For the first hour I created the universe anew. The idea had been to peel back a few layers, behold unfamiliar vistas, and generally become unstuck in our perceptions. One summer night 20-plus years ago, a friend and I ate a goodly amount of mushrooms. The majority of journeys are unsupervised and unsupported-at a concert, at a party, at home reeling from a puppy-based memory. Moreover, despite the popularity of using these substances with a professional guide, a shaman, or on an organized retreat, most won't. The help available to someone spinning out on psychedelics has historically been limited. Skiers sometimes smack into trees, and I still consider theirs a worthwhile activity. Read more from our new series on obsessions, curiosities, and deep dives. ![]()
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