Sex, Ecstasy, and Psychedelic Drugs
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Posted:May 30, 2013 2:04 am
Last Updated:Jan 10, 2016 4:25 am
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History records few human quests as unremitting or as widespread as the search for a harmless, effective sex stimulant. Recent claims - such as those made by Timothy Leary - that LSD is the greatest aphrodisiac known to man, have excited much interest in the sexual potential of psychedelic drugs. Sober discussion of psychedelic substances was difficult enough before sex entered the picture; now it is close to impossible. But bearing in mind that there is a great deal more to psychedelics than sex, it might clear the air to examine the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide - and several other psychedelic drugs - on human sexual behavior.
Along with the comparatively new synthetic psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, there are similar mind-altering substances present in many forms of plant life. Some of these have been used for hundreds and even thousands of years. Examples are the peyote cactus, the Cannibis hemp plant, the opium poppy and several varieties of mushrooms and morning-glory plants. Most have been linked in one way or another with sex.
Whether opium - probably Homer's nepenthe - should be considered a psychedelic drug is largely a matter of semantics. Some would-be authorities exclude all addictive drugs, including opium, from the class of psychedelics. However opium does produce effects similar to those produced by nonaddictive psychedelics, and among these are sexual effects that merit consideration.
Prolonged use of opium results in mental and physical and mental deterioration, including impotence. However, before is takes its toll, the drug can powerfully and pleasurably enhance sexual experience. No one has described the specific sexual effects of opium as well as the 19th century French Army surgeon and anthropologist Jacobus Sutor, who authored numerous sexological studies under the pseudonym Jacobus X. "According to my person experience," wrote Jacobus, "and from avowals made to me by women, both Europeans and Asiatics, the effects produced by opium in moderate doses, say from 10 to 20 pipes, are as follows: Under the influence of erotic excitement, either direct or merely mental, an erection is quickly produced, if you want to copulate. But - and this has never been remarked by any other author - although the penis is in a stiff erection, its nerves, and more particularly, those of the glans, are anesthetized by the effets of the opium, and though the erection is strong, the emission, on the contrary, is much retarded and takes place only after prolonged copulation. This anesthetic effect is also produced in the nerves of the vulva, the vagina and the rectum of the woman, and the 'psychological moment' arives slowly. The constrictor muscles of the vagina, and especially those of the rectum, undergo a kind of relaxation." He goes on to say that, with larger doses, more than 15 or 20 pipes, erection becomes incomplete; and with 30 or 40 pipes, it is absent altogether.
Jacobus' remarks also apply to peyote, to the LSD-type synthetics and, to a lesser degree marijuana. Those under the influence of these drugs describe the mild surface anesthesia, if that is what it is, as a feeling of 'rubberiness' that effects the penis, the female genitals and also sometimes the mouth, the breasts, the fingers and other body areas. It is by no means an unpleasent sensation; often it is descibed as heightened feelings of voluptuousness. Along with the rubbery sensation, the genitals, if excited, are felt to be engorged to an unusual degree.
At least as ancient as opium is the hemp plant (Cannibis sativa, or Cannibis indica). When used as a drug, it is called marijuana, hashish and a great deal of other names. Scientific reports on the sexual effects of marijuana are conflicting. For example, the French toxicologist Erich Hesse (Narcotics and drug Addiction) tells us that marijuana and hashish provide no sexual stimulation whatever; but another physician-author Bernard Finch (Passport to Paradise), declares that "After several inhalations, a feeling of sexual excitement develops and the smoker is able to improve his sexual performance, in that erection is stronger and more persistant, but orgasm is depressed and usually does not take place."
I could provide a great many more conflicting 'authoratative' statements on this matter, although Finch is the only writer I know who suggests that marijuana by itself produces a condition of sexual excitation. He also is the only one to say that orgasm "usually" does not take place.
From many other times and places, we also have claims that hemp is an aphrodisiac - and other claims that it is an anaphrodisiac, an inhibitor of sexual desire or of potency. But whichever way they lean, the authors of these claims are relying on personal predeliction, on very limited interview data or on the verdict of some favorite 'authority' who has already made similar errors. We find the same conflicting evidence from "experts" writing about the sexual effect of peyote or LSD.
Anyone who has carefully studied psychoactive drugs should know that many different effects are possible, depending on personal, cultural or immediate situational factors - which are often crucial in determining drug-state behavior. With marijuana and other psychedelics, people who are sexually stimulated may find that their stimulation is greater than usual and that their capacity to respond has been heightened. Others may find themselves totally indifferent such as the writer Theophile Gautier, who took some hashish and generalized that "a hashish user would not lift a finger for the most beautiful woman in Verona." The same individual may find that he is greatly aroused on one occasion and unexcited on the next. Or his mind may experience desire while is body is unable to act in concert with it.
Some cultures place great faith in the aphrodisiacal effects of hemp; and in those cultures the drug often does function as an aphrodisiac - producing sexual excitation, enhancing potency and pleasure, and prolonging sexual intercourse. Amoung Arabs, there is a vast lore of the effectiveness of hemp in maintaining an erection - the prolongation of the sex act being almost an obsession with some Moslems. A famous poem on this subject begins:
The member of Abu'l-Haylukh remained In erection for 30 days, sustained By smoking hashish Abu'l-Haylukh deflowered in one night Eighty virgins in a rigid rite After smoking hashish
The poem goes on to describe still more feats of sexual athleticism; but underlying its characteristic Arab hyperbole is some solid fact - hemp can, indeed, prolong an erection. Besides the mild anesthesia described by Jacobus, the male, with marijuana, may feel that his erect organ is bigger and more rigid than ordinarily. Sometimes, as happens with LSD and peyote, too, orgasm does not occur at all, which causes him no great distress, since he feels that this is a small price to pay for for the pleasure he has enjoyed, and the impression he has made on his partner. When copulation does not lead to orgasm, both partners still may achieve it by vigorous masturbation.
My own data regarding the contemporary use of marijuana use in this country - in terms of its sexual effects - reflect the conflict in this literature. Individual testimonials describe both sexual successes and sexual failures. Overall, it appears that up to now, marijuana has been about as likely to impair as to improve sexual performance. However, growing acceptance of the drug may be making the latter effect the more common. Much can depend on the users intention. Some prostitues smoke marijuana to eliminate genital sensation - while at the same time they give the weed to their customer to help him become more stimulated. In this case, it probably works for the male because it makes him more responsive to the suggestion that he will be more potent - and simultaniously it may reduce his inhabitions and anxieties.
It should be noted, however, taht sexual effects may relate to the potency of the drug. The strength of hemp products can depend on many things - where the hemp is grown, how it is harvested and prepared and how it is consumed. From one country to the next, or amoung regions of a country, there are great diferences in the potency of the plants. As to consumption, it is believed that smoking gives the strongest effect, by altering the chemical composition of the drug. Research in these areas are now under way, but results are still inconclusive. The eventual findings may explain to some extent the different responses amoung marijuana smokers. But individual psychology will still be a major factor.
At its best, most marijuana consumed in the U.S. is a maild psychedelic drug, affording what is rarely more than a pallid approximation of the experiences possible with LSD and peyote. The effects of these two on sexual intercourse are virtually identical, and a statement about LSD may well be understood to apply just as well to peyote - and probably to ther LSD-type psychochemicals, such as mescaline and psilocybin.
I compiled my data on the sexual effects of psychedelic drugs in a series of interviews, mostly "in depth" beginning in 1954 and continuing today. My information is based on more than 300 drug-state sexual experiences on the part of 94 persons, about two thirds of them males. Nineteen homosexual experiences are included. The interview subjects were almost college graduates from middle-class white Protestant backgrounds. Most of them took the psychedelic drugs outside any formal research or therapeutic context and then reported their experiences to me.
In other words, I did not study the effects of psychedelics on sex in the laboratory, as sexual intersourse has been so fruitfully studieds by Wiliam Masters and Virginia Johnson in St. Louis. My firsthand research with psychedelic drugs - which was largely concerned with matters other than sex - has now been abruptly ended by laws prohibiting almost all research in this area. Buit I did obtain, in the sessions I guided personally, some material significant in understanding psychosexual disorders. It was surprising how often these disorders seemed grounded in problem of values or, specifically, in low self-esteem. Nowhere can values be so quickly and so drastically changed as in LSD sessions. In several instances, discussed below, persons with sexual problems showed noticeable improvemnet after their LSD sessions - quite a remarkable occurance, inasmuch as the sessions were intended as research and therapeutic results were not expected.
To determine whether psychedelics drugs are, indeed, aphrodisiacs, we must first determine what we mean by an aphrodisiac. If we mean that the drugs specifically excite the sexual organs, then psychedelics are not aphrodisiacs. If we mean that they produce or encourage sexual desire, again they are not aphrodisiacs. But if we mean that the drugs can profoundly enhance the quality of sexual acts that occur between people who would, in any case, have had intercourse, then the drugs are aphrodisiacs, and my only objection to the term in this context is that it will continue to be misused by psychedelic or sexual extremists.
drug-state phenomenea that occur during a sex act occur in other drug-state contexts, too. The most common are changes in sensory perception, in awareness of time, in the state of the ego, in one's relations to others and in the emotions generally. In fact, these changes effect whatever one does, whether it be listening to music, walking through a forest - or making love.
The positive effects of LSD in lovemaking can best be appreciated by describing a hypothetical sexual act between husband-and-wife lovers - or between single lovers, should that seem more adventurous. I will not, however, hypothesize a casual erotic encounter between two near strangers, because such an encounter would be less likely to produce so favorable an experience. A strong emotional bond, or at least very positive feelings for the partner, is much more likely to yield the richest, most intense and most ecstatic experience.
People rarely have sexual intercourse at the very start of a psychedelic trip. First, as the perceptual changes occur and as consciousness is altered in other ways, they need to orient themselves in this new world. In my sample, this was true no matter how many previous LSD experiences they might have shared. Typically, when there is sexual intercourse, it occurs at least one hour and usually several hours after the onset of the psychedelic effects.
When the two people are longtime lovers, they may feel, in the drug state, an emotional closeness as intense as they felt in the early, most emotion-charged stages of being in love. Since visual perception is highly responsive to the emotions, each partner may take on an appearance of extraordinary radiance and beauty. Communication may seem multileveled, with a greatly hightened sensitivity to nuances of meaning - in gestures, caresses and words as well. If this couple decides to make love, they will bring this heightened sensitivity to their union, and their desire and the act itself may be suffocated with the same positive emotion - and with the same beauty - that has been present in their perceptions.
As foreplay and intercourse increaase their excitement, the couple will become aware of the genital sensations described by Jacobus. The man may feel that his erection is larger and more firm and his potency greater than it has ever been before, heightening his confidence, producing a greater sense of total genital arousal and increasing his capacity to respond. Anxiety about the duration of the act will very quickly dissappear. The couple will feel that their lovemaking will last just as long as they want it to last, so that time no longer matters. In the more profound experiences, there may be a sense of timelessness - of the eternal.
Several elements combine to produce these novel and extrememly pleasurable awarenesses of time. For one thing, intercourse always does last much longer in terms of the clock. This is probably because of the mildly anesthetized state of the sexual organs - although the term 'anesthesia' seems strikingly inappropriate in describing these very intense sensations. Moreover, diminished inhabitions soon produce self-confidence and spontaneity that help reduce concern about the duration of the act. Finally, there is the distortion - or 'slowing down' - of time that is a usual and important aspect of the psychedelic state. This distortion (a term that is technically correct but fails to convey its positive qualities) of subjective time is experienced because the mental processes have been enormously accelerated. So much may be experienced in a few minutes of clock-measured time that the person typically declares that 'hours' or sometimes 'eons' seem to have passed. A sexual union that in fact lasts 30 minutes or an hour may seem 'endless' or to have 'the flavor of eternity.' Lovemaking that lasts for several hours is not too infrequent.
The sexual union gathers ever more meaning and beauty as it progresses. It may even take on symbolic and archetypal overtones. The couple may feel that they are mythic, legendary, or more-than-human figures as they act out in a timeless and beneficient space of eternally recurring drama of love and creation. The feeling of being more than human does not indicate grandiosity but, rather, that one has transcended the ordinary boundaries of self, the limits of time and space, so that something more, some infusion of the divine or supernatural, must have occured. This awareness is accompanied by profound feelings of security, tenderness, humility and gratitude. Sometimes only one partner will enjoy this transcendental experience, but with surprising frequency the feelings are shared.
When sexual union includes altered states of consciousness such as these, it is properly described as ecstatic. It may progress to include one or even several instances of apparent physical and psychic melting into and becoming one with the partner. Whether this occurs in a sexual union or in a mystical context, or in a combination of the two, it is almost always regarded as one of the most profound and fulfilling experiences human life has to offer. The one that the two become is a unity much greater than its components. Religiously devout or mystically inclined people may have the sense of a unity that is also a trinity, with God present in the oneness. In any case, an experience of this order can hardly be dismissed as 'sexual mysticism' - a term sneeringly used by some of the more rabid opponents of psychedelic experimentation. Nor can it be tossed away with some labels from psychopathology, such as 'ego dissolusion' and 'depersonalization.' It can be one of the most beautiful and important experiences in life.
In view of all that has gone before, the orgasm - when it arrives - may seem something of an anticlimactic climax. Some people, in this orgasm-happy society, learn for the first time how much more than can be to sex than the brief intensity of the climax - and how much their past sexual experience has been impoverished by the urgent and infantile drive toward orgasm that is so prevalent in Western societies.
However, the orgasm, too, is 'psychedelic' - that is, magnafied or intensified. Time distortion can greatly prolong it, and there is an awareness of the whole process from beginning to end, in far greater detail. Men very often report sensations of gathering tension, concentration of energy and then an extremely acute awareness of the spasmodic propulsion of the ejaculate, which is plainly and pleasurably felt as it travels along the urethra and is ejected into the vagina of the partner. At the same time, there is a greatly intensified awareness of the genital organs of the partner: Their texture, temperature and movement. Some women for the first time become keenly aware of the pulsations of the male organ as climax begins - and of the ejaculate as they receive it.
Orgasm is often experienced upon two levels. It is the most intensely erotic aspect of the act, as consciousness seems totally absorbed in the orgasmic sensations. And yet there seems also to be another consciousness, which does not dilute but rather reinforces the genital consciousness. This is the sense of attaining the beautiful climax of a beautiful experience.
Remarkably, in view of the richness of the experience, throughout these unions there is an undiminished and sometimes greatly intensified awareness of the partner. One does not lapse into a selfish and exclusive preoccupation with the components of ecstasy.
In almost 25 percent of the sexual acts I recorded, one or both partners did not reach orgasm. This was nothing new for most of the women; but for some of the men, it was a novel experience. Typically, however, the absence of orgasm was not a disappointment. The act itself was so fulfilling that the attitude was: Who cares whether there was an orgasm? This, too, can be a valuable experience for those women who sledom climax in their ordinary lovemaking. It teaches them that even without orgasm, sex can provide remarkable fulfillment.
Under the influence of psychedelics, the anorgasmic woman can experience great joy in intercourse and derive gratification from conferring just as much joy on her partner. If this lesson were learned and applied to all intercourse, many people - both male and female - would be better off for it. It is worth noting that at least some have learned it through psychedelic experimentation.
The foregoing description was of a maximal drug-state sexual experience. Slightly more than half of my heterosexual subjects reported extraordinary unions resembling or approaching this at least once. The frequency probably would have been lower with younger or with less intelligent individuals, because richness of personality is a key factor in determining the richness of the psychedelic experience. An earned capacity for appreciating the complex and profound must already exist.
My intention here is not to promote the haphazard and now illegal use of psychedelic drugs - with or without sexual intercourse. But it is only realistic to admit that many thousands of people are taking psychochemicals without screening or adequate guidance. Of these, a good many are also experimenting with sex. It seems best that they be informed about possibilites beyond 'kicks' and trivia, so that they can explore the many valuable aspects of an experience that might otherwise be wasted.
My research indicates that homosexuals in psychedelic states enjoy profound, ecstatic sexual experiences with less frequency - and less intensity - than their heterosexual counterparts. Female homosexuals seem more likely to have profound sexual experiences than male homosexuals. The very practical matter of the positioning of the bodies apprears to provide a partial explanation. The ecstatic experience seems more likely to occur when one faces the partner while the act is being performed. Social attitude toward homosexuality, as well as the homosexual's typical guilt and low self-esteem, may also be deterrents. In the drug state, homosexual acts are usually specifically erotic and less invested with other positive meaning. However, the physical pleasure of genital, oral and anal sensations is enhanced, just as with heterosexuals.
Claims that LSD-state sexual intercourse can 'cure' homosexuality and frigidity may lead to enormous disappointment - and possibly serious harm - to psychosexually disturbed people, who have enough problems already. Under the influence of psychedelics, a failure to funtion as promised might cause a powerful reinforcement of existing disorders, making any cure more difficult.
Nor is it invariably, or even frequently, true that, in the words of Timothy Leary, a "neurological and cellular fidelity" delvelops between two person who have had sexual relations during an LSD experience. The notion is poetic but inaccurate. Even the most beautiful drug-state sexual unions do not always guarantee change in a previous relationship. Leary's devotees sometimes tell me, with what sometimes seems more hope than conviction, that Leary speaks a 'private language,' the better to convey the ineffable truths. However, the fact is that he is taken literally by a great many people. He has said, for instance, that "in a carefully prepared, loving LSD session, a woman will inevitably have several hundred orgasms." I have yet to hear from anyone else a single instance remotely approximating this; and I feel rather confident that if it had been happening with any frequency, the world would not have had to wait for Leary to announce it.
While LSD can hardly be considered a panacea for sexual disorders, it does hold promise for becoming an extremely valuable tool in treating those and many other promises. And it will become even more valuable when therapists stop regarding it as adjunt to their old procedures and develop psychedelic therapies permitting them to make full use of the great weath of phenomenea available.
Scientific literature on psychedelics includes hundreds of reports of successful treatment, even with the old procedures, for such disorders as homosexuality, figidity, impotence, fetishism and even transvestism, one of the most difficult to treat of all sexual deviations. Good progress in these areas has been made in England, and it is certainly unfortunate that psychotherapists in this country are legally unable to work extensively with psychedelics.
Some homosexuals, for instance, as part of their low self-esteem, have a distorted body image. They think they are ugly or deformed when they are not, and may believe that they have an abnormally small penis - when they actually have a normal one. In LSD sessions I recorded, the body image of homosexualsd sometimes became normalized, heightening self-esteem and producing definate trends toward heterosexualization. Here, homosexuality seemed based mainly on values - not on some long past traumatic experience. In any case, heterosexualization could occur without any trauma being dealt with. However, when there was no subsequent therapy, the subjects' homosexuality returned within a few months after their LSD sessions were over.
Some men with potency problems decided in their LSD sessions that their sexual organs were not too small and afterward their potency improved, sometimes permanently. A frigid woman discovered that an 'inner voice' had been calling her a 'fake' and an 'unworthy person.' The voiced ordinarily talked to her 'on some below level consciousness'; but in her LSD session, she heard it clearly and she was able to refute it just as clearly. After freeing herself from this voice, she felt she no longer had to punish herself by denying herself sexual pleasure. Her frigidity soon was overcome - and had not reappeard almost four years later.
The therapeutic value of LSD is by no means limited to sexual disorders. Alcoholics intractable to all previous therapies have quit drinking or become much improved after treatment with psychedelics. Cure and improvement rates range anywhere from 25 to 75 percent, and some of the studies have been very well controlled. In other cases previously withdrawn, schizophrenic improved when psychedelics were administered. Given the questionable value of some approved psychoterapies, it is a wonder that public outcry has not demanded increased use of psychedelics in the areas where there promise seems so great.
Possibly such a great demand is now discouraged by recent evidence linking LSD to chromosomal abnormalties. This charge must be considered in proper perspective. The fact is that no one, at the present time, can say how important LSD-caused chromosomal damage may be. We do know that rather similar chromosomal changes are produced by many products widely used - caffeine (in coffee and cola drinks), alcohol, antibiotics and a wide range of drugs about which no such furor has been raised. Live measles vaccine, in particular, quickly produces chromosomal breaks. We know, too, that LSD has been in use for a quarter of a century, apparently without causing cancer or deformed infants - the two main specters with which chromosomal damage of this kind seems to confront us. Moreover, the U.S. Government continues to sponser a few LSD therapy projects, so Government scientists must not feel the risks are too great. The sensible position must be to weigh LSD's value against possible, but not demonstrated, dangers. The evidence is sufficent to warrant withholding LSD from pregnant females.
This may also be the place to mention briefly a new psychedelic substance, STP. STP is yet more potent than LSD, producing effects that may continue for days. It also produces far more bad trips and frequent aftereffects. The chemical analysis of STP indicates similarities to mescaline and the amphetamines, but more refind analysis is needed.
Cases brought to my attention include aftereffects such as partial amnesia, frightening perceptual changes and recurring states of panic. One man, for example, weeks later, felt his head alternately growing to the size of a watermelon and shrinking to the dimensions of a pea. It is too soon to say whether these sensations will be permanent. No one I have talked to appears to have had sexual intercourse under STP. For those persons, at least, the experience was much too overwhelming. Neither does it seem likely at this point that STP will have much value for research or therapy. Pending further information, the best advice is to leave the drug alone.
With STP, we may be witnessing the unhappy result of too many unscientific medical pronouncements combined with too many scare stories about psychedelic drugs. A number of physicians have greatly exaggerated the dangers of the old psychedelics - and even of marijuana. Now, with a drug that seems to be much more dangerous, these 'scientists' have forged a credibility gap that prevents many people - especially those in the psychedelic underground - from taking their claims seriously. Warnings about STP from physicians have been much less effective than those voiced by the underground press. The medical profession should consider this lesson and perhaps profit by it. More psychedelics will be created and some will almost certainly be very dangerous. Disaster could ensue unless scientists manage to regain the confidence in the public.
In the case of LSD and the 'milder' psychedelics, the chances of unfortunate results can be reduced by following a few basic precautions. Since psychedelic experience can magnify tendendies in onself, in others and in the surroundings, psychedelics should not be taken in an environment that will threaten or displease. When this precaution is ignored, there can be bad trips - whether or not intercourse is a part of the experience.
Sexologists always urge a pleasent setting for intercourse - as well as a partner one respects and relates to positively. This becomes even more important when the couple has taken psychedelics. With LSD, a drab, dirty room that might ordinarily be ignored can become a filthy, sordid pesthole, and this perception of the room can saturate the total experience. Similarly, sex with a person about whom one has negative feelings can become, with LSD, an experience of extreme repulsion - with guilt, depression or anxiety as a result. In two cases I know of, males took LSD, picked up prostitues and had very bad trips. Both men, of course, had basically negative feeling about prostitues and these emerged in a much heightened form during the sexual act.
Both men were initially aroused, but soon began to feel degraded and then powerfully repelled by the situation. One felt that the woman's body was coated with "a dirty, poisonous substance" that rubbed off on his own body and infected him. He managed to get her out of the room, was near panic for a long while and, after the effects of the LSD had worn off, he went into a depression that lasted for some days. In fact, his perception might not have been completely imaginative, since he contracted gonorrhea as a result of this contact. In the other case, the male found the girl becoming more and more ugly as he looked at her. Then the room became similarly ugly. He became nauseous, then was overwhelmed by feelings of guilt about his 'prejudice.' That man was white and Jewish and the woman Negro made the situation especially complicated and charged with emotion.
With LSD, some peope may besome aware of what they feel are opposite-sex components of their personality. This they interpret as evidence that they are homosexual. Some males with effeminate tendensies, who strongly suppress their effeminacy, have felt they were undergoing a physical sex change. Their bodies seemed to have female breasts and genetalia. Understandably, this kind of experience, too, can lead to anxiety and depression. And afterward, the person may believe that his 'true personality' was revealed.
One should never regard drug-state as necessarily more revealing than other types of experience. With LSD-type drugs, what might be a passing and easily dismissed idea can become a prolonged a vivid mental event. But this doesn't mean that it necessarily has greater validity than the passing idea would have ordinarily. Such phenomenea are best regarded as drug-state curiousities that will not effect the normal personality and behavior.
When negative perceptions or emotions occur, and if they last long enough to be distressing, it is best not to analyze them. Try to get interested in something else. Psychedelic veterans have learned to do this. Similarly, it's often easy to divert the partner, should his or her distress become obvious. This might be done with an especially interesting or amusing remark or by telling the other person how much pleasure he or she is giving. If, as ought to be the case, the two people are lovers or good friends, then it is likely that they will know how to help each other, should the need arise. For this reason, too, psychedelic experience is not a desirable arena for casual sex between two strangers.
Spontaneous changes in visual perseption may also provide very pleasant experiences. One man, for example, related that his girlfiend changed as he held her in his arms, first to Helen of Troy, then to Cleopatra, then in successive metamorphoses to yet other women, so that he quickly "made love to all the famous beauties in history." After a while, the girl resumed he own appearance, although her beauty was greatly heightened, and he "thought he no less lovely than any of the others and appreciated very much her part in providing such a great experience."
There are a host of similar erotic phenomena that sometimes occur in the psychedelic state. These might seem trivial and self-indulgent compared with the transcendence of the ecstatic union, but they are intereting, nonetheless. For many people, for instance, it is possible to 'genitalize' almost any part of the body, by consciously transferring the response capacity from the sexual organs to some otehr part, such as a finer. Rubbing one's finger against a fabric can provide sensations akin to those experienced in masturbation. A couple might even genitalize the lips and the mouth, so taht kissing affords sensations very much like those usually experienced in mouth-genital contacts or in sexual intercourse.
One man, who had taken a large dose of LSD (about 500 micrograms), found himself unable to obtain an erection, despite much assistance from his partner. Abandoning the effort, they lay side by side. Suddenly, he became aware of his entire body as "one great, erect penis. The World," he said, "was my vagina and I had a sense of moving in and out of it, with intense sexual sensations."
A few research subjects have reported similar erotic sensations from listening to music. One man reported "the sexualization of my entire body as I listened to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The music washed over every inch of my body, giving sexual sensations like those of a very intense orgasm. The pleasure became so intense as to be unendurable. I had to shut off the phonograph. I wondered at every instant if I would not have a real ejaculation." In a subsequent LSD experience, he responded to the same recording in the same way. No other music produced the phenomenon, and he never learned why the Pastoral should have such an effect. With another subject, any symphonic music produced strong sexual sensations.
When males see vivid images or visions, they almost always include beautiful nudes, with Balinese dancing girls and other Orientals appearing frequently. drug-state visions in America are shot through with this predilection for the East - in archetectural and religious imagery as well as in nudes. But just as women are less interested in erotic art, so do they have less erotic imagery.
The aftereffects of drug-state sex can be of very great value, though often the results don't last. As an immediate aftermath of a good sexual experience under LSD, some couples report an over-all improvement in their relationship - and a specific improvement in their sex life. Frequently, a portion of the drug-state perception of the womans greatly heightened beauty carries over, so that she continues to appear more attractive. Sometimes, with psychedelics, inhabitions fall away, allowing people to engage in sexual practices that are normal and that had been desired, but which inhabition prevented. Extensive caressing of the genitals and mouth-genital stimulation are frequent examples. Breaking through such blocks can be permanent. Especially amoung married couples, who had largely ceased to attract each other sexually, there can be a reactivation of old desires and emotions. Most of these beneficial aftereffects are lost in days, weeks or months, but they can be retained - or possibly reactivated by another LSD session - if they are regarded as important enough to be worth preserving.
Because ecstatic union is so rich an experience and may have very positive effects on a relationship, it is obviously desirable that it occur and be repeated. This is possible without psychedelics, but the necessary changes in consciousness occur more readily when they have first been experienced in LSD-type states. After LSD, memories and pathways in the nervous system have been strongly established and can be explored again more easily.
To take some terminology from the theologians, we have been busy for a long while 'demythologizing' sexual intercourse - divesting it of a sense of sin and a necessary connection with procreation. But a totally demythologized sex can be mechanical, vapid and banal if it remains without larger significance. Ecstatic sexual experience may be the new and valuable 'remythologizing' agent. With and without psychedelic drugs, we may be able to invest the sexual union with new beauty and meaning. https://www.facebook.com/Psychelics?ref=h
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Visualizing The LSD Experience
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Posted:Dec 30, 2014 8:15 pm
Last Updated:Apr 5, 2015 3:17 am
8986 Views
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I am familiar with several psychedelics and experienced to the point that I am comfortable taking them alone in moderate doses. I have taken LSD three times. Light breakfast. No herbal supplements, unusual foods, prescription drugs, etc. I spend the weeks before thinking a bit about what I want to get out of the experience, in what is becoming an annual ritual.
The purity of LSD is rarely a consideration and I consider this material well assayed by friends. Dosage is supposed to be 1 dose (100µg) per drop but I of course lack tools to verify this. I've taken one dose of what was indicated to be 100µg from this source before, and this time took two as that experience was pleasant but never left ++ territory.
The physical effects of LSD are relatively familiar and in any case not interesting to me in this case so I encourage reading other LSD descriptions for that.
--- Begin
It's a sunny day in the middle of a window of rainy ones - my good fortune (and good planning). We sit outside, getting a late start around 10am. 200µg (approx) in tapwater-brewed 'Splashdown' tea in the back yard with L–. Sunny morning. I am excited but apprehensive, though I'm not sure why. I have a vague worry that I'm not in the proper mindset for this, as dissatisfied as I am with some life fundamentals - work, money, and the like. Fascinating that after 15 minutes the LSD is completely metabolized in the body and nothing has 'happened' yet. Neural explosions are beginning, cascading upward to consciousness.
I've edited this document after the fact; such additions (almost solely additions) are [bracketed].
I have two 'goals' in mind, if that's the right word. I don't press, only offer up a subject and see if it is taken up. I am interested in understanding more my relationship with my body; specifically, my asymmetry and the pain I feel in my hands and back and head. I have realized that frequently my frustration and bad mood are the product of pain I am so inured to that I am consciously unaware of it. I'd also like to understand why I don't feel hungry often enough, and in general repair my connection to my body, damaged by illnesses and attendant emotional struggle.
I'd also like to understand how I can proceed with my study of science; it seems a pointless exercise, arbitrary and capricious. I love science, and I am amazed to discover that not only do most people involved in it not revel in it, but that they are absolutely rigid with anxiety and fear, and caught up in their social/political academic game. I don't know if I care to succeed at it at the cost of participating in their model, whether it is worth the stress of the degree program, and how I can justify researching tiny details of such a huge world to little real avail.
--
My alert is as always a slight lightness at the brow and a tickle in my shoulders and a desire to take full, deep breaths rather than what seem like habitual shallow ones.
The onset consists of waves of the sensation - my attention begins to detach, wander, and small details of the landscape jump out. The lines of a leaf are more vibrant, the regularity of the lattice behind the plants becomes especially salient and clear. I feel euphoric, and my shoulders drop and I relax. I am tempted to laugh out loud.
Sound is a clear indicator; the air becomes crystalline, and my field of perception becomes spherical and much larger. I am not hearing with my [attention-limited] ears any longer, but with my whole perception. I can hear a barking echoing from the wall over my right shoulder from the window to my left, a truck downshifting on XX street a block and a half away, hear the dampening effect of the warmer, moister air next to the grass of the lawn as a tangible presence.
Some visuals begin; straight lines become chrome-edged, curves heavily shadowed in black. In general I don't pursue visuals, favoring instead Large Thoughts. This marks the last point I find 'normal' attention forced upon me for the remainder of the experience and I decide to move inside and lie down.
We go inside and I lie on a large pillow L– kindly sets up, in the sweet spot of the stereo. First I am in the front room; trucks going by outside are loud and obnoxious. I make small talk about the trucks and can tell I am beginning to have difficulty communicating; everything feels socially awkward, as though the timing were all off [and such chit-chat is inappropriate]. This is the incorrect way to talk, now, and I am a a bit ashamed and as always startled by how much time we spend saying such things. I am chilly, or at least trembling slightly. I sit on the pillow and L– puts the goat over me. My teeth chatter; mild nystagmus, some large-muscle tension. This phase lasts half an hour. I am happy but a bit distracted. L– helps me move to the living room to better enjoy the silence.
The temporal progression is not clear from here out until I start to come down. I'll speak of the major experiences instead.
The Mirror Game
[Later voice: This is a fascinating example of dehabituation and using the insight provided by the experience as a biofeedback to examine my own body. I have a fair amount of experience with biofeedback in physical therapy.]
I go into the bathroom, which has got to be every trip sitter's least favorite part, I am thinking to myself. What is he doing in there? Should I interrupt? The very thought that I am thinking these things [, worrying from someone else's perspective] is an indication of how strongly the tendency to imagine things from others' points of view asserts itself. One time while I am in there I am gazing into the mirror. The visual aspects of this I'll described below; here I'm concentrating on my body.
I notice suddenly that I am standing with my weight mostly on my right leg, and that my right toes are curled slightly against the ball of my foot. It feels entirely natural or habitual but suddenly stands out. This makes my balance entirely wrong; I can feel it. I have noticed this before, but now it is clear that this throws my right shoulder up, clenches the muscles of my back and neck. My entire right side is clenched. I remember the first time I took LSD, the nerve on the bottom of my right foot being so painful. Today it is again, as is the spot between my index and middle finger. (A nerve? Have to check.) I habitually curl my foot to protect this pain.
[Later voice: Later, I suddenly remembered a summer in childhood when I acquired a sliver of glass in this location; I cut it out myself. This strikes me as bizarre and silly but the thought leapt to mind and fits and is provided without editing.]
I shift my weight to make it evenly balanced between my left and my right foot. My smiling face in the mirror begins to repaint itself as sinister. The stubble on my cheek grows coarser, my eyes droop, and my face in the mirror becomes a symmetric version of just the left side of my face, angry and ugly. I shift to my habitual, mechanically bad pose, and my smile returns; the stubble diminishes; I look happy and my face is right-side symmetric.
This is not going to be easy. My body and my mind have a commitment to this unhealthy posture.
I hesitate briefly - I feel a pressure to not do anything 'too weird'. I can't imagine why. This comes up other times as well. [The internal monitor is so strong.] I take off my shirt; I can feel warring selves who feel this is 'too weird' make my movements clumsy. I identify with the ones who are doing the shirt-removing, discard the nay-sayers. [More on the perspective of 'fractured' selves as an analogy for conscious attention later.]
I watch my shoulders; I flex, stretch, rock my back. I grip both sides of the sink and gaze into my own eyes, and begin. I move from one foot to the other, mixing in a bit of left foot gradually, watching my visage distort and become angry. I balance and remain patient, let the torment subside, until it settles into a blend of familiar and sinister, happy and angry. The anger and sadness tug at me; like any potential focus, I can feel the pull to identify wholly, to fall into [associating with] the negative identity. To do so would mean being overwhelmed by fear or anger or tears [giving up to ridiculing myself for this exercise, or to let the awareness of the pain submerge, and lose my ability to work with it]; I can feel them welling up within me. Neither, though, is it safe or right to ignore the sadness and deny its existence. Instead I must integrate them, observe both. I can see that I am smiling. I continue this process for as long as I can. I want to reach a point of balance, then identify with it, make it my new physical condition. Again I think of the biofeedback training I've done: I need to use this state of heightened perception to identify the healthy posture so that I will recognize it later, so I can strive toward it. My perception is too clouded by pain and habit most of the time.
There is more about this right/left symmetry in the morning, below.
Eventually I decide I have made as much progress as I can without incurring too much cost to be useful. I am grateful to myself for this opportunity.
Food
L– makes me some eggs. They are perfect, just soft enough and just runny enough, with delicate traces of mint leaf and salty blue cheese, and two pieces of perfectly toasted bread, one with piquant meyer lemon preserves and the other just with sweet butter. I weep. I want to tell her they are fantastic, but every time I try it sounds so habitual, so trite. They are Good Eggs. I don't want to sound like I'm ready to converse; I just want to tell her how much I appreciate such exquisitely crafted food. I make some noise to this effect and drop it. A few moments later she appears with a glass of water, well timed. Her concern for me is enormous and perfectly phrased; not intrusive, not demanding, always only present and ready to withdraw.
I don't want to stay on the bed where I ate; she is reading there and the presence of another person makes me itch to communicate verbally, and I am incapable of it [and don't desire it]. The failure is distracting [; it is the wrong thing to try to do]. I return to my pillow in the living room, I think; perhaps this is when I go outside. She asks if I want company and I don't, but it is hard to tell her no. I worry I will make her unhappy, by rejecting her company, by leaving when she has designed such exquisite music for me, music which has guided much of the rest of my experience. There is a lesson here, I note, in my worrying too much about my responsibility for others' feelings.
Sex
I'd like to make love, though it's not a strong desire. I don't suggest it for a few reasons. One, I'm not sure how I'm interacting with L–. I don't know if I would come across as a drooling barbarian. The subtle parts of sex may not work, and I don't want to just paw at her. I know this is a dangerous thought, even as I am thinking it, but decide to save it for another time.
I also worry that it won't go well - in that it may not be the great extra-verbal bridge between us that I feel it should be. That thought scares me, and I don't want to make the risk right now. Another (or the same) lesson, another thing to discuss later with her.
Finally, I have no idea what my attention span is. Sex may take a million years, and I may have to stop and wander off on another pressing mission. Again, I don't want to intrude.
I do wonder, though, what an orgasm might feel like in this state. I think of what she did to me a few nights ago, and cannot fathom being on the receiving end of such pleasure again. Considering the plate of eggs made me cry, I imagine the singularity experience of orgasm - not so different in some ways from this loss of self - may gild my mind with diamonds and silver. However, it took me several minutes to thank L– for the eggs, and I think my verbal abilities amount to single words right now. I can't imagine myself croaking, 'sex?' and then waiting - or worse, wandering away. I know this will be funny later, but my tolerance for conflict [especially navigating social interaction] is very low right now so I don't pursue it further.
God
I saw god. Oh, should I have saved that one for last?
I saw god. Oh, should I have saved that one for last?
It begins as an understanding of how I perceive and the nature of the self. I am shedding selves moment to moment, sheaves of them falling away in a spiral around 'me'. Each one is the mechanism of an individual perception, of thinking a thought. I don't associate my subjectivity with any one of them; rather my subjectivity is informed by them as a plant is by its leaves. I would say I 'dispatch' them for each purpose, but there is no separation of me from Me; rather each is created in the act of perceiving, thinking, and they are me the way my finger is me. Each little-m-me occurs at the interface, the product, of Me and Everything Else, is created by that interaction. It was like being in a shower of tumbling leaves, each a complete moment exactly the size of a perception, where perceptions can be near-instantaneous apprehension of qualia (essential blue-ness; a single figure/ground realization; flutter of an eyelid; contraction of a muscle) or more complex thoughts like an appreciation of the relationship between myself and L–.
This was very clear in the mirror game. V1 neurons in the striate cortex are each calibrated to different time series and pattern detection - they are spatiotemporal filters of different temporal 'sizes', with different perceptual responsibilities. I can see each one functioning. The result in the mirror is a series of successive 'images'. I watched my iris and perceived each component of perception separately - blue; grey; diagonal lines; black-edge-darker/lighter border detection, each present and entire, and in each direction its neighbor another slice of qualia separated either in time or in my 'choice' of perception. This same effect was visible outside the 40-to-100 millisecond domain of V1; especially V4 stuff like spatial frequency (patterning), figure/ground detection, and up into global visual perception and even into greater cognition, and I'm reminded now of recent research that shows that not only are V2-V4 susceptible to attentional focus (citation?), but that they can influence and tune V1 but even frontal cognition can (XXXX, 200 . I'd say they're on to something.
Subjectivity, such as my identity, is 'choosing' a branch, a spiral arm, of these shedding selves; identifying with a slice of them. This isn't a random set; it's a set that is defined by the same nature as the fractal set generation mechanism that 'creates' them in the first place. As each element of a fractal contains the same infinite complexity within as without, so does any selected subjectivity. It may feel discontinuous in time but that's from the local perspective; the relationship from above is clear, as the colored regions of a Mandelbrot fractal are related. Whichever are selected are seamlessly joined into the 'user illusion' of consciousness.
I am a shedded self, a local function of the fractal; every branch is a pocket subjectivity the universe uses to see itself [through local interactions]. Uphill, the universe is a single entity; it is the essential subjectivity; that is to say, 'god'. It is a fractal spiral, radiating from a single pole. Capital-M-me is that singularity; as far up as I want to go, I am the entire universe. I feel love for myself, all the facets of myself. There is no perception of myself in the past, though; nothing about my childhood or really anything other than how I identify myself now, and of the rest of the world on an equal footing with my 'self'. [Future was present, though; my sense is that 'past' was present, but my only perception of the past would have been from a smaller yet self, and 'upward' was more interesting.]
There is never a sense of another larger than me; that is, if there is nothing, there is nothing; if there is a thing, it is a subjectivity of some size, defining the axis of a spiral. Further subjectivities may exist [alternate branches of this larger whole - some are 'mine', some I will, I know, habitually conceive of as 'other people', later; the selection function between 'me' and 'other person' though is so clearly analogous to that between the various perceptions that make up 'me'], and we are equal and part of the all, but there is no part of the all that is unknown to Me at this moment; none is an island, entire of itself, etc. This is probably why communication is so difficult; I am identifying with things outside the single-ego-verbal-entity, and cannot coordinate it to talk at that level any more than I can usually choose to grow the right side of my thumbnail faster than the left. [God is the name for the process that defines this 'spiral' and temporarily partitions it so it can interact with itself; ] there is no god outside our relations to each other.
The sensation fades and I can tell I am becoming more little-m me. This is effected by 'selecting' an arm of the fractal and indwelling there; there is some sadness (?) to the selection of a branch and I am reluctant to restrict myself, as much fun as it is to play at being a person. I so rarely get to be here, with everything all in one place and available to me. I feel comfortable and joyous to be so large. I'm certainly not bored. I am home.
As I come down I find myself 'sticking' to L–, desiring to speak to her. The desire to interact with another subjectivity requires constraining myself to the portions that can operate at a shared time scale. To be more specific, engaging verbally is a lower-resolution interaction. Verbal-style interaction, that is non-externalized but cognitively categorized interaction, affords a slightly higher resolution, and it is more tolerable - these are body language, scent, balance. This greater band of communication with the world remains longer, too, when the effects dwindle; later, when we are on the beach, I can feel the flow of traffic, can feel to a greater degree even than usual the individual drivers and their collective behavior. I tell L– that if one of the drivers were to consider turning left to enter the parking lot as they drove by, I would be able to feel it, and I believe this; it's the same way you can tell when a driver is going to turn even though they failed to signal, a thousand tiny cues from the slight turn to the right, the flick of the eyes to the mirrors, but I can perceive it at leisure; can read the body language of the couple arguing far across the beach [and I'm right; we walk closer later, and they are arguing], etc.
But that is later. As I said, I 'stick' to L–, but I am incapable of tuning in to the faster/smaller frequency and can't make myself think at that level. I suspect that this is the point at which I am harder to deal with; this is where I start making the right kind of eye contact but can't engage. L– later says that she couldn't tell; she thought my eye contact was fine [all along]. From my perspective, my subjectivity had 'left' that shard and was on to the next, and I felt I was not eye-contacting well. I am reminded (note the passive voice so often!) of the handful of individual cases in which I have seen a person known well to me 'go mad'; that is, fail to be able to sync up with the consensus world and communicate about it. The 'sane' perspective (I in those cases) feels flickers of the identity of the other, fleeting, like the way a thicket of trees becomes a periodic orchard from a moving car, but the trapped mind is incapable of communicating. I wonder if I should go visit [redacted; who is currently in a mental institution]; wonder whether it would be easier or harder to talk to him now. [Probably, I thought even then, harder; there is no special likelihood toward a greater ability to relate there.]
I'm reminded of my biofeedback training and the sensation of being able to 'consciously' smooth a tense muscle or direct my breathing. The sensation is similar; finding the controls, getting the heft of a ball to throw it, bouncing in a new pair of shoes to see how they'll fit. I'm heading toward myself. [Was it John Lilly who referred to needing to get the user's manual out of the glove compartment at this point?]
[If you get into these spaces [non-ordinary states of consciousness] at all, you must forget about them when you come back. You must forget you're omnipotent and omniscient and take the game seriously so you'll engage in sex, have , and participate in the whole human scenario. When you come back from a deep tank session -- or a coma or psychosis -- there's always this extraterrestrial feeling. You have to read the directions in the glove compartment so you can run the human vehicle once more.]
[Another one of Lilly's I hadn't read at that point:
At the highest level of satori from which people return, the point of consciousness becomes a surface or a solid which extends throughout the whole known universe. This used to be called fusion with the Universal Mind or God. In more modern terms you have done a mathematical transformation in which your centre of consciousness has ceased to be a traveling point and has become a surface or solid of consciousness... It was in this state that I experienced 'myself' as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was distributed around the galaxy. A 'membrane'.
I like that the 'point' of consciousness moves up in dimensional complexity and becomes a surface, or a solid.]
The Copular BE
I'm barely verbal. My ideas are nearly incoherent but I want to talk as much as possible, having learned from trying to remember my dreams how important it is to verbalize them quickly. I share how English-prime, the 'variant' of English derived from Korzybski's general semantics, seems like a wise idea. The copular BE is a lame copout, a shortcut not worth its cost, from my perspective. Everything is defined by interactions; there is no epistemic or attributive identity.
We talk about how every tool is not value-free but rather compose entirely of values. I tell her that right now I feel like a 'tool' in this sense; that I am a locally constructed artifact composed to interact and by interaction with the rest of 'my' 'environment'. Everything is like this in its own way: my V2-V4 neurons are like this; they do a job (or several jobs, actually) and any more cohesive appraisal of that job is necessarily from the perspective of that of which they are a portion. I am a delightful machine, capable of edge detection and qualia sorting and composing sonnets and metabolizing food and oxygen and thoughts , and inventing parking laws and paying parking tickets - depending on what 'I' is under examination. I am a message in a bottle, floated back to this corner of time-space-experience. My only definition is the message I bear/am; my existence is that message.
I ponder destroying all dogmatic verbal systems and see that everything is a 'verbal' system; destroying a verbal system would be nothing but destroying the portion of Self capable of interacting at that 'resolution'. This is impossible, of course; the self exists only through interaction, waiting for interaction with the verbal system to create it. Oxidation is a verbal system of oxygen and sonnets are a verbal system of typical ego-resolution subjectivities and love is a verbal system of larger subjectivities. For that matter, dams are verbal systems of beavers and commerce is a verbal system of corporations, which are themselves a verbal system of egos. So, Mr. Burroughs, I understand your frustration and agree that your path to liberation requires tuning out particular verbal systems, as we have already done. Rarely do the portions of self associated with micturition or sneezing dominate our consciousness, rarer still those whose sole interaction with the world is digestion or toenail-growing. It takes a lot of work to put this Self in the position of chatting about the weather; be proud of it, or at least pat it on the head and thank it from time to time. Better verbal systems await our need for them. Every human relationship is such a local verbal system, developed between two spiral arms of the universe. [Upward!]
Love for L–
L– is a wise soul. L– cares for me, and cares for me well. Every realization I make in my life, she is prepared to meet me at. I am humbled by my good fortune and joyous that we love each other. She is an excellent partner and I am happy that I feel I am relating to her properly, as two individuals with a strong bond; we are good for each other. Later when she is talking while she drives I am rapt at listening to her; I love her mind, so quick and so sincere. Sincerity, above all, is the word I associate with her, and with what it means for us to have a relationship. It is possible for me to be utterly sincere with her.
This love is so good and I want to compare it to my past love, the one that was so strong but so wrong and so sad. I decide to think for a while of Jennifer, and my love for her, to understand the difference. I see that what characterized it as so intense was its ludicrous focus - I was able to think of nothing but her; I identified as solely the shards of self concerned with her. It was a good experience and a good place to experience, but inherently curtailed, a dead-end arm of the spiral. Specific memories I had shadows of but had thought lost show me this. I remember a curl of hair, the shadow of a curtain; just like with H–, occasional phantom concordances lined up but we were never consistently in sync. I let the image fall away.
L–, 'totally subjective'
I'm just becoming verbal again and L– and I are talking. She uses the phrase 'to be totally subjective' and my naive mind is still taking words at strong value to my internal correlation for them. 'Total' and 'subjective' are words that have a lot of import to me at the moment, but I'm starting to understand the mediating function of words between subjectivities and the contrast between what leaps to mind when she says 'totally subjective' and my understanding of what she really intends me to think is so huge it makes me choke and laugh. I've got your total subjectivity, right here.
[There is] no difference between right-on-red law and oxidation of iron in rusting. Both are just local customs.
I pick up my glasses to put them on and the asymmetry of my head is enormous. I feel my teeth grind against each other, feel how much my body spirals, and I'm sad. I pick up my sunglasses a moment later, and they are in the same category as the glasses, but different - not being custom-fitted, they move differently, and the three-dimensional difference is tangible, a chiral variant. I wonder if I would be much, much better at complex geometry. Math is pretty again.
The universe is clockwise. I remember that from yesterday. But when I woke up this morning, it was counter-clockwise. This relates to my left/right balance issue; I am misperceiving the direction, perhaps? I close one eye, my left (RVF), and breathe deeply. The universe Necker-cubes back to clockwise, and I dwell for a time in the 'weakness' of my right eye, remembering, strengthening my connection to that perception from this side of my brain. I know that my worsening right rhomboid/ infraspinatus/ trapezius/ latissimus pain is the result of ignoring my left side; distrusting my weakness, denying the memory of years of pain, still. I am happy; I have a path to recovery. I am aware that this is an insight. It was not granted to me from on high; it is not a message from elsewhere (see earlier, there is no external authority). It is a fact just like 'blue eyes' or 'bad haircut' or 'hexagonal hydrogen-to-hydrogen bonds become stronger than local entropy in water at 0 degrees celsius around here' that I was able to perceive.
We walk on the beach, and L– assiduously avoids being upwind of me while she smokes. I want to tell her that seeing a cigarette surrounds me with every sensation associated with them and that the oddness introduced into her walking behavior is much more distracting than the smoke could be, but I am completely incapable and it doesn't really matter anyway. She is being kind and I love her.
The tide is very far out and I enjoy the sensation of the ocean being at arm's length, and see where it's going to come back. I feel dizzily lost and enjoy the feel of the small rip currents formed by the curl of the dunes. I see how I could be trapped by the water and shiver; Tyger Tyger, I could be drowned while I enjoy the sound of the percussion of the waves. A small voice sets a timer on how long I will stay here. [And I take some pride in the fact that I have a mind that is good at taking care of me, that will set that timer and not interrupt me with worry until it goes off, so I can safely devote my attention to other things.]
Science - If everything is simply everything's way of noticing itself, pointing out patterns seems absurd. But being a scientist, ie, noticing things, is a joy and the whole point. It's the tiny details that seems ludicrous. [The notion that any one detail is better, or above all that a model has anything to do with reality.]
Religion
We talk about a definition for religion. More to add, but essentially that I find it hard to identify something that isn't religion. [Everything is religion.] Peak experiences are going to be a moving target [that is, while math is the study of models, the study of peak experiences has an open lambda closure (sorry, lambda calculus is just the best way to explain it) in that what is 'peak' is a function specific to a particular subjectivity, and will have to be amended as we grow. Any religion we build, that is, any spiritual technology/religious function I might create to as James defines 'associate man with the transcendent' has to have dynamism built into it. This is the cleverness of Mr. J. H. Christ and Mr. G. Buddha. They did an excellent job of making definitions relative, before their followers started eating the menu instead of the meal and Christianity in particular ossified into the petty, cruel mess it now favors.]
Food
We eat at the Tibetan place we love because they genuinely prepare North Indian food with all its layers and complexity intact - I've never been anywhere like it in the States. The food is sublime. The wine is a clumsy failure; I can feel the minerals in the soil reach out and be blunted by the naive sweetness, clubbed to death like a defenseless baby seal. I think again that aesthetes of wine know what they're doing, and their attempts to describe wine are also attempts to harness a dogmatic verbal system. Us religion folks may benefit from talking with them.
Body
Today, I love my body. I am tall and strong and happy. My posture is good and nothing hurts. I dance a lot. I am astonished by how great my body is. I laugh every time I walk by the mirror, which I conspire to do frequently.
Lessons for the future
Fewer things. The closest thing to this and the route to broadening consciousness, that is, 'identification with formerly non-self' is unalloyed attention. Multitasking is silly, or rather any multitasking that requires conscious attention. [Here I was thinking of the kind of multitasking that is built in to our bodies - digesting food, up to perhaps balance while reading, etc.] Cultivate attention; 'never whistle while you're pissing' moves one notch further toward being my next tattoo.
Fewer things in every sense. Possessions are so easy to have, but each carries with it [or, more, demands you carry] a tiny fragment of your values [devote a small amount of your attention to carrying it]. One is the constantly progressing product of interactions with the universe. Own nothing; keep near you the things you value. ['Omnea mea mecum porto'.] This is the Buddhist doctrine of clinging as explained by Alan Watts and others. Leap lightly and love each step. Any step not loved is a stumble.
Identification of self with more is something I bring back as a goal. The broader Self I can experience, the better. Individuals should be large in extent in time and space [and subject].
[Miscellaneous notes I can't delete:]
A boy on the street can't take his eyes off me. I smile; I talk with him. He's about five years old, playing on my steps as his mother takes him on a walk around the block. [Old people and notice me a lot more, or I notice them, or we notice each other, for a few weeks after.]
PULL PIN SIX!
Ha ha ha. Zelazny made great hay of the LSD experience. Walking to shadows, the relationship between selves. Pull pin six!
right eye/left eye
I underuse my right eye.
[Finally - all this added:]
One of my favorite meditations has become easier for me, or one has been suggested to me by the experience. I call it the moment-to-moment or the continuity meditation, when I have to call it. I 'attentionate', devote my attention to, the act of perceiving time. How big is a thought? Is this moment of thought the same as the last one, or is it a new one? What makes the border? How long can a thought be? None of these are individually considered, of course; rather I am trying to examine the state-of-thinking. 'Examine' is really not the correct word. I am devoting myself to being the state-of-being-thought/perspective, I suppose. Making of myself only the act of making myself. I find this meditation nearer at hand now, when I close my eyes and think of it.
And I find my mood still (+2 months) very even. Kind, thoughtful, happy, I dare say. I've been called 'wise' four or five times in the last few months; hardly all new, but still it stands out. I feel less desirous, more excited about doing than having. I've felt this before, of course, to one degree or another, but this seems different, to be with less effort; a higher baseline of such a state. And my attention is less fractured; I discard multi-tasking.
I could be sad when I read this and see that it has in some ways become more distant. But I'm not; I'm doing Well. I will know what I need to know when I need to know it.
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Posted:Dec 29, 2014 10:51 am
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Some notable individuals have commented publicly on their experiences with LSD. Some of these comments date from the era when it was legally available in the US and Europe for non-medical uses, and others pertain to psychiatric treatment in the 1950s and 1960s. Still others describe experiences with illegal LSD, obtained for philosophic, artistic, therapeutic, spiritual, or recreational purposes.
Dock Ellis, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970 while under the influence of LSD.
Italian film director Federico Fellini experimented with LSD under the supervision of his psychoanalyst Emilio Servadio in 1964.
Richard Feynman, a notable physicist at California Institute of Technology, tried LSD during his professorship at Caltech. Feynman largely sidestepped the issue when dictating his anecdotes; he mentions it in passing in the "O Americano, Outra Vez" section.
Jerry Garcia stated in a July 3, 1989 interview for Relix Magazine, in response to the question "Have your feelings about LSD changed over the years?", "They haven’t changed much. My feelings about LSD are mixed. It’s something that I both fear and that I love at the same time. I never take any psychedelic, have a psychedelic experience, without having that feeling of, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” In that sense, it’s still fundamentally an enigma and a mystery."
Bill Gates implied in an interview with Playboy that he tried LSD during his youth.
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, became a user of psychedelics after moving to Hollywood. He was at the forefront of the counterculture's experimentation with psychedelic drugs, which led to his 1954 work The Doors of Perception. Dying from cancer, he asked his wife on 22 November 1963 to inject him with 100 µg of LSD. He died later that day.
Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., said, "Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life."
In a 2004 interview, Paul McCartney said that The Beatles' songs "Day Tripper" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" are about LSD, although John Lennon explicitly declared that "Lucy" was never about LSD but rather inspired by a picture drawn by his Julian.John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr also experimented with the drug, although McCartney cautioned that "it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music."
Kary Mullis is reported to credit LSD with helping him develop DNA amplification technology, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993https://www.facebook.com/lsd25acid
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Hallucinogenic Drug Experience
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Posted:Dec 29, 2014 10:47 am
Last Updated:May 12, 2024 9:34 pm
10754 Views
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Eugene Seaich's THE FAR-OFF Land (An Attempt At a Philosophical Evaluation of the Hallucinogenic Drug Experience) is a gem of a book which is short enough to be read in a day and with enough substance to feed the reader's head and soul for a lifetime. Written over 50 years ago, this little known work is now seeing the light of day and has all the attributes of becoming a classic of psychedelic literature. Connecting with eloquent style and sensitivity the portals of psychology, philosophy, cultural anthropology and spirituality, Seaich discusses and brings closer to our access an awareness of a "far-off land" whose essence is both dream and primal human identity. Poets and religions only offer a small glimpse of such a place while our psyche thirsts for its often forgotten nurturance. We are fortunate that Eugene's grandson Eric Hendrickson has surfaced the FAR-OFF LAND and I invite everyone interested in understanding a higher calling to reflect on the text which also can be of expansive help in navigating to those ports of our long lost homeland.http://AdultFriendFinder.com=rdr_ext_tmb?tag=donations09-20
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Hallucinogenic Drug Experience
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Posted:Dec 29, 2014 10:46 am
Last Updated:May 12, 2024 9:34 pm
10599 Views
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Eugene Seaich's THE FAR-OFF Land (An Attempt At a Philosophical Evaluation of the Hallucinogenic Drug Experience) is a gem of a book which is short enough to be read in a day and with enough substance to feed the reader's head and soul for a lifetime. Written over 50 years ago, this little known work is now seeing the light of day and has all the attributes of becoming a classic of psychedelic literature. Connecting with eloquent style and sensitivity the portals of psychology, philosophy, cultural anthropology and spirituality, Seaich discusses and brings closer to our access an awareness of a "far-off land" whose essence is both dream and primal human identity. Poets and religions only offer a small glimpse of such a place while our psyche thirsts for its often forgotten nurturance. We are fortunate that Eugene's grandson Eric Hendrickson has surfaced the FAR-OFF LAND and I invite everyone interested in understanding a higher calling to reflect on the text which also can be of expansive help in navigating to those ports of our long lost homeland.http://AdultFriendFinder.com=rdr_ext_tmb?tag=donations09-20
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Drugs and Sex
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Posted:Oct 3, 2013 10:05 am
Last Updated:Dec 7, 2017 3:24 pm
19484 Views
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SEP
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Drugs and Sex
History records few human quests as unremitting or as widespread as the search for a harmless, effective sex stimulant. Recent claims - such as those made by Timothy Leary - that LSD is the greatest aphrodisiac known to man, have excited much interest in the sexual potential of psychedelic Drugs. Sober discussion of psychedelic substances was difficult enough before sex entered the picture; now it is close to impossible. But bearing in mind that there is a great deal more to psychedelics than sex, it might clear the air to examine the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide - and several other psychedelic Drugs - on human sexual behavior.
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The gaining of self-knowledge while under hallucinogenic stimulation is specifically mentioned by th
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Posted:Sep 27, 2013 8:36 am
Last Updated:May 12, 2024 9:34 pm
18784 Views
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The gaining of self-knowledge while under hallucinogenic
stimulation is specifically mentioned by the Indians of the Southwest,
who feel that guilt is resolved by means of unrelenting self-criticism
and visionary awareness of one’s sins. Ellis also refers to a similar state
of perceptive introversion: “It was as if I had unexpectedly attained
an objective knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my
normal state of being with the eyes of a person who sees the street on
coming out of the theatre of broad day
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, LSD give us the power
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Posted:Sep 27, 2013 8:35 am
Last Updated:May 12, 2024 9:34 pm
18831 Views
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, LSD give us the power to revive
forgotten memories, and in my enquiries, smokers have
frequently informed me that while under its influence,
they are able to recall things long forgotten. If through
such use the unconscious mind could be rendered more
accessible, possibilities as an aid in psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy are shown.philosopher, wrote of its power to revive
forgotten memories, and in my enquiries, smokers have
frequently informed me that while under its influence,
they are able to recall things long forgotten. If through
such use the unconscious mind could be rendered more
accessible, possibilities as an aid in psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy are shown.
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LSD abd Sex
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Posted:Sep 26, 2013 3:16 pm
Last Updated:May 12, 2024 9:34 pm
14360 Views
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LSD abd Sex
History records few human quests as unremitting or as widespread as the search for a harmless, effective sex stimulant. Recent claims - such as those made by Timothy Leary - that LSD is the greatest aphrodisiac known to man, have excited much interest in the sexual potential of psychedelic drugs. Sober discussion of psychedelic substances was difficult enough before sex entered the picture; now it is close to impossible. But bearing in mind that there is a great deal more to psychedelics than sex, it might clear the air to examine the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide - and several other psychedelic drugs - on human sexual behavior.
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To link to this blog (ez3eric) use [blog ez3eric] in your messages.
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