A month or so after
my first experience with mescaline my friend D made his way up to my home
town in Mississippi to stay a couple of days with another friend
or mine, C. C's parents had gone out of town for the weekend
for something I can't remember. So, we had the house to ourselves for the
weekend- his parents, being flower children, of course would've had no qualms with our psychonautics, but having them gone left us room for greater creativity. C's house was on the campus of the high school we had all attended.
D arrived after
nightfall with the bottle of mescaline tablets that we had gotten in
Hattiesburg about a month earlier. I paid him twenty five dollars for the
tablet (five more than I had paid for the first one) and took it soon
afterwards. D also took one. Then, as is the case with mescaline, we
waited. And waited…
And…
Waited…
A few hours into the
wait D and I began feeling the MDMA-like bodily sensations that mescaline
gives. We just sat and talked about old memories from high school and so forth;
we also conversed about the effects the mescaline was having: about how easily
new ideas formed and even painful topics were easy to address and examine. The
question struck us as to why couldn't we, and all people, simply feel this
good, this weightless and empathetic, this tranquil and happy, all the time;
seeing as how our motor skills were not in the least impaired we wondered why
this state of mind and body could not
have been the norm- why god or evolution, whichever, couldn't have made us this
way all of the time. The ease of conversation was wonderful, with every topic
drenched in empathy.
The time came when
we agreed that the psychedelic effects of the drug should be starting.
Remembering how extraordinary the mirror had been on my first mescaline trip, I
went to the bathroom to see if the mirror would have the same effect. I was
happy to see that it did, but not to the same degree. After a few minutes in
the mirror I went back into the kitchen and sat at the small, round table in
the center. It was just as Cameron asked, "You trippin' yet, man?" that the trip actually began.
My head rested in my
hands, elbows propped on the table, the wood-grain on the brown table began to
flow away to my right. I began to laugh hysterically at the wondrous sight- the
wood-grain flowing across the table like a brown river, undulating like an
ocean.
C and D asked me what was going on and I told them about the table and how beautiful it
was. They agreed with my assessment- shit twas truly badass.
The house full of
cigarette smoke and the weather outside
very agreeable, we decided to go into the yard for some fresh air.
Stepping outside was like entering a new world; the flora wasn't just alive- it
was living.
I lied down under
the oak tree growing in C's yard. Looking up at the tree's branches, they
began to grow before my eyes. The branches stretched higher and further out,
sprouting new stems and leaves along the way. The tree kept growing, taller and
taller, breaking into the stratosphere of the night sky. I lied there,
awestruck, narrating the event to D and C.
We all got up and
went back into the house. D and I split another capsule. C turned the
TiVo to a Lewis C.K. special and D and I blew multi-colored smoke rings.
Turning our attention the TV I noticed the Christmas tree lights dancing around
the tree- which seemed to grow just as the oak outside had; although I could
clearly tell the tree was the same size and shape the entire time- because of
the walls, furniture and ceiling remaining in their static positions- it all
the same appeared to grow and expand.
The curtains and the
walls rippled and quivered like gently lapping tides. Intricate patterns
swirled and evolved, changing into different colors, growing bigger, then
shrinking, rotating on their axis's in every direction.
This went on for an
hour or two, watching the comedy special and the vibrant patterns play off each
other, the three of silently competing in an unspoken smoke ring blowing
contest.
We spent the rest of
the night reminiscing and conversing over the aspects of the high mescaline
gives, particularly the feeling of insight it brings. The analogy of having the
brain of a baby struck me; under the influence of mescaline we were allowed to
turn off all of the learned filters and biases that had come to clog our minds
and prevent us from gaining any further insight or enjoyment from those things
with which we had come the most familiar. Whereas in a sober mind these
filters, accumulated over years of unconscious judgment, are always on,
preventing any deeper thought or appreciation of quotidian experiences,
mescaline can tear down these filters, leaving our brains like that of a
baby's: simply absorbing everything around us, ready to learn, accept and
evaluate instead of stubbornly rejecting all but what we already know. This is
what makes me regard mescaline as such a highly attractive substance.
My second mescaline
trip was much more pleasant and much less intense than the first, though much
less remarkable. Even though I in fact ingested more on the second occasion
there are numerous factors that need to be considered. Firstly, and most
importantly I believe, was the fact that on the second trip I had been
maintaining a regular diet. The first time I had been fasting for the past 48
hours, leaving my body wide open to absorb larger quantities of mescaline. I do
not mean to say that the higher absorption is entirely responsible for the
increased effects; the fact that I was aware of my fasting may have well played
just as large, or larger, role is exaggerating the trip. Being aware of the
fact that my fast would indeed increase the mescaline's effects would have
certainly increased the effects further in itself. This aspect of preconceived
expectations play into the third difference I mention between the trips.
The second
difference in the two trips was that on the first trip I had consumed other
substances than just the mescaline, most notably the marijuana. Having smoked
marijuana, my sober mind was made all the further distant and my frame of
reality cloudier. This, no doubt, made
it more difficult for me to distinguish reality from illusion. While I believe
that smoking marijuana increased the intensity of the experience, I do not
believe this to have been a wholly bad thing. The negativity, I believe, came
from the third difference: my setting.
My second trip was
in a much, much more pleasant environment, completely absent of negative
energies. These things combined, I believe, were the cause of the vastly
different levels of intensity and enjoyment in the two trips. The next time I
try mescaline I will make a point of having marijuana and a safe, pleasant
environment on hand.
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