Love Letter to LSD

LSD and the Search for God -

Flipping through the pages of an old encyclopedia, I stop to read the description of a fairy. Described as an angel of light, they have a length ranging from 2.5cm to 7cm and weigh little more than a fraction of a gram. Fairies are woodland creatures that protect that natural balance of the forest through their subtle and contained use of magic in the form of pixie dust. The dust protects the unique vibration given off by whatever object it was sprinkled over, acting like a shield against rotten spirits, or a net to contain them.When consumed by lower entities, pixie dust generates an effect of euphoric intoxication that allows a user to briefly glimpse reality's true nature. What an odd little wonder drug this seemed to be, I had to find a way to get my hands on it before I logged off for the day. So, at the battle station on my desk, I scoured my resources for ways to obtain this fabled powder. It was simple! I would need to kill enough fairies, collect enough bodies, cremate and mix their ash with gold flakes to turn them into a delicious powder! Obtaining the sweet magic of pixie dust was not an easy task, however. It took hours of hunting, fighting, and scavenging for just a single dosage!! Still, my hard work paid off, and I was ready to log off for the day with a feeling of accomplishment. Half dead and under-rested, I get out of bed the next morning and shuffle into the shower. My day begins when the water hits my skin, jolting my body back into a state of awareness. As I reenter my room, on top of my desk lies a thumb sized pile of white powder, in front of it, an index card that reads pixie dust.

I awake in my bed with cold sweats. I know too well what the dream is about, what urges it’s trying to provoke. My subconscious mind claws at the walls of my psyche, begging for another taste of my old treats. I haven’t touched a synthetic in years, and longer so since I played a video game. This dream captured my old lifestyle in such cohesiveness, it made me realize how shallow it really was. Looking back, I know I never would’ve changed my lifestyle if I didn’t know the pain it would cause. My father was an addict. As was his father, and his father, as were most of their wives and extended family. I developed asthma from secondhand smoke, an addiction from stupidity, and a sense of awareness from psychedelic abuse. It's funny. As a drug addict, there are few drugs that tell you to stop taking them. There are few performances so well choreographed that they can teach a lesson amid uncontrollable chaos. There are few drugs so powerful, so unique, so mystical in its nature, that you can’t even call them drugs. Lysergic-acid diethylamide, LSD-25, is the unpicked fruit of human creation.

If there’s any truth to what you know about LSD, then it’s not surprising to know how unintentional its synthesis was. We had access to a tool that worked like a master key to the mind, activating deeper parts of the brain and bringing them up for conscious observation. We had access to an experience so spiritual in nature, so personal in value, so powerful in practice, that we had no other choice but return to primal ignorance and deem ourselves unworthy of its use. Psychiatrists valued the potential as a therapeutic aid, the CIA tried to see if it could be used for mind control, and the hippies searched for God in his own graveyard – this substance was powerful, and people were learning how to use it. Opening what feels like the mind's eye, a feeling of overwhelming understanding, compassion, and love for everything around you sets in as your eyes dance with the colors and patterns of your environment. You can see why people do the things they do, as for a second you remove yourself from your ego and place your eyes in the head of another– it might not change your opinion, but now you understand their perspective. It only takes one dosage to change a person’s life, and how else does it do this but by showing you what life really is.

Quarantine marked the beginning of the story. At first, I saw this as an opportunity to finish school exactly how I wanted to - smoking weed, playing video games, pulling all-nighters just to watch the sun rise and joining my morning class without missing a beat. Quarantine felt like the break from reality I had been itching for. It allowed me to follow my life path - that being school, while still getting to enjoy life, that being drugs, video games, and free time! It was on March 30th, 2020, when I was turning seventeen, that I decided I was “ready” to try LSD. I would soon find there’s no such thing as being truly “ready” for LSD – I decided to trip this day because it’s a memorable and personal date. Around eight forty at night, I told my mother I was going out to drop a wallet off at my friend's house. A twelve-minute drive across town brought me to a baby blue, two-story townhouse with a smokey-gray hellcat parked in the driveway. I walk to the side of the house, under the porch and towards the only illuminated door in sight. Giving the door three light taps, my nose can smell the pungent skunk odor as soon as it creaks open. I enter the unlit living space at the doorman’s request, following him to the center of his living room and atop a geometrically patterned rug. As the man opens up his fridge, I spend the moment taking in my surroundings. I noticed a cat bringing company to an otherwise lonely home, how the static humming from the fridge satisfied any urge to break the now long and awkward silence. Still, like thunder, I remember the clap of the voice that ordered me to turn around. Like a man too tall for a doorway, I crouch my knees and bend my neck to allow the eyedropper a position directly above my mouth. Like a child at the doctors, I stick my tongue out and wait.

I still think back to that moment from the perspective of the clock, from the objective view of what happened. Nine o four, I see the moment before the drop was squeezed from the bottle and onto my tongue. Slow silhouettes saturated in clear molasses, giving me the same eerie feeling that only a wax museum can - but I cannot remember what I thought, nor how I felt, nor what I expected – only the situation for what it was. Maybe it's metaphorical? Perhaps my new eyes don’t screw into my old head. Well, that’s a scary thought. Can I never go back? Oh well, I didn’t care much for that head anyways, this new head seems to see what it didn’t see before. What could even be back there? And those colors…wow. I didn’t know brown had so much beauty, it has always been my least favorite color. But why?? What is brown but the combination of every color - that’s beautiful in its own sense, how did I not see that before? There still seems to be a lot in which I don’t know. Why did God create life in the first place? It seems like theirs no right way to do it, people don’t know how, and the freewill given to us is so often used to forsake his name…but then again, history tells that people don’t like to listen to what they don't believe. They didn’t listen to Christ when they killed him… but what came from that but the fulfillment of the ultimate prophecy. I'm thinking God did that on purpose… but he did seem pretty emotional when it happened, ready to cry a flood or whatever. But how the fuck can god be emotional?! He did create us in his likeness, so maybe he is an emotional being, but he is literally God: all powerful; all knowing; all good; he should be better than our humanly emotions. Or maybe, emotions are what makes us like god. Our emotions come from…something. something.. something… something,…. -- or -- nothing!? Nothing.. Our emotions come from nothing. They originate in how we feel towards something, meaning they all start from something, but they come from nothing. Hear me out. We see something. Now, if we saw that thing for the first time, that thing is just a thing. But, once we experience it, we create something. That thing becomes something, it now has a label. Our experiences with that something condition us to feel a certain way about it, we assign feelings to that label that dictate how we react to it. So, in a way, like God the creator, we are creators too. We create in his likeness, something from nothing, we assign meaning to the inherently blank based on our perspective on it. Maybe that’s what god really is, the personification of what people are. Maybe it's God who is created in our likeness, because it is us who are the true creators, the assigners of meaning in a meaningless world. But still, who came first, the god or the human? Well, I wouldn’t know.

Thawed thoughts from a brick of the minds ice. Where are these ideas coming from? Am I tripping yet?? It’s been hours, midnight passed and this was supposed to kick in two hours ago - I didn’t think this shit worked!?! But why can’t I see any hallucinations. Or… wait. Can I?? Has that poster always been an optical illusion? I can’t tell. What the hell. No, I need to be tripping. I feel it. Every time my heart beats, it beats deeper. I can hear my thoughts so clearly. Too clearly. Are those… are those even my thoughts? They have to be. This is my brain. Mine… My..my. By.. Bye bye. Hahaha, No. I'm not going anywhere! I’m… I am…What does that mean? My, I’m, I. What is I. What am I. Who am I. Who…. Oh no. Who the hell am I. Who am I if the thoughts in my head are not mine. Who am I if the eyes I see with are not mine. Who am I if I am not what I am?? Help!! No. Don’t help. Or do! You are being helped. Or not! Close your eyes.

I wake up again in cold sweats, but my eyes are still closed. I see pixie dust. I want pixie dust. Am I really awake? I can feel myself moving… towards it, but my body remains still. The dust sits so seductively, calling at me like a siren. I take some grains between my fingers and rub them into my gums, an amount small enough for me to get a taste without overdoing it. I notice the pile does not shrink after I take, quite the contrary – it actually replaced the few grains I took! I cut the pile in half and prepared a few lines to snort, an experiment to see if this phenomenon will keep up. The pile doubles. I take double. I feel nothing but the urge to take more, so the more I take. More and more, and more, until the pile towers over me like a smoke column, as I stand gawking and staring into the massive heap of erotic sand. As quick as a gun, I dive into the fanciful concoction, sending a whirlpool of dust into the open air. I unfasten my jaw and gape my nostrils, gasping like I had forgotten how to breathe, allowing as much dust to enter my lungs and sinuses as humanly possible. The pile grows larger still, my body being consumed by the growing mass of pixie dust until not even my eyebrows have the space to move. I am lodged between the weight of grains, what was once so light is now far too heavy. I try to breathe again, my lungs like concrete and my mouth obscured, it is futile. In torture I endure, surrounded by what I love, imprisoned by what I did, fastened in silent stillness.

My eyes open again to my computer's glaring light. I’m still hallucinating, I can tell for sure now because everything moves, even the darkness. I move over to the bed, and even when I lay flat, the ceiling sways like I’m in a boat. Even as I lay motionless, my body rocks me like a hammock. But my mind is clear again. Mostly. I still see a lot. The screensaver on my computer looks to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. A photo of grass green enough to make Bob Ross blush, blades curling into rolling hills that sink into the bright blue sky, reminding me of the hilly view from my childhood farm. It was more beautiful than any piece of nature I had ever laid sight on, so much meaning placed in each portion of the photo that I could dissect it for days. The grass had its purpose, it was the soft ground that feeds the world's critters, a beautiful sacrifice of life to feed life. The clouds were icons of the cycle we all take part in. We appear, we change, we move, and we continue. The hills were symbols of the world's irregularity. Beauty lies in how bumpy life is, how sometimes we feel so low that we only see more hills to climb, and when at the top we are so fixed to the view, we fail to acknowledge that we must go back down. I am in bliss. Such wonder could bring a tear to my eye, in fact, that’s exactly what it's doing. It wasn’t until my eyes closed again that I realized, I don’t need anything. I don’t want anything. I have been given everything I need.

Again, I awake. For real this time. I think. Real… what is real. Is what I experience real? If so, then my hallucinations were as real as my dreams. It certainly felt as real as I feel now. Maybe more so. But that’s not possible. How could it be? Reality is here, now. But the past is just as real as the now, it’s just as important. No Past, No Now. Great. So, it was real. Just because nobody else knows it happened doesn't mean it didn’t happen. If a tree falls and nobody hears it, the tree still knows it fell. It fell as I fell, as nature intended. I feel crazy. I think I am crazy. None of this makes any sense at all but so much at the same time. I understand how empty my words are, I speak how I live. Waiting for the right moment. But what the hell is a right moment. There is no such thing as a right or a wrong, it’s all just what we decided. Why did we decide. I want to go home. I am home. Real home, please. Go to sleep. Ok.

I awake again. My eyes are steady. My heart beats flat. I am back, ready. What do I remember? All of it and none of it. Do I know what that means? No. Is that going to stop me? Hell No. I’m fascinated with what I found inside me. Why does the brain work in such secluded magnificence? How much was the drug really doing? What part of that was really me? I had answers to questions I never asked, questions to truths I had never challenged, my sense of self was… obliterated. I didn’t know what I was anymore, I am now just… a shell. One thing I do remember, however, is that I can be a creator. I can create anything. I’m empty now, that means I am a blank canvas. I can be what I want, who I want, when I want and where I want. Now, what do I want?

I awaken.