People have been eating and drinking and doing unusual things to alter their perception for as long as we can tell. What is this drive to want to get inside, or outside, of us, to alter our sense of reality?
I loved the 1980 movie “Altered States.” Cable TV and movie channels were new, and that let you watch films over and over again, repeat viewing being its own kind of altered state.
This was William Hurt’s breakout film, about a college professor experimenting in abnormal psychology: on his self. He was using an isolation tank, for full sensory deprivation. Unfortunately he was genetically devolving into an ape, which seemed pretty far-fetched at the time. At this point, scientists think drugs really can change our DNA: possibly in positive ways.
Still, I was enthralled with the idea of being deprived of all my senses. So, one crisp fall day in my 21st year on earth, I made my way to small, very upscale vendor in Chicago where I could pay $45 for an hour in a sensory deprivation tank.
It was 12” of super-salinated water, in a huge long dark tank with an angled access door at the end where your feet should be, in a cedar room as hot as a sauna. You laid down in it, with your head at the back, and they closed the door, and you floated. The water was as close to body temperature as they could get it. Some people wanted new age music or ocean waves or bird sounds piped in. Not me. I just wanted it quiet and pitch black.
I had a choice of going completely nude or wearing a suit…I think I wore my bottoms, but not my top. I was a little tired, and that was a mistake. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep throughout the middle of it.
The beginning, when they closed the door, was scary. I had to do some breathing exercises to keep calm. But pretty soon, the salty water did it stuff, keeping me buoyant without effort. I started to have some spinning sensations: first front over back, and then circularly…that was disturbing. I almost hit the “panic” button, which would call an attendant to get you out…but you didn’t get your money back. And I was going to get my buzz’s worth.
There was a point, when I felt fully awake, where I started to lose track of my body, and space, and time…there was a foggy, angular white doorway…that I thought for a moment was the end of the session…but it was higher, and much, much further away. There were people there, freindly smart people, beyond the doorway. And I felt like I knew them. I could almost hear them. Laughing and talking. And then, I started to move towards them…not physically, but from my chest, my heart chakra. But the sensation of movement startled me, and I fell back into my body, and thrashed around in the tank a bit, impatient for the experience to be over.
Some of my wilder friends thought I should have done it high (everyone smoked pot then). But I didn’t want that, I already knew what it was like to be high, which was really very nice, indeed, if it weren’t for all that bad karma around it (like the people killed in the drug trade, which is what made me stop smoking or cooking that stuff ten years ago). And pot was always just, you know, pot.
I have always wondered who those people behind door, in the white light, were. They were just black silhouettes: I couldn’t see any features. They didn’t look like people from the past, or particularly from the future. They just seemed like people not really here. Somewhere else. I wasn’t afraid of them. I was afraid of not coming back.
The next year, I experimented with magic mushrooms, and I saw the moonlight dancing neon green on Lake Michigan as if it were alive with energy. I did this together with good friends, some of whom I’m still in touch with today. I felt an overwhelming presence of goodness and grace, that I think has helped me re-find that sensation in more everyday ways as I get older.
I also took ecstasy, which was unremarkable, except that one person in the group became a movie star and is in lots of films and I can’t help but think of that night every time I see him on screen. He went off with some others when one of my roommates started to have a bad trip. My roommate’s father had committed suicide our first year of college. For some reason, this trip set him off, and he just needed to cry. So I sat up all night, held him when he sobbed, made him macaroni and cheese, and talked through it all, and then we smoked some pot and went to our respective beds. I felt a little sorry for myself that I didn’t get to go with the group with the almost famous guy…but still know I did the right thing.
When we used drugs in college (okay, a conservatory-style arts program), we treated it like an experiment. We researched it; we (mostly) checked our sources and used righteous suppliers as best we could. The wilder ones tried LSD, and cocaine, and boasted about taking heroin, and yes, drugs did mess some up –- it was, and is, of course, dangerous. Still, we were doing it to experience altered states of consciousness. Not to escape consciousness and the experiences we were living. We did it to experience them in a heightened way. And at the three particular moments I’ve described here, I did have powerful, life changing experiences I will never forget.
Plus, I don’t think I’ve devolved into an ape…at least, not yet…
Links:
Epigenetics, DNA: How You Can Change Your Genes, Destiny – TIME
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952313,00.html
HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html
Altered States Movie on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States