I Love(d) Lucy.
As many of you know, I have, by all reasonable objective standards, wasted the better part of six months doing nothing but trying to play out a rock and roll fantasy life. This particular entry deals with my healthy appetite for psychedelics, which, as of yesterday, is better described as my unhealthy former appetite.
Skip the next little bit if you don't care about specifics or don't want to read about drugs themselves.
It started about a week and half ago. I had never before had a problem with acid, save for a bit of muscle tension that I knew was a common side-effect. Well, about three hours into the journey I got this feeling in my spine, almost in the middle of my neck that I can only describe as an explosion. Imagine a water balloon filled with jelly splitting open--and the jelly flowing down my back until it felt as though my spinal cord was defecating. Panicked, I went home and slept it off and hoped that it was nothing more than a hallucination.
What really terrified me about this SpineDrip (and I apologise for using such a horrifying term, but I want to emphasise how disgustingly serious it felt) was that it felt as though my body adjusted to the drug. It caused the pain my back to disappear, which may seem like a good thing, but it was the slight discomfort that let me know a) that the drug was working as it was supposed to and b) that it was, in fact, a drug in my body, a concept that can often be forgotten by a user who is having a difficult experience.
The horrifying SpineDrip part was gone the next day, and disappeared for about a week until Friday night when it hit be when I got home from work. It was the most terrifying night of my life. I have never heard a genuine account of anyone experiencing a "flashback," and all the research I had done on the drug lead me to believe that all such instances were purely psychosomatic. On Friday, however, I realised that the visual distortions during an LSD trip are simply caused by the way the drug affects various hormones, namely serotonin and melatonin, and causes your body to be uncomfortable. Upon further research, it became clear to me that my insomnia and persisent post-trip visual distortions were the result of a severe lack of melatonin.
(As a side note, if they had LSD and the means to research it in the sixteenth century, we would probably know a lot more about it, as melatonin is created by the pineal gland, which at that time was considered by philosophers, including Rene Descartes I believe, to be the part of the body where the mind becomes no longer bound by physical and chemical laws.)
Anyway, yesterday (Saturday), I woke up with this very uncomfortable tingling sensation all through my back. I could not describe it as pain, just as something that I knew wasn't normal. It caused my body to twitch, which was not an involuntary action, as I was fully aware that the twitching was the only thing I could think to do to sort of "shake off" the tinglies. It persisted all throughout the day, and at about 8:30 I finally accepted that this isn't something I should take lightly. After driving around looking for walk-in clinics, I ended up at Peel Memorial.
Three hours and $10 dollars in parking and a few public sobbing sessions later I saw a doctor. He read my chart, in which I gave a genuinely honest account of what had happened, and originally was going to prescribe an anti-psychotic to stop the muscle twitching. When I told him that they weren't involuntary, he told me to just wait it out for a day or two. So I went home, woke up today, and I am please to say that the uncomfortable feeling has subsided, though I imagine the tension in my body is the result being forced to sit and stand in uncomfortable positions all day.
So there you go.
In terms of lesson-learning, you can forget about it. I understood not necessarily the specific risks, but the fact that there were risks when I got into all of this. And I got into it because I was tired of not taking risks. But I knew that if there came a time where I personally felt I could no longer continue with it, I would stop. I am sad that this happened so quickly, but in retrospect I am glad that it affected my body before it affected my mind, because a crazy person doesn't understand that they are growing more and more insane.
Also, despite the extensive research I did into the effects of the drug (what I came to really like about LSD and MDMA is trying to understand while on them the reasons behind their creation; both were created by Germans in the first half of the twentieth century, I will do an entry on that probably later today), I never came across anything more than anecdotal evidence describing what I felt. I ended up having to do reverse-research, meaning the information was there, but not directly linked to LSD in any research. So I had to rely on my own understanding of what was happening in my body. There were times where I was terrified that I had permanently destroyed by serotonin levels (Parkinson's Disease), or had suffered some sort of hemorrhage. Fortunately for me, these were dismissed by the doctor with a slight chuckle.
Aside from what these chemicals did to my body, I realise now that all my concerned friends were concerned for this very reason.
I'm sorry.
I don't regret the fun that I had, and had I been more responsible I probably could've gone a lot longer without this problem. Right now I'm scared enough to not even crave the experience, and for everyone out there that got into this because of me, be careful. I'm not going to apologise because I didn't force anyone to do anything, and I certainly promote drug research before using anything, but just realise that LSD is a chemical. It doesn't occur naturally anywhere, and it certainly is not meant for human consumption, despite the fact that human consumption can lead to tremendously fun and life-changing experiences. I'm not going to say "don't do drugs," because that would be a grossly oversimplified solution to something that doesn't necessarily even have to be a problem in the first place. Writing this I realise that people who have no interest in this sort of thing are probably less likely to have any problems, as the effects of an LSD experience are largely based on the users psyche. Imagine being able to consciously think about everything that's in your head at the same time.
I know I have alienated myself from people and have gained a reputation that I would rather not have because of these experiences, and there's nothing I can really do to change that. I am comfortable with who I am and the choices I have made, even now, though it breaks my heart to realise how little empathy I truly had for my close friends who were concerned about me.
So I'm not a totally different person now or anything; this entry was more to document my story and sort of "let it out" than it was to get people to react in any particular way. So there you have it, my friends, this livejournal (and my life as an acidhead) has officially jumped the shark.
Skip the next little bit if you don't care about specifics or don't want to read about drugs themselves.
It started about a week and half ago. I had never before had a problem with acid, save for a bit of muscle tension that I knew was a common side-effect. Well, about three hours into the journey I got this feeling in my spine, almost in the middle of my neck that I can only describe as an explosion. Imagine a water balloon filled with jelly splitting open--and the jelly flowing down my back until it felt as though my spinal cord was defecating. Panicked, I went home and slept it off and hoped that it was nothing more than a hallucination.
What really terrified me about this SpineDrip (and I apologise for using such a horrifying term, but I want to emphasise how disgustingly serious it felt) was that it felt as though my body adjusted to the drug. It caused the pain my back to disappear, which may seem like a good thing, but it was the slight discomfort that let me know a) that the drug was working as it was supposed to and b) that it was, in fact, a drug in my body, a concept that can often be forgotten by a user who is having a difficult experience.
The horrifying SpineDrip part was gone the next day, and disappeared for about a week until Friday night when it hit be when I got home from work. It was the most terrifying night of my life. I have never heard a genuine account of anyone experiencing a "flashback," and all the research I had done on the drug lead me to believe that all such instances were purely psychosomatic. On Friday, however, I realised that the visual distortions during an LSD trip are simply caused by the way the drug affects various hormones, namely serotonin and melatonin, and causes your body to be uncomfortable. Upon further research, it became clear to me that my insomnia and persisent post-trip visual distortions were the result of a severe lack of melatonin.
(As a side note, if they had LSD and the means to research it in the sixteenth century, we would probably know a lot more about it, as melatonin is created by the pineal gland, which at that time was considered by philosophers, including Rene Descartes I believe, to be the part of the body where the mind becomes no longer bound by physical and chemical laws.)
Anyway, yesterday (Saturday), I woke up with this very uncomfortable tingling sensation all through my back. I could not describe it as pain, just as something that I knew wasn't normal. It caused my body to twitch, which was not an involuntary action, as I was fully aware that the twitching was the only thing I could think to do to sort of "shake off" the tinglies. It persisted all throughout the day, and at about 8:30 I finally accepted that this isn't something I should take lightly. After driving around looking for walk-in clinics, I ended up at Peel Memorial.
Three hours and $10 dollars in parking and a few public sobbing sessions later I saw a doctor. He read my chart, in which I gave a genuinely honest account of what had happened, and originally was going to prescribe an anti-psychotic to stop the muscle twitching. When I told him that they weren't involuntary, he told me to just wait it out for a day or two. So I went home, woke up today, and I am please to say that the uncomfortable feeling has subsided, though I imagine the tension in my body is the result being forced to sit and stand in uncomfortable positions all day.
So there you go.
In terms of lesson-learning, you can forget about it. I understood not necessarily the specific risks, but the fact that there were risks when I got into all of this. And I got into it because I was tired of not taking risks. But I knew that if there came a time where I personally felt I could no longer continue with it, I would stop. I am sad that this happened so quickly, but in retrospect I am glad that it affected my body before it affected my mind, because a crazy person doesn't understand that they are growing more and more insane.
Also, despite the extensive research I did into the effects of the drug (what I came to really like about LSD and MDMA is trying to understand while on them the reasons behind their creation; both were created by Germans in the first half of the twentieth century, I will do an entry on that probably later today), I never came across anything more than anecdotal evidence describing what I felt. I ended up having to do reverse-research, meaning the information was there, but not directly linked to LSD in any research. So I had to rely on my own understanding of what was happening in my body. There were times where I was terrified that I had permanently destroyed by serotonin levels (Parkinson's Disease), or had suffered some sort of hemorrhage. Fortunately for me, these were dismissed by the doctor with a slight chuckle.
Aside from what these chemicals did to my body, I realise now that all my concerned friends were concerned for this very reason.
I'm sorry.
I don't regret the fun that I had, and had I been more responsible I probably could've gone a lot longer without this problem. Right now I'm scared enough to not even crave the experience, and for everyone out there that got into this because of me, be careful. I'm not going to apologise because I didn't force anyone to do anything, and I certainly promote drug research before using anything, but just realise that LSD is a chemical. It doesn't occur naturally anywhere, and it certainly is not meant for human consumption, despite the fact that human consumption can lead to tremendously fun and life-changing experiences. I'm not going to say "don't do drugs," because that would be a grossly oversimplified solution to something that doesn't necessarily even have to be a problem in the first place. Writing this I realise that people who have no interest in this sort of thing are probably less likely to have any problems, as the effects of an LSD experience are largely based on the users psyche. Imagine being able to consciously think about everything that's in your head at the same time.
I know I have alienated myself from people and have gained a reputation that I would rather not have because of these experiences, and there's nothing I can really do to change that. I am comfortable with who I am and the choices I have made, even now, though it breaks my heart to realise how little empathy I truly had for my close friends who were concerned about me.
So I'm not a totally different person now or anything; this entry was more to document my story and sort of "let it out" than it was to get people to react in any particular way. So there you have it, my friends, this livejournal (and my life as an acidhead) has officially jumped the shark.