Just one, then I gotta go

“Ok. I’ll bite. Gimme a lighter and let’s fire it up.” He did. I flicked the Bic.

“Hit it slow, just heat it.” In general, good advice for smoking anything.

Burning the substance destroys a percentage of the molecules. Warming slowly ensures a better kick. I drew the lighter closer, keeping the flame some distance from the end. It had a yicky, plasticky taste, but I kept on.

Immediately, I felt a powerful surge rushing up my back. Five seconds later, the grain of the picnic table began to scroll hieroglyphics like on CNN. Problem was, I couldn't read them.

“I don’t know if I like this, Big boy . . .”

“You’ll be fine. Take a deep breath. You know what to do. It’s over in 20
minutes.”

“Ok,” I said to myself. After all, it wasn’t my first trip to the petting zoo. But lordy, whatever this shit was, it was the strongest drug reaction I’d ever encountered and that included big ole bell ringers of IV Cocaine.

Shoooo-wheeee. After time unknown, the world morphed into an angular monumental vision, resplendent with applied decoration: Mayan, Mesopotamian, that sort of flavor. The intersection of Hillsborough and Enterprise Streets became polished translucent sheets of semi-precious stone, lapis, tourmaline, and agate. The sheets of stone changed size, color and position to account for movement and lighting.

There were customers standing close to me. I had to conceal my state, taking care not to try to engage anyone in conversation, limiting my movement to belie my mangled mind. I stood, reeling from whatever this was.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Dimethyltryptamine, DMT, Dimitri.” I’d only heard of it and didn’t know anything. As I stood, trying to make myself a part of the landscape, there was a pop, a noise coinciding with the appearance of these—um—critters. They stood maybe 5 feet tall, these scaly, feathery Aztec—ee—things. They made a hissing sort of whine when they moved, as if their motions were resulting from hydroelectric servos. Whirr—a—click.

“I take it you guys aren’t from around here?”

Two of them looked at each other and make this sort of giggle, gesturing.
So we spoke for about two thousand years or so. They sure knew a lot about Ford
trucks, being from another dimension and all.

Subsequent reading led me to Rick Strassman’s groundbreaking work, The Spirit Molecule. Strassman, a researcher at The University of New Mexico, had done the first clinical trial of the psychedelic compound DMT since the sixties. He published papers and had collected the anecdotal material for the book. Strassman believes that DMT can put folks in touch with other dimensions.

After what I saw, I’d have to agree.

Next: Salvia Divinorum

When I heard that Salvia Divinorum was legal, my first reaction was, “horseshit.” My second reaction was to toddle over to the local headshop to check it out. Yup. Legal and sold to anyone. We picked a packet up and went back to Clark’s place. I’d forgotten the rules about enteogenics, that you should have one person to act as a “watcher.” We dragged Arkansas Bill’s bong out of from behind the couch and all took big ole hits.

Within seconds, I was gone. I lost all sense of external reality. The only thing I can recall is a thought, a voice, a sense that went like: “You’re never coming back, you’re never coming back, you’re never coming back. Do you want to never come back?” The world was rendered to toroidal—geodesic in structure—a lattice-like structure that unrolled one way or another, as if a inner tube was being grasped in two hands and being spun on itself, depending on how I felt about never coming back.

Within minutes, the sense began to fade, just in time to hear the smashing of glass and women screaming. I tried to get a hold of myself.

It was time to get professional, for the sake of journalism to note what was happening.

The bong lay shattered on the floor. Three women who had been hanging out, drinking and smoking weed, fled the house in screams.

Back enough to consensual reality, Arkansas Bill was standing over Joe who had been sitting on the couch. “Don’t go, Joe! Don’t go!” Bill hollered as he took Joe’s hands. The tops of Joe’s thighs had become almost level with the tops of the cushions, as if he was literally becoming one with the couch. From what I saw, Joe seemed to be sinking into the cheap couch cushions of foam rubber covered with a dull plaid.

A terrified expression on his face, Bill gave a mighty tug. Joe pulled up and out of the cushion with a wet slurping sound like the sound one would hear pulling a flat rock partially buried in the muddy bottom of a shallow stream—schulurrrrrp—and broke free of whatever seemed to be holding him.

I made my way, as best as I could on the downhill of the stuff, outside to where the gals had fled in terror.

“What did you see?” I asked. “What happened?”

The women clutched each other, sobbing with fear and confusion. “I saw, I saw, I saw, he was—uh—oh God, I saw him sink, something, oh my lord,” was about all I could get out of them. I went back inside to see how things were going. Bill and I were in agreement.

In my typical fashion, as in after I ruined something by not reading the instructions, I went online the next day, I checked out the Salvia Divinorum User’s Guide. At level five, where we apparently were, the substance can cause actual or perceived merging with solid objects.

Weeks later, I ran into one of the gals. I’d been unable to pry out of her what she had seen. I asked her again. She gave a description of what Bill and I saw: Forget one with the cosmos, Joe was becoming one with a cheap piece of salvaged furniture.

You want more?

Peter Eichenberger is an Opinion Writer for the Independent Weekly in North Carolina.

(Photo of the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Bast.)