lucy in the sky with diamonds



He said: Extensive study for accomplishments; restraint by the rites; by short-cuts across fields you lose the great road.

In the 1960s, the United States Government decided we would fight two unjust wars. "We", because we are the government, they serve "by the consent of the governed", may heaven forgive us. We lost both wars. The Vietnamese kicked ass big-time. Since we never had the guts to formally declare war, we didn't have to sit down at a table and surrender. The other war we are still supposedly fighting. Yep, that "war against drugs". We lost, but we still don't know it.

Like most Americans, I was addicted to the hardest drugs very early in life: sugar, caffeine, chocolate. Caffeine is still the most difficult one to shake. At the too-early age of 14, I added nicotine to the list, and not very long after that, alcohol. All legal stuff, the government doesn't mind (nicotine was added in 1954, long before the current hysteria about it).

For many years, I firmly resisted all other options. In the early 60s, my good friend Edward Meneeley established a tradition of holding a New Year's Eve party in his studio. I was dismayed, horrified when noticing at the first such party I attended that Allen Ginsberg, one of my heroes, was smoking marijuana. I was, in short, a young idiot, but then our government is also very young. In terms of the life of nations, the United States of America isn't even into its teens yet.

I continued my absurd attitude, while sipping Scotch on the rocks, into the 60s. I even banned a young lady from our house when she slipped some grass in for my lover one evening. Then I read Aldous Huxley's later books (having long been an admirer of his earlier works) and that led to reading Timothy Leary ... and that led to receiving from a good friend in America (I was in London at the time) a packet containing some little purple pills.

Michael had experienced the high of cannibas sativa, I knew nothing. We were both scared by all the horror stories, so we locked the house, closed the shutters, vowed at all costs not to go out into the garden, and took one pill each. On the bed was a green blanket. I was sitting on the floor by the bed and the blanket became a vast lawn and there were wondrous sculptures of words on the lawn; I picked up a book and looked at it and the words became illuminated, fantastic flowers and birds sprouted from the simple a-b-c's and flew off the page; I looked in a mirror and saw a thousand faces, saints and demons; I went into the garden and lay on the grass looking at the sky, and I was somehow a bird, hundreds of feet in the air looking down on the garden. In brief, I went down the rabbit hole and nothing was ever the same again.

So began a three year interlude in this long life when every Sunday we would take LSD. We were firmly in Leary's "sacramental" camp; the party dudes with Kesey and the Dead seemed to be having fun, but that wasn't our method. During the week we would smoke high quality hashish every day and drown ourselves in the music which in the 60s in London was the most important part of many people's lives. On Sundays we would light the blue-red-purple candles in the gilded fireplace, set the joss sticks burning, swallow the pill or bit of paper or strange little squares of gel and search for the Meaning of It All.

What did I find?

There are no accidents. It doesn't matter. There are no rules. This isn't the only life we have. Aleister Crowley is back (he said "tell them I'm back" when I held a wand to the center of the seal of the A.A. and got zapped out into the Infinite). Well, ok, maybe that was just a psychotic moment.

I went on to try everything I was able to find: mescaline, peyote, opium, heroin, all kinds of "speed" and having gotten pretty messed up with meth amphetamine, doctor-prescribed ritalin and valium.

Mescaline is wonderful, gentle and sweet, and a joy to experience. Peyote buds have the nastiest taste I have ever experienced and I threw up over all myself without even noticing until later, but yes, it is a door into a totally different reality than LSD, complete with purple sky. I was innocent about opium, someone told me to eat a pea-sized lump of the stuff. I did, nothing happened for some time. I ate a much bigger lump, unfortunately on a day when I was supposed to host a dinner party at a posh London restaurant. The headwaiter had to help me sign the tab. I didn't like the sickly sweet smell when smoking the stuff, and I never wanted to eat it again after that first experience. Amphetamines are wonderfully high octane fuel that puts the mind into warp speed but they are such a trap. Always it seems that you are one step away from understanding all and everything, but it just don't come that easy.

In Delhi, I met a young fellow from Los Angeles who will forever remain in my memory for standing with me one night in the Himalayan foothills, looking down at the lights of the plains and saying "on a clear night, L.A. is paradise". He was in India to buy heroin, which he shipped back to California concealed in tourist-type trinkets, and he was accustomed to shooting up several times a day. I had sniffed the stuff before (remembering one memorable afternoon when the Sikh owner of my favorite Delhi juice bar gave me a little packet of white powder telling me to sniff it, I did, and ended up literally crawling across the large park in the middle of Connaught Place to get back to my hotel room). I had drawn the line at the use of needles, but crossed the line when the L.A. dude offered to do it for me. The "mosquito bites", as he called them, then became a habit for several weeks. But I didn't like it, I could never remember anything that happened. Super Mandrax, nothing more. I decided to quit, had severe hiccups for a couple of days and felt like shit, but the "withdrawal", the subject of so much stupid propaganda, is small time stuff compared to valium or nicotine withdrawal.

In the early 70s, I had the extreme good fortune to live in the establishment of a righteous cocaine dealer. Little mirrors with lines of white powder were always available. My nose suffered physically, but I loved the roller coaster effect of it, only wished it lasted longer. The dealer, a lady, also had one of London's most popular "open houses" and many, many people came to call, some to sniff and some to smoke and some just to enjoy the good company. Despite her best efforts to get him to sample the best, Jerry Garcia only sipped tea, the Darjeeling kind. While I was living in that magical place, I came into some unexpected money just at the time a fellow came through from the West Coast bearing a small bottle of liquid direct from Oswald. He planned to find a printer to turn it into the usual decorated, perforated squares. I bought the bottle. Drops on sugar cubes for breakfast, never mind the old days when the party method was shunned. More shall be said about that time in another Tale.

There is only one drug I have experienced that I would refuse if offered: PCP, "angel dust". No doubt about it, that stuff takes you to more different realities than any other drug I have experienced, but there's no control at all, a complete detachment from first-level reality. I broke a wooden flute in half, and thought by stroking the pieces I would repair it; I walked through a glass door thinking there would be no problem flowing through the glass (scars on my wrist remind me how wrong I was); I rode naked on the hood of a car down Central Park West thinking I was on a flying carpet to Tibet. Great stuff. Thanks, but no thanks.

But we Americans are supposedly guaranteed the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". If smoking a joint, dropping some acid or indulging in some other substance isn't the pursuit of happiness, what is it? Our government did lose that war. Too many of us turned on, we shall never see life the same again as a result, and we know the sad men in their dreary suits and ties and black shoes who decide what we can and cannot do are more to be pitied than admired.

The Analect for this Tale was not lightly chosen.

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