Clinical aspects of the hallucinogenic experience.

1) The following brief description is added to satisfy the reader’s

curiosity regarding the more clinical aspects of the hallucinogenic

experience.

Mescaline, as found in the peyote cactus, is a colorless oil, which

rapidly absorbs carbon dioxide from the air to form a crystalline

carbonate. It is synthetically produced as the sulfate salt, which has

a bitter, pungent taste and a limited solubility in water. Pure LSD is

a brownish powder, melting just below the boiling point of water

to form an oil, which can be readily absorbed through the skin.

Commercially, it is available as a white tartrate salt, freely soluble in

water, in which form it is decomposed within a few days by the presence

of air. Chlorinated tap water decomposes it almost immediately The

amount of LSD necessary to provide the average hallucinogenic

experience is 100 micrograms (one tenth of a milligram). Its effects

begin approximately one half-hour after oral ingestion, or virtually

instantaneously after spinal injection. Psilocybin is from 100 to 150

times less potent by weight, requiring doses of 4 to 8 milligrams

for the average subject. Mescaline is the least potent compound, the

usual dose being 400 milligrams (some 4,000 times larger than LSD)

and requiring as long as two hours to take full effect. DMT and T-9

are destroyed in the stomach—hence must be given intramuscularly,

producing results within three to fifteen minutes, which abate entirely

within the hour.

The first effects are a sense of subjective mystery and certain

vegetative changes, which include elevation of temperature, increased

blood pressure, dilation of the pupils, and more rapid respiration.

Mescaline, especially, tends to produce initial nausea, which passes away

entirely after the desired results are obtained. Thus one experiences

his “hangover” beforehand, rather than afterward, which makes

the hallucinogenic experience rather unique among drug reactions.

Hyper-excitability of the nervous system follows, with transient

tremors, tenseness, and occasional paresthesias (sensations on the

surface of the skin). This central nervous stimulation is noticeably

stronger than that produced by the amphetamines and culminates in

an intense euphoria, which lasts throughout the main course of the

experiment. The thoracolumbar regions are especially excited, making

the genital area and the calves of the legs hypersensitive. After some

time, the skin becomes damp; the mouth and throat, dry; and the

muscles, slightly cramped from the prolonged stimulation.

The initial phase of the experience is almost exclusively pleasant.

In the case of individuals who have anxieties or feelings of insecurity,

potential weaknesses may be dramatized in such a way as to precipitate

acute psychotic reactions. Intravenous injections of Thorazine (50

milligrams) or Frenquel (160 milligrams) bring almost immediate

release from the depressing symptoms; residual symptoms have

been known, however, to persist in rare cases for a week or more.

The ordinary individual has little to fear from the hallucinogenic

experience, and investigators have recorded subjects who have taken

LSD several dozen times without side effects; Indians who employ

peyote in their religious observations have used the drug for many

years without physical or mental deterioration.

The effects of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin may last for eight

to ten hours. The spectacular phase of the experiment is over in five

or six hours; the only aftereffects are muscular and nervous tension,

which can be controlled with nicotinic acid, the phenothiazine

tranquilizers, or barbiturate sedation. For a week or so afterward,

perhaps due to the depletion of serotonin in the body, a greater than

usual mental alertness is noted.

2) Wordsworth’s famous “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” is

perhaps the best-known expression of this suggestion of a former

paradise, which adult perception fails to sustain:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not is entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his Joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest.

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

3) The haunting suggestion of a former mode of existence is one of

the common themes of literature in all cultures. An example is given

from Gerard de Nerval’s “Odelettes” (Fantaisie):

There is an air for which I would give all

Rossini, all of Weber and Mozart,

A very old air, languid, funereal,

Which charms me only with its secret art.

But every time I happen to hear it sung,

My soul grows younger by two centuries;

It is under Louis Treize . . . I believe I see

A green hill yellowed by the setting sun.

Then an old brick castle with stone corners,

All the windows stained with rosy colors,

Surrounded by great parks, with a little river

Bathing their feet as it glides among the flowers.

Then a lady, at the tall window of her chamber,

A blonde with dark eyes, in an ancient gown . . .

Whom I have seen before perhaps and known

In a former existence! . . . which I can remember.

4) N.A. Yawger (American Journal of Medical Science, 195, 351-357,

1938) makes the following remark, regarding the ability of cannabis

(also a hallucinogenic drug) to summon memories long buried in the

subconscious mind:

John Stuart Mill, philosopher, wrote of its power to revive

forgotten memories, and in my enquiries, smokers have

frequently informed me that while under its influence,

they are able to recall things long forgotten. If through

such use the unconscious mind could be rendered more

accessible, possibilities as an aid in psychoanalysis and

psychotherapy are shown.

Drs. Rolls and Stafford-Clark (quoted by de Ropp, Drugs and

the Mind) add this comment:

Characteristic effects of Cannabis Indica include

euphoria with disturbances of time and space perception,

sometimes accompanied by erotic visual imagery and

usually followed by profound relaxation and sleep. A

striking feature may be the vivid recall or re-experience of

feelings long since past and formerly forgotten. This drug

thus seemed particularly suited to our requirements in the

treatment of (a) case of depersonalization, and proved in

fact empirically to be highly successful.

5) The need to express our own inner needs and motives is perhaps

the most important aspect of fulfillment in life. Hermann Hesse’s

definition of the problem, which leads to neurotic loss of powers if

unsolved, is as follows:

Ich wollte ja nichts als das zu leben versuchen, was von

selber aus mir heraus wollte. Warum war das so schwer?

(I wanted nothing more than to

give expression to that which I was born with.

Why was it so hard?) (Demian)

Goethe’s Faust also voices a similar complaint:

Der Gott, der mir in Busen wohnt,

Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen;

Der uber allen meinen Kraften thront,

Er kann nach aussen nichts bewepen.

Und so ist mir das Dasein eine Last,

Der Tod erwunscht, das Leben mir verhasst.

(The God who dwells within my breast can

deeply stir my soul; yet He who governs

all my powers can not express himself in

outer deeds. Hence, my existence is a burden

to me, death would be welcome; life is cursed.)

That happiness depends upon the realization of our inmost

nature is explained by the fact that the basis for reality is within us,

rather than outside, and must be given expression in order keep the

flow of life in motion. Consider Hesse’s Damien:

My young friend, you also hare your mysteries.

I know you must have dreams which you have not

told me. I do not wish to know what they are,

but I must tell you: live these dreams, put them

into action, learn to respect them . . . We must

renew them every day within our hearts, otherwise

the world will become a sorry place.

The things which we see are the same things

which are inside of us. There is no reality

other than that reality which we bear within.

For that reason, most people live such unreal

lives, because they think the world outside is

the real world, and don’t allow the world

inside of them to express itself.

6) Also compare Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater:

In the midst of my complicated hallucination, I could

perceive that I had a dual existence. One part of me was

whisked unresistingly along the track of this tremendous

experience, the other sat looking down from a height

upon its double, observing, reasoning and serenely

weighing all the phenomena.

Havelock Ellis also noted the intellectual clarity that is preserved

during the hallucinogenic experience:

The mescal drinker remains calm and collected amid the

sensory turmoil around him; his judgment is as clear as

in the normal state; he falls into no oriental condition of

vague and voluptuous reverie. The reason why mescal is

of all this class of drugs the most purely intellectual in

its appeal is evidently because if affects mainly the most

intellectual of the senses. On this ground it is not probable

that its use will easily develop into a habit.

7) The ability possessed by hallucinogenic agents to transform

the commonplace into the sublime is described by Ellis in another

passage from, his study on mescaline:

A large part of its charm lies in the halo of beauty which it

casts around the simplest and commonest things.

The effect upon a common room was one of extreme,

refreshing novelty: The difference between the room as I

saw it then and the appearance it usually presents to me

was the difference one may often observe between the

picture of a room and the actual room. The shadows I

saw were the shadows which the artist puts in, but which

are not visible in the actual scene under normal conditions

of casual inspection. I was reminded of the paintings of

Claude Monet, and as I gazed at the scene it occurred

to me that mescal perhaps produces exactly the same

conditions of visual hyperaesthesia, or rather exhaustion,

as may fee produced on the artist by the influence of

prolonged visual attention. I wished to ascertain how the

subdued and steady electric light would influence vision,

and passed into the next room; but here the shadows

were little marked, although the walls and floor seemed

tremulous and insubstantial, and the texture of everything

was heightened and enriched.

8) An unnamed artist friend of Havelock Ellis observed the same

archetypal spectacle mentioned here, though he did not consciously

recognize the animals as sperm cells: “At another time ray eye seemed

to be turning into a vast drop of dirty water in which millions of

minute creatures resembling tadpoles were in motion.”

In Lysergic Acid Dlethylamide and Mescaline in Experimental

Psychology, edited by Louis Cholden, R.S. Sandison repeats the

experience of a female patient who underwent a birth reenactment:

I have found the vaginal passage and I have the great lips

of the vagina sealed . . . I must get out. I am pressing

against them with my feet and hands and the seals are

giving way . . . I can feel my young body starting to make

another effort . . . I feel I must grow away from the womb,

I feel I have left it, but not quite. I have been returning to

the womb and seeing myself as a sperm swimming about,

and others dying, clinging to the wall of the womb and

then falling away.

9) The gaining of self-knowledge while under hallucinogenic

stimulation is specifically mentioned by the Indians of the Southwest,

who feel that guilt is resolved by means of unrelenting self-criticism

and visionary awareness of one’s sins. Ellis also refers to a similar state

of perceptive introversion: “It was as if I had unexpectedly attained

an objective knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my

normal state of being with the eyes of a person who sees the street on

coming out of the theatre in broad day.”

Harold A. Abramson (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and Mescaline

in Experimental Psychology) believes that this awareness of one’s

structural weaknesses can be beneficial by making it possible to act

out the corresponding conflicts and strengthens the personality:

Under the influence of LSD an experimental stress

situation is produced. Psychodynamically, the subjects

of the experiment repeatedly go through threatening

situations in which they are constantly assured by their

own success in dealing with the experimental stress.

Ego-depression produced by the drug is well balanced

by ego-enhancement which persists as an ego lesson

learned.

10) Brotteaux (Hachich; herbe de folie et de reve) states that the final

stage of hallucinogenic intoxication is “a period of ecstasy and

profound tranquility”. Nearly every writer on the subject agrees

that the experience ends with a heightening of the sublime and the

transcendent, which the subject attributes to the objects of his vision.

Beringer (Der Meskalinrausch) says: “Extraordinary joy overcame

me—a strong and beautiful feeling of eternity and infinity. This so

overwhelmed me that soon everything appeared infinite.”

Baudelaire (Les paradis artificiels) describes the culmination of

the cannabis experience as follows:

A mood of calm, muted and tranquil, takes place; the

universality of man is announced colorfully, and lighted

as it were by a sulfurousdawn. If perchance a vague

memory reaches the soul of this poor happy man that

possibly there is another God, be certain that he will rise

up and question His commands and that he will face him

without terror. Who is the French philosopher who said,

with the intentloa of mocking modern German doctrines,

“I am a god who has dined poorly”? This irony would not

touch a man intoxicated by hashish. He would quietly

reply: “Perhaps I did dine poorly, yet I am a god.

Ludlow, the American experimenter, records:

My mind grew solemn with the consciousness of a

quickened perception. And what a solemnity is that

which the hashish eater feels at such a moment. The very

beating of his heart is silenced. He stands with his finger

on his lip; his eye is fixed and he becomes a very statue

of awful veneration. I looked abroad on fields and waters

and sky, and read in them a most startling meaning. They

were now grand symbols of the sublimest spiritual truths,

truths never before even feebly grasped, and utterly

unsuspected. Like a map, the arcana of the universe lay

bare before me. I saw how every created thing not only

typifies, but springs forth from some mighty spiritual law

as its offspring.

11) The manner in which the outer world and the inner soul are

made to correspond mystically through perception is described by

Baudelaire:

Suppose you look at a tree gracefully waving in the wind;

in a few seconds what, in the mind of a poet, might be

merely a natural comparison, becomes for you a reality.

First, you attribute to the tree your passion, your desire

or your melancholy, its murmurs and its writhing become

yours, and before long you are the tree. In the same way,

a soaring bird first represents the immortal desire to fly

above things human, but already you are yourself the

bird.

This psychological phenomenon of projection is familiar to all

who have investigated the matter.