Then and, ahem, now

When I set up this blog, I intended it to be a place for stories and pictures of my gilded youth (with a possible earning stream in blackmail, seeing how many of my cohort are now in the highest halls of the land – gentle readers, you know who you are – in the ’70s, beyond time and the statute of limitations), but I find myself beginning, well, not at the beginning, but yesterday, Boxing Day.

I bought a pack of x20  Salvia divinorum extract a few months ago now, and I'd talked about it with a couple of guys who'd tried it – sons of an old school friend – but hadn't got around to trying it myself because I remembered my basic psychonautic training about set and setting. Although I could guarantee the setting, I had no set to speak of – since my wife died, I live alone apart from my 7-month old terrier pup, Scrap. Then yesterday, after lunch, and stuck for something to do, I whimsically decided to give it a go – it was lying there in its unopened packet in front of me on the coffee table.  I had persuaded myself that anything that you could buy legally over the counter couldn't be that strong, and that even if I disliked it, all I had to do was curl up in a ball and wait out about 20 minutes. As a sop to caution, I measured out a little less than half what the guy in the shop had suggested and smoked it in the whae, using a jet lighter to ensure the active ingredient volatilized. It was an easy smoke, and I held it for a while before exhaling – a faint taste of raw potatoes – then sat back on the sofa and wondered how I would know it was coming on. The next thing I'm aware of, I'm standing by the front door (in the next room) with odd shoes on, the door's wide open and Scrap's in the middle of the street (not as serious as it sounds, we get maybe a dozen vehicles passing a day) barking his head off and keeping a wary distance. I fall to my knees as I bend to rectify the shoe situation and realise I'm tripping balls and have no idea where I've been for the previous aeon or two, but it sure wasn't here, and the memory's elusive. It's at this point I remember I smoked the Salvia, and an extraordinary visual show commences,  with the (rather shabby-looking ) room dissolving into a roiling, writhing, cartoon chaos, tinged with 3D red and green as the rods and cones swirled and swam and the doors of perception were blasted off their hinges.  In fact, the show's so packed with detail that I struggled to see well enough to function, and I sure can't cope with shoelaces – a surfeit of fingers, none of them mine – there's this insane 1930s Hawaiian guitar music chuntering away in the next room and intertwining with my mind and tugging at my sleeves, so I go back into the other living room to turn it off, and find that the coffee table in front of the sofa – on which was all my dope (including the rest of the packet of salvia) and paraphernalia, three pairs of spectacles, a camera, several ceramic bowls, three remote controls, my iPod and phone but thankfully no laptop – had been overturned leaving a heap of consumer slurry that Scrap was far too interested in. I made a swipe or two at cleaning up while holding him off with my other hand, but decided I had to get out and clear my head and stop him barking.** After a false start in which I strode out the door in a startling, if bracing insufficiency of clothing for the conditions, we went over to the Millennium Green (currently more Swamp), where Scrappy played for what seemed like forever a complex game involving mud, sticks and puddles, while I alternately tried not to be sick, then to be sick*, then to find a place to pee – this stuff is a powerful diuretic, I've since read – and hope I don't have to interact with humans. When Scrap started jumping up at a couple with another dog, between us we managed to gather him in. I'd had enough head clearing and human contact, so I took him home. When we got in, I looked at the clock. It was not quite a quarter to three, maybe half an hour since I smoked it.   This is the first new drug I tried in a couple of decades: despite taking more than 300 trips on the classic psychedelics such as LSD, Psilocybin and mescaline, I've never before lost myself so completely nor have I had such a rush in my whole life. And I have never forgotten so quickly and completely the contents of a trip, nor done something as extreme as overturning the coffee table without even noticing ,and having no memory at all of it, although bits have returned. There were long moments of extraordinary beauty, even sublimity, that have stayed with me: the visual memory is particularly strong. Of course, I've since done the research I should have done earlier, and found that it is not a classic psychedelic at all, but a dissociative one, with effects apparently more similar to those of Ketamine and PCP – neither of which I would go near – than acid. I felt pretty good all day today, too. It's proved very refreshing – that's precisely the word. I remember how I used to use acid as a kind of spiritual Drano in the ’70s when I felt psychically clogged, or 'fed up' as we called it then.    * I never was sick, btw, it was just the information chaos (same cause as car sickness, basically).  ** When I did clear up, I found that one set of specs had lost an arm, and a dinnerplate that had been supporting candles was smashed, but nothing vital, and I had at some point in the proceedings had the foresight to put the Salvia back in the packet and seal it, and I was thankful for that – will definitely do it again, now I know what to expect. Looking forward with keen anticipation