Little Story #6

Michael Pollan has written a book about the use of psychedelics for the treatment of depression, anxiety, end of life and maybe other things. I haven't read it yet but I did listen to him having a very interesting discussion with Ezra Klein on Ezra's podcast. I listened to it twice.
Being a sixties kid I have great affection for psychedelics. I strongly believe in the positive impact they can have on our inner world. I did them in high school and for years after that I tried to make sure I did them once a year to sort of reboot my perseption.
I went to an experimental high school in Maryland. One of my English teachers did a class called LSD Psychotherapy based on the book of the same name. Rumor was that he came to class tripping and it was probably true. He sat in the front of the room staring at us not saying a word. The strangeness of this was augmented by his extremely thick glasses and wandering eyes. And his enigmatic smile. At some point I stopped going to class. He approached me in the hall and asked why. I said - I expect most of these teachers to fuck with me but I didn't expect it from you. I got an A in the class.
I dropped some acid one day before school. A guy walked up. Asked what I was doing. I said I was tripping. He asked where I got the acid. I told him. He said - oh a bunch of people freaked out on that yesterday.
Uhhhhhh.....
It was really strong Acid. The entire trip was me thinking about what it meant to freak out and trying not to, which was actually quite funny.
I never understood people taking psychedelics and going to a party or a concert.I was such an alienated teenager. I thought I would probably freak out in that kind of situation. Tripping wasn't about fun for me. It was serious inner work. Well. Maybe not serious. There was always giggling.
A few years after high school when I was living in Boulder a friend came to visit and brought something. Maybe mushrooms. Probably mushrooms. We decided to have a "straight" person around while we tripped.  We chose my best friend at the time. She was an extremely abstract thinker. That trip was all about the ludicracy of having her as the "straight" person. 
It's interesting to think about another person as the anchor on those trips. Another thing Michael and Ezra talked about was the nature of consciousness and brain science. Michael said that if they could switch consciousnesses for a minute it would be really disorienting. Our sense of ourselves and the world is based on so many things. Where we were raised, our height and weight, our family, so many things. There are obvious commonalities in the human experience but we experience things differently. 
The last time I remember tripping was on mushrooms. I spent most of the trip laying on a bed staring at  picture of my guru. It was ... a trip. It ended with me sitting on the steps of a porch staring at a very tall tree waving in the wind. Something about that calmed me. It's strong memory that I recall in a very physical way. 
I'm a little bit afraid of psychedelics now. I worry about what chaos may exist in me. There's probably way less chaos than there used to be but I know it's there now. I'm not trying to avoid it. I'm just not sure I wast to immerse myself in it. But ... maybe someday.
Heh.