Switched On

by John Elder Robison

  The cops brought us back to the station, searched us, and searched the car. They didn’t find much more than the Canadian rocks, and they let us keep them, which was a comfort. At first they thought we were up to something nefarious, but they soon figured we were just crazy kids and they let us go home. Someone trying the same thing today probably wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Cubby thought the story was funny, and Martha whispered that it was a strange thing for me to be talking about, especially with people I didn’t know well. But howling along with the ambulance had been stranger, so she just sat there waiting to see what came out of my mouth next. Maybe everyone feels the urge to pee on foreign soil at some point. But if the scientists felt that way, no one admitted it.

  Another night’s memory came back to me, and I related it in vivid detail too. That time, I ate mushrooms while lounging by the woodstove at a friend’s house in North Amherst near where I lived. The psilocybin took hold, and the next thing I knew I was flying fast above a cold, high western desert. The sky was a beautiful purple, filled with stars and waves of light, like the aurora borealis but filmier and infinitely more beautiful. As a creature of the sky, I flew for a long time, soaking up energy from the colours of the darkness and the rippling of the light. Far below me, the desert was dark and empty. Swooping gracefully toward the earth I found myself jolted back into the real word with a bang. There I was on my old Honda 750, in real life, riding through the gap in the sawhorse barrier that marked the endpoint of the (still being built) Interstate 91 near St. Johnsbury, Vermont. I barely stopped my motorcycle before ploughing into the rough gravel after the tarmac came to an end in a few hundred feet. How I avoided crashing between Amherst and there, I’ll never know.

  St. Johnsbury is a good three-hour ride from where I’d started out in Massachusetts earlier in the evening. I have no recollection of getting from one place to the other; all I know is that I miraculously made it safely through the deserts of New Mexico and the highways of Vermont all in one night. Once the bike skidded to a halt, I took a deep breath, killed the engine, and looked up into the night sky. Northern Vermont hasn’t got any cities to fill the darkness with light. There’s no pollution to colour the air, and that night there were no clouds. Nothing but stars, airplanes, dragons, and the other creatures of the dark. Millions of pinpoints twinkled back at me, but I never saw the beautiful purple and the waves of light again. It was a long cold ride back home, and I didn’t make it there until morning.

  As I told these stories I realized I must be giving them the impression that I’d had a wild and drug-crazed youth. That wasn’t true at all, and I made a point of saying so, for whatever good it did. I’d only done mushrooms a handful of times, and never anything stronger. Those few mushroom experiences were bizarre enough to put me off stuff like that for good, even though I’d never had a bad trip. Most people I knew in those days smoked a little dope and drank some beer, but the aftermath of both usually left me anxious or embarrassed. Relating to the world was hard enough when I was sober; doing so high or drunk was more than I could handle.

  It seemed awfully strange that those memories would come flooding back just after the TMS session. The images came out of nowhere and shouldered their way to the front of my consciousness. These were not seminal moments in my life; they were experiences that I’d nearly forgotten. They weren’t cherished memories, like those of my experience with music. All I could figure was that TMS had brought long-buried memories to the forefront of my mind, but why that might have happened remained a mystery, to me and to the scientists.

  It was late when we got home, and I didn’t get to bed until 12:30. I lay down next to Martha and closed my eyes. That was when the strangeness hit me.

  The world started moving.

  At first, I didn’t connect the movement with TMS. Frankly, my first thought was that I was drunk, because that’s what it felt like. However, I’d only had iced tea at dinner. Then I got scared. Am I having a stroke? The world was swirling and twisting, slowly but steadily. With a start, I opened my eyes. Just like that, the motion stopped. When I closed my eyes, it began again.

  Anyone who’s been falling-down drunk would recognize the feeling. The spins. It’s what happens five minutes before you throw up. This time, however, there was no nausea. And the long and eventful night was just beginning.

  As the world spun vertiginously around me, images began playing in my mind. Vignettes of the day just passed were followed by crystal-clear recollections of my early childhood. Suddenly, I was two years old, sitting underneath the seat of the white rocking chair on my grandmother’s front porch on her farm in Georgia. I could hear her saying, “Watch out, John Elder! Keep those little fingers away from the rockers!” I gazed out across the porch, and then I was back in Alvaro’s lab earlier that day, looking at the doctors. It was like I was a character in a movie of my life, but with no chronological sequence, no beginning and no end.

  Next I found myself in the hall at Beth Israel with Dr. Doidge, who was looking at me intently and saying, “Can’t you see the energy around certain people? Whatever you may think of Obama, can’t you see his charisma?” The TMS experiments were unfolding during the run-up to the 2008 elections, and Obama was all over the news. And in the dream I thought, He’s right, I do see something. How do I explain it to him? Then I opened my eyes, and I was in bed in Amherst.

  I saw that Martha was sound asleep at my side. Whatever conversation Dr. Doidge and I had been having had not woken her up. Anxious as she was about the whole TMS process, I didn’t want to startle her with this in the middle of the night. I resolved to keep quiet and tried to remember exactly what we’d talked about that day. It seemed likely that we did have a conversation about Obama. Or maybe I imagined the whole thing. I do know this: the Dr. Doidge I was conversing with in my head was one heck of a personality. He was like a real-life Yoda. My hallucinations that night were so vivid that they’ve left me unsure about what really transpired between us.

  As I lay there, a fresh thought jolted my mind. Where are the inflatable life jackets for our boat? I could not remember. Wherever they were, I knew I needed to change the inflation cartridges. A little voice was telling me that the major cause of failure of inflatable life vests is that the cartridges expire and they don’t work when they are needed.

  Is the house sinking? Sometimes animals sense stuff like this in advance. A life jacket can’t save you if you’re not wearing it! I’d better go put one on.

  Opening my eyes again, I looked around and marvelled at the strange stuff that was happening. The rational side of my mind was struggling to surface and was rejecting the possibility that the house was about to founder.

  Then I was back in Alvaro’s office, talking to Lindsay and Alvaro about diagnoses. “There are tons of adults with no diagnosis,” I said, “and they’re going to be reluctant to get one, because they’ll be branded by the insurance companies. Marked as autistic.” I couldn’t tell if I was talking in my sleep, imagining this conversation in my mind, or recalling something from earlier in the day. I still don’t know.

  Then I blinked, literally, as if I’d been startled, and I was in the TMS lab with the whole crew. In my dream, I looked at the clock and saw it was six P.M. The extra time spent filming had made us late, and the scientists were worried. The stimulations they were filming were part of a real study, not a sham for television, Lindsay warned them. “You guys have to move out of the way, because the effects of this TMS will fade fifteen minutes after stimulation and we have to test quickly.” I’d heard that enough times to know it wasn’t my imagination, but then why was all of this coming back to me at three in the morning?

  A really strange idea hit me just then. Tonight, it’s all about connections. That’s what it is. Connections. An idea pops into my head, and then I make an association, and another, and another. And the floor tilts and I slide into the next idea. It’s as if there’s a mass of spaghetti in my brain and it’s sprouting tendrils, weaving itsel
f together. The end result? I have no idea.

  That was how the night passed. Even though nothing bad happened in my waking-hallucinating-dreaming condition, the effect was disturbing, and I sat up in a state of high anxiety at 4:05 in the morning. As I came to my senses, the feeling of anxiety vanished, but I remained alert. Unless I had dreamed the anxiety too? Dream and reality were pretty mixed up that night, and this wouldn’t be the first time I woke up anxious over something in a dream.

  Walking across a dark and quiet house, I went upstairs to my study, where I have a commanding view of the driveway and the woods around us. It was still dark outside; I couldn’t see a thing. I sat there quietly, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did. When I looked at the clock it read 5:17. Just like that, an hour and twelve minutes had vanished. It was pitch-black, but a few birds had started chirping. Or were they a hallucination? Shit, I thought to myself, I better find out. If I’m still hallucinating, the scientists will want to know.

  When I opened the window I could feel the cool of the darkness before the dawn, and the sounds and smells of woodland spring came pouring in. With a sigh of relief I realized that the birdsongs I was hearing were real. Closing the window, I had a new and unsettling thought.

  Sometimes, when the birds started singing, it was because a dangerous animal had entered the neighbourhood. Should I get the shotgun? I wondered. But I was safe in the house, up on the third floor, and I hadn’t heard of any animal home invasions in Amherst.

  What I felt was a brief chill, a whiff of danger, but it passed in a moment. All my life I had been anxious, and I wondered why I was not in a state of total panic now. How can this be happening, with me staying calm? The night had been one strange experience after another, yet I was resolutely upbeat. What a remarkable development, I thought. Perhaps that insight released me, because I opened the window again, sniffed the darkness one more time, and padded downstairs to bed.

  Once asleep I was out like a log. There were no more hallucinations, and I can’t remember dreaming. When I finally awoke—at noon—I opened my eyes to a gentle motion, as if I were on a boat, rocking at anchor in a harbor. What is wrong with me? The world around me looked the same, but the ripples I was feeling would not stop. Every time I closed my eyes, things moved faster.

  I got up, got dressed, and driving very carefully I made it to work without incident. The guys were all in the shop as usual, and our service manager Maribeth sat behind the counter, talking to customers. Everywhere I looked was bustling with activity, which I took in as I looked around.

  Then I made eye contact with Eddie, who worked in the shop, and a thought struck me with overwhelming intensity: He has the most beautiful brown eyes. I wonder why I never noticed that before? A moment later, a voice inside my head said, What’s going on? You’ve never noticed anyone’s eyes before! What’s happened to you?

  Indeed, I had turned away from him, shocked by the power of the feeling and overcome by a mix of emotions I could not even name. Before that moment, I’d been uncomfortable even looking in someone’s eyes. Now that had changed. Avoiding eye contact was such an ingrained part of my life that it gave me the name for my first book. Staggered, I turned my attention to one of our customers, who’d been waiting to tell me about her broken car.

  As she spoke, her face began to tell its own story. I wasn’t even hearing her words, but her feelings shone through clearly. As she calmly described the symptoms of her car’s misbehaviour, her eyes were saying, I’m really worried about what this will cost because I’m insecure about my job and whether I can afford to fix the car, but I need it to get to work so what’s going to happen?

  I responded immediately, with reassurance. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “the problem you are describing sounds like a pretty small thing to fix.” She immediately relaxed. The whole thing happened so quickly and naturally that it took me a moment to realize the significance of what had transpired.

  Somehow I had read the expressions in her face and answered them instinctively—and correctly. Most people take such abilities for granted, but I had a lifetime of experience missing those cues and saying the wrong things—sometimes the worst possible things—in response to the logical words others spoke to me. A few days before, I’d have listened to her story and said, “Huunh! Have to bring the car in and see what’s the matter.” Her fear and anxiety would not have made any impression on me at all; consequently, it would not have occurred to me to reassure her.

  You are seeing into their souls, the little voice said. Just then, I felt another flood of emotion and I had to step outside as the wave washed over me. Human eyes had become windows, and the surge of emotion pouring from them was very powerful. And somehow my new ability felt completely instinctive and natural, as if it had been there forever.

  How will I make it through the day? I wondered. As the shop grew busier and workers and customers surrounded me, the emotions I was sensing went from a trickle to an overwhelming torrent. Noticing Eddie’s eyes for the first time was remarkable, but experiencing the collective emotional energy of a small crowd and feeling each person’s hope, fear, excitement, and worry was just as disabling as being blind to it. The nature of my disability was effectively turned upside down. Originally I’d been oblivious and my emotional world was comparatively silent. Now it was full sensory overload with a cacophony of distinct emotions swelling like a discordant symphony all around me.

  When I could focus on one person it was as if I had emotional ESP, but thinking back I know it must have been the newly awakened, fuller power of my mind. The emotional onslaught was unfamiliar and overwhelming. And the day was just beginning.

  By some strange twist of fate, I’d been booked as the keynote speaker for the Massachusetts Medical Society’s annual meeting that night. That was another of the invitations that came my way after the release of Look Me in the Eye. Speaking to three hundred seasoned middle-aged doctors, I felt as if I were looking into their very souls, where I saw their fears and hopes and dreams. People who were in the audience later told me they’d never experienced anything like the connection I made with them that night. Somehow, I touched them with my words in a way I had never known I was capable of doing.

  When I spoke I told them about being autistic, and alone. Then I talked about TMS, my hopes for change, and my dreams for the future. My exact words are lost to memory, but there is one thing I will never forget: I spoke from the heart to a group of hardened medical practitioners—doctors who had seen and heard it all—and I made them cry. I saw the tears and felt their empathy reaching back out to me. My doctor friends in the audience still talk about that night.

  Dave had been seated at my table for the dinner that preceded my talk. “The fellow sitting next to me was that older doctor who’d gotten an award from the medical society for fifty years of service. And he was listening to you with tears running down his face. It was remarkable,” he told me.

  By the time the event was over I was worn out—I felt as if I’d hiked ten miles. When I got home and told my wife what had happened, she said, “Well, you won’t need me anymore.” I staggered as if I’d been hit. As much as I loved her, and the life we’d built, I knew she was right, that something fundamental had changed in me, and as a result, it had changed in us. There was nothing I could say in response, but I felt unutterably sad.

  Hallucinations and Reality

  THE NEUROLOGIST Oliver Sacks wrote a book called Hallucinations, in which he described being partly blind—according to tests—yet having his field of vision filled in by his imagination. He described a similar phenomenon with his patients, with respect to sounds—hearing things that were not there, or hearing things different from reality.

  Some of his patients heard trains when no train was present. Others heard the voices of departed loved ones. In his book, Dr. Sacks attempts to account for those hallucinations medically. Others might explain them spiritually. Dr. Sacks makes the point very eloquently that anyone is capable of imagining
things that are not there under the right circumstances, and such visions may be visual, auditory, or even olfactory. The mind apparently has a great power of creation. One thing Dr. Sacks does not address is the difference between outright imagined fantasy and vivid and sudden recollection. Try as I might, I could never figure out whether my musical hallucinations were imagination, memory, or a mix of both.

  My experience of seeing into people—looking in their eyes and sensing their thoughts—was completely real, as far as I could tell. It didn’t seem like hallucination; I came to believe it was more a dramatic expansion of a sense I had always had, though at a very low level.

  Dr. Sacks avoids any territory that cannot be explained by science, yet there are countless stories that science has no answers for. I’d had such an experience myself, ten years earlier. I was driving on Route 128, out by Boston, when I had the feeling that something terrible had happened to my father. When I dialled his cellphone he didn’t answer. That gave me a queasy feeling, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so I continued on my way. Forty-five anxious minutes later, my phone rang. It was the state police. “Your parents have been in a crash,” the dispatcher told me. “They’re still alive, but you’d better go to the hospital now.” I wheeled my car around and stepped on the gas, realizing that I could have followed my original instinct and been halfway to the hospital by that time. I never questioned premonitions after that night, though I’ve no idea how to explain what I had experienced.

  Shamans describe hallucinations as a vehicle for leaving the body and travelling to distant places; they see them as a means of making connections with things we can’t reach otherwise. They’re lessons, or learning experiences. Is that what mine were? Were they also a way for my mind to reach inside itself and make new connections? Maybe the shamans were onto something all along that traditional medicine is only now on the cusp of discovering.