I survived. I still have no idea how two clocks (the word-sequence and pitch clock, and the apparent-elapsed-time clock) could run at such different rates at the same time, and still both always point to the same hour.
A few days later, I re-assayed the same amount of the same marijuana lot (without the other drugs on board, of course) and there was a modest intoxication, but negligible time distortion.
It must have been that combination, or me that day, or the relative positions of the planets. I will probably never know.
CHAPTER 14. ALEPH-1
It was in the year 1976 that I synthesized the first sulfur-containing psychedelic, called paraDOT, working at a distance with a friend. Dr. Charles Wyndham Mantle, who was a Professor of Chemistry at a large university on the East Coast.
The name I used for this group of the 4-position sulfur-analogues of TMA-2 was the Aleph family, calling upon the Hebrew alphabet. Using this code, the first and simplest base was Aleph-1, and with the dutiful preparation of simple homologues, these could then be named in sequence, i.e., Aleph-2, Aleph-3, etc.
Aleph-1 was, as I said, the first and simplest of the group, but my experience with it was far from simple. In fact, it was my first exposure to a state that was one of the most delicious blends of inflation, paranoia and selfishness I have ever experienced. It was a rare and prized occasion, neither predictable nor repeatable.
I hadn't named the family yet, at the time that I took the drug. The name was chosen because, with a reasonably modest dosage of paraDOT, I found myself in an extraordinary place which left me quite in awe of the chemical. It proved, as one could reasonably expect, to have been a sui generis occasion/ but at the time I thought it might be a property of paraDOT
(and perhaps even of its homologs) and, if so, the effect needed a name all its own. Hence, Aleph - the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet - and the first component of a new vocabulary.
The best explanation of that Aleph experience are my notes, written in real time (during the experience) which speak for themselves. Interestingly, as to level of effect, the experiment ranked about a plus two (the character of the effect can be defined, but it does not have an intensity that interferes with speech and function), from the sensory and physical point of view. From the mental point of view, it was certainly a full plus three. It was extraordinary because of the strength and persistence of the many concepts which paraded past me as a sequence of distinct entities. Each was fully realized in an instant, then immediately succeeded by the next. The cascade was not only unceasing throughout the several hours of the experiment; it held me in a state of continuous, exhilarating energy for which only one word seems appropriate: power.
I have not edited out any of the apparent nonsense because it belongs here as much as does the occasional valid insight.
My notes follow, including comments and explanations inserted at a later time, which are in brackets:
I took 5.0 milligrams of the hydrochloride salt of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylthioamphetamine, or paraDOT (Aleph-1) in water at 10:50 AM on July 2,1976. Three hours since any food. It is now the (0:00) hour of the experiment.
(0:50) Warmth in lower legs.
(1:10) Walked out to the highway for the mail.
(1:35) Warm all over. Effects developing nicely.
(1:50) Very real effect! Quite nice. No sense modality emphasized. Not yet, anyway.
(2:30) Sat outside and got the concrete bag to float above the ground for a moment [this was a bag of dry Portland cement, full, with a logo on it that showed a bulging bicep]. Man on sack - Act of Power - but the act is not told, or it then would be only a Tale of Power. Or at best, a Tale of an Act of Power. An Act cannot be saved, relived - only the Tale persists. The act is past.
(2:33) How long does it take to assimilate an act? The act itself, an augenblick [a quick glance], is like a drug effect, in that to assimilate it is to recall the wave of concepts that flooded over you. They must be sifted, reconstructed, as best as can be done from memory.
But that is only the immediate drug effect. There are aspects more broad. The drug may be just the prototype of a family, the trunk of an as-yet-unexplored tree with an unknown number of limbs, more branches yet, and an infinity of leaves.
And we can explore the infinity on many levels but we all too often choose just one, the immediate present. One can pass an opened door again and again, each time seeing new things, but always the same doorway, the same door.
Go through - don't just look through. Looking is like a tale of power; to go through is the act of power. And suddenly a new dimension of doors, each unexplored.
In this way the SCH^ becomes the SR [the SCH,, ÿ methylthio group, is a clump of atoms found on the ^-position ofAleph-1. The "R" in SR symbolizes any of an infinity of other clumps that can be located there other than the CHy such as ethyl, propyi, etc.}. It was lucky that the first door, SCH, was the revealer of the fact that there was an infinity of additional doors that might otherwise live to blush unseen. [Mixed metaphors are not uncommon in notes I have written under the influence.}
I am being inundated with "concepts" which are coming too rapidly to write down. This is not a verbal material, ergo, tales cannot be told.
It would be exhausting to go at this pace for long. Music is being ignored. Try eyes closed.
Nothing.
Why pursue new things when I have the clues at hand - discovery is no longer needed.
This is a truly conceptually exploding experience. How can one ever hope to record this kind of intellectual supernova? If I were a historian I could be busy for life, writing down these scattered-about concepts, but that would be to no avail, as they would only be tales, and who would read them and who would believe them?
(2:45) Theo came over to the lab, and for a few minutes we discussed the problems associated with vacuum pumps. It was a laborious exchange of words when what was needed was an exchange of concepts. I knew immediately what I wanted to impart, and was terribly impatient and not too sociable. But imaginative expansion must be a private act.
There is the value of the tale. It is the history. The record contains the details, origins, interpretations and nuances - all the things that can be explored at one's leisure, later. But if the application to the real moment is valid, a simple allusion to it is all that is needed. This approaches nonverbal communication. The thumbtack which holds the message to the bulletin board. Too many people are preoccupied with the message; it is the thumbtack that is indispensable.
Can't write fast enough.
Next time try tape recorder.
With a variable speed as well as a start-stop.
No - don't need the stop.
True, I could talk faster than I could write, but talk is too slow and too noisy. Maybe just record key words and fill in the details later at leisure. But what if there were no later, since later there would be yet more key words. And who would want leisure anyway? If you did anything with it, it wouldn't be leisure. Therefore there is no leisure. Q.E.D.
Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony," on KKHI is somehow appropriate. (3:00) This material is truly psychedelic. There are no sensory traps to catch your attention. My searching has been for better traps, more interesting and entertaining traps. But here there are no traps. It is certainly intriguing from the neuro-anatomical point of view, to continue the studies of SARs [SAR is the abbreviation for "structure-activity relationship," the correlation of biological action with chemical structure.} This is the intellectual psychedelic - no seductive sidelines to capture your interest. I want an hour to expand upon each minute.
How to record concepts?
One can't even record music without a time-dimension. But concepts are in no time - timeless, thus lasting, but untellable, only actable. Therefore, concepts are acts, acts of power.
This drug, too, shall pass. I want to scream about it to the world, but that would destroy it.
This drug is power. I will talk about its effects, but I must not reveal its id
entity. I will have to explore through the open doorway alone.
I will put these concepts down as C's so that I can keep track of them later.
C: There must be an optimum RS to reveal the universal HS. [R, again, is any of the infinity of atom collections that could be put on the sulfur atom. If it were to be metabolically removed, an Hwould result. Perhaps all of these unknown modifications might give rise to a single "active" product.}
C: Maybe there is a personalized RS for every person! How can one tailor the identity of the R
in the RS to fit the person, if the only endpoint is universality? Obviously, it must be done by individualizing each product. I must make all possible RS's.
(3:25) Let me try to write this up later tonight, when things slow down. For the moment, stick with concepts.
C: Music is basically like a tale. It must be transferred from the beginning to the end over time. Music CANNOT be POWER. History also involves time in its recording as well as in its recounting. History cannot be power despite what Toynbee says.
Concept = intensity = power. Tell NO ONE about this drug so that it can never be identified and there can be no moves made to destroy it.
C: "---------------------." [I apparently censored this concept because it was so personal and private, I simply refused give anyone the right to it, including myself!}
Everything I turn to MOVES, not in the physical or visual sense, but in the conceptual and constructive sense. One can create a concept from anything, a speck of dust, an insect -.
Try eyes closed. Looks like cottage cheese, nothing there.
C: There are hints of this in all other psychedelic drugs, but always lost in some sensory dimension.
C: This is what Huxley was trying to pick out of LSD and mescaline. This is each of those - LSD
and mescaline - devoid of the entertainment; pure conceptualization. It is frightening.
C: Try lab work. Why? I would merely prove I can do what I already know I can do. To what audience?
(3:38) On the radio, there is the news. Each item gives rise to concepts worthy of an essay.
Repeal of the anti-capital punishment law allows, not systematic, but --, lost word - proceeding with capital punishment. See - there is no record of the lost word. It was an act and it's gone.
C: The record, the tale, is still needed, to provide recall. It must be valuable, otherwise why all of this scribbling? Let's try it without scribbling. Lie down a while.
(3:40) Conceptual cascade. I must record or, like a dream, all will be lost, and any personal value would be lost too.
C: I would like to call this the infinite 40 minutes but is it 85? I know when it started, but when does it stop? Only when I start to write history, not MAKE history.
C: How can this capacity be promoted? Controlled? Held? Recorded? Valued? And not made into an intellectual bomb? Does it even HAVE value?
C: Maybe like diabetes - with no insulin one spins one's wheels in an intellectual sea of conceptual glucose. Time is needed as insulin in the uncontrolled energy of concept.
C: This drug is like uncoupling phosphorylation at the intellectual level. [The phosphate group is one of the body's ways of storing energy].
C: Other drugs have the virtue of providing their own escape hatches, the sensory diversion.
Therefore, this one is especially dangerous.
C: The thing to do is to focus one's diversions into a single sense - like the western world being glued to its T.V. or radio. McLuhan had it right.
Lying down is too much. I am out of control. It is better to be ambulatory so that escape can be made with visual input.
(3:55) La Boheme, rather surprisingly, is not maudlin but a true friend. And accents in written French express hand movements. The accent aigu closes off a vowel sound; the accent grave extends it. My concept cascade is truly schizophrenic. I am now wondering in whom I might confide this. David would understand the chemistry but not the content. Who would understand the content?
C: I am perhaps the Rosetta stone. The chemistry translates to the concept, which translates to what? The power to act? There is a bit of tooth-rubby, and slight body warmth. Pulse is equal to Puccini exactly. Temperature is lab temperature, of course.
Maybe I had better not connect too closely with what is going on currently in the opera -
locking pulse to music at the death scene?
Or is one not master of one's own fate?
BIG C: Feather. [At this place in the notes there is a quail feather taped onto the margin].
Here I have gone beyond my general limits. What Tim [Leary] said about exceeding one's genetics is right.
Music. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is appropriate. I am living my music.
C: Are we not all living our sensory environments? Not in them, but THEM (direct object).
C: And the role of words (I am going too fast again) such as Bonsai, Gestalt, Dharma! We all live our language and are captives of our language. Slaves to words which have no equivalent in another language. Therefore nonverbal is the only way.
C: I was concerned what music would come next, what mood would be next. Why not put on a tape loop? This to guarantee eternal stasis, i.e., reading history. But we'll never discover, that way. Creativity requires a knowledge of the past, then an ignoring of the past. The tape loop is the birth, growth, life, decline, death and reincarnation cycle. One must explode out of it nonverbally and instantaneously.
C: Is creativity the making of a thing or a revealing? If we have revealed it, it existed all along.
We are never creating if all is contained in all of us. Only revealing. If all this is in all of us, it must be everywhere in the galaxy. And if nonverbal insight can be triggered chemically, then its chemistry must be universal. Intergalactic. The infinitely effective catalyst. This is the truly intergalactic communication - by chemistry. Not radio, or light, or X-rays, or binary codes.
Chemistry.
(4:20) The pace begins to slacken. Ziegfried Idyls playing. How appropriate.
C: Sanity, right now, is the ability to avoid concepts for awhile. Find a mental tape that is comfortable and stay in it. This all started back at (2:30) therefore 110 minutes of infinity. I must write this all down. Spin into the 110 minutes my whole life philosophy. And add appendices with details, such as THIS RS, THIS dose, THIS identity. Why a scientific paper, anyway? They must be written, but no one reads them. The main value is in the writing of them, so they are of value only to the writer.
I am feeling most benevolent and empathetic.
If I do write this, it becomes another tale of power. I must keep my ACTS personal, and powerful, and private except when needed. (4:30) Clearing fast. Back again. How can I go out and chop weeds without a note-pad? I might conceive of something and lose it (like so many unrecalled dreams). Maybe/ all for the best. Madness would be the complete re-dreaming of one's dreams of a lifetime. At a single moment. That - the gestalt recall - would be an ACT.
Power. The replay, event by event, is the TALE.
I hope I will be largely unable to decipher this later tonight. Obviously still not down - going down maybe - not down. So, it is more than 110 minutes of infinity.
(4:40) Why fight to change Theo? He is my own genetics. Peace be made with the little time left. We will be dust again. Make light with what intellectual glimmer we can come forth with, during our brief passage from darkness to darkness.
(4:50) Must shut it off. Too exhausting. Call it 160 minutes of infinity.
STOP IT
- and so it came to pass. I am aware of my body, really, for the first time during these last 3
hours.
(4:55) Note a slight tremor, slight teeth clamp, body warmth, pulse a little slow, respiration normal, music Mozart.
Coming down nicely.
LAST C: I wonder if I will have a compensatory swing to intellectual sloth as reaction to all this?
How can one ever put "last" to a Concept? And on that I will rest. One CAN put last
, by physical work.
(5:10) In good shape - toyed with a couple of concepts - dismissed them. I am repaired. My work is now ahead of me.
(1) Writing all this up as a private essay.
(2) Persisting in scientific publication in all peripheral areas as subterfuge, diversion. Keep all progressive work in my appendices. Code them "SH" - too informative.
(5.25) Quite clear. I can recognize the intellectual counterpart of the sensory power of DOM. I will keep this aspect of paradot to myself.
(6:10) Helen back home. All out. And that's the body of the real-time notes from the Aleph-1
experience. I am sure a shrewd psychopathologist would have no difficulty in coming up with a clean-cut diagnosis. Of course, a second psychopathologist would probably come up with a different one.
In any event, these notes stayed completely untouched for a full decade. And it is interesting to see what that decade did bring in the area of the Aleph family. A total of three have been studied at some depth. All three are completely fascinating.
Aleph-2 (the RS where the R is the ethyl group) is a good representative to show the positives and the negatives. The effective dosage is somewhere between 5 and 8 milligrams. The individual experiences range widely from extraordinary imagery, to childhood events reliving, to hibernation, to intense intellectual confusion. Different things for different people. The dosage requirements turned out to be unpredictable as well. For instance, (and this was perhaps the stinger that put the whole area on ice for the decade) was one friend's comments on his paradot experience. At 10 milligrams, he reported, it had mild effects, which he found rather uninteresting.
Perhaps there was a grain of truth in the concept that stated a possible need for the designing of each compound to fit each person. I abandoned the Alephs, eventually, in favor of the 2-carbon counterparts, the 2C-T's, which were thoroughly rich compounds in their own right, but a lot more predictable as to potency and quality of action.
However, for me, Aleph-1 was still the start of a whole new alphabet.
CHAPTER 15. TENNESSEE
My wife, Helen, died on Sunday, September 11, 1977. A few days earlier, she'd had a stroke, a massive pontine hemorrhage, which hit her while she sat at her desk in the university library (she had only time to say to a friend, "My arm feels funny," before she lost consciousness).
Pihkal Page 14