As close to nirvana as I can imagine being

I was feeling pretty lonely and despondent for a while. A bad breakup from a long time ago was still on my mind, the everyday stresses of life were building, and my awareness of social issues was becoming too painful. I wasn't at a low point per se, I was just feeling down for a while. This last time I ate mushrooms with the intent of having a deep introspective journey, and I certainly succeeded, though not at all in the way I expected. They were way stronger than I thought but it was still a rewarding experience. Now I'm much more satisfied with my life as is, nothing has changed except my attitude but I'm much more at ease on my own and the other things that were bothering me aren't as mentally oppressive as they used to be.

It's not really possible to describe in words what the experience was like but I'll give it a shot. I hope someone finds it interesting and if not writing this will help me sort out what happened.

My plan was to go on a hike, it was the first warm day after a recent snowfall and I wanted to see the wilderness with snow on the ground. I made myself a peanut butter and mushroom sandwich, ate it at the trail head, and started hiking. After an hour or so I started noticing the first effects, lights and colors were brighter and my depth perception felt more real. The landscape stood out way more than it usually did, kind of like the difference between a 2D picture and then seeing the real thing, except I started out with the real thing which then just got better.

Then things started to get bad. I started to think this was a terrible decision because I'm still in school and don't want to fuck up. I'd already dropped out once and psychedelics could really mess me up for a while. I was tearing into myself, loathing every recent decision I'd made and shouldering the blame for every single one of my troubles. I was angry, sad, frustrated, every possible negative emotion at once, and to top it off the hike wasn't as nice as I was expecting. The snow was still thick and I only had hiking shoes so I was slipping and my feet were soaked. As the visual distortion started to kick in I realized I was lost, I had completely lost track of the trail I was supposed to be taking. I was still on a trail, so I wasn't dangerously lost, but I occasionally passed other people and I was clearly in distress. I could barely read my handwriting on my directions and couldn't think clearly about where I was. This was in an area I'd hiked before but I began to panic. I'd planned ahead though and my friends knew what I was doing and where I was, so I called them to get help. They gave me directions and picked me up on a nearby road. It turned out I'd hiked uphill about 8 miles in 3 hours and came out about a 30 minute drive from where I'd planned to.

While hiking I'd been hating myself more than I ever thought possible. It wasn't depression, I cared too damn much about it to be ambivalent. My hatred came from acute awareness of all of my weaknesses. Every decision I'd ever made when I should have known better, every moment of cruelty or lack of compassion, every inadequacy stood out in my mind like brain freeze that refuses to go away. I flogged myself for everything I was ashamed of, bleeding on the inside and nearly weeping on the outside, it was the worst kind of misery. A jail cell in hell where I'd installed the bars myself.

When I got home I took my 'abort pill,' some medicine that would end the trip pretty quickly. Just as I began to lie down in my room though, everything started to change. The visuals were coming on strong, every decoration in my room started to come alive. The painting of a tree started to grow, I could see the leaves waving in the wind and the bark pulsing with flowing sap. My hands were glowing, twinkling in the faint light, and I was totally at peace. In my room I was in a safe place so I could enjoy the rest of the experience. It became the exact opposite of what I'd been feeling hours earlier.

Everything in my room took on a powerful meaning; my books, my guitars, my lava lamp, everything was exactly were it ought to be and it occurred to me that everything I needed for a happy life was right there with me. I closed my eyes and could see brilliantly colored fractal patterns, flowing in and out of each other, and started to connect them to what I was thinking.

I became one with the universe, totally and completely. We have always been one with the universe but we can hardly ever feel it. I felt it so deep in my being that I wept with the realization that I wasn't alone because it was impossible to be alone. I was part of everything around me, part of my friends, my house, my family, everyone and everything was me just as much as I was them. It was total bliss, as close to nirvana as I can imagine being.

Then time began to unfold. I had the feeling that this moment was going to last forever, because it was forever. Past and future no longer existed, each was a foggy memory or a foggy prediction of what happened and what might happen. The unity of the universe's various opposites became a chain of pairs, formed into a circle, where it is only possible for us to experience a finite few at any given time. Nothingness and existence, life and death, love and loss, separation and oneness; as I felt each I was only able to feel those directly connected to the present sensation. I started laughing and I couldn't stop, everything made so much sense. All the confusion and lack of understanding was simply a function of some other understanding. Just like the uncertainty principle, we can only know a few things at a time, and all my fears about the unknown just floated away. Time didn't exist anymore, I was going to be in this state of flowing understanding forever. Imagine the crest of a single wave, flowing through the ocean. My understanding, my experiences, my existence, was the crest of that wave. In everyday life that's all we know, and that's all I could know at the time, but I felt the existence of everything else. Even if I couldn't experience it then, it was there and I was inseparable from it. I fell in love with everything, it was such a powerful feeling that I was laughing and crying with more emotion than I'd ever felt before.

Then my perspective started to focus in on myself. As I saw all of my troubles and worries in the context of infinite love, beauty, and existence, I started laughing again. None of them mattered, they weren't real and they wouldn't last. My life, my actions, and my subjective existence were all totally insignificant and it was the most empowering realization I've ever had. All the pressure to succeed, all the fear of failure, all the demands placed on me became so trivial they might as well have never existed. I was free, to do, think, and love however I wanted. If my life was nothing and everything at the same time, then every desire and every dream of mine was something inherent and inseparable from the universe. Every wrong, every evil, every cruel or spiteful action or thought I'd ever had or committed was against myself. And every love, every caring or compassionate act, was me loving and caring for myself. Then I realized that most of the people around me had never felt this way, and their judgement, dislike, or jealousy were just a part of me, so I had no reason to care what they thought. All the fucks I once gave flew out the window, and I started to sing.

"I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck fuck fuck fuck, FUCK!"

It was the best song ever.

After singing for what felt like hours but was only a minute, I started to calm down. I was rolling around in my bed, which felt more comfortable than a womb could ever be, and started to go into denial about shrinking down into my body. I was one with the universe, my consciousness had transcended all of time and space to contain the entirety of existence, but now it was time to be human again. I was a little sad about it but knew it was inevitable, and knew that all the things I'd learned and realized were still true. So I took a shower and went to play some video games.

I didn't reflect on it too much for the rest of that day, it was too fresh and too raw. The next few days though I was able to feel the residuals of all the peace and love I'd been a part of. I didn't realize it at first but I was utterly content with the same life that was just not enough before my trip. After writing this out, I understand why a little bit more.

This trip was waaaayyyy more intense than I had expected or wanted, the 'abort pill' I took certainly cut it short but that's not saying much. All the fear and self hatred from the first half made me want to die, I wanted to die more than I'd ever wanted anything. Then I had exactly the opposite experience, I loved everything and didn't care whether I was alive or not because that love transcends everything. Life is an adventure, an 80 year vacation from my normal state of being, and I'm going to explore it to the fullest.


Mushrooms are a powerful drug that should not be toyed with. They can be incredibly rewarding and unbelievably painful. You may come face to face with all of your inner demons and may not be able to escape their fury. You may feel an omnipresent love, a compassionate force so overwhelming that all human evils appear to be nothing more than little annoyances. You may walk through hell, float through heaven, and then come back to earth knowing the difference between the two. After a journey like that, it's impossible to keep the same perspective on life.

A brief analysis of Occupy Wall St

The Occupy Wall St movement is almost universally misunderstood, even amongst those who would consider themselves occupiers. I cannot truthfully say that I know 'the truth' about the movement though I consistently see the same misunderstandings. Occupy Wall St was an expression of popular anger at the gross injustices of our social, political, and economic systems. There were no official goals, no explicit demands, and no consensus on which specific issues should be the focus. However, if a single message can be gleaned from the entire movement it is this: there is a class war going on and we are losing.

This class war is being waged on a variety of fronts, many of which initially appear completely unrelated. The wars on drugs, terror, and crime share a common enemy: the poor and disenfranchised of the world. Corporate personhood, corruption in government, and the two party system are only some of the ways that democracy is quashed. The consolidation of media outlets, propaganda relabelled as public relations, and internet censorship schemes all seek to throttle the development and exchange of ideas. Concentration of wealth, a currency controlled by a self interested elite, and a predatory economy all prevent people from having the time or resources to effectively enforce their basic human rights. It all comes down to control, control of the masses to solidify the power of a neo-aristocratic class.

The ultra-wealthy elites looked at Occupy Wall St and saw a true threat to their power. People across the country, indeed across the world, coming together to show just how mad they are. We were talking, sharing our struggles, realizing that our personal and financial problems are shared by millions. To borrow from the feminist movement, we began to realize that the personal is truly political. Yet this in itself is not threatening, instead it was our show of strength. We saw how many of us there are, how many of us are mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore, and we started to realize that we are strong. The proletariat were starting to see their true power and the ruling class was terrified.

In response, there was a massive, coordinated campaign to silence and destroy the movement. Occupiers were mocked and vilified in the media, we were supposedly just angry kids who had no cohesive message and offered no solutions. These claims were false or patently absurd, you do not need a solution to identify a problem and the message was simple: there is a class war going on and we are losing. We were relentlessly hounded by police and federal agents, in Denver the peaceful encampment was stormed by pseudo-soldiers with tear gas and paintball guns full of pepper spray. In Boulder we were lucky, the police resorted to sleep deprivation via hourly visits and the city council issued edicts that would criminalize standing still in a public park at night. Yet elsewhere elderly women were being pepper sprayed and a veteran was almost killed by a tear gas canister to the head. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security worked in cooperation with major financial institutions to coordinate a Nationwide crackdown on Occupy communities everywhere. The full and terrifying power of the ruling elite was exposed; the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known, a surveillance system that only the Stasi could envy, and a domestic police force systematically desensitized to brutalizing the same people it is supposed to protect. Driven home at the barrel of a gun, the message was clear: Do not challenge the status quo.

It would be a mistake to say that the system is broken, it is performing the function for which it was designed. The sad truth is that we cannot use the ballot box to resolve our social, political, economic, or environmental problems. The game is rigged, so the winning move is not to play.  I believe that we are speeding towards an abyss, a humanitarian catastrophe where billions will suffer and millions will die. Yet all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. I fear that we will only awake from this artificially induced dream when we are faced with a devastating social crisis. At this point it may be too late, the powers that be might capitalize on this to cement their control or we might enter a new dark age while simultaneously facing environmental catastrophes. No matter the outcome, the longer that we sleep the worse the nightmare will become.

Still, the greatest legacy of Occupy Wall St has yet to make itself known. We stirred the pot, scum may still float at the top but now we are more aware of them. Information has started to spread, ideas flow more vigorously than ever, and a new international network of activists has formed. We know that the system is failing, we know that it must fall, and we are awaiting the next opportunity to bring it down. Now with more experience, more allies, and greater resolve, whenever the next political movement appears, we will be ready.

Chemical Nonsense

Some of the most profound and life changing experiences I’ve ever had happened on the couch in my living room. How do you word a feeling? One particularly memorable moment involved my guitar; I was sitting down stroking the body with tears streaming down my face muttering the same phrases over and over again. Can you describe a being? I had just finished tuning it but not in any way I’d ever done before; adjusting the peg one degree and listening intently, over and over again until it was just right. How can you describe a feeling? I noticed that sometimes the strings get a little stuck near the top of the neck, I tugged on each one individually, yanking it into place until the tone was just right. Can you word a being? Eventually, after what felt like an hour, I tried to play but couldn’t make a sound that summed up what I was feeling. Describe a being? Word a feeling? I gave up and just admired the wood, falling in love with every grain, every crack, every shade of color; the feeling was overpowering and I wept. I could get lost in it forever.

Everyone has defining experiences in their lives, some come from overcoming challenges while others from great sorrow. Why, wait, it doesn’t matter. This one changed me forever in ways I may never come to fully understand. Whatever, I’m happy. I remember walking in circles touching everything I passed and feeling equally touched by them. Ribbons flowing, people, ideas crossing in space and time. I would force illegible handwriting into a notebook believing I was approaching some profound truth. So close, so very close. At one point I felt capable of ending existence with a single committed thought. Self reference. To this day I don’t believe it is possible to describe in words the swirling thoughts and emotions of those hours. So this is what acid is like.



I have been very fortunate in my life, loving parents who have never struggled for money yet did their best to teach me its value. Trading places, paper for food. They raised me to question what I’m told and be open to new ideas. NO. My father’s job had us moving every few years, I’ve lived about a third of my life thus far in various underdeveloped and developing countries. False separation, boxes for boxes. This has given me a wider perspective than most people my age simply by having been immersed in various cultures. My sandbox is bigger than your sandbox. I do my best not to take it for granted but there are also many disadvantages to moving every few years. Humans, souls, where do they go, body and mind. For some time I struggled with why I should have all these things when so many die for want of water or food. Thus is life.

When I first moved away from home, beyond the sheltered trappings of dorm living and thousands of miles away from my family, I experienced the harsh realities of the world. Why why why why why why why why. I learned how many of the things I believed while growing up just weren’t true. Doublethinkers, newspeakers, soma addicts, pneumatic life; I am faulty machinery. Having your world view shatter is a terrifying and exhilarating experience yet unlearning what you know is the only way to replace a false belief. Memories, symbols for reality, metaphors upon metaphors. One of the most powerful lessons I learned were all the lies I had swallowed about drugs. I love everything.

In elementary school I had to go through the Drug Abuse Resistance Program. D.A.R.E. to believe what you’re told. Officer Friendly came to our classroom to talk about the dangers of drug use; we learned that drugs are addicting, they can hijack your life, and that you can be sent to jail for having them. My god, I’m criminally couch ridden. I’d never heard anything about drugs until that day but when I came home and asked if cocaine could kill a person who tried it once my mother became furious. Drugs are bad, mmkay. She told me that it was a gross exaggeration and that they left out one of the most important reasons people do drugs. They’re fun dammit. In school I was told what to believe but thankfully my parents wanted me to ask why. The good book says so.

Today I know much more; I know that alcohol is by far the most dangerous of all drugs yet also the most acceptable. Hypocrites everywhere, is that what it means to be human? For a year I smoked cannabis several times a day; it is almost harmless and now I appreciate art like never before yet it’s a schedule one substance. Breath smoke for fun, fucking brilliant. I danced like I’ve never danced before while on MDMA which has let me feel more comfortable moving to music. The rush, it’s coming!!! I’ve been engulfed in the emotions of others while on mushrooms and my empathy is stronger for it. The room has an energy, it flows through us all. Aside from the occasional drink the only drugs I use now are nicotine and caffeine yet I have no regrets whatsoever about the others. So where is my commercial?

Yet all of these drugs pale in comparison to the effects of LSD. Lets go on a journey, a trip, hahahaha. A person could read the bible a thousand times and come no closer to god, a few milligrams of this drug and suddenly they feel at one with creation. Oh, there you are. Most drugs have undeserved negative stigmas but acid definitely has the worst. Oh nothing, just popping bubbles. They say it drives people crazy or makes them jump off buildings, these stereotypes just aren’t true. If he thought he could fly why didn’t he start from the ground? It has helped me explore the deepest workings of my mind and know myself like never before. I feel, I know, I am.

One night I spoke to god. Yeah, that’s not really you. I was well aware that I was tripping, the visuals I had were about as powerful as what you see after glancing directly at the sun. The stars died so I could be here today. He took the form of George Carlin leaning over a wall smoking a cigarette. Well aren’t you just as cool as a cucumber. He never said anything, just gave me glances when I said something stupid or listened passively while I talked. You’ll never give us proof of your existence. I would speak and think out loud, trying to work out the tumultuous cascade of thoughts. Whatever man. It was powerful at the time, I look back on it now and it doesn’t mean much. You like burning ants. These experiences, while undoubtedly hallucinations, are still ripe with meaning. Metaphors, metaphors, metaphors.

The best way I can describe being on acid is a rather loose metaphor. Vessel of ideas, symbol manipulations. If your brain is a bucket and your thoughts are tetris blocks lying inside of it, LSD shakes the bucket. Listen and you might learn something. Thoughts bounce around and rearrange, some of the arrangements are completely insane but others make a scary amount of sense. There is nothing here. There is a danger though, if the bucket gets shaken too much things might fall out. Slowwwww downnnnnn. Not to say that you will go crazy but too much could take you places you don’t want to go, like a very unpleasant memory. I want to forget. There is immense value in looking at things from a new angle, that is the most fascinating effect of LSD. Wow.

I have also felt what it is like to be insane without actually crossing that line. Wait, no, hahaha. When thoughts rush at you without control and you have no way to block them out you are at the mercy of your subconscious. Wait, no, hahaha. After these experiences I found a new appreciation for my sober mind, the ability to direct my thoughts as I wish. Wait, no hahaha. Just like anything you might take for granted, you don’t realize its value until you know what life is like without it. Wait, no hahaha. Neitzsche said “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Wait.

These experiences are far from clear cut; I have undoubtedly taken risks with such mind altering substances even without the potential legal consequences. Life without living is no life at all. Though it is hard to put my finger on exactly what I learned from trying out various drugs, there are a few definite things I can say. Nothing is certain. I am more comfortable in my own skin, I know that death is not something to be feared, and I know that the most powerful force in all of human existence is the bond between people. Vibrations in the mind of god, whose true name is love.

Back on the couch I found myself rooted to my seat and drifting away in a sea of thought. Symbols representing symbols. Some of the things I’d learned are floating in and out of my consciousness, others I could barely grasp for more than an instant. Imagination of myself. I knew that I wanted to write a song but I didn’t (and still don’t) know how, I’d never done it before and knew nothing about songwriting. So what? My guitar was lying across my lap, the taught strings on the neck and tantalizing curves of its body were taunting me with their simple beauty. (...) Suddenly a group of ideas appear in my mind; music is just emotion in vibration, an incomplete feeling expressed in words that are paired with a partial sound. Pretentious prick, what do you know of music?

After staring at the back of my guitar for long enough, I started to write in my notebook. Let if flow. The words poured onto paper; flowing strong in no particular direction and I felt better for it. Puddles of ink can move mountains. When I read them the next day some made sense and some didn’t but I vividly remember the emotion they were attached to. Vibrations of feeling. Eventually I rewrote those lyrics and rewrote the tune to them. It’s coming clear, slowly. Those first words were the earliest ones I’d been proud of, the first of any creative work which I felt had any merit. The sound of life. I’ve since written much more, some good and some bad but that’s how these things go. And that’s ok. I know for certain that those hours I spent mumbling to myself changed the direction of my life. It doesn’t matter. I write and play music when I have no other outlet, it clears my head and eases my worries in a way nothing else ever has. My peace and great reprieve. Without the confidence I found sifting through all that chemical nonsense, I would likely be living without the greatest comfort of my life. Oh wait, I forgot, I don’t exist.