true hallucinations.htm - Shroomery

true hallucinations.htm
each of us ate a large pile of mushrooms. The onset of the Stropharia was rapid, and the hallucinations very vivid, but despite the larger dose,
after an hour or so the experience did not seem to be particularly different from the earlier trips. We came out of our reveries and conversed
softly about our reactions.
Dennis complained that he felt blocked from a deep connection by concern for our father in Colorado, about whether or not he had gotten our
last messages to him before we set off down the Rio Pu-tumayo. Dennis seemed melancholy, as if his homesickness had been amplified by the
hallucinogen. At least that's what I supposed. I tried to reassure him, and we talked softly in the darkness for several minutes. He said that his
trip consisted of many things, a suffusing inner heat and a strange inaudible buzzing that gave him, so he said, insight into glossolalia-like
linguistic phenomena, which I had experienced on DMT and had described to him before. I asked him to imitate the sounds that he was
hearing, but he seemed to think it was not possible. While we talked, the drizzle lifted somewhat, and we could faintly hear the sound of a
transistor radio being carried by someone who had chosen the let-up in the storm to make his or her way up the hill on a small path that passed
a few feet from our hut. Our conversation stopped while we listened to the small radio sound as it drew near and then began to fade.
What happened next was nothing less than a turn of events that would propel us into another world. For with the fading of the radio Dennis
gave forth, for a few seconds, a very machine-like, loud, dry buzz, during which his body became stiff. After a moment's silence, he broke into
a frightened series of excited questions. "What happened?" and, most memorably, "I don't want to become a giant insect!"
Dennis was clearly quite disturbed by what had happened, and both Ev and I attempted to calm him. It was obvious that what to us had
seemed only a strange sound had far different effects on the person who made it. I understood his predicament because it was familiar to me
from DMT experiences, where a kind of glossolalia of thought, which had seemed the very embodiment of meaning to me, seemed mere
gibberish when verbalized and heard by other people.
Dennis said there was a tremendous energy in the sound and that he had felt it like a physical force of some kind. We discussed it for several
minutes, then Dennis decided that he wished to attempt the effect again. This he did, but for a much shorter time, again reporting that he
experienced a great amount of energy being
unleashed. He said he felt as if he might have left the ground if he had directed his voice downward. We wondered if one could make a sound
capable of having a synergistic effect on metabolizing drugs, while Dennis suggested that chanting might make some drugs metabolize more
rapidly. According to Dennis, from the inside it felt as if he had acquired a shamanic power of some sort.
He began pacing around and wishing aloud that Vanessa would appear out of the gloom with her skepticism, which he felt would crumble
when confronted with his testimony of the reality of something strange. I told him that she would only think of it as a peculiar sound in
combination with a hallucinogen she was growing uncertain of.
At one point Dennis became so excited that we all left the hut and stood looking out into the pitch darkness. Dennis contemplated going
immediately to find Vanessa and Dave to discuss with them what had happened. Finally, a bewildered Ev and I convinced him to return to the
hut and leave it all for the morning.
Once back in the hut, we tried again to figure out what was going on. I felt Dennis's amazement was perfectly reasonable; it was my own
encounter with the visionary and linguistic powers of DMT that had originally sent me looking into hallucinogens and their place in nature. It
is incredible to see all that you believe about reality changed around by these plant metabolites. Excitement is a reasonable reaction to such an
edifying, even terrifying, experience.
My brother and I had been close over the years and especially close since our mother's death, but there were experiences that I had had while
traveling in Asia that we had not yet shared. To calm us all and to argue for the universality of the kind of experience that Dennis had just had,
it occurred to me to tell a story.
CHAPTER SIX
KATHMANDU INTERLUDE
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/All%20Users/Doc...lture/True%20Hallucinations/true%20hallucinations.htm (30 of 106)4/14/2004 10:01:15 PM