The Angry Infant
This was simple enough to write yet rocks and boulders hindered its completion. I was born in the autumn of 1952 and considered a sweet and normal child. However, some eighteen years later, bitter, hurt and desperate for love, I embarked on a memorial orgy of drug taking as a way of numbing myself.
I never took hard drugs like heroin or cocaine because I did not move in the same circles as those who did, but certainly, Marijuana, Opium, mescaline and L.S.D I devoured, some days, as if they were food.
I guess I was lucky my circle of friends did not include those who injected themselves. In fact, we did not consider ourselves drug users at all. At least, not the kind the newspapers were keen on. The type that was associated with prostitution, poverty and crime.
We spent a great deal of time tracking down and 'scoring' dope and acid. From the East End of London we travelled, first locally and then finally to the posh parts of West London in an ever-expanding circle, as we grew more confident about what we wanted.
Needless to say, there was no shortage of young men and women prepared to sell us anything we wished for and it was my first experience of what would, years later, become known as networking for all the dealers seemed to know each other.
Therefore, my friends and I lived in a soft drugs type of world. I never witnessed violence of any kind because everybody found squabbling took too much effort! We were ripped off of course but that came with the territory. Non-existent acid on blotting paper, grass that turned out to be bay leaves, (that sure gave me a headache) and dealers disappearing into the back of pubs with our cash never to return. I think, over the years, we became the victims of every type of fraud and swindle that it was possible to heap onto us.
Yes, in 1972, we were just a bunch of silly long-haired hippies, hallucinating the days away, watching bands and having sex whenever we had the chance. That was the totality of our lives.
Well almost. As I remember, I had about ten or twelve close friends. Friends who used to pop round almost any time of the day or night and although I held down a job (or two) much of my time, I remember, was spent alternating between being either very happy or very upset.
Moreover, the reason I know that is because of something I did every night that none of my friends did; I kept a diary. Specifically, from the final days of 1973 to the end of 1985. Eleven years in total. All handwritten and all, miraculously survived. Today, I wonder how I managed to continue it through the smoke of grogginess.
Then in 2005, I read an astonishing book called, 'Our Hidden Lives'. It was to do with Mass Observation. This was an organization, founded in 1937 who aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. A team of observers and a panel of volunteer writers were recruited to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain.
Having become a writer myself, I immediately applied but in the meantime, I remembered my old diaries and wondered if they might be of interest to Mass Observation. Certainly not in the condition they were in but reading some of the entries, which described some of the most important events in my life at the time, I realised that it was worth the effort to type them into a word processor for perhaps possible inclusion to their records in the future.
From a Secondary Modern education which had been nothing short of abysmal and from which I took almost nothing, and certainly passed no exams, failing even my eleven plus, I had self-taught myself to write competently, taking almost 20 years in the process.
However, a depressive literary tide of far greater proportions was to overcome me when I began to transcribe those diaries. From thirty years in the future, I read about the excessive and unnecessary amount of drug taking. At least that was what I had remembered.
What I had so conveniently forgotten was the rest of my personality. Up to that point, I had remembered myself to be somebody of good cheer, always laughing, always ready to help a pal. Always there for people. Talk about selective memory!
Because, the more I read the more I came across as a whining and tiresomely depressive and competitive brat who, it seemed, almost never bathed, sponged off everybody, treated people disrespectfully and was utterly self absorbed. I must have been awful to be with and quite horrible as a friend.
I seemed to find fault with everything. I was tight-fisted with money. I loathed sharing anything with anyone including anybody I lived with. I was a liar. I broke the law. I stole. I was a depressive. I was angry. I was a hypochondriac. I suffered from migraines continuously. I let people down because of my illnesses and often wanted to be on my own. No wonder I took to drugs.
However, my drug taking came to halt in 1973. I had started in 1969 when I was about 16 or 17 and although I will not blame the guy (who I will refer to as A) who introduced me to them, I do believe that if we had not become friends, my life might have turned out quite different. However, who is to say that I was not already a drug addict and that I just found someone to offer me that which I unconsciously wanted. Who is to say?
I took many drugs. LSD or acid was my favourite and I remember taking it every week for at least two years. That was over a hundred trips and quite possibly a great deal more for sometimes, I took it midweek as well. The reason why I stopped so suddenly makes for an interesting story.
I had one very close friend (who I shall call B), and we were tight in those days. We were very well known and almost the cynosure of our little group.
It was our habit to take our acid early on Friday evening and then to spend the next eight hours together walking and laughing, hallucinating out of our minds until the early hours of Saturday morning. That was our routine and we carried on in the same fashion for, as mentioned, about two years.
I have to admit that the hundred or so 'trips' that I took during that time were fantastic. I remember that one of our little gems of wisdom at the time that we told ourselves was that the experience was indefinable and indescribable.
However, thirty years on and with a greater vocabulary, I will attempt it. We took either Strawberry Fields in the beginning or microdots on blotting paper later on. The deal seemed to be, one microdot per trip. However, what did we care for rules?
We often took two at a time and sometimes even more. The 'trip' began about fifteen or twenty minutes later with some nausea possibly because of impurities but that passed quickly. I cannot say for B but for me, everything I saw became brighter and clearer...at first. Almost luminous. As the drug's concentration increased, I then seemed to become surrounded by something, which I can only describe as a transparent bubble, which extended perhaps up to six feet from me and which seemed to serve as a protection device. I could see it quite clearly, as if I were really in the middle of a large plastic dome, which traveled with me, wherever I went.
Soon, every sound and every voice began echoing which caused much confusion, intrigue and laughter. Depending on the amount taken, understanding any conversation beyond yes and no became almost impossible unless one really concentrated. At the same time, the longer I focused on what I saw, the more it transformed itself into something else. A face became a monster as my brain layered image after image on top of what I happened to be staring at. Bodies became bloated. Strangers walking harmlessly along the street appeared to be eyeless. Once, we took four microdots each and utter confusion reigned. I make a phone call and although it belonged to a close friend I had called many times, I could not remember the second number. B could not get out of the old-fashioned red telephone box either no matter which side he pushed. He even pushed the side with the telephone! Perhaps an hour after taking it, the effects were at full volume. I remember once tripping in a park and, sitting on the grass, spent almost all of the eight hours staring at my feet, just simply enjoying them, their shape, their texture, their colour...
Once I stared at a stream for the entire trip imaging that I was in a balloon high above an African plain looking down towards a vast river. However, my 'mighty river' was a drain, a rain outlet, which splashed down onto a concrete basin.
One windy night, we sat on a bench by the side of a road and watched for hour's balls of colour float across our paths like the tumbleweed in American ghost towns. My brain mixed sensations together and I saw things that were not there. The more acid I took the more I experienced synaesthesia. That queer sensation where the senses become mixed. Clapping produced a shower of sparks. A friend's yawn produced a transparent bubble. A car speeding past issued brown clouds. Thunder was blue. Speech was yellow. A scream was white. Broken glass was red with purple edges.
However, despite the confusion made up of the echoing, the ever-changing hallucinations, the disorder and the bewilderment, I inherently knew it was all a game, a drug induced experience, a series of fantastic yet quite believable hallucinations which would last for a certain number of hours until, at the most, the next morning... until one September.
It was a Friday evening, overcast as I remember but not raining. My friend B and I had both brought four microdots each meaning to treat the other so we had eight in our possession. While we were sorting this dilemma out in the street, I remember a gust of wind upset our counting and blew the lot onto the pavement. Well, at fifty pence each, we did not intend to lose any. Therefore, in our haste to reclaim them, the easy way to hold on to the ones we caught was to place them in our mouths where they were sure to end up anyway. And this we did. Therefore, we took four squares of acid each. No big deal really. Ok, it would be a 'heavy' trip but we were confidant we could handle it.
I have to say here though that out of all the time B and I tripped, we always stuck together because we were fast friends. However, that evening was to be different. Somehow, and I cannot now remember why, B had to go to visit somebody so we agreed to meet around the house of another friend a short while later.
This other friend did not take acid at all. He smoked a bit of hash occasionally, even though he was not a smoker of cigarettes but his real passion was alcohol. To this day, I have never seen anybody drink so much and remain upright and sober. He did not get angry like some do or giggly like others. No, he just went quiet and tended to sit and listen to music. Possibly the best type of drunk. I will call him C.
In Search Of The Lost Chord by The Moody Blues. C was playing that record when I wondered into his bedroom after his mum had opened the door to me. I settled back on his bed, chilled out and listened as the room slowly took on movement. Which is a strange thing to say but being a hippy, C had chosen wallpaper the design of which caused my eyes to imagine it was moving and as the drug's presence increased in my brain, the quicker and more outrageous the pattern moved. C knew I was tripping because I tended to keep silent. My brain fully occupied in enjoying the experience so there was no need for talking.
However, just when C's bedroom was beginning to resemble anything but a small bedroom in a terraced house in East London, when I was immersing myself fully in the sounds, colours and ever-changing shapes, the structure of my life changed forever.
At the time, I was staring at C's face who was sitting on his bed, eyes closed, clutching a pint of beer. C had a shock of long curly brown hair and rather a long face and it did not take my brain long to change him into a clown, a monster, a giant insect...anything really. And whatever he transformed into, it is important for you to know that what I saw was as clear to me as the words you are now reading and the world you are now seeing. Then one blink and the illusion was destroyed only to begin again a second later.
The moody Blues had become an auditory blur. With so much echoing, I could hardly make anything out but it did not matter. It was like being insane but not minding that I was. Once taken, the tripper gives up the right to normality. He or she is taken over. All control is lost. It becomes an eight-hour ride on the most dangerous and most stomach-churning fairground mechanism imaginable with no hope of getting off or reprieve. Once taken, that is it for there is no going back.
An illusion I have not mentioned so far was the effect movement has on the tripper's eyes. It is one visual artifact that has been duplicated imaginatively by television and the media, consisting of anything that moves within the tripper's eyesight leaves a trail of itself that can last for up to several seconds. And when the object stops, all its multiple images catch up with it. The effect is true whether it be a person's eyes blinking or their lips moving in speech, to the whole world displaying hundreds of separate images as one walked. I spent many a trip just sitting, waving my ever-changing hand in front of my face.
I have addressed sound and sight but we have three other senses, all equally sensitive to the effects of one of the most powerful drugs ever invented. Cigarettes felt like soft plastic and I used to continuously break them when I flicked them with my thumb as smokers do to remove ash.
I once spent over six to eight hours feeling perhaps four times wider than I was. Like a football with stumpy arms and legs. I remember I walked all night and did not have a particularly nice time but it wasn't what was usually known as a 'bad trip'
Water felt like air, like a breeze. A wind blowing on one's face felt like a solid mask. For me, my taste buds were not particularly stimulated as I was normally rather nauseous and so did not wish for food and odours too did not figure in too much but sex of any kind was extraordinary. Moreover, far too extraordinary for my limited literary talents!
However, that night, in the mist of this confusion, no matter what I saw, heard, imagined and projected, I always knew it was just me having a trip...until listening to The Moody Blues as my friend's wallpaper pealed itself downward in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of moving colour.
Because then, an unusual sensation... Baring in mind that I had taken acid well over 100 times and at doses that would have probably sent most people off for a stay at the local mental hospital, this sensation was unknown...and it scared me.
I had the sensation of having my brain being pulled and stretched backwards until it felt like a tight balloon until it released itself and snapped violently back causing me to jerk my head upwards and come back into consciousness as if I had been partly asleep.
This unknown and frankly, extremely unpleasant sensation certainly got my attention until I again drifted off into the surreal painting which was sounding me. Then...bang, there it was again. This time I stood and C looked at me with questioning eyes. To him of course, nothing was wrong. He was drinking a beer but that was all and it was early in the evening. The room was normal to him.
I told him, or tried to tell him, a man who knew absolutely nothing about tripping, what had happened to me but of course, he did not know what to do or say. When it happened a third time, anxiety shot through my system like lightening lifting up every hair on my body and causing adrenaline to wash through my system as fear completely took me over.
C mentioned that, as the blood had drained away from my face, he could see that something was not right, so suggested that we went downstairs to a more normal atmosphere. Poor guy, he really did not know what to suggest but I knew, as the sensation happened again that I had to get out of that room. That multicoloured, forever moving, giant, eight-foot by eight-foot echo chamber.
His mother was ironing and C explained that I was not feeling well so they let me sit in their front room where, with my blue eyes as big as saucers, I sat down and gazed at the television, which happened to be on. Reginald Bosanquet was reading the News At Ten. Suddenly he looked squarely at me and said in a voice I will never forget; and now for an amazing incident, Jean Winchester is now four foot smaller than anybody else. And that's when the 'normal hallucinations' cased, almost as if somebody had switched them off. I still felt as if I was separate from the world by my 'bubble' and everything looked and felt 'on edge' but everything looked quite normal...except for the fact that I was now seeing the world from the perspective of the height of my hips. I had to look up to everything. It was as if I had suddenly shrunk to a height of two feet. I jumped up and stood, an action, which caused C's mother to look at me closely, but it made no difference to my vision.
Then as quick as a flash, I was my normal height again but another hallucination replaced the one that had vanished. This was more complicated to explain but I was gratified somewhat because at least, it seemed that the shock of what my body was undergoing meant that the chemicals which were being released were even more powerful than the acid because the normal effects of the trip was beginning to wear off quickly.
I remember the echoing ceasing, the after effects became less intrusive and objects seemed to stop morphing from one form into another. However, this new hallucination brought with it a feeling quite unlike I had ever felt before. Although the hallucination was strange enough, imagine the room you are in half filled with water but now replace that water with a sheet of clear Perspex, so carefully cut and shaped around every fold of curtain and clothing, piece of furniture and person, the feeling that accompanied it was just utterly terrifying.
For in just one long second, I knew that the world had been created just to play this one trick on me. In that moment, my entire life was rendered to nothing or had been at best, demoted to a trick. My parents, my brother, my childhood, my friends, my personal history, my loves, my hates...all became valueless because none of it had been real. I could not explain why the world had been created to do this but I was utterly convinced. I am at pains to describe this because, at the time, I had never been as sure as anything in my life to the extent that had it been necessary, I would have bet my life on it. Even today, some thirty-five years later, I can still feel the ghost of that feeling and although it is not true, I still feel a coolness flush through me just thinking about it.
C suggested a walk so I could get some air and he some food and I was lead out obediently into the street for the five-minute walk to a fish and chip shop. Thinking back, I believe that all this happened because B and I became separated. We had always tripped together and as good a friend as C was, he was not the right sort of person to be around when one was tripping, partly because he had no idea what was going on and partly because he was a depressive. However, least I heap the entire blame on C, I have to firstly admit that all those nightmares must have been already in my mind and the acid just brought it out.
However, before I was to finally obtain relief and settle down, I had three more severe hallucinations to endure. The first was as we approached the takeaway. An African woman walked out of the shop and I noticed that she was a shop dummy or at least entirely covered with plastic, including her fish and chips which she was eating...except that the fish she holding was alive as she chewed on it. I could not keep my eyes off her as we passed each other much to the embarrassment of C. She was really like something out of a horror movie.
Next, on the way back we walked under a railway arch at the same time as a goods train was passing overhead and the engine, a big male diesel, laughed directly at me before he hurried on pulling all the female carriages along behind him as they twittered and giggled.
After that, there are no more firm memories except one but I think I had decided that I had recovered enough to leave C and go home on my own. Such was C's complete misunderstanding of what I was still going through that he just let me go too.
I now remember almost nothing of the rest of that night except for the final and most revolting hallucination of all. I waited for a bus. I was in command of myself by now to a greater extent for my anxiety had peaked. I had 'come down' remarkably quickly because it was still before midnight and normally, a trip such as I had taken, given the amount of the drug, should have lasted until at least four or five in the morning.
But there I was, almost cold stone sober...except that when the bus came, when I hopped on it (one could in those days), the bus conductor stepped downstairs and immediately split in two before my very eyes. He tore right in half, left and right and his left half passed by me and fell off the bus while the right, somehow (with one leg?) went along the lower deck collecting fares.
I saw it as clearly as I can see this keyboard. An hallucination it was but unlike no other hallucination I had ever witnessed before. In 'normal' trips I hallucinated on what was in front of me but in this one, I was constructing whole new worlds most of which were terrifying. This conductor, I saw his organs, pink and plump and pulsating. His white skeleton. His mouth and teeth chattering. His flicking tongue. His blood rushing about. I saw it all. And that was my last memories of that evening. I do not remember getting home but I did, apparently safely as well. I do not remember the rest of the bus ride or what happened to the body of the conductor. I probably returned to normal soon after and that must have been that because as evil as the hallucinations were, none of them lasted very long.
The experience stopped me taking drugs though. Except for very rare instances when I would take a puff of a joint, I considered that evening to be my wake up call. Yes, I did continue smoking weed because it was the sociable thing to do. The truth was that there was nothing I liked more than to have a smoke with my friends and watch a film and eat a meal.
However, one day, perhaps some years later, I could not finish the joint I had made. I was perhaps half way through it when the most extraordinary bout of anxiety shot through me and I became scared. Later that week, month or year, I tried again but had to give up after only a few puffs. And then after only one puff. The day eventually arrived when I became anxious and nervous, what today we would call a panic attack, even before the joint had been lit.
From that day I descended into frequent bouts of anxiety and paranoia, which began to affect me, altering my lifestyle in ways, I never before thought possible. To begin with I developed simple phobias. Planes, boats, trains, lifts and tunnels and then a complex one which involved people. They labeled that social phobia.
I dealt with these as best as I could before I began, in 1980 to attend a series of human development workshops, the kinds that were popular at the time. We would try to find our love or worship our gender or learn to forgive those who had wronged us.
The last workshop I attended was in 2003, 10,000 books, hundreds of workshops and 23 years later. I did not have to keep doing them of course but I made many friends on my voyage of self-discovery and like all good things, became a habit because there was no cure for pleasure.
Not many people were as dedicated as myself I have to say and I regarded much of what I learned as being rather redundant in the context of my own life but I did hear a lot of stories and also a lot of advice about how to overcome adversity. The moral? Don't take drugs.