Down the Rabbit Hole

In the months after my friend ‘helped’ me become conscious of my shallowness, I tried to carry on life as it had been. It worked sometimes. More times than not there was a gnawing in the heart—something that had been mostly repressed before--but no longer could be.

After about three months my college roommate at the time asked me if I wanted to try something ‘absolutely mind-bending’–in pill form--that might help me. I didn’t want to.

But over a few weeks he persisted. Told me it was ‘pure stuff.’ That it would help me ‘see inside my soul.’ That it was like 'those magic mushrooms Native Americans use for insight.'

I was still skeptical, so he suggested maybe I could just take ‘half a tab.’ And though not convinced, I was intrigued. 


I took half a pill. And in about 45 minutes it was down the rabbit hole. It was down the rabbit hole for the rest of the night.

As he promised, it was mind-bending. At first mostly just a sluggish ‘WOW’ state. Before long there was a kind of ecstasy. Thinking in vivid colors and in 3D with surround sound. 


At one point my roommate put headphones on me and played a song by the Moody Blues. The bit of lyric I remember is


   A beam of light will fill your head 
   and you’ll remember what’s been said 
   by all the wise men this world’s ever known.

That's how the experience was unfolding. At first a perfectly marvelous sense of being led through landscapes of insight, wisdom, epiphany. 


But as the night wore on the landscapes were more about comparisons, inadequacies, judgment, self-loathing, condemnation, and fear.

Well into the night it was all I could do to just hold on. It was like being caught in a great whirlpool, going down, down, down. Something told me I must not go down any further. That people who went down further never came back.

For the rest of the night I swam with all my might against that powerful, threatening current, at some point finally drifting off to sleep.

When I finally woke up it was with the absolute certainty that I had to understand what this 'thing,' this powerful experience of the mind, was about. Not just because I was curious. Mainly it was because I had a deep sense that this 'beam of light' would either light my way forward or burn me up. And that 'lighting my way' or 'burning me up' would depend on whether I stepped willingly into spiritual exploration or ran away hoping to return to where I'd been.


There's a thread we follow. While we hold it, we can't get lost. Though for me it would feel mostly like being lost for the next 4 years. 


Mostly. But not always.