________  ________  ________   
   2021-04-01                                   /        \/        \/    /   \  
                                               /       __/         /_       _/ 
   A  little   while  back,  I  think   I've  /        _/         /         / 
mentioned  this   maybe   once   before,   I  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
"overdosed"   on  dextromethorphan.  I   put    /        \/        \/    /   \
overdose  in quotes  because  what  comes to   /        _/         /_       _/
mind when you talk  about drug  overdoses is  /-        /        _/         /
generally something more severe or fatal but  \________/\________/\___/____/
this wasn't  particularly dangerous, it just
was more than I normally take and the effects were quite different.

   For those not familliar with dextromethorphan, the effects tend to even out
into plateus depending on  how much y ou take and those plateaus  can be quite
different. For context I hover around the second  plateau, a state of euphoria
and general disconnection. Everything becomes tinted by a kind of rose-colored
selflessness and I feel at peace. Anxiety gone, life is good.

   At the time I was very  epressed, grieving  my grandmother who  passed away
some time ago and distressed about some other things in my life I largely have
no control over. This made me somewhat reckless and I took around twice what I
would normally take, aching for  an escape. The l argest downside  I find with
dextromethorphan is that  it takes a little while  to come on  so it's easy to
take more than you need, thinking the  initial effects weren't enough, only to
find an hour later you're lost in the Juice of Sapho.

   I was sat on the couch  when I realised  something  was wrong. The room got
small and hazy, like a cocoon, and sound became impossibly far away. There's a
dog that lives nearby that, when robo tripping, rings out crystal  clear in my
head. It's bark becomes a bell, reminding me of where I am.

   In addition to the visual and aural effects my mind also got stretched into
new shapes and this was by far the most interesting part.

   My ego, my sense of self was completely evaporated. I became conscious of a
vast  succession  of the  movement  of atoms. Like a  silvery  carbon  thread,
stretching from the big bang, through me and onwards to my future. Atoms  born
into the expanding universe, coalescing,  becoming  stars,  becoming  planets,
becoming  complex  molecules,  microbes, primitive  animals, ancient  man,  my
ancestors, my grandmother, my  mother, myself, my  daughter. I saw it as clear
as day, like I could touch it, the path of an atom through  impossible lenghts
of time, right to this point in me and onwards.

   I was stripped of  self worth. My life meaning nothing in  the unimaginable
vastness of the drama playing  out in the universe, a life living  for a split
second in a species  that will only  last  minutes on a planet that  is doomed
within the hour, under a sun that will  barely last a day in  the scale of the
broader universe. 

   In that moment I felt so pure, any  anger, any pettiness, any  sadness just
gone, and I felt  only joy and wonder at the size of  everything. Any notion I
had about  being important was  gone  too, I became  aware of everyone  else's
struggle, each person  living full lives  with their own loves  and losses and
joys and traumas, no one  was a  bit-part or cameo  in my life, they  were all
whole people living whole lives.

   It was such a significant change in the way I felt  about  life and  family
and community and  society. It's a feeling  I wish I could  have carried  back
with me when I returned to Earth but in the end my  senses returned mostly to
normal, albiet with some consciousness of how I felt during the trip.

   To summarise; winners  don't  use drugs but  winning isn't  everything and,
hidden in that  mess of powders and cough  syrups is a powerful  humility that
I think a lot of us need to learn.



EOF