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SOTU drinking game, 2008 - 2008-01-27
little light - 2007-12-19
hamburger phone - 2007-12-18
why 'grease' is a perfect LA movie - 2007-12-17
recipe: barley treasure - 2007-10-12

2004-03-12 - 10:30 p.m.

tuesday night i couldn't even talk to anyone without crying. i skipped my class because i wasn't ready to face new people. z called me and when he assessed my emotional state, he came by with a beer and some advice.

'look, i know this doesn't seem like a solution, but why don't you take those mushrooms?'

'well, z, i've tried everything else. i might as well hit the hard reset button. let's do it tomorrow.'

on wednesday morning, i brewed a tea of about a quarter ounce of psilocybin mushrooms. i sat down with the village voice and by the time i finished the tea, my head was spinning. the voices on the talk radio seemed too harsh. i put on some brian eno and a warm sweater and lay down on the couch.

z came back to check on me a little later. he smoked some pot and babysat me. i had mild visuals (things shimmered and vibrated in front of me, colors were especially vivid) and my body felt heavy and strange. waves of nausea passed through me, but i hadn't eaten anything since the previous afternoon, so i didn't feel like puking. at one point, i saw myself in the bathroom mirror, and giggled because i thought i looked like a woodland elf.

the first hour was really emotional. i cried so much that i got dehydrated, and the tears seemed to squeeze out of my tearducts like huge fat honeydrops. z had talked to me about 'facing truths' while 'shrooming, but the truths i faced, if any, were more emotional than factual truths. he and talked a lot about our relationships to our parents. the nausea was powerful and psychedelic. it seems like a cliche, but i could really perceive a kind of ego death happening. i felt that z and i were holding a funeral for parts of me that were dying.

eventually, the sheer physicality of the trip dissipated. we began to look at pictures in magazines together. i read the tarot cards for z. we talked about images of god in indian art and how naturally psychedelic they are. i read parts of the bhagavad gita and told some mythic stories to z. i could feel my mind working very differently, outside of my day-to-day worries and petty concerns. i could see how emotionally ingrown i had become, and i could also see the way past it.

later, z suggested we go outside. i was a little hesitant because i felt so sensitive. but i put on a big jacket and we ventured outside. i was dismayed to find that a crew was shooting a movie at the end of my block. several identical yellow cabs were lined up, false police cars were speeding around, expensive cameras and actors tracked the action. i froze. z walked up to a production assistant and asked if we could walk past. he said sure. i made z hold my hand. the crush of the simulated and the simulation really fried my fragile synapses.

we drifted to the river's edge, photographed each other. we repaired to iona for the restoring powers of guinness. i had a feeling very much like the one i have after getting tattooed: the end of a harsh physical experience, feeling much stronger and changed on the other side of the experience.