Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  If you'd had a drug experience that was memorably traumatic, then the flashback could well be your way of reliving it. All you need is the catalyst, the red shirt, and the scene could pop up from your unconscious to replay itself, in living Technicolor, not to speak of sound effects and emotions, as well.

  But my fugues have no apparent relation to past trauma of any kind. I decided, on that day, to look closely at blood pressure, and at the possible need of my brain for sugar. Knowing that I had to be in court in the afternoon, I had no choice but to extricate myself from this strange situation.

  I had to put on San Francisco clothes (a white shirt, a non-outrageous tie, a jacket, and clean socks). Brute subtraction (present time from target time) told me that I had to be in court in less than four hours. To start with, I was going to have to come to grips with the meaning of the concept, "four hours," pretty damned fast.

  A frightful thought hit me. What if I found myself on the witness stand, still in this peculiar state of dissociation? Would I be able to understand the questions I might be asked? Would the very concept of question and answer be meaningful? Could I simply grit my teeth, and carry it all off without anyone being the wiser?

  I thought/ let's see if I can answer that by turning on the radio; maybe that will help define the geometry of my strange altered place.

  The radio gave me a late Mozart piano concerto, coming across with complete integrity. A stellar thing of beauty without any trace of disconnection or disjointedness. Fine, I thought, let's turn to a news station and get words.

  I was hit with the time, the weather, an advertisement for a travel service, and a stock market report/ all within the first minute of listening. It felt as if I had just been dealt a poker hand in which every card carried a different suite, and each card had a different number. Nothing made sense.

  I did not look forward to a spirited cross examination on the witness stand. Maybe this was all due to some unprecedented drop in my blood sugar level. I voraciously ate a couple of oranges, and began getting ready for my trip to the City. I showered (everything went well), I searched for a suitable shirt (that was not as easy), and I found reasonably polished sandals.

  Can I drive? I will certainly find out.

  As it turned out, my driving was flawless. It was quite another matter to unravel the intricacies of underground parking, there under the Civic Center, but I was able to call up the correct procedure from some emergency memory bank, and all went smoothly.

  Still wondering if my blood sugar was involved, I sat down at a lunch counter and ordered a tall glass of orange juice.

  Gradually, imperceptibly, things began slipping into their normal place. My body was slowly rotating back into its proper north-south orientation. It became more and more comprehensible that today was Monday, June the 19th, because yesterday had been Sunday.

  Tomorrow, of course, would be Tuesday.

  By 1:00 PM everything was pretty much normal. Normal? Yes, normal. My appearance on the witness stand, I felt, would be under control. And so it was.

  In retrospect, what was that all about? I had drifted, like a wide-winged bird, over many things that were without meaning, yet my mind was clicking away quite properly on other levels. The elapsed time of this event, this fugue, was around five hours.

  Twice, since then, basically identical experiences have occurred, but in shorter time. The most recent lasted only twenty minutes.

  Somebody will undoubtedly say, "Maybe certain of his brain cells got burned out as a result of too many exploratory drug assays!"

  But that theory isn't logical, because, if such had been the case, how could they have repaired themselves in a two to three hour period? The professional neurochemists tell us that these cells never repair themselves.

  The flashback, as I said, is not a good explanation as there is no obvious trauma being relived.

  The fugue event has properties quite removed from any drug experience I have ever had.

  Might it have been hypoglycemia? I don't think so. My two later fugue experiences simply dissolved and disappeared without my paying any attention to sugar at all.

  I think that fugues such as this might be part and parcel of normal brain function. Perhaps they are ascribed, by whoever becomes aware of such an oddness, to stress or lack of sleep or too much drinking the night before. The obvious response is to phone the boss and tell him you're sick, and go to bed until it passes.

  Maybe there is a man in the backwoods of Idaho who is walking through the trees on his land, one day, and suddenly realizes that the familiar surroundings have become alien territory; he is a stranger in a forest that belongs to someone or something else. The back of his neck prickles as hair rises, and he turns around and heads for home.

  I am convinced that this phenomenon, the fugue, is part of the heritage of the human animal.

  And I have come to appreciate, at a very deep level, the possibility that this state (blessedly transient with me), might be the day-to-day reality of some guy out there on the street.

  It's a thought that gives rise to immense compassion. I look forward to my fourth occurrence.

  If the apparent pattern is maintained, the next episode should take place in another five years, and may last only a few minutes. That is an extremely short period of time in which to run experiments in word association and counting numbers backwards, but I will try to do both. I am most curious.

  CHAPTER 38. CRISIS

  (Alice's voice)

  SUNDAY

  This is the story of a major alteration of consciousness which occurred because, apparently, it was time for it to happen.

  It began on a Sunday afternoon one November in the mid-'80's. Shura was working in his office and I was in the bedroom, beginning to sort out what I thought of as my shit pile, a collection of such things as clothes, belts, stockings, photographs, and old magazines, all waiting to be put where they belonged. The pile was a symbol, a reminder to me of a side of myself I detested - scattered, disorganized, and procrastinating. I wasn't sure which was worse, looking at that mound of stuff or fighting the sluggishness that always crept over me when I began trying to organize a personal mess of this kind.

  I understood the depression; I had long ago figured out the conflicts involved in trying to clear up any accumulation of objects that represented some part of myself - especially if it was an unwanted part - but understanding hadn't resolved the problem.

  I started in, lifting boxes onto the bed and folding clothes into drawers, feeling slow and dull.

  So when Shura called out to me from his office, "Hey, how would you like to help push back the foreskin of science while you're working?" I shouted back that I couldn't imagine anything more appealing, and what did he have in mind?

  He crossed the hall and leaned against the door frame, "There's this new thing I've taken up to thirty milligrams. I haven't spotted any activity yet, and I thought you might want to take it one more step up - maybe forty milligrams? You almost certainly won't get any effects, but I would appreciate having one more level out of the way, if you feel like volunteering?"

  "Sure," I smiled, "What is it?"

  "It's 3,5-dimethoxy-4-methylphenethylamme. DESOXY, for short."

  "Okay, I volunteer," I said, suddenly not tired any more. Even if there wasn't liable to be activity at forty milligrams, I thought, it would help my morale to know I was trying out the next level of a new drug, to have the self-image of Alice the Useful to help counteract that of Alice the Messy.

  Shura went to the lab and came back with a glass containing a bit of white powder and beckoned me to follow him to the kitchen. I asked if he was taking anything himself, and he said, "Nope. I had an inactive level of something else yesterday and I need to stay clean today."

  I poured out a bit of pink lemonade onto the powder. Shura clinked his coffee mug against my glass, "To science." I replied, "I'll drink to that," and did. Then I said, "Bleah," and poured out more lemonade to wash the taste away.

&nbs
p; I hugged him, "Thanks/ honeybun! I feel useful and virtuous and important!"

  "Well," he cautioned, "As I told you, I don't honestly expect we'll get any activity, but you never know. You could have a threshold, if we're lucky. But I wouldn't count on it."

  On our way out of the kitchen, I asked, "What makes you so sure I won't get activity?"

  He explained that, if he hadn't detected any effects at thirty milligrams, a mere ten milligrams more couldn't be expected to present anything but a threshold, at the most. "All drugs," he said, "Have what is called a dose-response curve; with more material you get more effect. But most things like these phenethylamines show a pretty shallow slope. If you get nothing at one level, there's rarely much to be seen at even twice that level."

  I paused at the door of the bedroom, "Okay. But you don't usually double the dose of a new compound, do you, in the first stages of trying it out?"

  Shura shook his head, "Not when it might be getting into the area of activity, but, yes, I might in the earlier stages. Anyway, with this DESOXY stuff, we're not doubling, just going up by one third again. Normally, I jump by half again with each new trial, so this is a pretty modest increase."

  I went back to work, making neat stacks of letters and catalogs which had inserted themselves between ancient copies of The Saturday Review and Newsweek, and listened to talk radio to keep my mind from turning to mush.

  About forty minutes had passed before it dawned on me that something had changed. I couldn't define it at all; I just knew I was off baseline. I went into the office and told Shura that things were going on, though I couldn't tell exactly what, and he said, "That's great! I didn't really expect you'd get anything. Think it's distinct enough to be counted as a definite threshold?"

  "It feels more like a plus-one, actually," I said, "But let's wait and see."

  "Well, keep me informed."

  "You'd better believe it!"

  I stooped and lifted and grumbled, threw crumpled clothes into the ironing basket, examined photographs and stacked them carefully in a shoe box on the bed, feeling increasingly strange and not entirely comfortable. There was no apparent body load; it was just a general uneasiness, and I couldn't really pin it down.

  By the time an hour had gone by since ingestion of the drug, I had come to the conclusion that this was more than a plus-one, and that I didn't give a damn about organizing things any more. I wanted to lie down, so I shoved boxes around to give myself space on the bed. I still couldn't define the discomfort.

  There was no apparent visual activity of the kind that we look for when there's more than a plus-one effect; nothing was moving on the walls or ceilings; there was no rippling of curtain edges. But when I looked through the window at Mount Diablo and its foothills, they had taken on a disturbing aspect.

  I love Diablo; I've seen many sunrises over it, often standing with Shura's arms around me at the tail end of a good experiment. The distinctive shape is part of us, part of our home, one of the first things our eyes go to when we return from being away. I had never before seen it present itself the way it did now - hard, unfriendly, almost hostile.

  I looked away from the window.

  Feeling cold, I got an old, soft, taffy-brown sweater out of the closet and put it on before lying down again. It seemed best to stay quiet for a while longer, because movement of any kind caused a chill to go through me, and there was a hint of nausea.

  Lying on my back, hands clasped behind my head, I examined the room. There was an ordinariness to it; it was just a room, not the treasured place where Shura and I made love and heard music. It was merely walls and furniture and a mound of stuff against the far wall and a big bed piled with dusty cardboard boxes. I felt no attachment to any of it.

  In fact, I realized, I felt no emotions at all, just a faint distaste.

  When Shura came in and asked how things were going, I said, "It's really weird. I don't think I like it much."

  He sat on the bed and asked me what level of activity I thought it was, and I said, "Close to a plus-two, I think."

  His eyebrows shot up, then he frowned, "Maybe you're very sensitive to it; I can't understand how you could be getting a plus-two at just ten milligrams more than I took."

  I said I couldn't understand it either, but it definitely was not going to be one of my favorite materials at any level; of that/1 was certain. At least/ not from what I'd seen of it so far.

  He asked about body or nervous system load and I said/ "All that seems okay; it's just a mental uncomfortableness."

  He stroked my leg thoughtfully/ then made a suggestion/ "Why don't you go outside and see if that improves things?"

  I said/ "All right/ I'll give it a try/" feeling no enthusiasm for the idea. I got up and walked down the hall to the back door. Shura called out after me/ "Do you want company?"

  "No/ thanks/ let me try it by myself/ at least to start with."

  I walked slowly down the path/ past the lab and up the short brick stairway. My arms were folded against the cold/ and I felt slightly irritable. I wandered to the edge of the grassy shelf.

  We often sit there when the weather is good/ in canvas patio chairs which wobble on the uneven ground/ and look out over the valley.

  I turned my eyes to the mountain in the east and then north to where the county seat/ the old town of Martinez/ was hidden under a thin layer of white fog. Aside from the faint irritability/1

  felt nothing. There was no excitement/ no depression/ no fear; no real emotion at all. The valley and the mountain were very much present/ but I could see neither beauty nor ugliness anywhere/ and I felt no personal connection to any of it.

  Everything I saw seemed to very intensely exist/ but not in relation to me.

  It all looks cold, clear, distant, and there's no response inside me. No caring of any kind. For anything. Which means this damned drug will go no further than Shura and me. Well, well, waddya know! "Damned drug" implies some feeling, after all. Some part of me is angry! That's interesting.

  As I stood there watching the fog layer at the end of the valley/ it began to take on a new aspect; it seemed alive - a cold/ white/ alien entity. It was/1 thought grimly/ like an externalized form of my own state of mind.

  Am I feeling this way because I'm seeing nature as it really is, without the sentimental overlay that humans put on it? People always think, "I care about this tree, that river; I love the mountain, the hills. Therefore they care about me, they love me, too." Without being aware of it, we project onto the natural world entirely human feelings which it doesn't share and has no concern with. Is that it? I'm feeling no emotion because I'm tuning into what's around me and seeing the way it really is; a physical landscape in which emotions don't exist at all. Only animals and humans have emotions. The rest of nature has none.

  My tummy was still not sure of itself/ so I went back to the house and stopped at Shura's office door to tell him maybe I'd try putting a bit of food into the bod. He asked/ "How was the outside world?"

  "Couldn't appreciate it/ I'm afraid. Everything is very strange and distant and not particularly friendly/ so I thought I'd come back and heat up some soup. Do you want some?"

  "Sure, sounds good. Do you need help fixing it?"

  "Good heavens/ no/ thanks. I'm okay."

  At the table/ Shura reached for my hand and held it for a moment. The hot cream of tomato soup and sourdough bread was making me feel a little better.

  When we'd finished eating/ he sat back in his chair and looked at me/ smiling slightly/ and said/ "Well/1 guess we'd have to call it a surprising experiment/ to say the least!"

  "Yup/ I'd say so. Not entirely a pleasant one/ either. It pretty much flattens out my emotions/

  which is something I just do...not...like. It's really strange; I'm aware that some part of myself is angry at this whole thing/ but I can't connect with the anger. I know I'll be able to experience it tomorrow/ when I'm back to normal/ but now/1 don't seem to be able to feel it; I just know it's there."


  He nodded. "Where are you now/ plus-wise?"

  "Oh/ I think it's easing off. I'm on the down slope/ thank heaven. About a plus one/ I'd guess."

  "Good. I'm going to go very carefully with this one/ from here on. That is/ if it seems worth taking any farther/ and there's some doubt about that/ from what you've said. It certainly looks like an extremely steep response curve."

  "Uh-huh/ it sure does."

  "You going to be all right?"

  "Oh/ yes. I'll do the dishes/ then just relax and watch TV for a while and keep myself distracted until I'm back to normal."

  He came over to me and held my head against his stomach. He stroked my hair/ then bent down and kissed my forehead. I hugged him and got up to clear the table.

  By 9:00 P.M./ I was pretty much baseline. There was still a sense of emotional flatness and the remnants of disconnection from my surroundings/ but I kept myself occupied with television/

  until an attack of yawning signaled bedtime.

  Curled up back to back with Shura/ I discovered that my nervous system was not/ after all/

  completely at peace. Once/ I jumped - what Shura called "darting" - startling myself out of an uneasy drift into sleep/ and a few minutes later my right ear was attacked by a viciously aggressive buzzing which came diving straight into it. I knew it was only a phantom wasp/

  having experienced it before/ but a feeling of vulnerability remained for some time. I made a mental note to tell Shura that the body's wiring was a bit sensitive to this stuff.

  MONDAY

  It was a good sleep. When I woke, I looked at the the sunlight streaming in across the ceiling and thought. Oh boy, that was awful yesterday. That was awful! I sat up and put my feet on the floor, aware of a full bladder, and looked around me again and knew, in an instant of shock, that I was still in it. It wasn't over.