The Psychedelic ChristianBorn Again on LSD: Part 2
After about an hour, the LSD began to take effect.
The shadows that the campfire threw up on the reddened undergrowth appeared to have a life of their own, and a suspicion that all things have great purpose — much greater than I had known — began to take hold in my mind. More and more, I felt like talking less and less, and rather just preferred to sit and take the moment in. All else seemed as a profanation.
Ok, before I go further let me take a second here and just say that psychedelic experiences are notoriously difficult to describe. For instance, a meaningful realization in the thick of it, can come across as a banal maxim once written down and read later by someone else. But, alas! such is the case with every intense religious experience. I think of the Apostle Paul, writing in the 3rd person of an experience he had. He tells how he was ‘caught up into Paradise’ and interestingly mentions how he saw things that ‘no mortal is permitted to repeat’ (2 Cor 12:1–4). While I have never had an experience quite like that, I certainly have struggled to find the words to do justice to a profound moment. A common example of this problem is experiencing the death of close kin, or a kindred spirit. To say it comes as a shock is saying nothing at all. Nonetheless, such times can sear the importance of spending time with our loved ones in our consciousness so deeply that the poignancy of it stays with us for a lifetime. But unless one undergoes such an experience, the sentiment seems trite. We may recognize it as true, but it will be treated as unimportant until we go through something similar. The burned hand teaches best, so to speak.
Now, if you recall from part 1, I’m 15 in this story, in the woods at night, on 2½ hits of LSD with friends. If I were at a legal, therapeutic retreat center, I probably would have been safely tucked into a bed, with peaceful music playing, with soft eye-covers on. A loving, and experienced sitter would be on hand for guidance as needed, as I explored a prayerfully discerned, and premeditated intention for my life. Such centers are becoming more and more common throughout the world as different countries such as Portugal, Australia, the Netherlands, and certain states in the USA are decriminalizing, or even legalizing the therapeutic use of these powerful plant medicines. Such facilities can greatly enhance the positive effects of a psychedelic experience, but sadly were not available to Midwestern teenagers in the 90’s. Instead, my inner state, or ‘set’ was tinged with a sense of danger and criminality from the beginning due to its illegality, as was our clandestine ‘setting’. I was starting out on the wrong foot.
It was about that time when someone swiveled their head around and asked ‘Hey… where’s Neil?’.
Where indeed? I dimly recalled him saying that he was going on a walk, in the dark, in the woods, woods that were strange to him, and even stranger no doubt because he also had taken LSD. This did not bode well, but, there we were without a lot of options except calling out for him; which we did, but it availed nothing. After that, we simply awaited his return.
It was never our intention to camp throughout the night. Camping wasn’t even allowed up there on the airstrip and as the night wore on, a few of our number decided that the time had come to retire for the evening and head home. So, some of us walked them back down the hill to our house where we planned on replenishing our firewood before rejoining the group. Our plans were interrupted. My parents were waiting for us. ‘Where’s Neil?’ they said.
This is when things took a turn for the worse.
My parents had raised their three boys as their parents had raised them — as conservative, fundamentalist baptists. Growing up in their house meant church twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays — every week — punctuated daily with family devotions. For some, hearing a regimen like that gets their hackles up. But looking back, after having grown up in a culture so devoid of rites of passage (especially for boys), and so rife with ultra-individualism; the counter-culture offered me a collective sense of self (me in the church), and religious observation (prayer, holidays, and baptism) was invaluable and enriches my life still today.
Granted, the fervor of my parents’ devotion and its enforcement on their children ebbed and flowed over the years. But by and large, us three boys endured a rather rigorous religious upbringing. Later in life, after I had discovered a faith in Christ on my own, I found myself gravitating more towards theologies that proffered the love of God as definitive to the Divine nature; nonetheless, in my youth, I remember being more scared of God than in awe of God. As we received communion once a month via tiny little shot glasses of grape juice and broken bits of matzo, the pastor’s injunction that ‘Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Therefore, everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup’ (1 Cor 11:27–30) ran riot in my head. After all, I had been told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that we all are sinners. Sin seemed to be the lens through which God exclusively saw us. Why on earth we had to walk so close to the precipice of judgment by taking communion once a month was anyone’s guess.
And so, it was against this backdrop of a lifetime of indoctrination of the anger of God and the sinfulness of Jonathan that I saw my parents when we approached the house. We intended on simply grabbing firewood and sneaking our way back up to the airstrip. But, that wasn’t in the cards for us that night. ‘Where is Neil?’ they asked as they exited the house to confront us. I honestly do not know exactly how we responded, but hearing that Neil was in fact in town and in police custody remains clear to this day. ‘The police say he doesn’t know what planet he’s on. Why would that be?’
Although I couldn’t have put it into words, the supreme importance of ‘set and setting’ while taking psychedelics grew wildly clear to me at about this moment.