One chilly Saturday night, after growing bored with a party chez Mancuso's famous invitation-only discobash, I descended onto a New York City street not far from the Bowery1 to find myself in the middle of a most unexpected confrontation. Bodies seemed to litter the street. Live ones, to be sure, but bodies nonetheless, a coalition of the down-and-out, two or three or four shuffling around to nowhere in particular, but most others reclining in the gutter, motionless.
At the party I had taken a very small dose of LSD, very small indeed, for such a milieu is not the place for ultimate explorations. I certainly felt in complete control, the actual power of the dose seemed quite minimal, it had merely added an unusual edge to the antics of the Saturday-night-fever of the private discotheque. Yet, as soon as I hit the street, I was in the midst of a titanic battle for survival.
Once before, while walking a New York City street under psychedelic influence, I had witnessed in ultimate starkness the meaning of poverty and destitution: an unconscious, horribly dirty and frayed old man passed out in the gutter, his head resting against the tire of....an immaculate Rolls Royce. Despite the intimate contact, how wide the gulf between! In a normal celebratory night out on the town, such sights are quickly put out of mind with one unconscious excuse or another, a refusal to see significance in all its horror and glory, a significance which cannot, however, be ignored in the psychedelic state. The habits of mind allowing willful ignorance are simply no longer available.
On this post-party Saturday night I was about to confront, not only an in-depth understanding of such poverty, but to experiment with actions concerning the things that must, or must not be done in such situations. As usual, in the psychedelic state, synchronicities occurred at a disturbingly frequent pace. No sooner was I on the street, than the whole flavor of the party had metamorphosed into a radically opposite vista. Upstairs the youth of the city were reveling, down here the dregs of humanity were biding their time, listlessly meandering around a hell in which they had been imprisoned through the very same process that produced the upstairs revelry. And here I was, fresh from the celebrations and inebriations of the above, and dressed appropriately, in the midst of something which could not be ignored. What should I do? Record the scene for posterity, retrieve my Chevy pick-up at the corner garage and off to a warm home? If one could cast a spell and have all these abject human tragedies suddenly transported to....the upstairs party? no... their former lives for a second chance? perhaps... the afterlife? What interference here, even theoretical, would make sense? Just what could be done, given the power to do it? Perhaps a token gesture to just one person: let me give some money to one of them.
“Hi, I just got out of this party upstairs, and had such a good time that it saddens me to see that you have been down here like this... Here, let me give you some bread...” How phony it sounds, how can one even say the honest and true in such a situation?
After a suspicious but tired glance, a shrug of acceptance from my chosen token destitute. But... oh, blast!, I’ve got just about zero cash on me! I left my wallet hidden in a secret compartment in my car, not wanting to carouse with it at the party! My hand in my pocket, grasping something that feels like a couple of pennies and maybe a nickel, is part of a most punishing synchronicity. My new-found friend, not much more surprised by this development than my original offer, looks at the eight cents in my extended palm and says,
“No, man, keep your money, I don’t need it,” and trudges off down the street to my pitiful attempts at explanation and apology. Even if I could see my attempted gift as an action designed more to assuage my own sense of guilt for the scene I was witnessing than produce a meaningful change from across the gulf which separated upstairs from the street, the intervention of fate, depriving me of the wherewithal to accomplish my impulsive initiative goaded me on to yet a further attempt. Just how does one accomplish giving when there is not even a request at hand? If I had had a hundred-dollar bill in my pocket and at that moment someone had asked for a handout, I would not have hesitated. But here the street was full of derelicts, none of them asking the least thing except to be left alone. Just how does one give under such circumstances?
At this stage in an experience turned object-lesson, long experience with the psychedelic state had taught me more than once that events can easily ensnare one into a vicious cycle of error. A hard lesson is often not seen at its first exposition and, like the smack upside the head with the Zen master’s cane, needs sometimes to be a bit painful to sink in. The psychedelic experience itself has such a feedback, the very thing which renders it so potent: The original effect of the drug, as my theory here surmises2, a simple increase in the gain of the salience-detection system of the brain, seems insufficient to explain the multitude of psychedelic “effects” that can follow. But at the behest of this simple original effect, our cognitive systems go wild: the feedback by which we create custom habit routines for ongoing perception and thinking, in which heightened significance is a factor, then leads to preparedness and expectation of further unusual significance, and when it is found (more often than not!), a further cycle, and yet a further cycle can produce astonishing results. A short review of chapter 3 and figure 13 should refresh the reader’s memory as to the mechanism of this feedback process.
Due to the possibility of such rapid, almost catastrophic augmentation of situation which becomes possible in psychedelic experience, I had always followed a simple rule: no matter what one observes and no matter what seeming conclusions one arrives at in the process, take no irreversible action. Waiting, if necessary until the reflection of the next few hours or even days has added its wisdom is not only a safe policy, but in the end the wisest. If events, and their interpretation, build up to an unsettling crescendo, one must remember the rule. Be, above all, the observer of events, including the event of oneself, but take no action whose consequences might in some way be destructively final.
In spite of my rule I was nevertheless compelled to try once again: a not very old but extremely tired-looking gent in western attire, cowboy boots and all, whose every surface seemed worn, frayed, stained, or otherwise used to the limit, was lying on the sidewalk, somehow impossible to ignore.
“Hey man, com’on, it’s cold in the street, here, lemme help you up and I’ll take you to my hotel room. I’ve already paid for it and I’m not going to use it since I’ve decided to drive back home tonight. You could take a hot shower and get a good night's rest...” Again the sound of profound artificiality, my renewed attempt already has taken its inevitable direction, too late to obey the number one rule, here I am enmeshed again in a scene I know will knock me down a few pegs.
After some lethargy, my new friend “Tex” is up and about, but not much interested in my offer, rather preferring a drinking buddy to make the rounds with until the next flop in the gutter. Nevertheless, having made the offer, and after fate had played such a mean trick on my last attempt, I try this time to follow through. We amble off toward the parking garage, talking about good old times in Colorado.
The scene at the garage is positively infernal. The two of us, as upstairs-downstairs as yin-yang archetypes from another dimension, confront the late-night philosophy of the Houston Street all-night-service automotive one-stop emporium, manned by a small crew of African Gods whose unassailable wisdom shall not let pass the least pretense or trickery. Out there by the pumps, many complex conversations begin to take place, and while waiting for the delivery of my chariot I notice from the corner of my eye that Tex and a few of the regulars seem to be discussing my plight. My Chevy appears from the bowels of the garage and, avoiding what seemed at the time to be a rather violent motion towards my lonely spot on the pavement I quickly hop into the waiting cab and drive off, alone, to contemplate the lessons of the evening.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bowery
Psychedelic Elephant - A Critique of Psychedelic Research
Introducing a new paradigm for understanding how the brain event of neuroreceptor agonism by a psychedelic chemical can lead to the mind events of the great multiplicity of possible psychedelic states of consciousness. Cause and effects re-examined.