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A Visit to Inner Space – Alan Harrington [from LSD: The  Consciousness Expanding Drug edited by David Soloman]

It began with a salty taste in my mouth, and my vision started to become prismatic.  One’s pupils actually dilate and appear to be the size of quarters.  There was a pressure in my head.  The curtains seemed to billow. There might be somebody behind them.  The air crackled silently.  I had a feeling of coloured musical notes floating about and the scene, I can remark now, was quite like a Klee drawing.  I felt a bit queasy, but it passed.  The music was louder and the guitar strings beautifully separated.  Ralph was looking at me and I began to laugh.  I was going to flip on my tape recorder!  What a ridiculous, hilarious thing to do!  Why not though?

“Why not?”  Frank said, and we both laughed.  I couldn’t stop.  Everything that I could think about was insanely and pitifully funny. The world.  The universe.  All the poor sweet pitiful people I knew.  Myself.  What a scene!  Filled with noble, ridiculous people!  The world! The world!

This reaction, which is Cosmic Laughter, was different from any way of laughing I had known.  It came out of me as though propelled by a force much larger than the person laughing.  It came right up from the entire of my being.  The force continued throughout the major part of the experience, no matter what I was feeling.  It resembled both a mild and sustained electric shock passing through the body and spirit, and a mild and incomplete and continuing orgasm.  A throbbing and rhythmic current which for the want of a fresh image – and one is no longer afraid of being banal – could be described as the life force shakes you, as if you might be aboard or bestride, or being carried along with, the force that penetrates and then fills all being…………

The machine captured outcries from beyond despair, and frantic attempts of the man to keep himself together, to summon his intelligence and apply it against the grief that has come over him.

“Oh God….. this is awful!… oh… oh…. I didn’t realise it would be so physical.  This stuff won’t let you go!………… oh……… my God, what have I done?”

Suddenly the predicted hostility comes forth

“Why are you so peaceful?” I demand of my fellow voyager.  “How can you stretch out and smile while I suffer?  Why am I the only one to suffer?”  Then in a small voice “I guess there are others.  They suffer too”

“Yes” murmured my partner, lying with his arms folded….

“This is awful, God. I want to get back”

“Swing with it”!

It was Arthur’s voice.  I saw him through air that seemed to have turned to jelly

“Swing with it?  Okay!  Sure.  That’s right. Ha! Ha! But it’s hard.  I wonder if I can stand up.  Shall I try?”

“Why not?”  said Ralph, eyeing me compassionately over his folded arms

“There.  You see.  I did it.  I can walk.  But I don’t know why I did it.  What’s the point?”

We laughed.