Drugs are Bad: Can We Learn from Psychedelics?

I've always said that there are two types of people who take drugs- those who want to get high, and those who also want to get high, but also maybe learn something or grow or take something positive away from the experience that doesn't fade with the high. 

 Some people understandably would say that any different thoughts that occurred during an acid trip or whatever were just a result of the drug, and meaningless and invalid. From what I experienced and from what others have said I say no. 

 I learned or experienced quite a few things during my experiences with these things back in the day, which turned out to be valid, and stayed with me forever. There were so many things that it's hard to pick one. This story is more about an observation than getting new ideas, although it was new and I did learn from it. It does show the possibility of there being more to these substances than just getting high. 

 I went to a big party one night and dropped some acid or shrooms. I was sitting and talking to some friends. When it kicked in I saw beautiful colors start to radiate from people...mainly around the head and shoulders but in some cases the whole body. As I watched the colors began to take on a bit more structure and shape but they were still pretty abstract. It looked like an outline around the body like they were glowing or something. It had the basic shape of the head and shoulders and it extended maybe 6" out from the body but the distance could vary. 

It started to become a little more organized, and it reminded me a bit of the famous paintings, as seen here, by artists who experienced Schizophrenia, only nowhere near as intense or disturbing. In fact it was beautiful, and it was getting harder to concentrate on conversations because it was so fascinating. I was talking to good friends of mine while I was seeing colors all around them. I'd recently read an article saying that people and other objects had an "aura" around them, and I wondered if that was what I was "seeing."

 I chalked it up to the effects of the acid, and it was, but it did seem to make sense in that the colors and patterns seemed to match the different people I was looking at. Most of my friends were fairly easygoing and peaceful, and their "auras" seemed to reflect that, but with subtleties. My mellow friends generally had colors in the blue-green range and the edges such as they were were fairly smooth. A few of my fierier friends had more oranges and reds and the outlines were more jagged. Some were a rainbow of both, but it did seem to go with their personalities to a T. 

 Years later when I learned about firing Raku clay with copper sulfate it reminded me of the aura thing. When copper sulfate is added to the kiln it vaporizes and bonds with the surface of the clay. It gives a rainbow of colors depending on the firing temperature. Cooler temps yield green and blue, warmer temps give yellow and orange and hotter temps give reds. It was the same with people. My "cooler" friends had auras that were mostly greens and blues while my "hotter" friends had more reds and oranges. 

  I thought that too was just an effect of the acid. It made sense that if I was seeing an hallucination that it would align itself to the individual. If I knew someone's personality already then it made sense I'd see an aura that matched. But then a "control" experiment presented itself. A bunch of people started coming in and most of them I didn't know. I thought I'd test it out on them. I'd pick people and take note of their auras, and if I got to meet them later I'd try to get a basic feel for their personalities, and again it seemed to match every time. Like my friends their auras were different. A few did look fairly similar to the cat painting, and of the people with those auras that I got to meet, true to form they all were complete loonies or assholes or angry people, and I avoided them like the plague. 

 I met some of those people through mutual friends and I saw them many times after that, and their personalities lined up with what I'd concluded the night of the party. In fact I met a young woman who had the most beautiful aura in the place, and I asked her out later. She was a friend of a friend and she was single. She matched her aura and I was crazy about her. She was a sweetheart with a very calming personality. We dated for almost a year before she was offered a scholarship to finish school elsewhere, and mover out west. We might still be together otherwise. She's an angel.

 

 After that night at the party I got more interested in the aura thing so I started looking into it and I discovered Kirlian Photography. By using special lighting and/or frequencies or special film or whatever, that can film auras, as in this image. It's basically electromagnetic energy and that can be picked up on film.

 What I saw at the party that night was basically a combination of these two images. It wasn't as jagged as the hand image or quite as smooth and halo-like as the image of the woman, but very similar. BTW I think I can dig her aura but I'd have to meet her to know for sure. 

 Hey, maybe the aura deal could be used in a pickup line. "My aura would like to get to know your aura. Aura you free this weekend?" Maybe I'll try that one of these days. Anyway what I saw looked very much like a combination of these two photos. It was incredible and it certainly seemed to lend some credibility to what I'd seen at the party.

 So are these substances only useful for getting high, or is there some knowledge we can glean? Again there were many ideas that came into my head when I was tripping that turned out to be true, and stayed with me long after the effects wore off. One thing I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt is that everything is connected, and in many, many ways. Not only do my experiences suggest it but science (SCIENCE) proves it.

 For an experiment to be valid it must be repeatable and the same results obtained. I experienced the same thing a couple other times under the same circumstances, and a couple of times when I was completely sober. Both of those times the general light level was low but they had some sort of funky light coming from somewhere. Maybe it was a light frequency that was similar to the Kirlian process. It wasn't as vivid as when I was tripping but it was definitely there and it looked exactly the same. Does that lend validity to the idea that there's some "truth" or lessons in a psychedelic experience? It's hard to say but there's enough evidence to at least think about. Anyway don't do drugs. Have a nice day.