After about an hour with nothing but nausea, I said, ‘Look. You’ve got to observe me for the next four hours. We might as well enjoy ourselves. It’s a lovely day. Let’s break out from this stuffy building and walk for miles and miles in the country.’
Looking back now and remembering that I seldom go for walks, it is clear that the drug was beginning to act. However, I did not realise it then.
‘Any change in the way things look?’ I was asked.
‘No. No change.’
‘Don’t you see anything at the edges of the buildings, for instance?’
‘Good Lord, yes! That factory chimney has got a spectrum down the edge! Just as though it was seen through a prism.’
The drug has certainly started to work, and we returned to the laboratory, where more accurate observations could be recorded.
The early experiences were wholly delightful. There was a feeling of exhilaration and self-confidence, such as is rarely experienced, and an exaggerated tendency to laugh at anything at all. The failure of anyone else to understand what the joke was became in itself irrepressibly funny. The laughter became difficult to control. Things got funnier and funnier, and I laughed until I was in a condition of painful spasm, with tears running down my cheeks. Then the visual distortions began. I noticed a patch of sunlight on the floor. Because its brightness appeared to be fluctuating I enquired if clouds were crossing the sky. No, the light was really steady. I dictated into the tape recorder a running commentary on the apparent changes of intensity of this steady patch of sunlight.
At about this time, distortions of depth also began to occur. The object that made the greatest impression on me was a pair of spectacles worn by one of the assistants. They stood out in front of his face, which itself was increased in depth.
‘You’ve no idea how funny you look,’ I said to the man.
He looked puzzled. In some curious way the fact that he was, as it were, at the same time both in the experiment looking distorted and outside the experiment looking puzzled, with the puzzled look showing in the distorted face with the protruding spectacles, struck me very forcibly.
Then the nausea increased, the depth distortions became greater, and colour changes were more noticeable. Earlier, it had been fun but now I was ill.
At their height, the depth distortions alternated. At one moment the feet would seem to be far away and small, just exactly as they do when opera glasses are used the wrong way round. Then the effect would reverse, and the legs and body would look very short. The feet appeared to be about eighteen inches below my eyes, and it seemed that they had come up rather than that I had gone down. The illusion reversed direction several times per minute.
Having played the game of trying to walk along a line while looking down binoculars the wrong way, and remembering that equilibrium is then upset, I set out very, very gingerly on a visit down the corridor to the toilet, expecting to fall over. The corridor, which really is long, kept changing in length. If I looked down, my feet might be far or near according to what ‘phase’ they happened to be in. But, despite the alternate stretching of the corridor to perhaps two or three times its normal length followed by compression to one-half or one-third its length, accompanied by the apparent alteration in my own height, there was no difficulty in walking. There was, perhaps, a slight feeling of dissociation, which was to become more apparent later. The walking was done by a walking man, and on top of him was a pair of eyes which saw things distorted but these eyes were not in control of the motion.
On coming out into the corridor, I met the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the university. If I had not been fully conscious of his status, I would surely have bitten him in the waistcoat. Of all the places to bite a man, the waistcoat is the least profitable, but it was only there that I wanted to bite him.
The wish came in the form of a visual change. My false teeth were snapping away in the air, rather as a barber snips the air with his scissors between cuts of the hair.
All that the Deputy Vice-Chancellor saw was two men walking, my observer and myself, one looking at him very fixedly and walking slowly and with elaborate care.
At times on the way back from the toilet I would make a running commentary, like this: ‘Steady now. Someone’s coming. Corridor’s long. Can we get past? Good Lord, yes. Lots of room. Dead easy after all.’
Soon we were back in the lab, and they were showing me a flickering light made by an electronic flash lamp which consisted of a concave mirror, maybe eighteen inches in diameter, with a small bent hollow glass tube in the centre. The tube contained gas under low pressure, and gave a flash each time a condenser discharged through it. In this way the rate of flashing could be controlled very simply. The flash was bright enough to be irritating, but not painful. They set the lamp flashing at a fairly rapid rate and asked me to report what I saw. There was quite a complex pattern of light in the mirror, and it was easy to see many pictures in this pattern, just as one can by looking into a fire. The most striking thing was a set of teeth quite near the middle of the lamp. They were about one-third normal size, and absolutely distinct. I think, too, there was an eye.
In giving a description of what I saw, I was so slow, and insisted in describing each in order, going round clockwise, that I never got as far as describing the teeth. It was only after I was told that people often see teeth that I mentioned this neat little set which I had seen.
The next treatment was to lie down and close the eyes, while the light was flashed on the closed lids at various frequencies.
A lady psychiatrist sat by the side of the couch with a notebook in her hand. She could control the frequency of the flashes by turning a knob. She asked me to indicate into the tape recorder a commentary on the experience which would follow.
At the lower frequencies of flashing, nothing especially striking was seen. But at higher frequencies an illusion began to build up. I think it was at a frequency of twenty-three flashes per second that the picture became most vivid.
I was by the seaside lying on my back on the yellow sand, with the blue sea on my left. I had no desire to turn my head to look at the sea or sand, so that in a certain sense I could not actually see them. Normally, if a person lies on his back, little more than the sky is visible. Yet my appreciation of the sand and sky was certainly visual. It is hard to convey these illusions. If you lie on your back you can picture to yourself the sand and sea without looking at them; it was like that, only the picturing was as vivid as seeing them.
It was a bright day at the seaside. The sky was blue, and the sun was down straight into my eyes. I tried to close them and found them shut already.
I was not alone on the beach. Just out of sight, to my right, were three women. They were exceedingly lovely women, and again I could see them only in a certain sense. Suppose I were to meet one of these women, I would not be able to recognise her. All the same, I knew a lot about them because I could appreciate their presence so vividly. Their womanliness was most intensely felt.
This was not an ordinary erotic dream where one experiences certain sensations and even emotions more vividly than in the waking condition. It was along those lines, but much more impressive.
It was not just that I liked or loved these women very, very much. Rather, it was that I felt a wonder that was really there, really there in the illusion, if you follow me; it just cannot be described in words.
What a pity the sun was so dazzling. I wanted to lie back and enjoy the feeling of the presence of these women. They were so very kind.
When the frequency of the flashing light was twenty-three, everything was just right. When it went higher than that, the dream deteriorated. So, when we had covered the frequency range, I asked the lady psychiatrist who was turning the control knob if I could have twenty-three again. She put the frequency back to twenty-three, but this time it wasn’t so good. Also, I had the greatest trouble in understanding that she had given me twenty-three, although she repeated ‘This is twenty-three’ many times quite clearly.
Then the flashing light was turned off and I ‘came to’ or ‘woke up’. It is not clear how to describe it. I was extremely surprised to find that there were only the lady psychiatrist and myself in the inner room of the laboratory.
‘Only you and me? Oh well, just you and me. It’s all quite friendly, isn’t it?’ I remember saying, rather foolishly.
When the lady had finished her research, a man came in to record the electro-encephalogram. ‘For goodness’ sake, try and keep still just half a minute. I can’t get a decent recording,’ he said.
This puzzled me. I was keeping still. I was lying on the couch and was not making any muscular movements. I was apparently floating about in space, but clearly that would not affect him or his instrument – that only affected me.
‘You don’t mind me floating about, do you? That doesn’t affect your instrument, does it?’
‘You’re wriggling,’ he said.
‘I’m just getting comfortable. I’ll be still for a quarter of an hour.’ I lay still for what seemed about a quarter of an hour, floating for much of the time.
‘There you are,’ I said. ‘I hope you got a good record.’
‘You were still for about a minute,’ he said.
The thought occurred to me that since time seemed to pass so slowly, and since my speech seemed at this particular period to be of normal speed, it would seem to follow that I would be able to utter many more words in a given time than would normally be possible.
Accordingly the attempt was made, at my suggestion, to count up to as high a number as possible in five seconds. I seemed to count very rapidly for a long time, but I only got as far as thirty.
The experiment had started at 10.15 a.m. and it was now 4 p.m. We had had sandwiches and coffee for lunch. It was thought to be safe to take me along for a cup of tea in the common room. The custom is to take afternoon tea so that now, at 4 p.m., only one person remained, a pharmacologist who was a good friend of mine. He knew all about LSD and looked at me pityingly. I began talking to him with the boring, monotonous half-nonsense speech I was compelled to turn out.
‘Now then, Bobby, I know I am boring you, you see I can’t stop talking. I am cut off from reality, but one thing is very real and that is the terrible look of boredom in your eye. So please don’t go on listening.’
Back we went to the laboratory. It was about that time I first felt that I was split into two people. The following report is made with particular care:
There were two of me walking down the corridor. The two people were not very accurately localised in space, but the main one corresponded to the position where I would have been had there been only one of me. The shadowy or more tenuous individual, the naughty one, was slightly to the left. We could talk to each other, exchanging verbal thoughts, but not talking aloud.
The main person was really me, but in an improved form. He was a very strong character. He had an effortless strength that I never knew before that I possessed. The other individual on the left was much less well known to me.
‘Why not jump out of a window?’ he said to me.
The invitation had a compulsive quality which was difficult to resist. But just as I was considering it, the main person answered for me, speaking with effortless strength.
‘Of course not. Don’t be such a bloody fool!’
I was delighted with this man, with myself, that is. I thought, ‘I had no idea what strength of character I had.’
Those in charge were beginning to get a bit worried as to what was to be done with me. The effects which would normally have worn off by now were lasting for an unexpectedly long time.
They asked me whether I thought it was safe for me to go home.
‘Take me home,’ I said abruptly.
I was a little worried that I might want to jump out of the window when I got home, but decided to rely on my superself to look after the naughty one. I never told the experimenters that I was at times double.
The lady psychiatrist was to take me home, so she asked me to tell her the way.
‘Hell, it’s up to
you
to get me home’ was the thought that was in my mind. What I said was ‘Drive round this roundabout for about a quarter of an hour and then turn off to the left. I’ll tell you when we come to it.’
It cannot have taken much more time than was used in uttering that sentence to have driven a quarter of the way around the roundabout. But it seemed that that remark took the usual time and yet occupied only an inconsiderable proportion of the long time which appeared to elapse in going round the roundabout.
The psychiatrist seemed worried.
‘Is this the turning?’ she asked.
‘You’ve been driving quite some time now. Yes, I should think this is it. Try it, anyway,’ I replied.
The road we were on was not recognisable, but I had ceased to bother. The day’s work was over, and I relaxed. Actually, as the map showed, we had gone 180 degrees around. I was prepared for the journey home, which is one mile precisely, to seem very long in the car. So I settled down to endure it.
‘Bristol Road,’ I said. ‘When you come to Bristol Road you turn right, then left down Bournbrook Road.’
She did a right turn down Bristol Road but, being wrong already, the turn took her farther wrong.
It was really surprising how much the psychiatrist relied on me to direct her to my home. I must have failed entirely to convey to her my inability to interpret the changing world around me. I could, however, feel her anxiety and worry, and could see that she had her family on her mind. But one of the final symptoms of LSD was beginning to develop in me, and that was lassitude and complete selfishness. I did not care if her children were waiting for her, or if she had a party. If her house had been on fire, that would have been entirely her problem.