Last night, I had one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. I was having a deep conversation with my brother about altered states, lucid dreaming, and all that kind of stuff, when we both began to enter an altered state. The thing is, we were both completely sober. This altered state was induced solely through the conversation we had and the accompanying deep thoughts. When this happened, I felt like I was losing my mind.
I guess I need to start at the beginning. There was a time around 7-8 years ago when I was into experimenting with psychadelics - mainly mushrooms and LSD. But I haven’t tripped in a very long time. In fact, I had lost interest in entering the whole “spiritual realm” (or whatever you want to call it) through substances. It’s only been over the last year since I discovered lucid dreaming that a resurgence of interest in the spiritual realm has developed within me. But I’m really only interested in attaining these states naturally and not through drugs. My brother on the other hand has just begun to get really interested in psychadelics. But I would say, in my opinion, that he has a really good grasp on the psychadelic experience despite his limited experience.
So anyway, we were having a conversation about altered states, trippin, LD’ing etc, when my brother all of a sudden told me that he thinks he’s feeling some kind of buzz. I smiled and told him that I felt the same thing too. But the thing is, over the last few years, I’ve found that by being around someone who was high, or by talking about the psychadelic experience, I can feed off other people’s vibes and feel a very subtle high myself (but keep in mind that neither one of us were high). But usually it’s so subtle that I kind of write it off as a product of my imagination and nothing more. But last night, it was a lot more than my imagination. As I began explaining what I just mentioned above to my brother (about how I find myself getting subtle 2nd-hand highs), my brother tells me that he feels like he’ starting to trip hard. So then, I stop talking and sit back to assess the situation. I began to realize that I’m starting to trip really hard, as if I’m starting to peak on a LSD trip. As I sat there in my couch, the feeling built up to a point of intensity that was way too unnatural considering I hadn’t taken anything that I had to stand up and shake it off. The moment I stood up, my brother asked me, “Hey, why did you stop it?” He told me that he felt the exact same thing I was feeling and that he felt the extreme intensity I felt that made me stand up and shake it off. At that moment, I started to panic because I realized that we were totally sober. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.
Now, if this experience happened to me when I was by myself, I would have to assume that it’s what they refer to as a flashback. There would be no other logical explanation. But, the thing is, my brother experienced the exact same thing. It was as if a certain part of our minds connected and we were feeding off each other. My brother was really disappointed that I backed out of it. He considers it a real waste of a potential experience. I, on the other hand, freaked out. Back in my college years, I would have kept it going, but last night, I had to stop it because it made me question my sanity. But the fact that this experience was totally shared is what now reaffirms my sanity. I’ve experienced this whole telepathic connection with people under the influence of psychadelics. I knew it was real, but I suppose I kind of dismissed it as a “drug experience.” But last night, I really saw proof that psychadelics are merely catalysts that cause certain processes in our brains to get started. The actual tripping mechanism lies in our own minds and there are many methods of releasing this mechanism.
But there’s something both comforting and discomforting about the whole experience. First of all, I’m excited to have experienced this phenomenon. It’s comforting that I experienced this with someone else because it means that I wasn’t experiencing a flashback or losing my mind, although I believe that this wouldn’t happened if I was on my own. Another comforting thing is that, unlike with a drug where you are at the mercy of the substance to take it’s course, I could back out of it at will. But I do find it discomforting that my idea of “reality” has become even more confusing. It definitely shook up my view on what reality is. I also do not wish for this state to randomly come to me in the form of a flashback, although I’m fairly confident that this phenonmenon was induced through some fairly intensive mental efforts - in other words, since it’s not easy to do, it is unlikely that it would over you randomly without warning.
I also have a lot of questions. First of all, what is this phenomenon? Is it some kind of collective meditation or telepathy? Are conversations and deep thinking known to induce alterd states? (When I say deep thinking, I’m referring to something like dream recollection, but applied to the psychaedlic experience. It’s very difficult to recall the exact emotions, thoughts, and visuals associated with the duration of trips (like dreams). Instead, what you end up remember are bits and pieces of the trips, and it’s up to you to connect the dots.) Does talking about the experience and reliving the experience in your mind with a real focus induce the actual altered state?
Also, why was this state LSD-like? Was my subconscious recreating the sensations I experienced during my acid trips? But if it was simply a flashback, how could this have been transmitted to my brother? And how did we end up sharing this trip? Is it because we’re brothers and we share a certain genetic makeup in our brains?
Is it possible that I was chanelling this altered state, as if my mind was a server and my brother’s was a client machine? Or was it a collective effort? I tend to think that my mind was the server because I think we were living my experinces…but it was a collective effort in the sense that the telepathic communication occurred between the both of us.
The list goes on and on…
If anyone’s gotten this far, thanks for reading. I didn’t mean to make it so long, but there was no other way for me to get my point across, not that I think I came close to successfully explaining myself very clearly.
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