There's something about being human that makes us want to get intoxicated. Some want to get loose, some want to completely forget, others want enlightenment. Religions and governments have applied them wholesale, yet the same organizations try to control their use, waging wars and crusades against them, often at the same time that vast profits are being made surreptitiously. They are bad for us yet we can't seem to be complete without at least a trial by fire.
Then there is the choice of poison; that reveals a great about who you are. A simple glass of chardonnay after a busy work week, or a dirty needle in a public toilet? Reading the Physician's Desk Reference like fat Elvis on the toilet, or growing your own? Keeping it legal, or pushing the boundaries? Race, gender and age will largely determine your choices when getting loaded.
I'm neither a saint nor a sinner when it comes to altered states. I like a stiff drink or three and I certainly inhaled back in the day. But intoxicants also have this messy relationship to addiction at about the same rate that addiction has to genetics. I had too many drunk uncles on both sides of the family tree to ever feel comfortable letting myself go too far. My nature is to watch and be cautious, not jump in head first, so to speak.
Intoxication is universal, from Dionysian rites through yage to Bishop Pike wandering the desert looking for psycho-active manna. I grew up right in the sweet spot, when psychology was being sold to the public as the answer to so many questions. LSD was on the front page of Time magazine; better living through chemistry was more than a slogan. People were willing to try to re-wire their brains through whatever means like they would re-wire a hot rod or a toaster. There wasn't a manual despite what Timothy Leary said, and there were more than a few bad mistakes. Charlie Manson, anyone, or L. Ron Hubbard?
'Mind expansion' was a term that was brand new and ill defined. The concept of altering your brain through internal chemistry was added to those of using meditation and exterior environments, such as Feng shui or stained glass. The great secret behind this was the United State's military's attempt to weaponize psychedelics through programs such as MK-ULTRA, which accidentally spread LSD to all academic institutions of note throughout North America, a sort of Johnny Appleseed effect to the future counter-culture movement. Unintended, it was nevertheless pivotal.
The Central Intelligence Agency and other governmental branches never wanted acid to start flowing through the urban and suburban streets of America, but with the quantities that were being distributed for research (of a very dubious nature) and the growing excitement of the psychiatric community, the word was bound to get out. And it did, in a very big way. It's called blow-back, and it has lasted until this day. Between that and the government's involvement in drug trafficking, dating from at least 1946, there is no way that we can be a nation of teetotalers.
It's nothing new; check out the English/Chinese opium wars from 150 years ago, not Britain's finest moment. What was surprising was the length of the generational divide between drugs. Cannabis is no worse that alcohol, probably less so clinically, but it remains illegal in so much of the country. Now with various states and especially Canada getting into the pot business, it doesn't take a prophet to see legal weed, expertly packaged and refined, flooding the streets all over the land. Big deal - the cat's been out of the bag for a long time.
I'm of two minds about the entire intoxicant situation. On one hand, alcohol alone is enough of a public health issue. Too many people don't have the genetic make up or the discipline to prevent themselves from becoming a danger to themselves and especially to others. On the other hand, I don't trust anyone who doesn't indulge at least a little in some vice or another. It is best if we all have flaws, although I can understand if someone who is an ex-addict needs to clean themselves up. They get an exemption for past (bad) behavior.
I have to admit being a hypocrite on the subject of intoxicants. I like my poisons, and I usually know how to keep them in control. The tug of excess only seems to appear under pressure or if I am at the right point on the manic-depressive curve. Most of the time I can keep the monster in the cage, feeding it from a safe distance. I'm sure everyone feels the same way, and I'm sure many fool themselves in the same that I sometimes do.
I was a child during the heady days of 1967, so my initial perspective on psychedelics was as a voyeur. Specifically, I strongly feel that you don't need drugs to 'get out of your self'. It might help in the beginning, but it also might be a trap or a dead end. I was lucky to be an artistic person, attracted to painting and creating music, as well as self-expression through writing. I could get lost in my own head, which is a polite way of saying that I could stick my head up my own ass and learn to enjoy the view. But it kept me out of trouble more than a few times.
There are two novels that I'd like to bring in to this discussion. The first is 'Barefoot in the Head', a science fiction novel by British author Brian Aldiss. The Acid Wars have happened, the military having weaponized psychedelics and pushed the button, not as absurd as it seemed in 1968 when the book was first written. England was a toxic acid land, and an outsider from eastern Europe goes in. He starts out clean and clear headed and the narrative is a first-person account of his increasing intoxication. It is an excellent experiment in creeping the crazed prose style of James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake', unreadable by my standards, into a standard plot. It works if you plow through it, the disorientation overwhelming the reader after a while.
The other book is 'A' Rebours' by J. K. Huysmans, written in 1884. It is a symbolist novel and not an easy read, and it would be easy to describe the narrative as full of shit. But parts of the plot are about a decadent Frenchman retreating to the countryside and surrounding himself with an aesthetic environment, such as each room bathed in a single color, complete with distinct perfume. More than a little precious, nonetheless the novel isolates something we have all done in our lives; changing our environment to re-wire our brain. Remember that black light poster? Or how about that Cambodian temple rubbing? Same thing, only different in scale.
My music videos are done in that spirit. They are designed to overwhelm the senses, both visually and aurally, infecting the watcher by rendering them unable to come up with a way to stop the sensory overload except to switch it off. They are intoxicating without the intoxicants. I want your retinas to be trying to watch three superimposed images at the same time while sparks are flying at you. It is designed to be disorienting, but in a good way.
When having to choose a genre to put my music in, I always pick psychedelic. I didn't at first, until enough people told me how trippy the stuff was that I accepted the designation. Perhaps my entire life is so in tune to a small scale 'prolonged derangement of the senses' without excess intoxicants that I didn't realize initially the impact my activitis would have on others. If that is true and not a self-delusion, than I am one of the lucky ones. There have been a lot of acid casualties along the way.
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