I put the capsule in my mouth and swallowed.
I had just violated Trip Instruction #1. Never Trip With Strangers.
Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Campus. March 7, 1970.
Crowds were gathering for the Total Eclipse of the Sun festivities. I knew no one.
The capsule came from a guy that was in the Biology class I rarely attended.
I was also violating other Trip Instructions: Don't Trip if you are Depressed and Lonely.
But all of my other trips had been spectacularly beautiful. All was Love. Surrounded with friends. Heaven on Earth. All laughing up in a huge tree in a Memphis park, or laughing as the paintings in a museum came so alive that you could walk into them and feel the wind blow and hear the birds and see the light sparkle as it came through the leaves, no paint - alive.
The question that haunted me all my life was answered so simply: All is God: as close as the cells of my body - not far away. Bliss, covered by the veil of the ordinary. Can I stay this way forever, please? I don't want the veil to cover my eyes again.
So that is what I thought I would experience that day of the eclipse. Another Trip Truth is that, regardless of what you are told, you don't really know what is in that pill or capsule. Each substance, combined with who you are, produces very different trips.
This was my first bad trip. Horror is too mild a word for the feeling. I did not like melting into a puddle amid my distorted surroundings. Trips are never short. Bad trips last an eternity per second. When the day was over and I began to come down, the sun was setting. The beauty of Ordinary was evident now. I wept. Normal was still waiting here for me. Thank You.
The next day, a large picture of me was on the front page of the I.U. campus newspaper. Another picture of me was in the back with other pictures of the day. Beautiful, wistful, no evidence that I was "tripping my brains out" as we used to say. No more trips for me.
I would love to have copies of those pictures.
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