From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 38) Into And Past The 1,000 Mile Journey Date: 1996/11/23 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 38) INTO AND PAST THE 1,000 MILE JOURNEY. PEOPLE USE RECREATIONAL MIND/BODY ALTERING CHEMICALS to change their inner state. From some points of view, that's the beginning and end of the story. I don't think I need to point out that from other points of view, it's more complex then that, do I? Well, let's hang with the simpler premise. We do recreational drugs to change our state. WHY? Simple answer. It feels better. It lubricates the machine in a way that makes life more interesting, palatable, exciting, fun, and meaningful. And of course we all know that for those of us that cross the line into hard core addiction or alcoholism, the payoff is anything but the initial joys of first time usage. But I was determined to get the brass ring. It just took a lot longer to get it. As I relayed in my last story, I was sure that there was lots more to what we normally can perceive and enjoy in this life. I was sure that some of the more interesting states that were generated by LSD and other drugs could be had without the drugs. This became the basis of the TURMOIL that finally, luckily led me out of the mess. After my first decent into heroin addiction, I "caught myself" at around age 20 and gave it a rest for a few years. This was a chance for me to explore "states" without drugs. I read everything that was available at the time. This was the beginning of an avalanche of information that was starting to trickle through life about the growth and expansion of human consciousness. The markets in the West were getting their first real blush with the philosophies of the East. Yoga, meditation, Sufism, Gurdjieff/Ospensky, Zen were all become more or less common knowledge here in America. But what could you do with such information. If reading a book or two would get it, I would have gotten it by now. The hint was that more lucid and higher levels of functionality were possible. The sales pitch was that there was a way to get in touch with areas of consciousness that were not normally available. It was part of the old paradigm of our only using a fraction of our available brain power. However it was couched, behind whatever religious/philosophical hoopla it was presented in, the golden thread was that it was possible. This presented difficulties not originally counted on, by those that sought this information. How to do it? Could you do it by yourself? If not, who were you going to go to in order to learn it? This last one, in and of itself, brought even more problems to the playing field. Just because someone said they "knew," did they really? How many times have we read stories of people being duped, by some religion or cult. I don't think I need to mention the names like Rajaneesh, The Maharishi, Jimmy Jones, Tim Leary, Ram Dass, etc., that are now part of the American vocabulary. Back then it was a new playing field. The shams in the enlightenment business were not yet known. Plus they had a very naive and willing audience: The American baby boomer generation. I decided to go it alone at that time. I took what I could from some of the writings back then and attempted to see if I could make any of it work. Yeah, I was clean at the time. And yeah, I felt pretty good at the time. But I longed for the intensity of feeling and perception that drugs like LSD, Cocaine and Heroin could provide so easily. I didn't just want to "get high." I wanted to "be high." As much as possible. Here I use the word high, to mean an ecstatic, lucid, conscious, feel good state. I began a series of meditations. I started doing various yoga practices, along with certain breathing exercises. I pushed my system to the limit, by doing what are now called aerobic activities. I attempted to focus my attention on what I was doing, and not let it wander into daydreams of the past or the future. I changed my diet to one that was mostly vegetarian. All these things brought new shocks to the system. And after a while, changes started to happen. For the first time, I was able to maintain a level of functioning and consciousness that was in many ways better than any drug I had done. It was like taking an electrical system that was normally only able to handle 100 watts of power and increasing it's output to a 1,000 watt capacity. It worked. But something was still missing. What was missing I could not understand. It was not possible at the time to get to it. The journey of a 1,000 miles was going to go past the 1,000 mile limit. I just didn't know it yet. In time, my efforts died down. I was back to being ME again. I was back to all the minute things that are so carefully interconnected inside a person, that make them recognizable to themselves. And for me, this of course was soon to lead back to the easy way out again. Within a year or so of making these efforts I was back to thinking it was okay to fuck with drugs again. First, some pot. Then a few LSD trips and finally back to heroin once again. The second fall was even more of a bitch than the first. I didn't know it yet, but the second, third, fourth, fifth fall etc., are always harder than the first one. More "adventures" lay ahead. It's a good thing I had a sense of humor in all this or I would surely have been done for. Back then, I was starting to acquire a "panoramic" view of things that was letting me see wider bands of time and space then just the moment I was in. It was the beginning of finding out what was "missing" during the peak non-drug experiences of a year earlier. So the "turmoil" was back again. And it drove me forward or backward depending on how you want to look at it. It would be a few more years before I could take another stab at doing what I originally set out to do, in a drug free state. But what the hey? In the greater scheme of things, one more shot of dope, one more life, didn't matter one way or the other. I just thought it did. Copyright Gizmo 1996