I’m not na?ve. I don’t believe that a single tab of acid would have cured his bipolar disorder, reordered his grim view of the world, made my parents’ marriage happy, but it is not impossible to imagine my father’s life being different. I have a friend close to my father’s age, a Hungarian immigrant whom I’ll call Laszlo. During the Holocaust, Laszlo, then a child, was saved by a Gentile friend of the family, who smuggled him out of the village where he had been staying with his grandparents, to his mother in Budapest. The rest of Laszlo’s large extended family in the village was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. In Budapest, Laszlo, his mother, and his sister were once again saved, this time by Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian former Fascist party member who, posing as the Spanish consul general to Hungary, provided documents, protected housing, and eventually even food to over five thousand Jews. Laszlo’s father, who had been conscripted earlier in the war into the Hungarian forced-labor battalions, never returned.
A college student in Budapest in 1956, Laszlo was active in the failed revolution, and was forced to flee when the Soviet military invaded. He escaped to Austria and eventually to the United States, where he, like so many of his fellows, flourished. A former engineer who came to Silicon Valley in the early days, Laszlo is a venture capitalist and a philanthropist, with a foundation that initially focused on human rights, education, and health issues, and has lately shifted its concentration to mental health in young people. Laszlo was married and divorced twice. Despite accomplishing so much, for most of his life Laszlo has also been profoundly unhappy. He told me that when his children were young they used to ask him, “Dad, how come you’re never smiling? How come you never have fun?”
I first met Laszlo through a friend who knew I was researching and writing a novel set in Hungary. At the time, I seemed to be collecting Hungarian gentlemen friends of a certain age. Laszlo was an invaluable resource, and a lovely man, whose sadness was palpable. Then, when I saw him again recently, I found him profoundly changed.
Over dim sum at our mutual favorite restaurant, Laszlo told me the most remarkable story. Like my father, Laszlo missed the era of drug experimentation. During the sixties, he was focused on going to school and earning money to support his mother and sister, and eventually his wives and children. Smoking weed or taking acid was not something he had time for.
Recently, a friend who knew that Laszlo had struggled with depression suggested that he take the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, commonly used by native peoples of the Amazon. Laszlo initially rejected the idea. It seemed crazy. But he was in pain, and he was desperate, much as I was when I began this experiment. He agreed to accompany his friend, a physician and an expert in early-childhood trauma and its effects on mental and physical health, and fly to a place where ayahuasca could be legally consumed with the guidance of a “shaman.” If Laszlo had any expectations, they were only that he might spend a night in intense intestinal discomfort while seeing wild shapes and colors. Instead, he saw his father.
Laszlo was four years old when his father vanished, and he had never understood why his father had not said goodbye. With a child’s na?veté, he imagined that it was his fault that his father left, that he had been a “bad boy.” That pain lingered into his adulthood. Under the influence of this brew of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, Laszlo heard his father’s voice.
Laszlo asked his father why he had disappeared without even a final embrace. His father told him that the answer was simple: He had never imagined that his conscription would be permanent. He believed he would be home by the end of the day, and had simply not wanted to wake his little son.
Then Laszlo asked, “Did you love me?”
Laszlo found himself staring at a pile of corpses—men in prisoners’ garb who had died, frozen in formation. His father pointed to a skeleton, the only body not covered in snow. “That is my body,” Laszlo’s father said. “With my last breath, I blessed you and I promised to guard you all of your life.”
And then, suddenly, the sadness and longing that had tormented Laszlo dissipated. He understood why he had not only survived the Nazis and the Russians, but had been so incredibly successful throughout his life. Far from being abandoned by his father, he had thrived under his protection.
The profound spiritual experience Laszlo describes is all the more remarkable given that he, like me, is not a religious person. And yet he believes that what happened to him under the influence of ayahuasca was an authentic spiritual experience. He believes that the drug wrenched open the Doors of Perception and allowed him to glimpse truth. He believes not that he fantasized those moments with his father in the snow, but that they stood side by side somewhere, someplace back in time or in another dimension. Is that true? Or did the drug help Laszlo experience what he needed to feel in order to heal?
As so many of the researchers and philosophers with whom I’ve spoken have asked me, what difference does it make? The experience profoundly changed Laszlo. He is happier, lighter, more content and loving. His relationship with his children is better than ever. The pain that defined his life is gone.
I don’t know where my father’s pain comes from, but I wish it could dissipate like Laszlo’s did. However, my father isn’t about to trek off to Peru and puke in a bucket in a shaman’s hut. He’s not even going to experiment with microdoses of LSD. That’s just not who he is.
It’s a truism to say we can’t change anyone, not even the ones we love. You can find that sentiment on a thousand coffee mugs and inspirational Facebook photos. Just as I can’t force my father to drop a tab of acid, neither can I force him to confide in me. I cannot plumb the depths of his soul by listening to his psychotherapy tapes or plying him with questions. I cannot demand that he express love in a way that’s meaningful to me. Though the desire to do so might be understandable, it isn’t fair. In my relationship with my father I am always grasping, always needing. But aching for the ideal gets in the way of the actual. I have resented my father because he wasn’t affectionate like Shimon, empathetic like Fadiman, willing to take risks for the sake of self-knowledge like Laszlo. What’s the point of all this resentment? What good has it done me? It certainly hasn’t made either me or my dad any more content. There is a mutually satisfying relationship to be had with my father; just not the one I have been craving for so long. Got any pressing questions about the Gulag? Curious about the casualty rate at the Battle of Shiloh? Let me know; I’ll ask my dad.
Day 30
Normal Day
Physical Sensations: None.
Mood: A little wistful.
Conflict: None.
Sleep: Woke in the middle of the night. Had trouble falling back to sleep.
Work: Productive.
Pain: Seems really to be resolving.
Today I completed ten cycles of observation, and the experiment is over. The protocol asks that I prepare a report of my experience, and include “insights, advice, concerns, suggestions or warnings.” Um, that one’s easy. Don’t try to cop from a stranger who might be a cop.