I continued my fruitless quest. I even momentarily considered trying to log on to the dark web, but since I am only marginally more technologically savvy than my mother, who has yet to figure out how to turn on her cell phone ringer, I realized that with my luck I’d probably end up soliciting drugs directly from the DEA homepage. I only ever got as far as Googling LSD and finding endlessly threaded message boards where eager seekers were told by more experienced keyboard shamans that when they were truly ready the drug would come to them. Obviously, these guys were high. I gave up.
About a week later, I received a message from my acquaintance. The possibly mythical professor was sympathetic to my predicament. Moreover, he was nearing the end of his life and no longer had use for his remaining LSD. He would send it to me. The story seemed preposterous, but two days later, I opened my mailbox to find a brown paper package covered in brightly colored stamps, many of them at least a decade old. The return address read “Lewis Carroll.” Inside the package, wrapped in tissue, was a tiny cobalt blue bottle. On a scrap of white paper, printed in sans-serif italics, was the following note:
Dear Fellow resident of Berkeley,
Because of a request from an old friend, you will find 50 drops of vintage quality in the small bottle. Take in two drops portions (5 mcg per drop).
Our lives may be no more
Than dewdrops on a summer morning,
But surely,
It is better that we sparkle
While we are here.
L.C.
Weird. Very, very weird. And yet also kind of adorable. And freaky. I was ready, and it had come to me.
My first order of business was to test the drug. When I began flirting with the idea of trying the protocol, I ordered an LSD test kit. Without the security of the FDA, I wanted to make very sure that what I was taking was actually LSD and not some toxic substitute. Far too often, what is sold on the street as one drug is something else entirely. For example, as the precursor chemicals to MDMA (commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly) become harder to find, hundreds of new psychoactive substances, some of which are very dangerous, are being synthesized and sold under the name. According to the DEA, the vast majority of what is currently being sold as Molly is in fact something else, often a synthetic cathinone (known as bath salts), methamphetamine, or most likely a combination of a variety of substances, some benign, some very dangerous. My eldest child attends Wesleyan University, where a group of students ended up in the hospital after consuming what they had been told was pure Molly. The kids suffered respiratory distress, and at least one of them nearly died. It took six shocks with a defibrillator and an intubation to save that young man’s life. It appears that what the kids took was not MDMA but AB-Fubinaca, a synthetic cannabinoid commonly known as “Spice” or K2, which is far more dangerous. Similarly, toxic substances have been sold as LSD, leading in at least a few cases to death. I was not about to consume a drug without testing it first, no matter how cute a note it came with.
From where did I order this testing kit, you might wonder? I already told you I’m too nervous for hand-to-hand purchases and too inept to log on to the dark web. I got my LSD testing kit from the Internet’s largest purveyor of toilet paper, half-hour dramas, and discounted books. That’s right, I bought it on Amazon. And it qualified for Prime two-day shipping!
Squinting at the fine print on the box through my reading glasses, I read through the directions twice—I didn’t want to make any mistakes. I delicately squeezed a single drop from the cobalt blue bottle into the opening at the top of the test kit and squeezed the rubber sleeve, which broke the thin glass barrier between the drop and the testing solution, allowing them to mix together. The solution was meant to turn bright lavender in the presence of LSD, but I saw only the faintest shade of purple. I reread the directions. Stared again at the solution. Was it even purple I was seeing so very faintly, or was it my imagination? Suddenly I realized what the problem was. LSD is effective at infinitesimal doses. A single drop of pure LSD would contain a massive amount of the drug. For this reason, LSD, even in its liquid form, is always diluted. “Blotter acid,” for example, the most common way LSD is sold, is a piece of paper, generally decorated with some kind of design, soaked in a diluted solution of LSD and perforated into little squares. One single confetti-sized square is designed to contain the standard dose—approximately one hundred to one hundred and fifty micrograms of LSD.*2 If a single drop of Lewis Carroll’s solution contained a mere five micrograms of LSD, it had to have been so vastly diluted that it would barely register on the testing kit. After an hour of Web surfing (there seem to be a limitless quantity of Web sites offering information about psychedelic drugs, including how to test them), I made a decision to have faith that the contents of Lewis Carroll’s bottle would not make me grow either very big or very small. Or kill me.
I took the drug, and went on to have a really good day.
* * *
*1 ?Stay tuned. You’ll read more about how and why I’ve used MDMA later on in the book.
*2 ?Or at least that’s what it says on the Web and in the thirty-two books about psychedelics I bought and neurotically pored over in anticipation of beginning this experiment because I am a good student and an anxious nerd and I like to do my research before taking anything resembling a risk. I haven’t ever actually seen a tab of acid in person. According to DEA data from confiscated samples, the actual range of LSD on blotter is from thirty micrograms (if your dealer’s a cheapskate) to a hundred and twenty.
Day 2
Transition Day
Physical Sensations: Normal. A little draggy because of lack of sleep.
Mood: Grumpy at beginning of day, but by end of day productive and content.
Conflict: Even when irritable, I didn’t argue with anyone.
Sleep: A sleepless night.
Work: Not pouring out like yesterday, but a solid day’s work.
Pain: Intense shoulder pain during the night.
This morning, when I woke up, I thought, “Oh, it’s you.” Not the new-and-improved me of yesterday, who was effortlessly cheerful and affectionate with her children and husband and who wrote more in a single day than she usually does in a week. Just plain old me. About the second day, Fadiman’s protocol notes, “Many people report that the second day effects are as positive or even better than the first day.” For once in my life, would it have killed me to be like everyone else?