LSD And Looking For An Angel

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“I believe that there is a hidden hero in every man and a hidden angel in every woman.” 
 She calls herself Lili, though that’s not her real name.

 I do not know Lili. We haven’t met— not yet. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure what she looks like. Yes, I’ve seen photographs of her, but they were rather dark and pixilated, and that, I think, was intentional. She says she doesn't feel comfortable presenting pictures of herself in public, but I guess in this circumstance she felt she had to. What’s speaking to me about this odd beginning to what, perhaps, may eventually evolve into a genuine friendship, or even relationship, is that it speaks of a certain humility on her part not often found in others. This may well be a time when I will be forced to accept the person based upon who she is on the inside before I find myself drawn to what I see on the outside. You know that old war horse: accept me for who I am. That’s tough to do when you’re immediately distracted by the costumes, make-up, props, and slight-of-mouth magic.

 Well, Lili, I feel the same way you do. There may well be a hidden hero in every man. Unfortunately, too many times it takes a personal crisis to coax the hero out of hiding. Heroes don’t usually emerge until their host body or someone they depend upon for their own survival is in imminent danger of being lost. No, more often, I think, a man is a hero to someone else without even realizing that he is looked up to. Both of my sons are heroes . . . to me, for reasons I both can and cannot articulate. Whether they ever have or ever will see me as a hero, well, I don’t expect I’ll know that until I’ve floated up to the ceiling and look down on them standing next to my flatlined, motionless body and I overhear one of them say so.

But is there an angel hidden inside of every woman? 

As the brother and best friend to two men whose marriages ended in hellish divorces, and as one who is recently divorced himself (though on relatively amicable, if not specifically happy terms), I’m inclined to question whether all women are indeed descended from the heavenly realms. I guess I see it sometimes as a natural phenomenon in reverse. In nature, a chunk of dirty, soft coal is subjected to pressure and eventually, given enough time, becomes a diamond— arguably, the most valuable gem in the world. Certainly, people have died and killed for diamonds. But a woman is just the opposite. 

She starts out as a little girl, innocent, loving, pure, beautiful— a polished diamond from the beginning —but then, as she is subjected to the pressures of emotion and culture and self-worth, too often she collapses into her own selfish, insecure, immature, and yes, materialistic island and devolves into an unattractive chunk of coal. I’m not saying this can’t and doesn’t happen to men, too— of course, it does —but I think it’s more noticeable in women simply because we view them as nurturers, maidens . . . as angels. When they fall, the thunderclap is deafening. 

  “The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.” — Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

The Door in the Wall Huxley was referring to was what he called “the door of perception.” That is, Mescaline. Like Psilocybin (a.k.a. “magic mushrooms”) and LSD (a.k.a. “acid). A hit of one of these Psychotropics, and not only do you see music and hear colors, experience minutiae in the grandest of ways (Huxley wrote of staring at the folds and creases not only in the fabrics painted in some of his favorite artworks, but of shifting that same obsessive focus onto his own pants and understanding for the first time the magnificence and intricate perfection of the undulations in the very clothing he was wearing.

About LSD Steve Jobs said, “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it.” 

And John Lennon said that while most of his acid trips were good, he had the occasional bad one, also. But then he added that he could have a bad experience just sitting in a restaurant. 

Third eye kaleidoscopic, fractal, geometric color shapes; brilliant points of light as bright as the sun, coming and going, dissolving back into the blackness of non-sleep eyes closed in the middle of the night— when the conscious mind is finally forced to shut up and shut down and let the far more creative but painfully timid subconscious mind come forward. It is indescribable. Huxley referred to someone like me as “the meditating philosopher,” one who “sits there in his island of inner illumination.”

Taking LSD is looking for and finding that diamond, that angel. It is a beautiful, extraordinary experience, but those practiced in the art of “tripping” say that the kind of experience you have with acid depends a great deal upon the frame of mind— the emotional music and munchies —you bring to the party. If you arrive in a good mood, you’re going to see and experience blissful colors and sounds and images, and you will never, ever be the same again, even if you can’t quite remember what you saw and heard and felt. 

So it is with relationships, I think. Love— in it, out of it, close to it, even deprived of it — acts upon the participant the same way LSD does. Maybe that’s what Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music meant in their song, “Love Is The Drug.” You bring into the relationship good vibes and the experience is wonderfully rewarding. You get high, “stoned on love,” if you will. Bring negativity— however long it’s been suppressed, however long you’ve been telling yourself it’s behind you— and your trip is going to end badly. Maybe not in darkness and sorrow, but you’ll know the euphoria you were hoping for never happened and you’ll wind up disappointed and dissatisfied, feeling you got a bad dose or were ripped off.

My trips so far have been exceptionally good ones, even though my last romantic venture into the unknown ended in disappointment. But I realize now that I was under the influence of Love, humankind’s favorite artificial sweetener— a.k.a. LSD— Life’s Safest Dream —and I mistook a shiny piece of coal for an evolving diamond. Better to have been looking for a diamond that was worn down, just a bit . . . or better yet, a hidden angel.











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