I found this article on how single doses of hallucinogens can cause significant changes in personality a while ago and it has been popping up in my head every so often since. I’ve been told that weed/marijuana/pot/dank/what-have-you is an hallucinogen, and I tend to believe the information though I haven’t done any research on it myself since I am prone to auditory hallucinations when high. I get trapped in my head most of the time, and usually end up apologizing for being quiet (which my boyfriend scoffs at – he usually ends up apologizing for “talking my ear off”), but I’ve come to a few realizations since I began smoking/ingesting.
I got really stuck on the concept of death not too long after I started (mind you I started a little over a year ago – late bloomer here) and was often terrified and awestruck circling the idea of “nothing.” When rejecting the idea of an afterlife, which for a while has felt less and less real, how do you quantify “nothing?” How do you imagine being dead? Ant and I had a few conversations on the subject while I was going through this phase. He doesn’t understand why people fear death so much and when I said it was a scary concept he laughed a little and asked why. I answered by saying it wasn’t like a video game and not knowing was scary. He was very happy to point out that it was like a video game. Your character dies and for him it’s over. That whole section was gone, kaputz, game over, black screen, return to previous save. But he was wrong, because I am not the character. It doesn’t matter how involved the game is, whether or not you have save points to return to or if you have to start over at the beginning, how emotionally connected to your characters you are, when GAME OVER flashes I am still here. In my video game I am not the character, I am GOD! A little dramatic, but true. I made my point, he conceded, cheerful as ever.
Still, I suddenly find myself more connected to these ideas than I ever have been. I used to tell my friends that I was blessed with the ability to NOT visualize things, things that tended to make them cringe (spectacularly ugly people or their parents having sex for instance). But that has changed.
I feel like my world is suddenly in 3D, and the backdrop that was once projected onto a screen before me has come to life. I looked up yesterday and saw birds flying and felt for the first time that they were suspended in air. I know it sounds elementary, really the most basic of basic concepts, and I didn’t realize that I hadn’t thought about it until that very second, but I don’t think I ever had. I was absolutely sober in that instant. It was beautiful.
When I’m high this happens repeatedly, quickly and I can’t verbalize it at all. The ideas slip away too rapidly and aren’t at all relevant to what the people surrounding me are doing, and my mouth and throat just don’t function the way they should. They hit me again later when I’m sober and it’s like walking into a wall of cold air. I’d like to think this is for the better, and that these thoughts are a sign of some enlightenment that I am working towards, that maybe in this gray area of young/mid adulthood I am becoming a better person than I once was, but who can say?
Traipsing Through the Void 