I have become a character in, or more so, a victim of my own fiction.
So this is where things get a little tricky, or a messy, perhaps. Reality, in and of itself is a messy thing, but I have gone to great lengths to alter reality or at least my perception of it; as a matter of fact, our society at large has gone even greater distances, and at a high expense to alter awareness. Turn on the TV set or go to the movies. I, also, had a similar, and primary goal with my drug use, once I realized DXM's exact psychoactive effects.
I am just an observer, I am neither pro- drug use or against it; but drug use, by its very nature, is very dangerous and I have lost at least one good friend to addiction. He died at a young age from use of the over-the-counter drugs like I am referring to here. I should say "do not try this at home" but that phrase tends to encourage certain people to do the opposite. I learned about what gets one high and stared to use from reading anti-drug pamphlets in the 1970's and wound up in rehab at age sixteen primarily from using inhalants. I thought the badly drawn guy with the wiggly lines around his head looked cool. Not so much.
Dextromethorphan (DMX) is a dissociative chemical, it makes the user feel as though they were experiencing an out-of-body event. It is a hallucinogenic agent, a very powerful hallucinogen that may cause eidetic and immersive visions on all levels. The perceived image surrounds the user and generally it is very clear and realistic. I had experienced visual, audio, tactile, mnemonic and even, on occasion olfactory hallucinations. Kayako, the onryo, just climbed into my bed. I'm sitting in a chair but I am also a strict German-speaking woman with a riding crop pacing the room while I await the arrival of a friend . . . I could not have had time to do whatever it was that I thought I just remembered . . . That cigarette smell, wait no one is smoking . . . no one else is here.
The world, as I used to know it, is closing down on me, my corridor narrows as a giant star collapses into a black hole; I am barely holding that world together on a loose thread of words . . . a billion times a billion to the power of ten would only begin to count the stars and solar systems, as well as individual planets and moons, that exist in the known universe. Yet here we are.
Many scientists envision this universe in their daily work, possibly using an Einstein thought experiment on their own terms, but one does not have to have Einstein's brain, or the mind of a regular-type scientist to picture the same, does one? And if we cannot pose that thought in our own skull, what person has not seen, or at least heard of, Star Trek?
Star Trek puts forth the idea of the possibility that there are myriads of life forms (many of them hiding from warp-drive free species, but I digress) that have different outlooks and social mores but all struggle together to create an interplanetary society based on the human, militaristic organization Starfleet. Those who have not heard of Star Trek, probably have not heard of Star Wars either, which is a thing that takes place in another galaxy altogether. Although fictional, these are just some of the commodities that have become part of our collective reality.
This endless reality of possibility is presented, right here on Earth, on a screen that is becoming ever smaller, is everywhere accessible, and is probably similar to the one right in front of me. I want to focus on movies, since they are the oldest form of this phenomenon, but scripted series should be considered as "television shows" are streaming on everything everywhere. What a great drug that can be consumed by anyone, but there are side effects. What are memories if not images of the past that have been somehow collected by the fleshy thinking machine inside everyone's head.
What person can say they have not been effected by a horror movie, had nightmares about, or could not sleep because of the memory of some pumpkin-headed green men that came out of a chimney and finally dragged the woman they terrorized down into that ashen netherworld. Or as an adult, looking over their shoulder for a grey-blue ghost with long, tangled black hair hanging in her face, one powerful enough to conceivably materialize out of any corner of shadow. Devoid of olfactory or tactile components, a memory of one of these offerings can effect our current mind set as much, and sometimes even more, than our so called real remembrances.
Science, I am afraid, backs me up on this. Heart rates mount, adrenaline is secreted like an injection from a needle, fight or flight is initiated, pins and needles are felt throughout . . . master makers of the horror genre even use the science of fear to their advantages. The thing more common in a scary movie than a scream? The hi-frequency sound. It is an effect that is often hidden in the musical score but sometimes just a laid-bare noise effect squelches, or sometimes a low booming at the bottom of the normal hearing range is used in a similar, yet still potent, way. Both are as effective as a scream or the ominous future that looms. Maybe these things replace some of the touching and smelling associated with organic memories. But what are memories but past images recorded in our brain and replayed. I remember coffee by its smell, but I will never know the scent of my reflected facial expression, that wide grin of amazement, awe, and relief when my girls were born. I sure the hell do not want to remember my daughters' births by that hospital smell.
The scene shifts as I walk along railroad tracks with a person that once only inhabited the murky depth of my own head. As if by magic, we suddenly appeared at the place we were presently standing in.
A hazy green smoky smell followed Kiki Lee almost everywhere she went, although the smell of diesel and heavy grease overwhelmed the nose. There was also the metallic heat scent from the friction of iron wheels on rails. We were walking almost ten feet away from a slowly moving freight train. The hugeness of a train that close drowned out the scenery, with the dirt brown boxcars, splashed with bright graffiti tags and oil vanquished what our eyes could see otherwise. We walked quietly in the intermittent shadows like vampire ninjas. A solid downpour broke from the the clouds, it was a massive thunderstorm, but we did not care, lighting would probably hit the metal of the excessively long row of boxcars, there were three engines pulling that juggernaut, it seemed to be an endless, repetitive movable building.
So now Kiki smelled of nothing but wet hair . . . strobe flashes exposed exotic and supernatural creatures in the shadows . . . lightening framed the clouds with an electric lining . . . clouds that seemed to be insulators for the torrent of electricity . . . "Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining" (Owl City) . . .so it became appearant that being soaking wet was a good thing . . . lubricating the conversation.
A splash of lightning opened up the pathway to an ancient footbridge that was hung over the railway, it was mostly wrought iron, built to last like most railroad structures; it was built plainly like most constructs along the line, simply and solidly built like a testament to the ages. It was, in fact, a testament to an immeasurable payload it supported, being rolled over or shaking of a nearby behemoth crawling across the land. A basic block structure usually.
That footbridge spanning over the tracks was a little more Gothic than most railroad designs, the main posts were topped with large metal spheres, in between which were spines tapering to points, like a rib-cage made of spears. Underneath, the primary girders holding the legs together were low enough to sit on, that spot was also a good shelter from the pouring rain. Valentine was waiting for us there.
I have a lot of questions for Valentine and Kiki Lee, but they have been written about some time ago so I try to listen intently instead. I listened and looked, thinking, with just a nudge of imaginary desire "Of course they are all fine and hot, and the stuff. I thought them up that way." Kiki Lee is a former porn star whose ghetto booty rivals those of women of color, built like a brick shithouse as it were. Beyond her voluptuous body, Kiki has all, right down to the slightly un-oval face, thick, pouted lips and huge eyes that fluttered when she flirted, which was anytime she spoke.
Valentine is a mysterious, petite Spanish woman, cute to the point that she is almost unbearable to look at; but it can be seen in her brown eyes that that she is an agent of evil when it comes to sex, drugs, and whatsoever else she has her mind set on; Valentine was very down to business when she spoke, she rarely flirts, she speaks in a precise, grammatically correct manor, having a surprisingly low voice, she retained only a hint of her native accent. She is a neat dresser and has the manners of a charm school graduate.
Valentine's hair is jet black, kept excessively neat in a brisk pixie cut, and hazel-eyed Kiki has a blonde, frizzy and unkempt shag plastered with a full can of hairspray and teased to a point that it would make every 80s television actress jealous. Kiki was dressed "to kill", often wearing a short cut and tight classic motorcycle jacket, a low cut V neck shirt (bra straps visible), tight jeans, shorts or miniskirt. Val, on the other hand, was smartly sharp, almost as a Catholic Schoolgirl, minus the plaid. She could have been a "Heather" even with the more modern haircut, or at least, "Veronica".
Valentine was sitting , jovial, like a sprite on a giant toadstool; I turned to Kiki, wet as she was she reminded me of a naiad (Kiki was a type of nymph, a water one at that time).
Reasonably protected from the rain, under the wrought iron skeleton that was ribbed with painted metal spikes . . . grey battleship paint chipping . . . pock-marks of rust as large as moon craters . . . metallic paint cracking like blood veins . . . former evil but no longer scary like a broken Imperial walker . . . long dead but still standing on four legs . . .
Under that cover we touched a small piece of perforated paper to our tongues simultaneously . . . an hour later, all bets were off.
I can remember every hallucinogenic trip as actual "organic" memories, and not as chemical machinations of a self inflicted brain disturbance. My goal, until physical and social needs had overridden it, was to make my reality a horror movie sans the whole death and/or murder part. I have a few different anxiety disorders, so it may seem counter-intuitive to intensify and extend my tensity by purposely raising my blood pressure and heart rate, and experiencing extended hyperthermia. The experiment, under a microscope, worked. Until the broader, "true" reality of having a job and supporting an actual family.
. . . Waking with a of a troupe of clowns that would scare The Joker . . . being in a room full of people that disappear when directly stared at . . . where did that sweet little gal in the black pixie cut go? Was that Christ Himself blessing me with a ceramic box that held some unknown Holy Artifact? Tripping off the last stair and falling, falling to the cement basement floor and arising the next day covered in scratches and contusions. The latter physically happened, drugs are dangerous beyond that potential overdose that is a consistently hovering.
"Don't fear the Reaper", fear my children living without a Dad. Unfortunately the way I envisioned my darkened reality seemed to require the chemically altered brain observations. That was, until I realized loneliness and watching "The Ring" alone late at night could produce many of the same endorphins.
I do mean endorphins and not adrenaline, endorphins and dopamine is released in most people when relief is found after a particularly frightening scene. A small portion of us have "pleasure" hormones released during the scary parts. That does not mean I am a psychopath, I am just wired differently. I certainly have a shot of adrenaline when I watch the Daredevil fight twenty-three bad guys down several flights of stairs in the streaming reboot. The dude is blind after all!
The physiology of the body on DXM is similar to opiates and opioids, although the mental effect is dissociative, where the mind is seemingly separated from impending reality, therefore it produces, as often as not, "internal" hallucinations, I call them mnemonic, or the creation of one's own reality. DMX in particular has an element of a deliriant, where hallucinations may occur that seem as real as the keyboard in front of me. Talking to people that are not there or doing nonexistent complex tasks are examples.
It should be noted that psychedelic hallucinogens, such as LSD, intensify the surrounding world and make it difficult to block out things normally left in the background. That can be horrifying and not a horror movie. A good horror flick can be a reasonable substitute for a dissociative buzz, but a psychedelic high is a taste of another color.
But to quote Sonic Youth " A hundred dollars used to be more than enough551Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBiFZdC0iws
And now a hundred times a day and still it's not enough . . ."
