Hallucinogens – the authorities notwithstanding – will be used from now on
by some of the people to escalate their sexual ecstasies.
by Robert Anton Wilson, author of Sex, Drugs, & Magick
Cavalier magazine, April 1966
Several years ago,
Paul Krassner started a rumor that the government possesses a super-super-weapon known as the
O-Bomb-O for Orgasm – which would defeat an enemy by rendering him into
such ecstatic transports of delight that he
would have no energy left to fight, Naturally, various hipsters, lunatics,
philosophers and other social deviates began wearing buttons demanding lewdly:
OH, DROP THE O-BOMB
Like many
another wistful and mordant satire on our times, this O-Bomb joke has shown a recent tendency to come true. The
O-Bomb, otherwise known as the psychedelic chemical, has been dropped right in
the middle of Whitest America. The initials LSD are now better known than LBJ.
Marijuana is growing in 97 per cent of the nation's window boxes.
Peyote is the only Indian word, aside from tomahawk, that every freshman could
spell correctly on a recent examination at a well-known university. In short,
we are living in the early Zonked epoch of the
Orgiastic Age. While authorities have been wondering how to head oft the
Hallucinogenic Revolution, the revolution has already occurred.
A dozen consciousness-expanding and sensation-magnifying drugs are available, at reasonable prices, anywhere in the country, and there are no specific laws yet against most of them. And the word is out that – in addition to creating hallucinations, visions of God, instant psychoanalysis, telepathy, and various creepy and/or ecstatic sensations nobody has yet been able to verbalize – these potent potions also can lead one into sexual fulfillment beyond anything imaginable to those who haven't had it themselves.
It is this last aspect of the psychedelics that
accounts chiefly for their sudden popularity. "Americans," as
Tallulah Bankhead said long ago, "have
sex-in-the-head, and that's a hell of a place
to have it," All of us are hipsters in the special meaning that
The psychedelics are the answers to our dreams
(and, as Goethe remarked with typically Teutonic gloom: Beware of what you
dream of – you night be so
unlucky as to get it). There can be no doubt, in spite of the attempts of the
authorities to cover this up by emphasizing the occasionally nightmarish side
effects of these chemicals, that every psychedelic is also a magnifying glass which expands orgasm into three or four new dimensions,
A Harvard research project, to quote just one bit of "scientific" evidence, gave LSD or psilocybin to twenty-five married couples in their own homes, and all reported a remarkable intensification of the sexual experience. Such terms as "cellular orgasm," "pulsating energy patterns," "internal fireglow" and "melting and flowing of the entire body" were used by the lucky participants. The report states that the drugs created "profound feelings of interpersonal communion and unity which endowed every action with beauty and significance."
Cannabis sativa, also known as grass, pot,
marijuana, reefers, boo, etc., is the safest, most erotic, mildest and most popular
of the perception-boosting drugs-but
it is also the most heavily sanctioned,
legally. For possession of more than one ounce of cannabis, you can be
sentenced in
Show biz people use it continually. A professional
marijuana "dealer" told me recently that his clientele included,
along with bohemians and musicians, many young office workers, professional people and one lawyer.
The effect of pot, initially, is intensification
of sound and color awareness, together with an erotic tingling of the whole
body. Some psychologists regard this
tingling as the re-establishment of "polymorphous perversity"
(non-genital sexuality), which Freud
thought was born into all infants and
destroyed by social repression. Sex with pot is not goatish and brutal, as it
often is with booze: it is a slow, loving, very gentle, exquisitely intense
experience. Before trying it, brethren, remember: If the state catches you
having this kind of unauthorized orgasm, your rump will land in The Joint for
ten years.
The effects of cannabis last from about twenty
minutes to about one hour, but often seem much longer due to distortion of the
time sense. Habitual users say that sex can be had, ecstatically, at any time after the pot has begun to take effect. With prolonged use, the drug tends to create a
feeling of religious brotherhood with other pot-heads and a paranoid distrust
of non-users; the pot-head never knows when somebody will turn out to be an FL
(fuzz-lover) and turn him in.
Not a psychedelic,
and not illegal, is a drug similar in some
ways to cannabis as an orgasm-booster:
amyl nitrate. A cousin of ordinary smelling salts, amyl nitrate, when inhaled, creates an intense, cocaine-like
exhilaration for something less than a minute. Faggots have used it for years,
and the word began spreading to the rest of us only recently: If you and your
girl sniff this stuff just before orgasm, you will have an experience unlike
anything you can imagine in advance. Amyl
nitrate is known as "poppers" and is used, both sexually and
non-sexually, on many college campuses. Medical authorities regard it, like
pot, as harmless. These are grade
school level in the psychedelic hierarchy, however. High school is peyote,
psilocybin and mescaline. (Reform school, to follow the metaphor until it
staggers, is Jimson weed, yage and belladonna.)
Peyote, a cactus, and psilocybin, a
derivative from a mushroom, have been used in
The effects are approximately the same whether one uses
peyote, mescaline or psilocybin, although there is some tendency toward side
effects of nausea with peyote. The experience lasts from six to twelve hours, and, typically, includes anxiety, bolts of quick terror, beautiful hallucinations, telepathy, sudden self-insights, moments when "time stops" and you dwell
in Eternity, space-disorientations, and a growing sense of tranquility and love
for all living creatures. The body-tingle, or general eroticism, of cannabis
also appears and much stronger and with more benevolence in a peyote or
psilocybin high.
The pot-head feels
sexy; the peyote user, more likely, will
become loving, and sex will only be part
of the feeling. Experienced voyagers say that peyote sex is superb,
much better than pot-sex, but should not be started until late in the
"trip" – earlier hallucinations are apt to destroy one's ability to focus on the loved person. By the fifth or sixth
hour, when the hallucinations have passed and typically benevolent tranquility
has begun, sex – with a truly compatible partner – is an unspeakably sacred and
ecstatic experience. Sex with an incompatible partner can send you spiraling
back into hallucinations or anxiety.
Psilocybin and mescaline are illegal, but they are
not under the control of the Harrison Act and hence do not concern the U.S.
Narcotics Bureau. The dangers of getting busted are small unless you make a lot
of noise and the neighbors call the gendarmes. Peyote is legal every-where,
except in
Jimson weed, belladonna and yage
(pronounced yah-hay) are the Vietcong of the psychedelic world. Three kids were
arrested in
A dose of belladonna
that's safe for one person can be fatal for
another, which is one more reason for avoiding this kick. It is noteworthy, however, that belladonna was used in the
medieval period as a sex-booster by the so-called "witches."
Morning-glory seeds, which are coming into wide
use, are the college-level in the
psychedelic hierarchy. The varieties that cause sensation-magnification and
mind-expansion are Heavenly Blue, Pearly Gates, Flying Saucers and Wed-ding
Bells. A hundred seeds are said to be perfect for a sexual "trip"
(200 take you into hallucinatory and religious experience; 250-500 will bring
you all the way to ego-loss and the heights of mysticism; above 500 is
dangerous).
On 100 Heavenly Blue seeds, erotic sensitivity becomes acute all over the body, color and form take on new beauty and "depth," and everything appears profoundly meaningful, in a definitely religious sense. This is a surprisingly "cool" experience – cool as heroin and other addictive drugs are cool – and lacks the nervous, rapidly "flowing" emotional tone of peyote, psilocybin and LSD. It is an experience "of the mountains," of clarity and calm and clear air, with profoundly pantheistic tranquility at the heart of it. Orgasm becomes more an act of giving than of taking – an act of giving in, of surrender in the widest sense, of happening rather than doing. The seeds are legal everywhere.
Lysergic acid
diethylamide tartrate-25, or LSD, is post-graduate work. It is the best, and
most dangerous, of all psychedelics. It is the joker in the pack, acting
sometimes like the seeds, some-times like belladonna or Jimson weed, sometimes like peyote, and frequently acting
like nothing ever recorded before even in its own weird history. It has cured schizophrenia, alcoholism, criminal psychopathy, frigidity, and, it has been said, even cancer,
in some cases and has been ineffective against them all in others; it has
created the most mystical and God-centered of all psychedelic experiences; it
has often led to temporary psychotic
breakdowns; a few people have been driven to suicide by it. Nobody
should ever try it without professional supervision. LSD is illegal
throughout the nation, but easily available in cubes retailing for $3 to $7 in
most big cities through extra-legal sources. The morning-glory seeds can be
purchased legally anywhere, and $1 will buy enough for a hundred-seed
sex-jaunt, or you can grow your own. Belladonna can be purchased, in various
medicines, at drugstores, and $1.50 can buy ten "trips." Jimson weed
you have to find growing wild. Yage, imported from
These prices are
especially remarkable when you remember that
an alcohol-head, not necessarily an alcoholic but a "heavy
drinker," can spend $15 to $25 a week on his habit, and an addict of
heroin call quickly reach the stage of enslavement where his need costs him
$65, or more, per day.
Psychedelic prices are misleading, be-cause hardly
anybody, except pot-heads, ever wants to take more than one or two
"trips" per month. The afterglow and the intellectual stimulation
always take a few weeks to wear off, and you just are not interested
in another "trip" for a while.
Such a cheap Instant Transcendence, obviously, is
not going to be effected by laws or persecutions anymore than booze was
affected by the Volstead Act. The Psychedelic Revolution has occurred; society
is going to have to learn to live with the fact that a certain not-very-small
minority is hereinafter going to insist on, and practice, the right to make
them-selves more sensitive than the majority, both erotically and otherwise.
The O-Bomb has fallen, right in our midst.
____________________
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