Acid

Today I was listening to a short story called "Emergency" by Denis Johnson. The storyline basically is that an orderly and friend find some LSD (thanks) in a cabinet of the 1973 hospital in which they work, drop it, and mostly imagined hilarity ensues. The story was entertaining and well written, and the commentary before the reading spoke of incongruous events, but about halfway through I started getting dizzy and feeling frantic and sick, and I had to turn it off. My day had been productive, but that kind of multivalent productive--lots of computer work, to and from my car, looking at apartments, etc--where 10:00 felt a lot like 1:00. Dizzy, sick, I had to turn it off.

Shortly after he died, I was reading a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace. I got to "The Girl With Curious Hair" (also the name of the collection), got halfway through, and the same thing: dizzy, naseated. Had to put the thing down.

The ride home from Scanner Darkly was really similar, a friend talking me down. And I stopped Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I now own and have still never finished) midstream--I was dozing, sleep-deprived--and had to leave my apartment and walk around the block.


I think I can imagine the appeal of taking acid. Something about getting outside of your brain, about creativity and maybe about giving up control and that being really enlightening. And I think the physiology of drugs is fascinating--it was my favorite unit in Psych, and one of my favorite convo topics when I hung around more with people with experience. I don't know, maybe I would really enjoy a good trip, but the idea of losing control, losing track of time and reality for any period of time terrifies me. Sort of irrationally I think.


I write and want to teach writing. A lot of what I teach is how to pull a reader along an argument--striving toward some kind of logical linearity. A means B means C (or whatever). I know that this is sort of a naive and formalistic understanding of argumentation, but I think that at the level I teach, it works. It feels like I'm teaching fundamentals. But I like finding relationships between facts and arguments. I like putting these things in order.


I had a discussion with a friend (and later with my sisters) about plans. I like plans. I like to know plans. If there's not a plan but there should be I stress out. I don't have to plan, but I need to know there is one or that there doesn't need to be one. I like to print out maps so I don't have to rely on someone else's directions (which I may forget or not be able to conceptualize--you know? when they've listed the fourth turn and "you should turn north along Miller and follow it down the hill" and everything jumbles and you have no idea where you should be? And everyone's waiting for you? Eeeckh), I like to know what other people are wearing (or turn up in torn jeans and feel uncomfortable all night?) or bringing or going to eat. Not because I need people to do what I say, I just feel better if I know there's some sort of defining logic.


So. Does anyone else get jittery around acid? Is this totally neurotic? There's probably something more here...