Free Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan Page B

was not the only powerful stuff Nick knew how to make. After loading us up with all the existing information on the subject, he gave us “homemade” LSD.
    Up to that point our group's experience with psychedelics had been pretty much confined to taking peyote, which was a “natural” plant—and that had only occurred a few times. It was at Baxter's house that we'd had our first taste. Peyote (a cactus that was already well known by the desert tribes of Native America), when boiled down to a concentrate, became a vehicle for going out of our minds. Or, in a more gentle interpretation, going from one plane of reality to another (and another and another). Our first peyote experience varied from person to person, but as well as I can use words to describe my earliest psychedelic shift in consciousness, this is how I remember it.
    After swallowing the bitter-tasting cactus concentrate with a chaser of water, I sat still and enjoyed the initial sensation, a very subtle tingling or vibrating. Then I became aware of a large, inner area of air that was automatically collecting in my lungs and releasing over and over, without any help or thought behind the process. It reminded me of smoking cigarettes, so I pulled a pack of Marlboros out of my purse. After marveling at the ugliness of the art design, a pathetic blatant red-and-white attempt at flashy modern packaging, I took out a cigarette and lit it, just as I'd done hundreds of times before. But this time, it seemed like a very strange thing to do. As the smoke funneled down my throat, I felt a dry heat and then an interference with the air that was already in my lungs. I put the cigarette out and didn't light up another until I'd come down, about sixteen hours later. Feeling sort of nauseous (people usually throw up at the beginning of a peyote high), I went to the toilet bowl and arranged myself in the kneeling position, but nothing happened and the nausea slowly disappeared.
    Since flying off the edge of a cliff or trying to embrace a moving vehicle is not an uncommon desire for psychedelic drug participants (it's not that people become suicidal, it's just that in such a state anything seems possible), just before the six of us had ingested the drug, we'd designated one of the girls, Dana, to be our “straight” person. That was fortunate indeed, since in the middle of our high, we decided to climb a mountain that was close to Baxter's house. Before giving us the okay, Dana discreetly scanned everyone's faces, trying to determine if we were capable of comprehending the functions of simple things like doorknobs, curbs, traffic lights, and so forth.
    She finally voiced her approval, and after stepping out of the house (a monumental move into another world), it took us fifteen minutes to arrive at the sidewalk. There were just so many familiar objects that had suddenly taken on new importance, new vibrancy—and each flower, each square of cement, had to be appreciated at length. Children do this. Animals do this. Most adults forget how incredibly complex and beautiful the ordinary world is, but peyote was reminding us.
    As we lay on our backs in the tall grass on the mountain, each person made a brief awestruck remark about the diversity and synchronicity of the clouds, the air, the trees, and the animals. Unlike the Marlboro package, it all looked as if it had been perfectly designed.
    It and I became
this.
    This and them became
us.
    It was on that mountaintop where I first understood that you and I are only separated by one channel of a limited thought process. If I looked long enough, colors on the same object would slowly change in accordance with my ability to take in the transformation. My usual focused perspective was expanded. Instead of viewing certain things or people as passing scenery, as something inconsequential, the peyote made everything and everyone seem equally important. Suddenly I could see no isolation, no overabundance. It was all just energy, exhibiting