Chapter - 19. Epilogue

Chapter - 19. Epilogue
I had begun my detox and was down to virtually nil. My system must have been saturated as withdrawall wasn't to fully kick in for another week. I had stayed with Lipton. Regained sanity. Enjoyed the beautiful countryside round Leominster. I left Frome and my business in a psychotic condition. I apologise for anyone I offended, particularly clients and work colleagues. I had become quite ill from drugs and only by engineering a madness and irresponsibility could I ever hope to escape my addictions. Each year I wanted to stop but an endless flow of good work and financial responsibility meant I could never take sufficient time out to undergo a proper recovery. At best I would take a fortnight to sellotape together breakages then return to battle on. A year is needed, more sometimes, to reprogramme habits built up over decades. But I was close to death. Increasingly careless. I believe I would not be here had I continued.
With most drug freinds there is only the drugs you have in common. With Lipton our interests were often shared. We had also found our freindship transcended drugs. I think we always knew that but until you are straight you can never be sure. I had abandoned my business despite having work. Burnt bridges. Addiction encompasses all you do. To escape you must change even things that seem unrelated. Whilst making furniture I had always done some drug or drank a lot. The two, like it or not we're entwined. It was my pride and joy, from where I gained respect and self respect. But I had to abandon it to be safe. This maybe hard for some to understand but association with the oddest of things triggers relapse. Certain roads, certain people, certain books, my whole life including my furniture business reminded me of drugs. I hope one day to refind a way to make that doesn't trigger habitual behaviour patterns. In truth, I had become very disillusioned with the designer maker movement. The early days of the seventies; John Makepeace, Rupert Williamson, Fred Baier, Jeremy Broun, Alan Peters and a few others had inspired me, each had their own distinct style. The generation that followed took fine making to an extreme. An obsession and lost sight of the bigger picture. Over crafting is a kind of poor or bad craftsmanship. Betty Norburys series of books and exhibitions proudly advanced the idea that design was subjective, the work promoted chosen only on quality of making. The colleges steered a generation to look inward and a homogenisation took place. Further, Internet forums, discussion groups, be they paedophiles, gamekeepers or furniture makers form sealed communities where value systems can grow perverse. Away from the everyday chance meetings of the real world, where values are questioned, these groups grow deeper into perversity and obsession. I felt my work had no place here amongst those of my peers on a quite different journey. I needed to escape.
I didn't do it as well as I could. I insulted clients, other makers, but I was mad and fighting for my life.
After liptons I went to leeds. Walking in my old stomping ground was grounding. I stayed with one of my oldest and dearest freinds. He too has had substance issues blight his life. It was through the self awareness from the new lysergics that I was able to see what I had become. These are sacramental substances. The basis of my shamanic religion. It was where I began with drugs. I abandoned them in my teens. Thirty years later, having struggled with depression and addictions for years I discovered AL -LAD and to a lesser import 1p-LSD. These are both less demanding than LSD25. Through a few trips I was able to see myself. See what I had become. These are not to be confused with other drugs. No one need take them often.my last trip was two months ago and I am still working out all it meant. Maybe down to the low levels of endorphins or GABA from my early withdrawall something happened that I have never experienced before.
I had had profound insights in my teens were I took somewhere in the region of 1000 mushroom trips and 70 odd LSD trips. Yet only a dozen had I managed to overcome the anxiety and fully let myself be taken.
After a thirty year hiatus I found new more advanced lysergics were now being created at the top end of the research chemical market. LSZ sounded exciting so I tried this. It was pleasant, u stressful but not mind blowing. Then I tried AL -LAD. First time I compared it to acid. But it takes a while to learn a new drug, to throw off preconceptions, to stop comparing. Seldom is a first experience with any drug revealing. You don't know what to look for, correct dosage, best administration method. It was ultimately to cure my addictions, deliver a religious experience that changed my entire outlook on everything. Sadly now illegal, banded in blindly with other drugs.
I have not taken it since nor feel yet ready to such was its total inversion of all my fixed points of belief. I had been to a freinds party and three of us, old and trusted freinds drifted off. Two of us took AL-LAD. My freind is agrophobic but I find it hard to remain indoors. It was a lovely evening so me and chris took my dog to the woods. I was enjoying a strong trip in total relaxation. Zero anxiety. Suddenly this experience expanded tenfold and I lost any sense of myself as an individual. I had read Peter Russell's ideas on consiousness but wasn't thinking of these ideas. I became one with the planet. I underwent ego loss, loss of self. I became first part of the trees, then their underground root base, I became lost and at one with the molecules that make up the soil. My consiousness blended with everything. I could be the river, a particle of water, a wave or ripple, a stone or fish. The plants were me. The trees were me. I could be anywhere. Standing, or rather disembodied, looking down from high above. Or enter any part. I saw how everything connected, that it was all consious and I was a part of that consiousness.
For two years I had read neuroscience. Psychology. How the mind was emergent from brain. I took a materialist view. Yet this experience showed that this may not be so. Still I struggle to accept this. That consiousness is in and of everything. That there is no individual self. No seperation.
This is utterly contradictory to all I once believed. Still I struggle to accomodate this learning. This religious experience has changed everything for me.
I feel that this substance could cause a paradigm shift in human consiousness. Many will fear to take it but it is no test, like acid. I have never had a worried moment on it. The freedom to let your mind be taken, be shown this higher truth renders all competitive machinations a joke. We are not seperate. Individuality is an illusion. For many years the idea of the individual has grown, in politics, in art. Winning, success all seem so silly once this is known.
To put this in to words when all our language presupposes a different paradigm is very difficult. I am evangelical about AL-LAD. LSD, with its soul testing and heaven and hell reputation was never going to cause the evolutionary step forward many sixties idealists hoped for. But this can. When it became illegal the window closed. It is made from LSD, four fifths is lost. LSD is a known product so why would anyone throw away four fifths to create a substance few know of. Psychedelics are the most harmless of drugs. They are also the most illegal. What are the authorities afraid of? Transcendence? The numinous? Or do these substances reveal a truth. Can they unveil reality and show us for a moment how it really is. This is what shamans believe. Reality is hidden from us. Who wouldn't want a peep at the truth.
We still live as though the fixed pillars from which we construct our perspective are external givens. Time, space etc. But as science progresses time becomes no longer fixed but a subjective experience. Matter is proving to be problematic. Quantum mechanics reveals mostly there is little there. It takes an observer for matter to decide whether it is a wave or a particle. We need step back. All we know for certain is we are consious. All we know is through the lens of our consiousness. Our eyes transmit information to the brain that forms a workable approximation of reality. We never see what is there, only constructs made by our brains. It seems wiser to take consiousness as the given and accept our pillars are not so real.
There is a lot of mention of drugs in this story. I would like to draw a clear line between psychedelics and other drugs. Psychedelics generally are taken in microscopic amounts, are rarely poisonous, cause little harm, few deaths, and in recent studies any connection between mental illness and psychedelics has been disproved. Psychedelics are now again being researched; as working cures for long term depression, addiction, PTSD, for terminally ill patients in the acceptance of death. They should be licensed but available.
All other drugs are different. My great mistake in life arose from societies grouping together of drugs. It was psychedelics that interested me as an adolescent. I experimented with other drugs as they were bracketed together. Now, as a recovering addict I find it is once again psychedelics that have cured me. To have lived a life without a significant psychedelic experience is akin to have never fallen in love, never to have made love. Such is the importance of the experience. They are not to be taken lightly. An experienced tutor or shaman should be around. Set and setting are crucial. Still many will be buying trips alongside pills at festivals and enduring problematic taxing experiences. The sooner we have these drugs culturally disconnected from all others, the sooner we can learn as a culture the vastness of what they have to offer. The world steams headlong into destruction as world leaders and business leaders are unable to look from another angle. I see their collective madness, psychedelics could be the key, allowing them to see for themselves. Mankinds greatest hope AL-LAD, DMT.

Lipton remains itinerant living at various sites across Britain. Drug free he still enjoys a drink.

Skree lives in a campervan and moves around the south west and north east. Fully recovered from addiction he still uses ceremonial psychedelics on special occasions.

Jesus lives amongst the homeless and alcoholic around the Glastonbury area usually operating now under a different name.

Jesse Presleys whereabouts remain a closely guarded secret.

Ely Presley is king in waiting and leads jesses legion

Elmer Presley is working on his doctoral thesis on hydroponic strains of marijuana

The Archangel Peter Gabriel is a puff.


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