A Really Good Day(56)

As soon as dinner was over, I tried the technique for dissipating anxiety that my cognitive behavioral therapist recommends. I took a few deep breaths, exhaling for half again as long as I inhaled. I identified the physical sensation of anxiety, placing it in my upper chest and in my throat. I drew a mental line along the borders of the area of anxiety. Then I placed a soothing hand on the area and murmured, “You’re freaking the fuck out, you poor thing.”*2 I took a few more slow breaths. “You feel bad right now, but you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” My chest and throat unclenched. The anxiety ebbed. I was calm again. I was okay.

Also? I had some perspective. This couple were young in the 1960s, when Timothy Leary was spreading the gospel of psychedelic recklessness. For all I know, they had complicated histories with the drug that influenced how they responded to me. In all likelihood, their discomfort had far more to do with them than with me.





* * *




*1 ?In case you’re old or a Luddite (or my mom): Reddit is an online bulletin board where people have conversations about all sorts of things. There are approximately thirty-six million Reddit user accounts, though some individuals own multiple accounts. Every month Reddit receives 234 million unique views (Mom, call me and I’ll explain what that means). AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything.” Famous and not-so-famous people will respond on Reddit to questions from users. Obama’s done a Reddit AMA. So has that dude with two penises.

*2 ?Her instructions were silent on the issue of profanity, but I figure it can’t hurt.





Day 26


Transition Day

Physical Sensations: None.

Mood: Excellent.

Conflict: None.

Sleep: Only five hours. Nowhere near enough, but felt fine. Uh-oh.

Work: Productive.

Pain: Minor.





I have only one more dose of Lewis Carroll’s LSD. The thirty days will be up, the bottle will be empty. So is this it? Am I finished? Is the experiment over? The answer, at least initially, was obvious. I didn’t want to go back to feeling the way I did a month ago. This perspective? This equanimity? I wanted it to continue. But that meant I needed more drugs.

Resupplying should have been easy. I live in the Bay Area, a community replete with people who spend every Labor Day cavorting naked on the playa at Black Rock City. I must have been bolder in my search than when I first embarked on this experiment, because this time it was not that hard, as it turns out, to track down a Burner with access to LSD. I was given a telephone number. I sent the Burner’s friend’s friend (whose name I was careful not to learn) an oddly formal text, describing my microdosing experiment, using the word “Lucy” instead of LSD. After I hit “send,” I started to fret. How old was this person I was trying to do a drug deal with? Do young people even listen to the Beatles anymore? My kids certainly don’t. Would the person on the other end of that number have the faintest idea what I was talking about?

Within an hour, I received a reply. Either kids do listen to the Beatles or, even better, the source was someone who’s been doing this a good long time. Since a single regular dose of LSD lasts for one month, I decided that I would request a few doses. It was more than I was comfortable having in my possession, but if I continued the protocol it would allow me to avoid having to engage in the stressful business of buying drugs every month. It’s hard enough to buy tampons or lube. Who needs the agita?

The source, whom I decided to name Lucy after the product she sells, replied that she could supply the number of doses I requested. She said she would deliver the drugs to me at my home. That was unacceptable to me: I won’t even let someone from Craigslist show up here when I’m selling a sofa; I’d never expose my kids to a drug dealer. I suggested we meet up in the hills where I like to hike. Lucy rejected this and insisted on coming to my house. Against my better judgment, I offered a time when I knew I would be home alone and prayed that she’d turn out to be one of those honest, unarmed drug dealers.

A couple of hours before Lucy was due to arrive, it occurred to me that she wasn’t likely to accept credit cards. And even if she did, I’d rather not give her mine. I ran down to the corner to the ATM.

I had just pulled a few twenties out of the machine (it’s amazing how cheap LSD is—fifteen dollars a regular-size dose! That’s a buck-fifty per microdose!) when my phone buzzed. Lucy wanted to know if I’d consider buying sixty doses from her. I stopped in the middle of the street and glanced around, suddenly fearful I was being followed. I’ve seen Goodfellas.

“Why?” I texted back. “That’s far more than I could ever use. One dose lasts a month. Why would I want enough for five years?”

She replied. “I wouldn’t know how to divide it. It’s liquid.”

I tapped out a reply. “Just put a few drops into a dark container. Or bring your bottle when you come and drop them into my little blue bot”—

I stopped typing.

When I was a federal defender, I had a client, a Mexican woman in her forties, a mother of five, who’d been abandoned by her husband. On a rare night out, she met a man in a bar. He was from Puerto Rico, and she found his accent beguiling. They exchanged phone numbers, and he began calling her, telling her how beautiful she was, how he couldn’t get her out of his mind. My client was a frumpy little woman, with feet swollen from a lifetime of menial labor and thinning strawlike hair dyed the color of raw beef. She said the last time a man had called her beautiful was on her wedding day, when she was sixteen years old.