SWIM lives with a monkey who, along with several primate friends, occasionally conducts scientific studies involving the mind-altering effects of psychedelic substances.

On one December 5, 2009, he (henceforth "The Director"), along with 19 other subjects, conducted the following experiment concerning the socio-cultural effects of psilocybin cubensis mushrooms

(excerpt from The Director's personal journal, used with permission):

"20 subjects were chosen for the endeavor, with a deliberate mix of strangers, passing acquaintances, and good friends--with each subject knowing at least 2-3 "good friends" at the event.

Each participant was informed that, in order to participate, he or she would have to bring either a musical instrument or some kind of art supply.  Participants were encouraged to be creative in this vein, and to regard the term "musical instrument" as being extremely loosely defined.


All participants were also instructed to bring (and wear) a funny hat.


The participants were separated (by personal choice) into the following subgroups:

3 participants elected to stand as the "control" group, and spent the evening smoking blunts and witnessing shenanigans

1 participant elected to insulflate small recreational amounts of pure MDMA powder throughout the course of the evening. *This participant had been invited specifically as entertainment, as he gives fantastic lightshows, and is an all-around good guy* -- (henceforth "Participant X")

2 Subjects each ingested approx. 1.7 grams of p. cubensis mushrooms, which had been made into tea. ("Half-zees")

The remaining 14 subjects each ingested 3.5 grams of p.cubensis mushrooms, also tea ("Participants A-L," "Director," and "Host")

The tea was served as a group activity at approx. 9:18pm, immediately followed by a tour of the premises, as given by the the Host (housemate and close friend of the Director), at this time Participant's X and A also insuflated several lines each of pure MDMA.

The effects of the mushrooms became measurable quite quickly, and by approx. 9:40, the experiment was fully under way. The atmosphere was exceedingly jovial, all subjects engaged in ectremely enjoyable "getting-to-know-you" encounters with their lesser-know companions, etc, though to many participants' amusement pronounced difficulty was noticed with regards to traditional communication--some declared "words" themselves to have become meaningless.

At approx. 10:30, Participant B joined Participant's X and A in insuflating another small bump of MDMA powder, and it is at this point that the case of Participant B became worthy of further study.


Participant B is regarded by many of our colleagues to be an actual "genius." He has held a perfect GPA throughout 4 years of college while double majoring in Neuroscience and Comparative Literature, with a minor in Jazz Studies (saxophone player for perhaps 7-8 years).

Though he had taken mushrooms on several occasions, this was Participant B's first encounter with MDMA.

While becoming exceedingly outgoing for the first hour, his topics of conversation were becoming increasingly esoteric, and he instigated several fascinating (but somewhat difficult to follow) discussions amongst his fellow travelers regarding such varying topics as the perfect ambient household temperature, and the (semi)permeable nature of cell walls - he was most fascinated by how human skin can "choose" to 'absorb' some materials/substances and 'reject' others.

Approaching 11:20pm, he, like many of his fellow subjects was struck with an understanding of the futility of language, commenting to another participant "I don't know what to say, words have just become meaningless."

He then spent approx. 45-75minutes playing the saxophone, which he had brought with him, delighting most subjects for at least the first 30min or so, but many became increasing irritated until he stopped, at which point the friendly atmosphere resumed.

By around 12:10am, approx. half of the initial 14 "full-eighth" Participants had also insuflated/ingested various small amounts of MDMA, and were engaging in various bouts of goofiness and extreme relaxation in the various rooms of the establishment, each of which had been set up to provide a different "experience" (exact details of each room are proprietary knowledge of the experiment conductors and as such cannot be revealed here ).

Following his attempts at communication via music, Participant B requested permission to use the Director's laptop to write some of his thoughts down, and pick some music to listen to.

He chose music well, though he ignored the available iTunes library and began simply calling up songs via youtube. As he typed, several of the other participants joined him in the room, listening to music, talking and smoking a blunt, whereupon an unexpected phenomenon occurred: Participant B was suddenly struck with the idea of using "mixing youtube," but what exactly he meant by that was totally unclear.

He began opening various youtube clips--some famous speeches, slam poetry performances, old jazz/soul/doowop songs, '60 pop-era Beatles, etc--while playing a song with a regular driving beat on iTooons, then using the volume sliders on the varying youtube pages like crossfaders of a scratch mixer--a process Participant J dubbed "reality-jockeying ('Rj'ing')."

A particularly excellent example was his mixing of the low end and beat of the Beatles' "Come Together", the high-end vocals of "Rocky Raccoon," with a jazz pianist's recital in the background, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence fading in and out. It was a spectacular impromptu performance, and Participant B, seemingly in a trance, likewise entranced those participants in the room with what was happening (*SOMETHING NEW* they all concluded).

Participant J repeatedly inquired (rhetorically) when other subjects thought "the Reality Beat'" was going to "drop," finally answering his own query in an explosion of snickers: "Oh, I know: December 12, 2012!"

.............

The following day, the Director found the following document saved to the desktop of his computer: the recorded "thoughts" that Participant B had written down and subsequently emailed to himself, which the word-processing program had automatically saved to the hard drive.

While he had intended to produce a full account of the results of the experiment, the Director found Participant B's concise, single page declaration to be a much better summation of how thoroughly the hopes of the experiment were superceded.

It appears herein unedited, copy/pasted directly from the original word doc:

Quote

THE MUSHROOMS TEA


If you see above, punctuation is useless.

As are words: and punctuation.

They all say you learn and perfect rules so that you may break them. Knowing this, what are rules?

People shouldn’t try to solve, but ponder and progress in understanding.

This will happen if you drink the mushrooms tea. Whose tea?

Let the music and present overcome you with

the muhhhroooms tea (reader please sing this part…what ever melody you choose is perfectly fine.) It’s funny that the reader doesn’t even know the words are music until after reading the passage asking the reader to sing—(is zi the free entity) how much of that thought was because of sound or words or laughter or rhythm or the way my muscles move when they type--.

“It’s an instrument.” He’s talking about the way my fingers move and express against the music. Not anti- the music but against, the way I lean on a tree, comfortable, with perspective.



I could edit this someday, but that would make it something that it’s not. So here it is. Drink up.
MMMMushhhhroooomms Tea makes me freee (I will not end this with a period because nothing ends…Commas till I die , , ,

Periods are crazy. But semi colons make ideas more interrelated and I like connectedness.

He said: “I’m playing drugs like instruments.”

Play everything like an instrument.

Thank you for reading.

That is one of the theories of it, but it also seems to be genetic with certain abnormalities noted.  He thinks in pictures.  Temple Grandin wrote a book of that title and it is amazing how she can design things by thinking through them visually.  My husband does that also- he used to write computer programs and had 4 dimensional models of them in his mind.  I can't imagine doing that.

They tend to be very single minded which allows them to flourish in science/math careers where intense focus is necessary.  There are a host of sensory processing problems that really blow your mind when you think about them.  Some of the lower functioning autistics live in a world where sound, sight, touch etc are all mixed up.

Salat