Peg Life Vol. 5

The unrefined marijuana smoker overlooks many glaring subtleties that dot the landscape of full enjoyment of cannabis consumption. The destitute smoker may simply sublimate some aspects of appreciation in order to acquire raw chemical sensation. "Scraping a pipe," "torching a bowl." These terms are marks of desperation to the true coinosseur. If a pipe is to be used, glass. Always glass. Delicate, yet firm. Natural, yet crafted by human touch. Simple, and pure. Giving nothing, taking nothing away. The glass reflects; feminine and phallic. The plant gives pleasure filtered by physical membranes ingrained in solidified bodies bordering consciousness. The will persists in giving orders, out to flooded sensory organs. Heavy weightlessness assists in maintaining motionlessness. And then out of nowhere I listen to Death Cab for Cutie's I Will Follow You Into the Dark and I have a new favorite song and I start thinking I don't know what love is anymore. I think I thought I did once, maybe twice. Then I listen to another Death Cab for Cutie song and I hear "Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole / Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound / But while you debate half empty or half full / It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown," but in moments I am hearing a song called Soul Meets Body and in a similar span my thoughts have swung back from love to psychological and metaphysical philosophy and how the religious demand answers to its most puzzling questions and cannot accept any that are not categorical. Then after rereading this later I figure this point would be a good one from which to segue into the Good Friday Experiment, as I said I would write about it this time because I received some replies. The Good Friday Experiment was a psychological experiment carried out on Good Friday of 1962 at Boston University by Walter Pahnke. It was designed to investigate the potential of psychedelic drugs to facilitate mystical experience and it worked like this: Before the church services began, twenty Protestant divinity students were given capsules to ingest. Half of students received a 30mg dose of psilocybin, half received a non-psychoactive chemical that produced sensations similar to the early physical effects of psilocybin. They were then divided into groups and accompanied by ten research assistants to a private chapel in which the main chapel's service was being broadcast. The idea was to compare the experiences of those under the influence of a psychedelic drug against a control group while in a setting conducive to religious feeling. The volunteers were interviewed immediately afterward, several days later, and after six months. A questionnaire of about 150 questions was given to each of the participants as well. This questionnaire was designed to measure the extent to which the subjects had demonstrated the criteria of a mystical experience. What was found was that these criteria were overwhelmingly more apparent in those students who had ingested the psilocybin. While the experiment is the most scientific investigation into the potentially mystical effects of psychedelic drugs ever carried out, it has unfortunately never since been able to be reproduced due to the illegality of the substances under examination. It is disheartening to know how politics and fear can disrupt and prevent learning and spiritual growth. So to all of you I say never enter politics and never be afraid.

Tony Hawkins missed half the pulpit waving