Opening Up The Mind: The Story of An Academic That Discovered The Power of a Trip

So, I'm new to this forum. Perhaps this would belong in a different sub-forum, but I would like to share my experience of how I was able to combine traditional academic learning and opening up my mind to hippie thinking and culture through psychadelics

Yes, it is a long story but I hope that, at minimum, it makes you rethink your perceptions of the meaning of going to a good college and trying hard despite whatever your circumstances may be. I put work into this and broke the paragraphs into smaller chunks so you don't oggle at a block of text. I understand the perspective will immediately spark reactions from many of those in the forum given my background, but do read the rest as you will find it relatable in some way. I promise.


Many of you have had the opportunity to experience the beauty of psychedelics from a younger age, but I will begin by saying that I simply did not have the opportunity to try psychedelics given my background. My parents were far from hippies. While I'm sure many of you automatically will show contempt for this, I attended a boarding school (independent school) for most of my education and lived in the tiring and enclosed world of the élite. Yet... a boarding school, unlike a prestigious university, is not an institution which even attempts to claim any sort of academic freedom. In fact, it is a true bastion of traditional conservancy– the relentless sort which smites even the smallest glimmer of liberality. But I knew no better. For a kid growing up surrounded by cobblestone walls of ivy, guys and girls in businesses attire, and parents that drove me toward politics or finance, the world seemed like an unmarred gem. I knew there existed more, but could it be so different?

Soon it came time for what was, for most of those in my community, the logical next step: college. I was fortunate to have a solid academic experience from a young age and was admitted to prestigious university (think Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Harvard). Yet this institution (which I still attend) felt... inherently different. While many of these institutions remain a bastion of the élite... I began to realize the distinction between those with rich parents and those with rich minds.

I had, from a young age, excelled at mathematics and the pure study of the subject was beautifully alluring. I began to study mathematics more in depth and discovered the wonderful world of the intellectual. Many of these mathematicians make relatively little money. But they couldn't care less. Many of them barely sleep. But they couldn't care less. In fact, for them mathematics is the truest hedonistic pleasure. Later I would find many of these professors embraced some of the values inherent to what we would identify as characteristic of "being a hippie."

In the meantime, one of my close friends first introduced me to LSD halfway through my collegiate career. He had a very different background from me, having been abandoned by his parents at age 12. He managed to teach himself history and mathematics from the city library and applied to my institution with money he had literally scrapped together. Nowadays, thankfully these institutions provided him with the monetary resources to study despite having next to no money. While as a budding economist and mathematician, he discovered LSD allowed him to visualize the complex systems in nature using his own mind.

My first trip was beyond illuminating. I felt my mind peal itself from a veil of objectivity that was clouding it all this time... and I was able to focus on every single thought with a discerning yet confusing discipline. I study knot theory– a field of mathematics concerned with understanding how you can transform surfaces and sets that are connected to each other. During one trip, I was able to see an extraordinarily complex knot that I realized could replicate the folding of a certain type of protein. I was able to co-author a paper on this application and won a departmental award.

Yet... the education I obtained from LSD was not only practical in nature. I learned what it really meant to be happy. It's not money, wealth, fame, or success. For me, it's the ability to learn freely about something I perceive as beautiful. In my case, this is mathematics. For others, acid may help them to learn about who they really are.

Obviously, LSD is not something even remotely appealing to a university official. This presented me with an ethical dilemma I had not encountered before. I was breaking the law by consuming the substance, yet is law's intent not to protect those very freedoms we enjoy as humans in a modern society? Then I understood what, for many, was the "dreaded" hippie perspective. The law is unjust. We must truly do and learn what we believe in.

My friend is now quite an accomplished economist, even while still in graduate school and yet he came from a high school in a very poor neighborhood, had no parents, and certainly no money. He is not a genius. He simply worked hard in the pursuit of intellectual pleasure. Not all work mars the spirit.


I hope what you take away from this, especially if you are still in HS, is that you CAN go to a good school. You are no less of a "hippie" or precluded from beautiful trips while at a solid institution. If anything, learning some of the traditional scientific disciplines is a way to learn about this beautiful world from a different perspectives. Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize winning inventor of the PCR reaction (a way to copy DNA) once said that he doubted he could have invented PCR without his experiences with LSD. It was the combination of his pursuit of knowledge and the beauty of LSD that took him there.

Take a hit. Work hard. Learn. I promise you will find a way to deal with money if you take care of the first bits.

 

It was good to read something like this. I commend you for opening up your mind to a new and alien perspective. Many people refuse to in fear of the unknown and the laws that bind them.

I go to a community college, but I have discovered an entirely new understanding of the world around me after tripping on shrooms. I have not yet had the opportunity to try LSD yet, but I hope to in the near future.

Good to meet you and I hope that you continue to post here.

 

As a mathematics graduate student at a major research university myself, I can attest that many other graduate students have dabbled in psychedelics, as have [allegedly] some professors. In fact, one professor, whom I won't name as he is pretty well-known, wore a t-shirt with a THC molecule on it on 4/20. Only me and one other person recognized it and we laughed at each-other as we noticed! But, it does go on, especially in Mathematics.

Also, mathematicians are heavy stimulant users, which is the category in which I mainly fall. There is nothing more amazing than coming to complete understanding of an abstract structure after hours of trying to envision it, accompanied by periodic insufflation of Methylphenidate or Amphetamine salts.

 

Awesome, thanks for sharing )

 

Thank you.

 

that was a great read. thank you

 

piesaresquare

It is good that you recognise that an experience with LSD is still within the field of intellectuality. You simply perienced what was the ultimate experience for you - a mathematical one. My situation was parallel to yours yet completely opposite - it made me fully realise the trappings of an academic career, and the less than noble reasons why people pursue it. I did not want that.

 

Well hey thanks man. That was a good read!

 

hey, I'm an anti-establishment poet attending law school... so I feel ya, bro.

 

Thank you very much for the read. As stated by someone else, I commend you, that you opened up your mind to rather than just shut everything else and learn the truth about drugs for yourself rather than from what the government wants everyone to believe.

I assoisated with your friend quite a bit in this story. I had to leave home at the age of 13, an by that time I had already started smoking cigarettes, and pot was becoming close to a daily thing. I then moved to a all girls catholic boarding school to finish off my last two years of schooling. I have many memories of debates with other students and teachers about the use and effects of drugs, all falling of deaf ears and hearts.

 

these are the kind of reads that i hang around this place for. thank you.