My name is Martin.

There is something I know, which I want you all to know.
But before I tell you what it is, I would like to tell you my story.

Since the age of fifteen I have taken drugs, in some form or another.
At first I tried smoking cannabis, it didn’t really agree with me, it kept making me throw up, but I persisted with it and eventually I could tolerate it.

The next drug I tried was LSD, I found it very overwhelming, I never really liked it all that much, but the same power that overwhelmed me, also attracted me to it. I took it only when I went out to nightclubs, never just at home. I always wanted it to end much sooner than it did, it always went on too long.
Then I started taking speed, an amphetamine, as it gave me loads of energy when I was out dancing, it also gave me nice rushes up and down my body, very much like the feeling of adrenaline, it also made me enjoy talking a lot.
Then I discovered ecstasy tablets, which really did give me a feeling of ecstasy, a feeling of euphoric love for everyone, I couldn’t believe the feelings it made me feel.
I never really took cocaine, as it was always too expensive, though I have tried it on a couple of occasions, and was never that impressed with it, it always seemed to be an expensive shortened version of the much cheaper speed. It seemed to me that people took cocaine, so they could get a little short buzz, not only from the drug, but from the telling of people that they took the drug.
I never took heroin, and never wanted to or never tried to, it always seemed to be too dangerous and too addictive. It appeared to be so obviously destructive to life.
Once I tried smoking something akin to crack cocaine, I didn’t like it, it just gave me an immense, obviously false sense of power. I couldn’t see the point in it.
Later in my life, I enjoyed taking magic mushrooms, I found that they were nothing like LSD, I found them to have the potential to be truly magical if taken in the right way.
Though I have taken drugs many times, I am not what you would normally consider a druggie, I am more of an experimenter, I like to try these things out and see what happens.

I’ve never been very good at working. In the first jobs I did when I left school, I used to enjoy watching the clock, I liked to be a rebel and in no way a company man. I used to think people who were hard working and industrious were also pathetic, I used to see them as ‘arse-lickers’. They were something I never wanted to be, I wanted to be a rebel.
My perception of work changed when I went travelling at the age of twenty. I found that without the security blanket of my mum and social security to fall back on, I was forced to work hard, or go without, so I learnt how to work hard, without having to lick anyone’s arse. Working hard was enough to get me through.
When I returned to England to live after travelling for about five years out of seven, I had difficulty adjusting to the lack of freedom I now felt. When I was travelling, the whole world was my oyster, now it was just Leeds. It was then that I started to read, which since my school days I had not really done, and it was quite hard at first, I found it difficult to maintain my concentration, and the books always seemed to be very long, I found myself reading for the sake of reading rather than taking in what I was reading. But eventually, I started to read the books properly, and I realised that books can be fantastic things, but only if they are right for you, they are fantastic only if you read what you want to read, rather than reading what you think you should be reading.

It was around this period that I started to experiment more with magic mushrooms. I learnt how to grow them, although with limited success, but with enough success to satisfy my needs, I could never grow anymore than just what I needed.
Before I tell of you about my experiences in this period with magic mushrooms, let me tell you about some of my previous drug experiences, as I believe they are very relevant to the thing I ultimately want to tell you.

One time while taking ecstasy, I fell and banged my head quite heavily, when I opened my eyes I couldn’t see any people, just the room I was in, which was empty, I then closed my eyes and opened them again, and all the people who had previously been in the room, reappeared. My friend who observed my fall said this about what happened ‘When you fell back, and banged your head full on, with a real ‘clunk’, I thought at first you were dead, because when you opened your eyes, all I could see was the whites of your eyes, I couldn’t see your pupils, it was like from a horror film, then you blinked, and I could see your eyes again, and I was so relieved, because I knew weren’t dead. I genuinely thought you were dead’. I have always found it very strange that without my pupils I couldn’t see any people, and I can still recall that vision of an empty room to this day.

I was once reclining on a sofa in a room I rented in Tel Aviv after a heavy session of smoking cannabis, with my head gently resting in my hand, drifting off into unconsciousness, when suddenly, with such a disturbing, frightening jolt as I can’t possibly begin to describe, a very weird thing happened to me, my mind, for just a split second, became numbers and nothing but numbers, everything that was normally in there, was replaced with numbers, everything that is the thought process and everything that is feeling or emotion, became numerical, numbers flying through my mind with an alarming ferocity and speed, it was without doubt the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, I just cannot describe how horrific it was, or how strange it had felt, it was like being shocked by a numerical electricity. It was the most alarming feeling you can ever imagine. I maintain to this day that if it had continued for more than the quarter of a second or so it lasted for, I would have stuck a knife into my temple to end it, it was the kind of thing I would have been prepared to kill myself to stop happening. It was truly terrifying.

In the same room in Tel Aviv, I had a memorable experience while taking LSD.
I was laid on my bed at night feeling the full effects of the LSD, when I looked at my alarm clocks red display, it was 1.10am, after about thirty minutes of trying to shake off the powerful effects of the strong acid I had taken, I looked back at the clock, I was shocked to see that the time was now 1.12 am, thirty minutes or so in my mind had actually taken two minutes in the real world. I decided to not look at the clock for at least another hour, for the truth was, I wasn’t enjoying this LSD experience and was looking forward to it being over, I was also starting to dread the consequences of being trapped in a potentially very bad place in my mind for a long time – a very long bad trip. After what seemed like an hour of unpleasant tossing and turning, I looked back at the clock, it was now 1.19, seven minutes after I had last looked. All I could think was ‘this isn’t good’.
I knew I had to stop thinking about the time, I knew it wasn’t helping me.
It was then that I noticed something forming in the recesses of my mind, a little black snowball, slowly growing, slowly inching closer, I knew straight away what it was, it was my fears, my demons, all the fears I held deep within, like a dark ominous doom slowly approaching. I tried to make my mind run away, I tried thinking of other things, happy things, but you can’t fool your mind, especially on LSD. And so the black snowball continued. This was now very scary, very dark, a very dark, scary terror about to be unleashed on me.
It was then I did something which really surprised me, and does to this day. In my mind, in the midst of all this fear, my outlook completely changed and I addressed this approaching  terror and said with true genuine honesty ‘Come on then, show me what you’ve got, this is your chance, go for it, as good as you can do it, show me it all, I want to see it all, now or never, this is your time, I genuinely want to see it, come on’, and I genuinely did, I wanted to see it all, I wanted to see how bad it could be. And with this brave thought, the large black snowball of doom started to recede and slip away, and my fears and demons went with it, they could no longer frighten me, they were now just fears, just demons, just simple things to acknowledge, experience and learn about, to understand, not something to be frightened of, just something that had to be dealt with, nothing more.
The rest of the trip was spent in a peaceful state of mind. I found myself looking out at a strange world, everything in my room looked normal, everything where it should be, and how it should be, but nothing looked solid, it took on the appearance of an image, and I thought everything I could see was actually made of fire, though I didn’t know what fire was, just the word, but I knew enough about the word to know didn’t want to touch it. It got to the point where I wouldn’t touch anything in my room, similarly, I would look at my hand and say, ‘it’s my hand, I know it is, but I don’t know what a hand is’, I never thought my hand was fire, I just didn’t recognise it as ‘my’ hand, it was more like an image.

Once I got high in Amsterdam from taking some fantastic magic mushrooms, which were brewed into a cup of tea that was passed around in a small group seated on the upstairs floor of a hostel. When the tea was first passed around the six or seven people sat in this group, I was polite and took just a little swig of the tea like everybody else did, but I noticed that once the cup had done the rounds, and everybody had had their sip, there remained a big blob of mushrooms in the bottom of the cup, obviously most of the others were just sipping the tea, rather than taking a swig containing some mushrooms and chewing on them as I had. The experience the tea gave was very nice, very pleasant, very enjoyable, and the group engaged in nice, friendly, laughter filled chat. When a second batch of mushroom tea had been passed round, and finished fortunately just at my side, I asked if anybody would mind if I took some of the remaining mushrooms to chew on, when no one objected, I stuck my finger into the cup and scooped out about half the remaining mushrooms, put them in my mouth and started to chew. When the flecks in the floor tiles became thousands of scurrying ants, it was then that I realised that I was about to have a strong trip, so I excused myself from the group, and got up and went to my bed to lay down, to relax, and to experience the full effect of what I knew was about to happen. At one point I found myself laid on my side looking out the window, looking out at the top of the Amsterdam roofs and the sky above them, the sky was as black as night, then it was bright yellow, then it was red, then it was blue, orange, purple and so on, all the colours I knew, just switching from one to the next, each one as distinct and vibrant as the last, even black. It was a spectacular sight.
The next I thing I can recall was looking out the same window and having this thought, ‘I know my name is Martin, I know I’ve paid my rent, and I know I’m in Amsterdam’, but that’s all I knew, nothing more, just these three facts. But I knew who I was, I knew where I was, and I knew I was safe, i.e. safe in the knowledge that as I had paid my rent I could stay undisturbed in this bed, at least until the trip had worn off. The next and only thing I can recall of the trip was when I found myself, upon closing my eyes, in a comedy, cartoon punch-up, the classic cartoon fight we have all seen in many cartoons. When I opened my eyes, I was back in my hostel bunk bed in Amsterdam, when I closed them, I was back in cartoon land and I was loving every single second of it. It was the most fun I had ever experienced.
It was then that I had a very strange thought, more of a feeling, I thought to myself “I could live like this, I could stay in this crazy cartoon world forever, I really could, I’ve never enjoyed anything as much as this, if something goes wrong with my brain and it somehow keeps me like this forever, I would love it”. Obviously my brain didn’t keep me like that forever, and the effect of the mushrooms eventually wore off, and it became just a nice memory of a previous high, but the feeling it gave me, the feeling of genuinely wanting to live in another reality, was something I had never experienced before, even while feeling the beautiful feeling of love and euphoria that ecstasy made me feel in the early days, nothing had ever made me feel this way before, nothing had ever given me such fun.

Now I’d like to tell you about another time when I took some mushrooms, though stronger than the last fun-filled ones.
I purchased them online from a website in Amsterdam when it was still just possible to do so, and awaited their delivery. After a couple of weeks had passed I started to think I had been ripped off, I had received no confirmation of my order and the website had not corresponded with me in any way. After another week or so, a letter arrived,  and when I opened the letter I discovered some black, wrinkled, vacuum-shrunk plastic, inside which I found one dried gram of these stronger mushrooms, I was understandably over the moon.
It was a lovely sunny, summers day when the letter arrived, and I split the gram in half and took half, which meant chewing and chewing these acrid, dried little stalks until they were pulpy, and then swallowing. After about half an hour, I took the other half, and shortly afterwards, as I started to fell the effects, I went for a walk. I walked into the woods behind my home, and was taken aback at the beauty of what was before my eyes, there was nothing special or out of the ordinary in what I was seeing, it was just the woods I had walked through many times before, and knew very well, but it was how I was now seeing these woods that took my breath away. I could see the life bursting through in everything I observed, the trees were alive and bristling with life in such a way that I could actually see it, I could see the energy of life, the bushes and saplings had such a pulsating vibrancy, the stream glistened in a way that can only be described as magical, at one point, I watched a little spider in a web and was absolutely transfixed by the spectacle of this amazing tiny, little life form, the sun sparkled through the branches of the trees and I felt like I was in a heaven made of nature. Later on, I found myself back in the front room of my flat, it was then that the really good feeling started. I was, with every thing I did, experiencing the greatest feeling I’d ever had, absolute blissful euphoria, nothing I’d felt before came anywhere near to this feeling, and it just kept getting better and better and better with each new expression of my being. I kept thinking that just one second of this feeling was worth all the other drug experiences I’d ever had, it felt like it was worth a million of those amazing highs I had previously experienced, such was the immensity of the feeling. Every thing I saw was the best thing I’d ever seen, every thought I had was the best thought I’d ever had, and so on. And it just continued to get better and better and better with each new thought, feeling or vision. I saw the beauty in the corner of a table. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me, it truly was ‘high’ paradise, the greatest feeling I’d ever had.

What these drug experiences have taught me, is that it is actually possible to feel this way, to experience these things, to have such a feeling of love, euphoria and ecstasy, so as to completely change my concepts of what these things mean.
When I first took ecstasy as a seventeen year old, I could not believe what was happening to me, I could not believe that it was possible to feel the way I was feeling, I didn’t know it was possible to feel such a powerful love for everyone in the world, to see the beauty in everyone, even people I had previously disliked, I never knew that what was happening to me was possible, nobody had ever told me.
I have taken drugs many times, and many times completely forgotten the experience. But these experiences I have mentioned, have stayed with me, I can recall without difficulty how they made me feel, what they made me think, and how they made me perceive the world, they have genuinely had an effect on my person, on who I am. They have made me feel something I never would have believed was possible, a feeling so immense I never would have believed until I experienced it.
I know that the blissful feelings I had, the fun and laughter I engaged in, the love and euphoria I felt, were as a result of taking drugs, I know this, but I still experienced them, I still felt them, they still had an influence on me, and I have always remembered them, they are still a part of my memory, of who I am.

Now I would like to return to the time when I learnt how to grow magic mushrooms.
I bought the kit online legally from a website in Austria, and did some research. After approximately eight weeks of preparing and growing, I could produce enough mushrooms for me to have two, three, maybe even four trips, not an immense return for all my effort, but enough for me. I learnt by trial and error which mushrooms I preferred to take (Ecuadorian) and exactly the right dosage I should take (3.5-4 grams dried). I knew exactly what environment I preferred to take them in, which was generally just in my front room, laid on my sofa, and always alone.
Whilst taking some of these home-grown magic mushrooms, I started to notice something happening. I would find that as the drug started to take effect my right shoulder would begin involuntarily jerking, not a violent jerk but more rhythmic in nature, the first and second time it happened, it was humorous, and it generally only lasted about five minutes as I was awaiting the full effect of the drug to kick in. On the third occasion of it happening though, it became very tiresome, and I became very quickly annoyed by it, as I became more and more annoyed by it, I looked at my shoulder and without thought, I shut my eyes and mentally said ‘No’, and I meant NO, no to everything, I told every cell in my body that I was the boss of my body and this was not what I wanted and it had to stop. They all listened, every single one of them bowed down to me, they knew I was in charge, they knew I was serious.
It was then that it happened, the feeling flowed into me, the essence of life, life itself flowed into and through every part of me, I could feel the full force of life in all its beauty, I felt the most amazing feeling of calmness and serenity, a real peace in my soul, I felt my soul had returned to where it came from and been absorbed back into it. This was not like any drug experience I’d ever had, this was different, and I realised very quickly what had actually happened, I had turned everything off, all my thoughts, all my feelings, all my emotions, all my questions, all my hangs ups, all my fears, all my ego, everything, everything that I was, was now off. Like I’d turned a switch. It had all been turned off, and life was now free to flow through undisturbed, untainted by my stupid thought processes, and I can’t begin to tell you how amazing this unadulterated flow of life made me feel, it put my mind and soul in such a beautiful serene place, a place beyond smiling, it felt heavenly. I cannot describe it any other way. Just life, pure and simple, flowing uninterrupted through me, and every part of it being felt by me in all its glory. An amazing, heavenly calm, a fast-track nirvana that felt so pure, so natural, not like any other feeling I’d ever had on drugs, this was so different. Then the feeling would drift away, and I would open my eyes and look around the room thinking “where has it gone”. I realised through experience, that after a little sip of water and a few minutes wait, I’d be off again, back into a place where I felt I could obtain any and all the answers from, a place where I felt connected to the very force of life, a state of mind that can only be accurately described as heavenly, and I really do mean heaven.
This was the first time ever that drugs really told me something, something real, something not about drugs, this experience told me that drugs had the ability to show me what life was, to teach me about it.

Now I would like to bring the story up to date, to the present time.
I have, over the years, reduced my drug habit down to just smoking cannabis.
I discovered that by smoking cannabis infrequently, I could get too a very high state of mind, so about once a month I would smoke a strong joint of cannabis, I found at first, this would cause very vivid, pleasant images in my mind, usually as I lay down after reaching my limit of smoking, I would have staggeringly powerful mental visions, mind images and thoughts that always related to questions of life, themes of freedom, equality, fairness, justice, hope and regret, right and wrong, it would always be the same. Then my mind would show me these same themes in a different light, my mind would try to make me believe in an inherent malevolence pervading all these themes, and the same scenarios would now appear very dark, almost evil, and this shocked me to such an immense degree, so much so , it made me rouse from the ‘dream’, in sometimes, near panic. I couldn’t believe the cunning. I felt something was trying to convince me.

This went on for some months, until I wrote something, of which I will come to later. But once the piece was written and shown to the world, once I had let it out, admitted it, it changed my cannabis experiences completely.
From that point on, and until now as I write this, every single time when I get really high from smoking cannabis, I reach a state of mind that is very hard to convey to those who have not felt it.
I am still me, I am still who I am, but I feel a connection, a powerful connection to something so staggeringly amazing, I feel connected to a wisdom whose power is difficult to describe. I feel a oneness with it. I feel like it is the only one thing that matters. I feel such a love for everyone, such an empathy, I feel like I know all the answers, I can see exactly what needs to be done, I can feel all the divisions melt away, I feel like I’m re-connecting with something that I’ve always been connected to, I feel immense empathetic feelings of love for everything and everyone, I can feel the pain of the world, the pain of being distanced and separated from this immensely beautiful thing. I can see why the world is crying, and I know how to stop the world crying, it seems so simple, I know that if everyone in the world could feel what I feel, then they would know, everyone would know, and as soon as everyone in the world knows, then all the nonsense would stop, and everyone would live together as one, in peace and true harmony.
No more divisions, no more hatred, no more fighting, no more wars. Everyone would realise, as I have, that we are all one, all the same thing, all connected to something, an immensely beautiful something that words would have difficulty describing, something that is beyond atoms and matter, something so unexplainable, it needs no explanation. Something that just needs to be felt.
I feel connected to a force. A force which, the more I feel it, the more I know it.

​

My Name Is Martin

(Part 1)