FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2008

(part 64) A VERY BAD TRIP ON OSLEY ACID


I had very good luck with LSD until I ran into some of the very first OSLEY ACID to hit Southern California. I knew a film director named HENRY JAGLOM and he had obtained this batch from San Francisco. He had been warned about this stuff and told that it was not your run of the mill street shit that had been floating around LA for the last couple of years. Henry was a bit worried about the warning so he contacted me and said that he'd gotten this high quality LSD from San Francisco but didn't know how strong it was, so if I was willing to test it for him, he'd lay it on me for free. Like an ass hole I agreed figuring, "how bad could it be, I've taken a lot of acid and never had a problem?"

I met up with Henry and he gave me a big fat gelatin capsule of this stuff. Without so much as batting and eyelash, I dropped it in my mouth and smiled. I told him I'd get back to him the next day and tell him how good or bad I thought it was. I then drove to Bel Air and went into JERRY DOFF'S house, he was a lawyer I gotten to know, and where I occasionally hung out. It was a huge mansion inside the gates of Bel Air and I settled in to a small bed room off the kitchen, which was used as kind of a utility room and playroom for Jerry's kids. I didn't much think anything about the fact that I'd just taken this stuff without any information about it and was curious as to what kind of trip it would provide.

I was laying back on the bed and started noticing crayola marks the kids had made on the wall. As I stared at one of these marks on the wall it started to multiply. I looked away thinking I was just getting blurry eyed and then looked back at the dot like marks. Again they began multiplying on the wall and then began flying off the wall into the room around me, filling the air with thousands of flying dots. Pretty soon the whole damn room was filled with literally tens of thousands of furiously spinning dots that seemed to be attacking me. I became lost in my war with the dots, when all of a sudden I realized it was the acid kicking in and that I was hallucinating. I got off the bed and stood up trying to clear my mind and gather my senses.

I was beginning a trip that I knew nothing about and was entering a zone I had never known and was totally unprepared and ill equipped to deal with. As I stood in the middle of this small room all the depth to everything ran together as if the room and everything in it had become like liquid, as opposed to solid. It is difficult to find the right words to explain the enormity of the hallucinations I began to experience. I had hallucinated before but this was completely different. This had an edge to it that dwarfed my senses and caused me to go in and out of deep psychosis. I was completely losing sight of myself, within myself. This will take no more than minutes to explain but it took hours to occur, so keep that in mind, as I describe to you part of what happened.

I left that room, because the smallness of it was unbearable. It felt, and appeared, that the walls, ceiling and floor were all moving in towards each other, and that I would be crushed within them when they met. I ended up in the hall and it looked like it went on forever. As I stared down it's endless length, I had no idea of where I was, or for that matter, who I was. I was just a thing thinking things that had no connection to anything. When I was sure I was lost I would suddenly reappear to myself and realize how powerful the drug I was on was. I had no capacity to control in the slightest way what was happening to me.

I understand that using LSD is a form of giving up control and just tripping out, but this was ruthless. This was like losing your mind and being a witness to the fact that you were losing your mind. I finally made my way to Jerry's bedroom. which was massive, and tried to speak. He looked up at me and said, "Oh hi Bobby, how's it going? I stared at him and tried to speak but no words came out. I couldn't make my mind formulate thoughts and turn them into words. Jerry realized something was wrong and said, "What's wrong Bobby? Is something wrong?" I looked at a coffee table on the floor in front of a small sitting area and watched it disappear. It started at the ends of the table disappearing and just moved from both ends to the middle and was gone, it just went away and then all of a sudden it reappeared by the same procedure in reverse.

I was mesmerized by this visual phenomenon and I guess my silence started to scare Jerry. "Are you on some drug Bobby?" he asked. I motioned as best I could to the affirmative, which visibly pissed him off, I can't blame him because the whole damn thing was pretty weird and I was in his house. He finally got that I was in deep shit and called UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, at the University. He was able to get a psychologist on the phone and described to the guy what seemed to be happening to me. The doctor wanted to talk to me and Jerry handed me the phone. I managed to mumble something incoherent when a voice came out of the ear piece asking, "Are you hallucinating now Mr. Jameson?"

As the sound of this guys voice echoed in my ear the telephone began to melt in my hand, and I remember distinctly, the sense of realization that the guy on the other end of the line was in no way any more equipped to deal with the situation than I was. I sank into a deep sense of loss and disintegration of my mind and recall vividly just plain giving up to the madness. At that point I was sure I would never come back from what was happening to me, and in fact, it took 20 years to get over it and feel as though I had gotten beyond it. I am again telling you something that is intricately involved in the changes that occurred in me during the 60's. I feel obligated to report specific moments in time that I know were turning points for me, and because this trip was so different and frightening for me I increased, once again, my dependency on other drugs. My ever increasing intake of more and more powerful drugs was the eventual downfall of Bobby Jameson. Although much that was negative arose out of many of the things that I have shared and will share with you, in the long run, much good was also gained.