EXPERIENCE AND REFLECTIONS

E. ROBERT SINNETT

In the fall of 1956 I participated in an experiment being conducted for a doctoral dissertation in psychology.1 Three psychiatric residents and I were administered mescaline sul-fate; the standard dosage used was two hundred milligrams. We were observed and supervised by a psychiatrist and a psychologist. The drug experience took place in a setting familiar to me: the old Topeka VA Hospital, where I had been a staff psychologist for approximately a year and a half at that time.

I was sitting in Hawley Auditorium about half an hour after receiving my mescaline, wondering if the drug would have any effect on me. I am not highly reactive to drugs or akohol, and I am also a bit of a skeptic—inclined to wonder about the influence of expectations and placebo effects on the drug experience and reports of such experience. My first hint of an effect was a tingling sensation in my left hand, as if the circulation were poor; but instead of rubbing it, I pinched myself, and the mild pain had a strange, "not-me" quality to it. The pain did not seem diminished in intensity from what it would have been in my normal state, but it was al-most as if I were pinching someone else.2

Soon we went outside, and with no provocation I became ,overwhelmed with laughter. Dr. M. grimaced and stared at me in such a way as to communicate that my behavior was very strange. I ceased laughing abruptly, and I felt pained, for there was no denying that my state of feeling was "crazy" and inappropriate. It was as if the greatest self-conscious fears I had ever had (in adolescence) were transcended. This kind of outburst was quite alien to my ordinary state.3 On a later occasion I felt an intense, almost uncontrollable need to laugh—as intense and organic in quality as a distended bowel or bladder. This time, however, my behavior was somewhat more adaptive: I ran into the room where the group was as-sembled, saying, "Quick, someone hand me a New Yorker—I feel a laugh coming on1" I then stopped fighting off my feeling, laughed vigorously, and my tension dissipated.

Although there were four of us participating together as subjects, the experience did not have the character of an or-dinary small group. We seemed largely isolated from one another by the boundaries of our separate experiences. One subject was quite nauseated and dysphoric. Another kept deny-ing that the drug had any influence on him when with us, but he was observed to leave the room, hallucinate outside, and re-enter denying that he was feeling any effects. For both of these individuals, the experience was predominantly an unpleasant one. I was surprised that even later they seemed to wish to avoid me and avoid reference to the experience. I had expected that scientific interest, if nothing else, would lead us to some informative, sharing exchanges. The re-maining subject and I did share experiences later: for both of us, the session had been primarily positive in character.4

In the room where we gathered, there was a painting that I had seen numerous times before. It was a very bad, ama-teurish canvas that had been done by a patient. It was similar to the paint-by-numbers kind and had rather garish colors. Even though I remembered the quality of the painting, it took on a beauty that was striking and very absorbing. I don't know how long I must have stared at its whirling, luminous colors and into its cavemous depths. It seemed as though I might step through the frame into another world, in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion.

I checked my watch to see what time it was. I seemed unable to integrate the perceptions of the big hand and little hand into the meaning of time. Several times I cycled back and forth saying to myself, "The big hand is on 9, the little hand is on 4," before giving up. I hadn't realized before, the sequential nature of telling time—it is usually so in-stantaneous rather than process in character. I was later re-minded of my early experience in beginning to learn to tell time.

Time sense itself seemed absent for me, and only that which was in my immediate field of experience was rea1.5 My self seemed like a small sphere within the center of my head. The rest of my body seemed somehow peripheral and empty, as if my self were a pea-sized object in a shadowy, gray void enclosed by my body.

Because of my experience with psychological tests I was exempted from participating in the psychometric part of the study. As I observed one of the other subjects taking a psycho-motor performance test, I wondered if I would show a defi-cit: I felt that I would not. I did feel that, had I been asked to take the test, I might have knocked it off the table and laughed and been delighted to see the pieces fly about. I thought, too, that I might have told the experimenter, "Go fuck yourself!" and laughed uproariously at the funny, origi-nal joke I had made. I thought further that if I did show a decrement (basically I think that I was scared I would), it might be attributable to a lack of motivation.

Goal-oriented activity in general seemed alien to me, and I wanted to be absorbed in my fantasialike hallucinations without interruption. I am sure that I must have been very irritated with respect to any such intnisions. The hallucina-tions were indescribably beautiful and of such a raw sensory character (moving, vivid colors without form) that I was surprised at my impotence in describing them later. The fan-tasia simile represents my most articulate attempt to convey my direct experience, but it seems quite pallid and inadequate as a representation or communication. After a time, when I tired of the hallucinatory experiences that would appear viv-idly on shutting my eyes, I felt them to be intrusive. Neither sleep nor rest was possible, and I had not realized before how much sleep is dependent on one's ability to exclude stimulation from within.6

As I walked down a corridor to another room, I had the distinct feeling that the wooden floors were like the canvas of a boxing ring; i.e., quite elastic, yielding, and bouncy. I also felt that, as my feet pressed into the floor, some other part of the floor must be rising. It was as if the whole floor were some sort of hydraulic system. The ordinary experience is that one's foot yields to something solid. Whether kin-esthetic experience was attributed to an external state or whether the normal slight elasticity of a wooden floor was somehow given more weight in determining the experience, I don't know.

I entered the room, and after a short while I lay down on the floor with my head against the baseboard almost at a right angle to my body. One of the observers thought it odd that I didn't lie on the cot across the room. It was obvious that he felt uncomfortable seeing me in this somewhat con-torted position. I felt no discomfort, and crossing the room didn't seem worth the effort. Later I moved over, lay on a cot, and tried to rest or sleep, but I hallucinated a grid on a luminous yellow background. The grid was somewhat like that of an oscilloscope or radar screen, and it seemed that some mathematical function might readily be graphed on it.

Afterward, when we went outside the hospital, it was evi-dent that my space perception was greatly altered. Although I knew the flagpole was approximately fifty yards away, as I stretched my hand out it seemed that if I were to stretch a bit farther I could touch its top. I stretched several times trying to reach it, knowing I couldn't, and feeling that I could with "just one more try." Repeated "one more tries" didn't negate my feeling that this feat was possible.

During a ride in a car, as we went down Huntoon Street it seemed as if we were in a tunnel and the surroundings were blurred as they are when one passes somethinj.-yery near at high speed (we were moving about twenty miles per hour). One of the experimenters told me that although reports of tunnel vision are not uncommon, actual measurements of visual fields on previous subjects had showed no measurable change from the normal, drug-free state. My illusion was not dispelled by this information.

After approximately four hours, the experience was tei-minated by Thorazine. 'The effects tapered off rather grad-ually. I wanted to leave, and although I was aware of my disorganization, I left the hospital ahead of the experimenters and was intent on driving my car home alone. However, I seemed also to realize that this was foolhardy and went slowly enough to be "caught." I was somewhat surprised that they weren't angry with me when they found me. In this instance, as in previous experiences, I was grateful that I could trust a professional staff to be kind and care for me.

At home I tried to tell my wife about the drug experience, but it was difficult to express myself, and I think, too, that I felt some guilt about having had such an intense experience without her—it was as if I had done something "bad." She seemed indulgent and less curious than I had anticipated.

For a time I sat outside on our front porch alone, opening myself once more to hallucinations, contemplation, and inner experiences of diminished intensity—wanting to prolong the experience. The most vivid hallucination I experienced at this time was of smelling burning oak wood. It was a very pungent olfactory experience. When I queried my wife in an attempt to determine whether this was a veridical perception or not, she said she could not detect any such odor.

What lingering effects has the mescaline experience had? In fleeting moments and with greatly diminished intensity, I have felt the tunnel-vision phenomenon and the elasticity' of the floor beneath me that I described above. It is as though the perceptual constancies are themselves now seen as some-thing of an illusion and an oversimplification of the sensory world. The best analogy I can make is that after once seeing the set for the Bonanza show on location, I have found the illusion of the Western adventure somewhat fragile and harder to maintain than it was prior to visiting the set, where the illusion-creating implements were visible and obvious.

The most important effect of the drug for me was di-rectly experiencing a psychotic state. Although I had had much clinical experience working with schizophrenics as well as academic preparation in clinical psychology and two years of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, new vistas and understanding were made available to me. Hebephrenic, hy-pomanie, delinquent, schizophrenic, and organic brain syn-drome behavior and experiences became possible for me. The temporary exemption from the dictates of perceptual, cognitive, and habit structures also drew me into a vital expe-rience of the world of childhood. It seemed to me that the implications for doing rehabilitation and psychotherapy with psychotic patients are far-reaching. With the impairment I felt, I am sure that I would only have been amenable to a verbal therapy that used simple vocabulary, short sentences, and redundant messages. My disorganization made me very dependent on the professional staff for my well-being. Dif-ferences in their personalities seemed insignificant as long as I could feel they were competent and kind and would set limits appropriately. I must admit that with only such simple conditions necessary for satisfactory treatment, my faith in the desirability of a sophisticated, psychodynamic treatment approach was somewhat shaken. There would be value in pro-viding the student in the mental health professions with such an orienting experience. It occurred to me, too, that the ex-perience might help relatives of psychotic patients achieve greater understanding in a way that explanations or informa-tion cannot. I look on the mescaline experience as having been a provocative, rich source of data for speculation—richer, I am embarrassed to say, than much of my formal scientific research and study. I am sure, however, that it differs in many respects from a schizophrenic state; e.g., the hallucinations seem to be of a more primitive sensory character than those of the schizophrenic, which may be organized and en-dowed with meaning.

1 Silverthom, Lee J., Jr. "An Experimental Investigation of Some of the Psychological Changes Associated with the Effects of Mesca-line Sulfate." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kan-sas, 19 57.

2 On reflection later, I could intuitively appreciate why psyche-delic drugs might be useful in cases of intractable pain.

3 I had not been able to intuitively understand the silly laughter of the hebephrenic or inappropriate affect until this time. Also, I was unaware of the social plight of the schizophrenic, who must re-ceive feedback of his strangeness even from highly trained profes-sional staff.

4 Dr. Philip B. Smith has published an account of his experience: "A Sunday with Mescaline,' Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 23, 2o-27, 1959.

5 What profound implications this has for a rehabilitation pro-gram oriented toward planning! If relatives, the future, and the out-side world do not exist, such planning activity would be meaningless and absurd to the patient. 'The hallucinations and perceptual distor-tions seemed decidedly more real than the non-immediate aspects of my experience.

6 It occurred to me later that the psychedelic drugs might be a powerful technique for brainwashing; I would suppose that after a period of being incessantly harassed by hallucinations, a person might promise anything for release from this state.