YAGE IN THE VALLEY OF FIRE

PETER STAFFORD

The four of us, heading out to the desert to get high together, had little more in mind than a feeling that we'd enjoy sharing an intense experience. Ed had picked up some yage a few days before from a man of diverse interests. I don't think any of us knew much about this, other than that it was from an exotic plant—possibly even a bark or a vine—from somewhere in South America, and that it had psychedelic properties. Each of us had had experience with psychedelics and was confident about handling mind drugs. We knew little about this one, but anticipated an exciting time together, whatever its effects might be.

We chose Las Vegas because we had heard glowing reports about a beautiful desert setting nearby called the Valley of Fire. When we got there, we saw that it was much more fantastic than any of us had really expected. Everywhere were monuments of reddish-gold pumice, striated by blues and purples and scarlets. The volcanic formations rose abruptly from the level valley floor, scattered here and there as though cast by the wind. Every rock seemed hand-carved into animal or other suggestive shapes, which the highway department had marked by signs along the road. We found that several crags were decorated with ancient Indian hieroglyphics. We also stumbled upon a small adobe dwelling, empty and cool inside.

We had heard that yage made the user feel somewhat nauseous, so Ed suggested we start our trip on a small amount of LSD he had brought along. By beginning with the acid, we hoped to minimize the early disagreeable effects.

After taking the yage, I very quickly found myself deeply involved with paradoxical trains of thought, swirling through an immense grab bag of flowering, exploding ideas. I became completely absorbed by my past, by the past of the race, and went tumbling and tobogganing through the ages of man. Feelings of sadness, then great excitement and joy. Physically, about all I could do was to look over at the others and smile. They seemed to be having much the same thing happen to them.

We spent a good deal more time whirling about in our private thoughts. Then someone suggested that we go swimming at the deserted oasis we had located earlier that morning. With that, we all rushed to the car, eager to get moving. Reaching the open-topped car, I just jumped in. So did the others.

When we arrived at the water hole/oasis, we found some fifteen or twenty people at its edge, swimming, getting out of cars, picnicking. We waved to some of them, then dashed into the water. It was warm and languorous. Out in the middle, a couple of kids were swimming.

Returning to the car to assess the situation, we smoked a joint and decided that the other arrivals were all right. There was no cause to feel that they might mar our trip. The surface of the water shimmered and beckoned. Soon we went back down to the water's edge, eager to stretch and swim, to dive and swirl about.

The only real drag was keeping on a swimsuit. It seemed so unnecessary and unnatural! Especially since I had become a snake writhing about in the water. I maneuvered in and out of a swamp. Minutes later I found myself a frog and started propelling myself with long kicks. In both cases, water seemed my natural habitat, and land was distant, alien, somewhat terrifying.

After a while, my mind decided that I would like to climb a small mountain that looked down on this idyllic setting, but by now I was a sea lion, so it was difficult to get myself up and onto dry land. As I waded out, I felt awkward, silly, completely out of my element.

When I say I felt as though I was first one water creature and then another, what I mean goes far beyond merely "feeling slithery and reptilian." The experience had a different feel to it, different from anything I had previously felt, both physically and mentally. Under the drug, I was conscious of having different types of memories, and I lost my normal self-awareness. Rather than empathy with what I might imagine a snake or frog might feel, I was sufficiently absorbed in snakeness and frogness as to wonder vaguely how the humans around me might feel.

Drug-induced animal transformations can be very impressive. One such occurrence, recorded in The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (Masters and Houston, 1966), involved an anthropologist who considered himself a tiger. He had long been interested in metamorphosis rites as practiced in such places as Rhodesia and Haiti. In the course of an LSD session, he became aware of himself moving across the floor on his hands and knees. Coming up against a full-length mirror, he suddenly discovered himself "confronted by a huge, magnificent specimen of a tiger!" He spit, snarled, and tensed for a fight. Though he retained some perception of himself as a human, there is no doubt from his subsequent account that in essence he considered himself to be a tiger.

My own experience began pretty much in the same way as many LSD experiences—with the quick, detailed, intense examination of various manifestations of the classic dualities: knowledge/intuition, science/religion, sex/love, beauty/goodness, reality/illusion, and so on. My early experience could be considered typical in the limited sense that it was similar to one class of response. But I don't think it could properly be called "ego loss"; it belonged to another constellation. The effects were most intense at the very start, remained at that plateau for a while, then gradually tapered off.

The quality of experience changed, once we began moving, from being primarily explorations of inner events, with almost no environmental stimulus, to the experiencing of the external world colored by "inner" emotions and experiences. Internal and external realities coexisted, alternating somehow in a pleasing and harmonious way. As for my "objectivity" at this point, everything visible was also being seen as I might normally recognize it—but with the difference that I sorted out my perceptions according to an unfamiliar value system.

What does it mean, that while under the yage I did not merely feel "like a snake," but in some sense I was a snake, that somehow I had reached a level of experience where I could contact a potential "snakeness" residing within? What does it mean, that I felt my perceptions were being sorted in terms of new and different categories?

Throughout the psychedelic literature, there are accounts of people saying, "I didn't feel like myself. . . ." Generally, these statements are made in passing, and without much interest in examining their implications. This transformation experience is of vast psychological and philosophical importance. The user becomes enveloped within a smaller but more intensely felt universe (as generally occurs when falling in love). William Braden (1967) has written an entire book about this distinct transformation as it occurs when the experience is religious; he describes it as a switch from a Catholic or Protestant point of view to that of an Eastern mystic.

Once out of the water, I started climbing the mountain on a sacred pilgrimage. I stopped to examine small flowers and brightly colored rocks. I picked the flowers, putting them in my hair. The world shone with the joy of existence.
Again on level ground, I ran along, feeling Indian things. With virtually no plant growth in sight, I was hacking my way through jungles. I saw visions of snake gods, and received stories to take to my people. When I looked down to the oasis below, my friends, the others there, the wind caressing the water—all poignantly symbolized the human condition. Everybody should have a chance to see this vast panorama of man's existence on earth. To see the tides of nature, as I did then, seems an overwhelmingly marvelous thing in itself.

I wonder how psychedelics might measure up as one of the solutions to the problem of excessive spare time. Television is the major outlet for our increasing leisure. A relatively engrossing trivializer. Psychedelics, on the other hand, are tremendous energizers, which lead to greater participation. The use of psychedelics has lingering effects upon personality and life style. As time passes, the values heightened by LSD will slowly but definitely creep into and transform our daily habits.

A question of growing importance has to do with the effect the psychedelics might have upon family life. To date, their main influence has been to exaggerate the generation gap. Once parents have actually tried a psychedelic, the majority will continue, in time, to be interested in the drug's effects and the possibilities it opens, and many will come to take pot with some regularity. Since the family, a highly structured unit, is the foundation of society, regular psychedelic use within a family could have enormous social consequences. I think the traditional structure might change from its present patriarchal or matriarchal orientation to that found in a group of equals. The child would truly, then, become adviser to the man.

Such a restructuring of the family unit might shake society to its core. But such a shift may be neither traumatic nor even widely noticed. When we consider social restructuring, there is a tendency to forget just how absorbent and flexible the human animal can actually be.

I was impressed by simple sights: the rushes growing beside the water, a small gentian poking out from behind a rock, the patterns and swirl of the shale beneath me. As I approached the water to join the others, it suddenly seemed ludicrous to think of wearing a swimsuit. Up on the mountain, with no one around, I had taken my trunks off; on my descent, I had put the suit back on. I took the impediment off, feeling much better, and dove into the water.

No one, it turned out, seemed to care. As I floated, I mused about how long it might be before public parks and beauty spots like this would be opened and arranged for psychedelic exploration.

For some time yet, society is bound to experiment with the concept of prohibition—rather than control—of psychedelic drug use. In attempting to prohibit anything easily accessible that is at the same time greatly desired, what usually happens is that officials create an active underground movement which operates independently of them—and thus they gradually relinquish all controls. This is a serious problem in the case of psychedelics, since these drugs have to be used with intelligence and control if their delicate potentials are to be fully and safely realized.

The cost of the "hysterical ostrich" approach taken by officials is almost sure to mount sufficiently to force society to set up LSD centers and reservations, where the psychedelics may be used legally, safely, and with a reasonable level of good sense and security. To the extent that officials see value in LSD, it is almost exclusively in terms of medicine and psychotherapy. Beyond this, allowance will gradually have to be made for the creative, religious, rejuvenating, and educational uses of the psychedelics. The only effective ways for guaranteeing the non-destructive use of psychedelics are through widespread education in their positive use, the setting up of beneficial, appealing rituals for their use, and the establishment of centers where the drugs can be used safely, knowledgeably, and for the purposes of their users.

It seems to me that the eventual outcome will be the construction of psychedelic parks. In general, these will feature a large center for therapeutic, creative, and other uses, supervised by medical men and guides, and a psychedelic chapel for religious and mystical experience. The most likely setting will probably be a park of artificial environments. The dimensions of the park need not be very great, since space counts for little in the experience. A point of some importance, however, is the matter of diversity, for one of the major characteristics of these experiences, after all, is flux.

As the psychedelics become more familiar, we can look forward to a growing awareness of the diverse values to be derived from their utilization. As they gradually exaggerate the already unprecedented diversity that currently exists in human society, we can predict a greatly increased impact on social interaction.

I swam toward the others and we smiled. Nothing needed to be said. By now we all felt that we really ought to get moving and possibly see the sights of Las Vegas. After much indecision, we managed to get out and jump into the car and take off, surely "on the road." The highway was a river, leisurely wandering among the contours formed by the rocks. The rich hues of the desert led us into a strange Midland of Mordor. As we drove along, we entered into the land of fantasy.

At sunset, we left the car and climbed a peak. There was talk about the marvels of natural history. Once we had clambered to the top, we decided to claim the peak in the name of yage. We managed to find wood and propped up a pole. George offered his shirt for a flag. There was a short ceremony.

But now a car slowly came into view and we saw it was. . . the sheriff. We waved to him. We thought it marvelous that there was someone around to see that no harm comes to this territory. The patrol car stopped at the summit below. We met the sheriff and stood with him silently, watching the sun set. He told us about Nevada history and pointed to the hills where the Basques are, "the best sheepherders in the world." As the sun disappeared, the desert was gradually transmuted into the austere cold of blue-gray stillness. We stood transfixed, silently taking in the magic of the approaching night.

"When we got to Las Vegas, the main drag was so lit up, it was a real DMT hallucination. Buildings were outlined by neon, and everywhere there were garish colors, crowds, the din of horns. We began to feel the closeness of the city. We sought escape and took a glassed-in elevator to the top of one of the more modern buildings. The operator didn't know what to make of us. She seemed relieved that when we reached the top we immediately decided to go back down. Our conversation had obviously left her feeling rather odd.

Back on the casino floor, I winced as I watched compulsive slot-machine players. But craps and "21" are fascinating. I felt sure that, by following some strong hunches, I could win. Yet I didn't feel I had sufficient control of myself to risk actual play. After watching the floor action for a while, we decided to order dinner.

What I have been reporting so far has been my subjective reaction to my yage experience. I am not so naïve as to believe that these experiences aren't on occasion absolutely miserable. My experience was so positive because of the unusually good setting. In addition, we were left alone and knew it. I believe that one of the main reasons the psychedelics are dangerous stems from the fact that they can be used only surreptitiously at the present time. Generally what happens when things go underground is that they become perverted.

The psychedelic experience shared by increasing numbers of people may mean that we're now on the verge of an appreciative revolution. At the present time, there are few places on this continent where it's possible to participate in exciting, cosmopolitan "modern living." In a profound sense, the psychedelics may alter this situation, by virtue of their amazing ability to tune up the senses and realign value systems.

'When you couple the psychedelics with today's technology, affluence, and the cultural revolution occurring now at the popular level, it is easy to understand why we are seeing utopian experimentation throughout the country. The psychedelics are boosting the natural desire for such experimentation precisely when that growth can easily find a supportive environment. They tend to redress the imbalance of our perceptions, emphasizing similarities rather than differences. Psychedelics and technology promise a proliferation of utopian thinking across the land that hasn't been seen since at least the middle of the last century.

Once we were served, the meal was a delight. We were sharing half a dozen dishes, all participants in a glutton's feast. The atmosphere in the gambling rooms had seemed to confine our yage flights, but as we ate, the magic returned. I had only to consider an image, and it would realize itself, blossoming of its own accord, coloring over the dining scene.

After our magnificent meal, we walked farther through the town. By now the carnival atmosphere, the chrome-plated soul of this cold, impersonal city was getting to us. Before long, we all agreed we'd rather return to the desert.

As warm air flowed over us in the open convertible, I felt serene and joyous as I thought back to the shimmering water, the beautiful pumice, my happiness up on the mountain. Parking just off the road, we unrolled sleeping bags. We had a smoke, saying very little. Within half an hour, we were asleep.

This yage report is taken from a considerably longer account, which is available from the author at Box 285, Peter Stuyvesant Station, New York, New York 10009.