Welcome back to Revolutionary Restraint. Let me begin by apologizing for the delay of part two of The Desolation of the Left.  I actually thought I was going to get that out quicker than the last, but then my son decided to surprise us and make an early appearance early Monday morning. (In his honor here is the song that my dad (his namesake) put on the answering machine when I was born.) Since then everything has been a hectic whirlwind and I have not had very much time to write, but I will let this development serve as an inspiration for the direction of this post. I had already decided that I would make it a tradition to write an annual bicycle day and 4/20 article for this site, so please let these short pieces fill the silence until I can finish the second part of the last essay I had promised. Besides, we are only getting into progressively heavier subject matter, it can’t hurt to take a rest here with some lighter material.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, April 19th is a very special day in the world of psychedelics, often referred to as Bicycle Day. It commemorates the anniversary of the first purposeful lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, trip undertaken by it’s discoverer, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. The name Bicycle Day refers to the fact that after administering a dose of LSD to himself, Hofmann then had to return home via bicycle, resulting in what was probably the most profound bicycle ride in history.

Since that fateful day in 1943, LSD has risen to the status of paradigmatic psychedelic substance. It helped to fuel the countercultural movements of the 60s and 70s and proved a profound influence on art. It has also shown significant promise for use in therapeutic settings. LSD holds especially place in my heart as the first psychedelic I ever had the pleasure of experiencing. In my own experience, I have found LSD to be the psychedelic with the most profound connection to the Will. It provides the user with incredibly clear and direct representations of the Will, though, of course, because it is, in principle, impossible to ever fully grasp the Will in themselves, these representations are by no means perfect and they slip through ones hands as soon as one tries to grasp them. This is a matter that we will have to return to in some detail at some other time.

But I’m not here to talk about LSD, appropriate as it might be. Instead I’d like to focus on a psychedelic that is much lighter than LSD, both in terms of its psychedelic potential and in the subjective state it tends to engender. That substance is methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA.

MDMA was first discovered in 1912 by the German chemist Anton Köllisch, but largely forgotten soon after. MDMA and its psychoactive properties would not become widely known until the 1970s, thanks, in large part, to the efforts of psychedelic chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, who cited it as his favorite psychedelic substance out of the dozens he synthesized and personally tested.

Shulgin’s enthusiasm for MDMA is easy to understand. It is a truly remarkable substance capable of putting its users at ease, relaxing psychological guards, and allowing users to honestly confront their most powerful emotions and the experiences underlying them. In my own experience, I have found that MDMA has the tendency to produce a feeling as though Heaven itself is at one’s back, enveloping you in a warm glow, reassuring you that all is as it should be and that, whatever happens, all will be alright, so long as you are honest. (this description always reminds me of this song, appropriate or not)At times, it has been made me feel a direct connection to that primordial archetype of all men, Adam. (And it being Holy Saturday, it is worth mentioning that, when paired with a pipe of salvia and DMT, it provides clues to the state of Christ between the Crucifixion and Resurrection, by stretching the user between the Beginning and End of Creation, while keeping Heaven ever at one’s back.)

Now, an incredibly important point to understand about psychedelics is that while psychedelics can fairly reliably engender certain states of mind, psychedelics are not the only means of achieving the sorts of states that they engender and while psychedelics, when used responsibly, can be useful tools for achieving desired states of mind, one should also try to learn how to bring these states of mind about without the use of such substances. (This fact also points to the incredibly important question, “what is a drug?” I address that question in more detail, with substantial help from Shulgin’s discussions in my Two Essays on the Establishment of a Modern Theology.) This brings me to the reason that, of all psychedelics, MDMA is most present in my mind right now. There have been a number of times in my life that events of profound importance have triggered that feeling of having Heaven at my back that I also associate with MDMA. By far, the most intense instances of this feeling I have ever experienced, even more so than those instances brought on by MDMA, have been related to my children, especially, the experience of witnessing their births. It seems that something about the experience of such remarkable moments of joy such as these acts upon the brain in such a way as to trigger it to produce sensations of heaven. MDMA then, somehow bypasses the need for the stimulus of a joyous experience, tricking the brain into producing heavenly sensations without having perceived the appropriate stimulus (the absence of such stimulus might help to explain how MDMA often helps the user to carefully observe and gather their thoughts, as they get to experience that state purely, without some stimulating event and its details weighing on their mind). What all of this suggests to me is that Heaven is ever present, it is simply a matter of our being in the proper mindset to take note of it and appreciate it and we must make it one of our central goals to always promote conditions such as are conducive to noticing heaven in our daily lives. 

This is as much as time allows me to say for now. I know it is rather hasty and the ideas somewhat unrefined, but I hope it provides some food for thought. I know this post is a little light on music (perhaps the most appropriate post for it), but I will make up for it tomorrow with a 4/20 playlist. Perhaps next year I will provide a more proper trip log. Anyways, thank you for reading, and happy bicycle day!!!