The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 89 of 125
Somatic symptoms take center stage
Seemingly I was involved in a new cycle of trips. They weren’t like any previous ones: first and foremost because each one was the same, something that had never happened before. There was no beauty . . . no terror . . . no madcap humor. All that remained from earlier sessions were the bizarre somatic symptoms I had always dismissed as side effects. Now these took center stage. While my legs had always trembled, never before had they vibrated with such violence. First one would start, then the other, then both together, the heels drumming wildly on the bed: when I raised the blindfold to look, they were literally a blur of action. The hacking cough returned, now so harsh I was frightened I was going to damage my lungs. There were waves of nausea. The eerie taste of blood came and went. All along I had been in denial of this purely physical dimension to acid. Shaking in the legs I had dismissed as some form of bioenergy being discharged; while the coughing I conjectured, in an even more woolly minded manner, could be related to birth: perhaps to choking on the first breaths. This, as I said before, was one of the areas where my do-it-yourself psychoanalysis fell flat on its face. Any professional would have zeroed in on these symptoms, while all I did was try to pretend they weren’t happening.