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I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis,
in which I viewed a candle flame
and discovered in the heart of the flame,
standing with magnificent indifference,
the black-hatted and -cloaked
Spanish gentleman
who appears on the label
of the Sandeman sherry bottle.
Looking at fires when high,
by the way,
especially through one of those
prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings,
is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.
I want to explain that at no time did I think
these things ‘really’ were out there.
I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling
and there was no
Sandeman salamander man in the flame.
I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences.
There’s a part of me making,
creating the perceptions
which in everyday life would be bizarre;
there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer.
About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part
appreciating the work of the creator-part.
I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud
at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids.
In this sense,
I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic,
but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses.
Possibly this is because I know it’s my own trip,
and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to