A few months ago, I’ve had the unique experience of experiencing time dilation first-hand.
I had tried smoking pot a couple times last year, to alleviate the anxiety I feel. It seemed like a good idea because I know other people who use it for just that – and they seemed happy with the results. The first time I successfully got high was pretty good too, so I continued.
That was, until late November of last year, I experienced hell. I experienced the ironic testament that spit in the face of all the cautionary tales I had told myself about immortality, and how it would be a bad wish to make. I experienced a subjective week – all in a matter of twenty minutes – where I felt my body begin to separate from my consciousness, and an unparalleled fear that I was actually in limbo, forever to spend the rest of my existence staring down at the stainless steel sink in my kitchen.
When I got out of it, I had a single thought in my mind. I am fortunate it was not longer.
***
Now… if there were any moral I would take away from this experience, it would be “Don’t do drugs”, but I’m beginning to think my thoughts on the experience are more personal than the other individual.
Because I did it again! In my mind I’ve been trying to adjust to an existence where I live forever, because, it very well could happen again; Drugs exist! What a stupid idea that was, to subject myself to the same conditions that could so easily drive me over the edge, had it been a subjective month – or year – or millennia. I voluntarily brought myself back into my personal hell, forced to live through the same mental imagery I never want to see again. I’m sick of it, and yet…
I look at people who want to live an eternal life; religions and psychonauts, and I ask myself: What do they know that I don’t? What do they feel that I don’t? I ask myself constantly if there’s a hidden answer everyone else knows but myself, that would justify this voluntary capitulation to the conscious, eternal void. Even now, I have a conflicting desire to try smoking again, because under the right mindset, it could be so freeing. I want that, and I don’t think I can simply because of who I am.
I want life to be temporary, but I certainly don’t believe that anymore. I feel death is less a means to an end, and more a means to forget.
1 comment
Perhaps if one is sufficiently at peace with themselves, then eternity is nothing to fear. I know that for me the prospect of being trapped in my own mind for any significant period is terrifying.