In this episode, our hero plays the deadly game of Bowling For Consciousness and throws gutterballs.
A strange thing happened tonight. After my classes were through for the day, I visited my friends at the Porter College dormitory at UC Santa Cruz. Once there I was passed the bong and thus proceeded to get extremely altered. My friend, Allen, didn't participate because he had a class at 7pm, the Psychology of Law. As he left to go, he asked me if I wanted to come along. What he'd told me of the class before sounded interesting so I went with him, still in a very non-ordinary headspace...
The lecture was interesting but I kept going off on wild mental tangents as I am apt to even when straight (but especially so when I am tripping). One tangent was remembering the one time I'd ever come close to a sudden loss of consciousness. I'd been sitting in bed talking to my roommate, August, when I abruptly felt like I was fighting to maintain awareness of my body and my senses. I fought to stay awake and only barely succeeded. A related tangent was thinking about August's own recent experience of a very similar variety. All these thoughts brought to mind my own fears/premonitions about a possible heart problem that could take my life. So there I was: sitting in the very center of a huge lecture hall, stoned and fatalist.
Very suddenly, two events occurred, the order of which I am uncertain; but I think it was the following: 1) I imagine a scene where I have some kind of attack right there in class. 2) I feel a pop in the area of my solar plexus followed quickly upon by a feeling of dread and panic as my vision begins to lose color and contrast. I feel like I'm being pulled down into unconsciousness, into a dead abyss. My mind races and tries to convince myself that I'm just tripping--my sensitive altered state merely manifesting and amplifying my own fears. In short, I pretend it's not happening. I picture the scene I'd make standing up in the middle of the row in the middle of the large lecture hall. It feels like I couldn't make more than a few steps before falling. I muster up a calm voice to ask Allen what time it is: one hour to go. He can tell I'm flustered in some way and asks me what's wrong. I fake it and tell him I'm "just feeling a little claustrophobic; strange." I fight to stake awake.
After a few minutes the sensation subsides a little and I get to feeling a little better. In all honesty, the greatest force in keeping me conscious was the anticipated embarassment of causing a scene in front of all those people. If not for that, I might have called out for some help from Allen before losing it altogether.
The conclusion to this story is highly significant to me. At a short breaking point during the class, I was able to slip out and begin walking back to Porter. Coming out of the classroom, two girls were walking ahead of me. They were in front of me all the way back and I tried to keep my distance. As we were crossing the last bridge, I caught a few words from their conversation: "...felt like I was being dragged down into a dark hole...never happened to me before...scary feeling like I was dying..." Amazed, I walked faster to hear more. It sounded as if one of the girls had just had an experience identical to my own and was discussing it with her friend. I hesitated and resisted the urge to ask her directly what she was talking about. But the synchronicity was enough to startle me and give me that good old feeling of subtle satori.