Or maybe it used to exist and no longer exists.Īnd all this went through my mind in four or five seconds, and then the blob disappeared, giving me a strong sense of loss and heartbrokenness. I thought maybe this is not a color which actually exists on the Earth. I thought, this is the color of heaven, or this is the color which Giotto tried to get all his life but never could. It again had this luminous, numinous quality.
And as if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo appeared on the wall. And I built up a sort of pharmacological launch pad with amphetamines and LSD and a little cannabis on top of that, and when I was really stoned I said: I want to see indigo now. I had been reading about the color indigo, how it had been introduced into the spectrum by Newton rather late, and it seemed no two people quite agreed as to what indigo was, and I thought I would like to have an experience of indigo. SACKS: Well, a particular experience was with a color. Give us a sense of one of the better experiences that you had that made you want to keep using it. GROSS: So you started taking LSD in 1964, and you write that you took mind-altering drugs every weekend for a while. I'm strongly atheist by disposition, but nonetheless when this happened, I couldn't help thinking that must be what the hand of God is like or how it is experienced. And I took two puffs from it, and I'd been looking at my hand for some reason, and the hand seemed to retreat from me but at the same time getting larger and larger until it became a sort of cosmic hand across the universe. And one day, someone offered me some pot. And there, there was quite a drug culture, as there was also in Topanga Canyon, where I lived. And I was in Los Angeles, at UCLA, doing a residency in neurology, but I was also much on the beach, on Venice Beach and Muscle Beach. GROSS: What was the first time you tried a drug that induced perceptual distortions? I would often keep notes when I got stoned. And I think there's always an observer part, as well as the participant. I wanted to see a visually and perhaps musically enhanced world. I mean, I think I sometimes just wanted pleasure. It's probably a little too high-sounding for all of my reasons. SACKS: Well, I think it's one of the reasons. Is that why you wanted to experiment with them? GROSS: And you write that some drugs, like hallucinogenic drugs, promise transcendence on demand. And so there's - this seems to happen in every culture at some point. SACKS: Well, I was thinking of peyote ceremonies with Native Americans, but similar ceremonies in Mexico with morning glory seeds - ololiuqui, similar ceremonies in Central America with magic mushrooms, similar ones in South American with both - I can't pronounce it, ayahuasca. At some point, the use of such intoxicants becomes institutionalized at a magical or sacramental level. TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: So at the beginning of your chapter about your own experimentation with altered states, you write, every culture has found chemical means of transcendence. OLIVER SACKS: It's good to be with you again. He said these drugs connected with the reason he wanted to be a neurologist, which was to study how the brain embodies consciousness and the self to understand its amazing powers of perception and distortion.ĭAVIES: Dr. One chapter, called "Altered States," described his own experiments with mind-altering drugs in the '60s when he was a neurology resident. We're going to listen to their conversation recorded in 2012 after the publication of his book "Hallucinations," which described patients who experienced hallucinations brought on by neurological disorders, brain injuries, medications, fevers, blindness and more - hallucinations that ranged from the terrifying to the transcendent. Terry interviewed Oliver Sacks many times. Oliver Sacks died in 2015 at the age of 82.Ī new documentary, "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life," will be available online beginning Wednesday through the Film Forum and Kino Marquee websites. Sacks' work treating patients who had survived an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, commonly called sleeping sickness. His 1973 book "Awakenings," which established him as a writer was adapted into a 1990 film starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. His beautifully written books, such as "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" examined the mysteries of perception and consciousness by drawing on his observations of his patients. Sacks was a physician and a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. A new documentary about Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling author, will begin streaming on Wednesday.
0 kommentar(er)
