Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

One of my best rolls ever Saturday night. Technically I "Hippy Flipped", but I don't think I got much mileage out of the shrooms. It was definitely an enhanced roll, but I'll have to do a bigger dose of fungus next time.

I'll write as if you know nothing about the effects of ecstacy. Notice the phrase "effects of ecstasy" as opposed to a lone "ecstasy" -- I am about the subjective experience; phenomenology is my game, baby.

Ecstasy impacts cognitive functioning in two primary ways: sensory experience and social engagement. In my experience, most people have E experiences that are primarily one or the other of these effects. Many Ravers and partiers enjoy their roll by basting themselves in the sensory stimulus overload of EDM, dancing, light shows, massage, and various blow-ups and pass-outs. Lots of other E users, on the other hand, roll almost exclusively with small numbers of people and spend their time cuddling and in other forms of emotional engagement. Of course, everyone who rolls gets the "connection" and no one misses out on the pleasurable enhancement of the senses.

Just to muddle the breakdown of ecstasy impacts a bit more, I suspect the emotional engagement and the sensory enhancement are two sides of the same coin. Our emotional engagement with others is one highly sophisticated sensory experience, says I.

More on the senses. Know this: ecstasy is a drug that the body experiences. The brain is simply the a processing unit for what is happening in the body. If the brain tries to monopolize the experience, the roll is never quite there. Once the brain lets go, and the body is engaged by dancing or massage or a light show, then the roll begins. As you come down off your roll, try something to feel your body intensely and you'll find yourself rolling again. Now, when you get fully engaged in your body the brain is still important. If you pay attention to (as oposed to be dominated by) your thoughts, you will find that as you get immersed in the body sensations, your mental experience becomes... well, empty. This isn't to say theat there is no functioning. Rather, the mind lets go of attachment to any thought and you rise to a non-thinking awareness. I suspect that brainwave analysis would indicate that mental functioning under E is akin to being hypnotized.

If you have never rolled, this is what you experience: every sense experience you have becomes enhanced and magnified. While you have this amazing experience, your mind slows and pacifies. Existence becomes what you are experiencing and that your experience of it feels good. Very good. For example, if someone scratches your head while you are rolling -- you know how good it feels when someone washes your hair -- the pleasure of having your scalp scratched and massaged becomes almost overwhelming. The rest of the world kind of fades away and all you feel is the scratching. A period of time passes. Then, you notice the world slowly coming back and you realize that for a while, you lost all track of what was happening and all you know is that it feels good. This losing track of time and what is happening outside of your senses is a blow-up. We'll talk about a pass-out another time.

About the emotional engagement, the empathy and connection you feel, the sense of a shared reality, this is where even more magic is possible. It happens with many drugs, including alcohol, nicotine and even caffeine, that having the experience in a social setting creates a sense of shared connection. We are all on the same team! Simply having the experience and knowing others feel something similar, is bonding. E, however, amps up the natural connection coming from shared experience. E allows most people to expose more of who they really are, and it allows them to accept more about who others are. When two people who are rolling find each other, there is an amazing sense of "we know what we know and we know we know it and God does it feel good."

I'm not way happy with this E-zine. I'll revisit later.