I've just concluded an experiment with what I guess is the ultimate form of "passive smoking" -- using nicotine only in my sleep. I'd put on a transdermal patch immediately before going to bed and remove it when I woke up, even if I woke up in the middle of the night. I did this a total of 21 times -- the first seven with 14-mg patches, and the remainder with 21-mg. Since the patch is designed to release the nicotine gradually over a 24-hour period, and since I only wore each patch for 8 hours max, the actual amount of nicotine I absorbed was considerably less than the dosage on the label. As a safeguard against addiction, I only used the patches two or three times a week, and never on two consecutive nights.
I was interested in the effect of nicotine on dreams. On approximately half of my trials, my dreams were unremarkable. The other half were unusually vivid but mostly still within the range of normal dreaming experience. Twice I experienced extraordinarily deep and detailed dreams which I think could be fairly described as "trips."
When I posted my first nicotine dreams, in "
King Kong's limousine and other nicotine dreams," a reader calling himself Potato Salad left a comment saying my dreams had been unexpectedly peaceful given that nicotine "falls under Mars's jurisdiction" according to some unspecified system of "magical correspondences." I'm still not sure where he got that. Nicotine is a New World drug, so any attempt to understand it in terms of Western astrology would have to be of relatively recent date. The only system of astrological correspondences for controlled substances with which I have any familiarity is Crowley's
Liber 777, which I believe maps tobacco to the sign of Libra or something.
Anyway, my overall experience was consistent with nicotine being in some sense a "martial" drug. Many of the dreams involved fistfights and martial arts, and many featured intense feelings of anger and impatience. There was even one dream in which I was a Nazi soldier, although that particular dream didn't include any violence. The dreams also included quite a lot of sexual content, but I was strangely indifferent to it. The general feel reminded me of the cover of a Conan the Barbarian paperback: Conan may have a half-naked lady at his feet, but he's not thinking about sex; he's thinking about war.
Another thing I noticed was that there were a lot more animals than in my normal dreams. In one dream, I was staying in a hotel where some of the other rooms were occupied by lions, gorillas, and other large animals. In another, I tried to get on my motorcycle only to discover that it was actually a large tiger-like animal with brown fur. Two different dreams featured birds like owls or vultures, except that their "feathers" were actually fleshy flaps of skin.
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One dream in particular felt like a sort of revelation when it happened -- the Secret Dojo dream. I was walking down a busy street when I noticed what I somehow knew was a portal that led to the Secret Dojo. The portal wasn't always there, so I had to seize the opportunity. It was an opening made of carved wood, and it seemed much too small for me to squeeze through, but I just had to. I stuck the top half of my body into it and squeezed and wriggled and twisted until somehow, finally, I managed to pop out on the other side.
I found myself in a sort of underground city, and I started running, knowing instinctively which direction to go. I ran for hours and hours, never stopping or slowing or hesitating. This feeling of endlessly running, as all kinds of different scenery flew past, was the main sensation of the dream, and it was wonderfully exhilarating. I felt like Asahel pursuing Abner, as light of foot as a wild roe, turning not to the right hand nor to the left. I ran through a restaurant, vaulting the counter and running through the kitchen and out the back door. I ran through a warehouse. I ran through some sort of seraglio full of dancing girls. I ran through a Shakespearean theater, through the audience, then across the stage, then backstage and out. I ran through a very long, completely dark tunnel that sloped upward. I ran along a desert road under a bright tan sky, passing several gleaming statues of sharks the size of airliners. I ran up a wooded hill, through Triassic-looking vegetation, and finally to the gigantic caldera at the top that was the Secret Dojo.
It was night now, and the Dojo was empty, but the stars illuminated it clearly enough, and I could feel the energy of everyone who had ever fought there flowing into me. I spoke, for the first time in the dream, and said, "I've never felt such demonic power!" I instantly regretted my choice of words. Demonic made it sound evil, which wasn't what I had meant at all. I meant that it was a pagan spirit, not a satanic one -- the spirit of a Gilgamesh or an Achilles. I felt that my carelessly chosen word had perhaps revealed something I'd rather not have known -- that perhaps the power really was demonic, but I didn't want to face that. It was such a rush. I thought that I was "glorying" in the power, like the lions in the moonlight in Gilgamesh -- but then I realized that that word, too, might have satanic connotations: "And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, . . . and he gloried in his wickedness. . . . And Cain gloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free."
I left the Dojo and ran all the way back, running even faster with this new "demonic" energy. Outside the portal, I found my parents watching a martial arts performance. I immediately wanted to share the Secret Dojo with them, but I figured my mom wouldn't be able to handle the hours-long run, so I only invited my dad. "Are you watching this?" I said. "I know where you can see the real thing." He was game. He squeezed through the portal after me, and we ran through the restaurant and the seraglio and everything. As we were running up the sloping tunnel, I realized that I was running on all fours like a wolf, and that it felt very natural, but I wondered if my father would be able to keep up. I couldn't look back, though. Somehow, I just knew that was forbidden. To reach the Secret Dojo, you had to keep going forward, turning not to the right hand nor to the left. I began to worry that I might have left him behind without noticing, like Aeneas. I listened for sounds behind me. I could hear a few voices, but none of them sounded like his. I kept running, and the dark tunnel faded to white, and I was awake.
My first thought upon waking was that I had truly experienced the spirit of Mars. The enthusiasm -- and the desire to run -- carried on into the waking world for several hours.
