A little trip to nowhere

I dreamed that my wife and I had decided to try LSD. We got it in the form of little chalky tablets about an inch in diameter. (My waking self is pretty sure that's not what LSD looks like, but in the dream I didn't question it.) I took one and waited for psychedelia to break out, waited to see something weird or groovy or like far out man, and -- nothing. I really tried hard to feel something out of the ordinary. Did I feel a bit lighter, for instance? No, not really. Did the colors seem perhaps a bit more vibrant? Nope, vibrancy levels normal. Did I have by any chance a sneaking intimation that everything is just like you know this illusion and we're really all just like one man? Just a sec, let me see . . . sorry, negative.

I remembered Terence McKenna's slogan, "When in doubt, double the dose." I hesitated a bit because I figured my wife had probably counted the tablets and would notice that one more was missing, but in the end I popped another tablet.

Still nothing. I looked all around my study, looking at every book and tchotchke and piece of furniture, noticing everything, on the alert for, I don't know, plasticine porters with looking-glass eyes or anything of that general description. I realized that everything was sort of beautiful when you really looked at it, and I thought, hey, is that the LSD? Is this like when Aldous Huxley took mescaline and could sense that the four legs of his chair were the four legs of a chair and yet simultaneously Michael and all the archangels? No, not really. Just the ordinary beauty of earthly things.

I gave up and switched on the computer. An ad came up that said, "It's OK not to be tracked. Help us stop surveillance in its tracks!"

And I woke up.