The Death Phalus

"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun."

Eyewitness Account of the Trinity Test


We have all lived in the long and terrifying shadow of the mushroom cloud for over half a century now. Some days you forget about "The Bomb" and on others the fear crawls out of the back of your mind and screams in your face. There is something strangely attractive about nuclear weapons. Is it the sheer power of these hideous devices that can be so enchanting? The mushroom cloud itself is an icon of a terror and destruction that is almost beyond imagination. It is the motif, along with the concentration camp and the starving child, that defines the twentieth century. It is the signpost that guides us to oblivion.

There we're two occasions in the Twentieth Century when the world was close to all out nuclear war. The first and most famous was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the second and less well know was in 1983 around the time that the Reagan administration announced it's plans to develop the anti-missile Strategic Defence Initiative that became know, rather comically, as "Star Wars".
The Russians we're so convinced that the United States and it's allies were preparing for a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union that the then head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, organised the Soviet military along with the KGB and the GRU for a campaign of global espionage, code-named RYAN, which was the Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack" . This, primarily, was a heightened state of intelligence alert, instructing all foreign stations to conduct a constant watch for tell-tale signs of the build up to a Western nuclear strike. This meant hours of watching government buildings, noting the number of cars arriving and leaving, counting the number of lighted offices after normal working hours and generally looking for any signs of unusual activity. Tensions grew to fever pitch when on September 1st 1983
Soviet fighter jets shot down a Korean Airlines 747. The west was quick to condemn the attack on a civilian plane but the Russians claimed that it was on an espionage mission in Soviet airspace.

We don't have to guess what the effects of a nuclear war would be. We have had two very famous examples of the results that could be expected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we add to those two tragedies the meltdown and subsequent explosions at Three mile Island and Chernobyl and the data collected from them we can get a very clear idea of the long term horror and suffering that an atomic war would engender. So thank the Gods that they've never really been used. Well that's a lie. "The Bomb" has been dropped, officially, at least 2,050 times between 1945 and 1998. 528 of these explosions were atmospheric detonations and the other 1,522 were carried out underground. These 'tests' have been carried out on every continent in the world. It's probably impossible to realistically estimate what the effects of this testing policy has been and what long term changes to our environment could follow but there have already been numerous scientific studies linking atomic testing to an increase in earthquake activity.

The costs of the nuclear program are astronomical. So far the total expense is estimated to be somewhere in the region of $5.8 trillion. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States is still spending $35 billion a year ($96 million per day) on its nuclear weapons. About $25 million per day goes on operation and maintenance and the rest is spent on ballistic missile defence research (the United States announced its withdrawal from the ABM treaty on the 14th of December 2001). The United States with all it's rhetoric about "rogue states" and "WMDs" is still the only nation on the face of the planet that is researching new ways in which to deploy nuclear warheads. As I'm writing this the United States is developing a new breed of "Bunker Buster" nuclear missiles for use in "conventional" warfare.

And all of this takes place in a world where 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity... It's not rocket science is it?

Dimensional Mind Travel

When I was 17 years old I stole a book called "The Psychedelic Encyclopedia" from a book shop in Brighton. I was experimenting with all kinds of drugs at the time but especially LSD, MDMA, Marijuana and Amphetamines. This book was like a Bible to me. It was written by a guy called Peter Stafford and there was a picture of him on the inside cover. He was a hairy bastard. A real American west coast hippie, smiling all over his stoned, drop-out face holding a baby. The baby was his daughter and Stafford had dedicated the book to her. He'd intended it to be a honest guide to altered states of consciousness for his kid.
It was without a doubt one of the most interesting and informative books that I'd ever read at that time about drugs and drug experiences. It covered everything I could think off. Laughing Gas, Cocaine, Mace, Petrol inhalation, Barbiturates. You name it man, it was all in there somewhere.
I would lie there on the floor of the squat where I lived with my friends, smoking a long fat joint in my beads and flares, turning the pages of this most sacred book, reading first hand accounts of the incredible states of mind that people like Gordon Wasson and Aldous Huxley had experienced while psychedelic music played on some crappy old stereo somewhere in the background. I began to see a timeless and hidden world revealing itself to me, full of intellectual, artistic and spiritual potential. I wanted to know more.
There was one thing above all in the book that really stood out and made a deep impression on me. It was a small paragraph describing the effects of DMT. Of course there were lots of descriptions about trips that people had taken on LSD and Psilocybin mushrooms. You know the kind of thing. Colours, sounds, loss of physical and psychological boundaries and all the rest of it but these descriptions went on and on and although they were all very interesting and helpful to a novice like me it was the fact that the description of the DMT experience was so very short that fascinated me. I can't remember who the quote came from but all it said, very simply, was "My arms and legs fell off and the garden of God opened up." Wow! That was one of the most intriguing things I had ever read. I had to get some of this mysterious substance. Now, it was easy to get Acid and dope and all the minor stuff but nobody could get any DMT. In fact, nobody had even heard of it and no one really seemed to be that interested either. Everybody wanted party drugs like Ecstasy and Speed and Hash. Things to make you dance and chat and fool around. Weekend drugs.
"It sounds like this stuff could really fuck you up, man." My Accountant and Bank clerk friends told me. "Here, have some Coke."
So the years rolled by and I got on with other things but the DMT was always there at the back of my mind and from time to time I would think about it and what I had read. I opened a small shop where I printed and sold t-shirts. Really I was just taking loads of drugs and making music but the shop kind of paid for the lifestyle so that was good enough for me. It was a doorway to the world. All kinds of people would walk in off the street, some crazy some cool some just looking for a t-shirt or a joint.
One day, towards the end of summer, a guy came in whose face I recognised. He looked southern or eastern European. Turkish or Greek. He said hello and we looked at each other for a while. I knew the him for sure. It was Maltese Dave. The Baron. An old, old friend. Dave and I used to drop Acid in the college canteen together every Tuesday before Dave went to see his psychiatrist. Dave was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been self medicating for years. Speed and Coke were his drugs of choice but, of course, they didn't really help. They just made him worse. His head was full of every kind of Masonic, pseudo religious, alien conspiracy going but he always had some good drugs on him and generally didn't mind sharing them with you. So we rolled and smoked a joint and chatted about what we'd been up to and how things had changed and how the people we had know and hung out with had drifted away, or died, or got married and then committed suicide. Happy days. It wasn't long before I asked Dave what he had for sale and for the first time in the conversation he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Have you tried any of this 'All Seeing' shit?" He took a wrap out of his puffer jacket pocket and opened it. Inside was a yellowish powdered crystal of some kind.
"What the fucks that Dave?" I laughed. "Speed again?" Dave stared into space.
"No man, this is the fucking food of the Gods. This is the eye on the Pyramid man. The key to the fucking mysteries!"
"What is it?" I asked. It didn't even look like half a gram.
"This," said Dave "is D...M...T!"
Well, a strange silence fell upon the room when he said those magic words. I'd been waiting for this stuff to appear for fourteen years and now here it was in The Barons trembling hand. I stared at the wrap for a while. Neither of us spoke for some time. It didn't really look that impressive. Just some yellow crystals but I felt excited and curious.
"Have you been taking this stuff Dave?" I looked at him. He was gazing at the D.M.T. with an unusually loving and calm look on his face.
"What does it do to you Dave?" I asked, watching him carefully.
He looked up and smiled darkly as he started to softly laugh.
"I don't know what it does to you man, but it does it really quickly and it does it completely. This is the strangest fucking experience I've ever had and, if you want, I can sell you this last wrap. Its £200 a gram but I've got three hits here that you can have for 40 quid."
"What do I do with it?"

"You smoke it like Crack, in a pipe, and then "BOOM!" You're off."

"How long does it last?" I was already getting the money out of my pocket.
"Fifteen minutes, start to finish. Do it with someone you trust man, just to watch out for you but don't worry about a thing. It's all good."
I gave Dave the cash and with that he said a quick good bye and left the shop.
I'd finally got it. I actually had some D.M.T. in my possession. Amazing! I held it up to my nose and smelt it. It had an unsual and indescribable smell like nothing I'd ever smelt before. It hit a strange area of the senses somewhere between smell, taste and sight, like nothing on earth. It did cross my mind that Dave had just ripped me off and given me some kind of cleaning agent but there was only one way to know for sure and that was to try the stuff out.
Above the shop there was an office that a couple of friends of mine rented from the same criminally insane landlord as me. Both true heads and good men. One was a ruddy faced red headed drunken brawler called Lyle Smith the other was a bisexual mystic by the name of Calder. It seemed only natural and in keeping with the unwritten law that we should take this trip together. There was just one problem. Despite the fact that Dave had said there was enough D.M.T. for three people it just didn't look like enough to me so I thought it would be a better idea just to divide the stuff into two hits. One for me and one for Lyle. Calder would come with us though, just to make sure we didn't get into any trouble and Lyle's medicine woman girlfriend, Fey, was going to come along as well. She had a video camera and wanted to film the whole thing so the kids could watch it.

So, we set off to a place called Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex, a strange place associated with legends of human sacrifice and Devil worship. Just the spot for this kind of delicate soul operation. When we arrived we found a gang of kids riding around on BMXs by the exposed roots of an ancient tree, one of them dressed a Darth Vader. The auspices were good. After a little scout about we found the perfect place. A small clearing in a circle of trees. Calder and Fey lit some candles and incense and put them in place at the edge of the clearing while I made a makeshift pipe from a plastic bottle and divided the D.M.T. in two. Lyle sat cross legged and waited. Everything was ready. I filled the pipe carefully and with a salute I lit the pipe and inhaled the smoke deeply. I had know idea what to expect. I held the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could and then began to gently exhale. As I did so it seemed as if I was becoming the smoke itself. My body seemed to be disappearing. I could hear an incredible rushing and popping sound. I seemed to be turning into water. It was like a universal orgasm or a French kiss from the cosmos. I was at the centre of some benign atomic explosion. Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, I was falling apart. I just didn't exist physically any more. I was sub atomic. I was a particle travelling at the speed of light into a space of infinite proportions. I was limitless. I was stretched beyond dimensions, beyond comprehension. I was pure consciousness. I could here a roaring sound everywhere. The music of the spheres. It felt as if all the metaphors and symbols that I thought I understood were being shattered, one by one, in an absolute, apocalyptic and final iconoclastic moment. Here was God, the Devil, Buddha, Allah, Jesus Christ and all the angels, Krishna, Quetzacotl, Yama, Marxism, Fascism, Money, Nations, everything and all of us, all face to face and all together. All exploding. I was all of them and they were me. We were the whole of time, past, present and future. All I could comprehend was revealed as a limitation, as was I, and behind me and all of these convenient myths was a mystery and a reality so immense and so absolute and so real that I thought I would go insane but I was propelled beyond sanity which was yet another myth, another limitation. It seemed to me at this point that I was being asked questions, by whom or what I have no Idea, but my answers to those questions were so important at that moment, there was no room for half truths here. The safety of my very soul and the sanctity of the whole of creation was in the balance. I was screaming now. The scream seemed to come from the depths of oceans, from the depths of the Universe. It came through me. Out of my cells. I was the scream. The monkey roared and was terrified of his own voice. I was aware of my naked soul but I was entering Eden, not leaving.
"YES!" I screamed. "YES! FOR EVERYONE! FOR US ALL!" Over and over and over again. The same reply. "YES! YES! YES!"
I was not aware of my surroundings at all. with my eyes open or closed It was the same. I was gone man. Really gone. But I was there, if you know what I mean. I was home. What I could see is even harder to explain. The feelings, I can, with some difficulty and thought, just about put into words but what I saw was truly indescribable and to even begin to try would do that vision no justice. I can say it was beautiful but that is not enough. To say it was beauty itself would be closer to the truth but still far from adequate. And this, I think, is the point. There are just some things that you can't explain, things that don't need an explanation. They are what they are. You just can't categorise experiences like this. You can't measure them and log them or put them in a drawer in a museum somewhere. You have to live them. The experience itself is explanation enough.

I gradually began to come round. I was lying on my back quite happily blown away. I could see the old familiar world begin to reform itself, layer by layer. The faces of Calder and Fey orbited above me like suns. It was the faces I recognised at first. Familiar features like their eyes and smiling mouths and then gradually everything else. I loved them more than anything else in the world at that moment. In a way they had come to welcome us back from our journey although we had all travelled together. Lyle was lying next to me in the clearing roaring with timeless laughter, staring wide eyed at the tree canopy above. I rolled over and embraced him and kissed his laughing mouth. Slowly we got to our feet and, still in each others arms, ventured out of the clearing onto the brow of a hill that overlooked the Sussex countryside. The BMX kids were all huddled together staring up the hill towards us. There was an adult there with them who I suppose they must have gone to get when they heard the screaming coming from the clearing. After all, in many ways, this was their hill and we were strangers here. They didn't approach us even though I offered them one of the bananas I was now eating. We lingered there for a while in wonder and in play like children, watching the sun go down until Fey, Calder, Lyle and myself made our way down the hill back towards the road that would take us home, no longer the same people that had gone up the hill but, in many respects, still unchanged.