Client "LJ", Session May 09, 2013: Client discusses his interest in superheros and his past history with drug use. trial
TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: No, it's not locked.
CLIENT: Oh, my God. Carl.
THERAPIST: Not locked. Yeah.
CLIENT: We're good?
THERAPIST: Yeah, we're good.
CLIENT: Awesome. Cool. I've seen Ironman III three times since we last met, so that's good. I've seen two matinees and one 9:30 showing. People are going with midnight showings now. They're like, "Yeah, it's not open until tomorrow, but you can watch it at 9:30 tonight." That seems odd, but sure.
THERAPIST: So you don't have to wait until midnight? You can go to the 9:30.
CLIENT: Right. It was supposed to come out on Friday, but it was Thursday at 9:30. Okay. So I saw it at screen three the first time, which isn't good. [00:01:03]
THERAPIST: It's not?
CLIENT: I don't hate three, but you're not sitting at the right angle. It's just weird. There was a good article on why it's a useless invention. Our brain already makes things through the night. It's good doing that. In three there's an optical trick. Clearly they're not configured. The thing you're seeing isn't even three dimensional. It's just an optical trick that something is larger and more in front of the other thing. There's really nothing that exciting about that. Like at Disneyworld they had this Muppet one where they throw a fish at you from the audience. They're like "Oh, yeah. It's coming right for me." It's not coming right for you. It's getting bigger faster and filling up the screen. It's not actually . . . anyway.
THERAPIST: What did you think of the movie? [00:01:56]
CLIENT: I loved it. I love it. I love Ironman, Ironman I, II and III. It's one giant arc. Ironman I is about the armor, Ironman II is the world created after the armor, and Ironman III is about the man inside the armor, so it's a really good narrative arc.
THERAPIST: The man inside the armor? Huh. That's an interesting arc.
CLIENT: Yeah. It's really good. Again, it goes right along with the whole thing. When I was a kid I didn't want to be Ironman. I wanted to be Tony Stark, you know?
THERAPIST: The man inside it?
CLIENT: Right. We see in the comics many people can wear the armor. There are all sorts of armor, but they can't build it and make it better. That's all Tony Stark. Great movie. I've seen it three times. I saw it once by myself. [00:03:00] Some kid behind me, some college kid, was like, "That's totally improbable." I'm like, "That doesn't matter. It's an Ironman movie. What are you doing? This is a comic. Clearly improbably things will happen. There's a man flying around in a suit of armor he built himself, completely by himself, with the aid of a computer that he designed and a couple of robots that he built as well, himself in his basement which, presumably, he also kind of built. There's a lot going on here that is improbable, if not implausible. But here we are, we all bought a ticket. If you came here to pick apart a superhero movie so you can feel smart, then congratulations. I'm sure you feel pretty smart right now, besides which you're inebriated." So the next time I went down with Ginny. We walked down for the matinee and we see this gaggle of tween girls in front of the theater and Ginny is like, "Hope we won't have to see this with a bunch of tweens." I'm like, "No, no. They're probably here to see . . .." and I scan the marquee and we're like, "Oh god, no. Oh god, no. [00:04:03] The Croods. They're here to see The Croods, that caveman movie." They weren't there to see that.
THERAPIST: It was animations?
CLIENT: Yeah. But then they were there to see Ironman and they sat right in front of us in a row. [mimicking chatter] Fine. Okay. Tweens do that. Chatter, chatter, chatter. The movie starts and it's fine and at one point in the movie two girls in front of me, one starts talking to the other and I'm like, "Shh!" She flips around in her chair like, "What the . . ?" I just stare at her. I'm not going to be a dick, but I'm also not going to let a 13-year-old stand me down. Come on. This is a movie theater. This is what we do. We all pay attention to the film and if we're bored we leave. We go away. [00:04:59] Go to the lobby. Buy some ice cream. They won't sell you beer, but I'm sure they'll sell you ice cream, little girl. Then at the end of the movie they got up and they walked out and I was like, "If I had a daughter, I would be screwed."
THERAPIST: Why?
CLIENT: Because I would never be able to say no to her. These six young girls who are clearly being irritating. I was like, "Kids. What do you do?" We were sitting there and Ginny is like, "Oh, my god. Is this what 13 looks like now?" The movie was PG-13. It's terrifying. It's terrifying how childlike they are.
THERAPIST: Hard to say no?
CLIENT: Yeah. They're just kids, you know? If I had a daughter I would think she was amazing, so it's probably a good thing I don't have a daughter or any kids for that matter. There's a nice little moment in The Avengers when Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner is in this abandoned shack and a black widow is trying to convince him to go be an Avenger. He's walking around and he kind of lightly touches this bassinet that happens to be there and says the line, "We don't always get what we want out of life," signaling that he would have liked to have been a father but he never can be because of the Hulk. So apparently my doctor says the transmission of bipolar to your children is a 50-50 shot, just like flip a coin and do this to somebody, which seems . . .
THERAPIST: They would go through what you've . . ?
CLIENT: Yeah. It seems insensitive, at best and cruel at the worst. So as I was saying, first you decide to inflict life on someone. That's just a choice you make for someone else. I choose that you are going to exist and whatever happens to you is in some way my responsibility, my fault. If I am the cause ultimately of all your suffering . . .
THERAPIST: That was you.
CLIENT: Yeah. If I had not created you, you would not have any of this. So when normal things happen I'm like, "Well, okay. That's my fault." And so, first off, to inflict life is to flip a coin.
THERAPIST: And you might get hit by something else, [another call.] (ph?) The whole thing, bipolar.
CLIENT: That's the thing. This gets worse as I get older. I'm in a good place with my medication right now, but I'm at the dosage where, if I keep going higher, I can actually lose motor control. I can't afford to lose motor control. [00:08:03] I've always been very dexterous, you know? I paint, I do very precise things with my hands and I can't afford to lose any of it. At some point in my life, apparently, it will get worse. My bipolar will become worse, a little [roughening] (ph?). And that can happen again and it can happen again. Eventually I'll get dementia and that will be the end of me. So it's kind of an odd thought to think that this thing over which I have no control will get worse. And that when marijuana will be legal in most states so I'll just smoke that. [00:08:57]
THERAPIST: You've read that it gets worse?
CLIENT: That's what my doctor told me, my psychiatrist. (pause) It was also in an article on how psychiatry is basically one long [ ] (inaudible at 00:09:10). [ ] and read these novels on what conditions mean and how anxiety is the right amount of anxiety. Whatever. It's been helpful to me. "Your brother is against the pharmaceutical companies. I'm like, "Oh, my God." Yeah, there's a lot of evil, not just in pharmaceutical companies, but they do a lot of good in the meantime. Do they do as much good as they could? Probably not. It's probably [ ] (inaudible at 00:09:46) business to be too good.
THERAPIST: No, there are certain things that change people's lives. Definitely.
CLIENT: I find myself wanting to play new games but I can't really afford to. [00:10:05] I'm looking for new puzzles to solve. Besides that, I have a bunch of resumes. I have a friend [ ] (inaudible at 00:10:11) with my resume now and I have another friend who is meeting with a good friend today and she's passing on my resume and recommendation. She's also passing on my writing to this woman she knows who is part of a sci-fi author's group. You have to audition to get in and, if you do, then they meet once a month to show what they've written and discuss what they're writing and offer suggestions and improvements for each other. That would be really cool. That would be cool, because I like to write. I would like to write a novel. That would be fun. Sell my novel and make money on that novel. That would be great.
THERAPIST: You wouldn't have any problem coming up with a . . ?
CLIENT: No. It just happens. I just sit down and I do it. People tell me it's good, but of course it's difficult to believe anyone.
THERAPIST: Why? Do you think they're trying to make you feel good or something? [00:11:03]
CLIENT: No, I think there's a bias. I think there is an inherent bias to want to tell your friends they're good at things they enjoy. I have this problem less than most.
THERAPIST: You mean about doing that?
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Except with the girls.
CLIENT: (laughs) Yeah, with the girls. I don't know. I just want to go, "Oh, honey," and ruffle their hair and just be like, "What do you need? What do you need, princess?" My niece, Eva, we're taking her out, Ginny and I, on June 1st to do something because she gets so little attention. [ ] (inaudible at 00:11:52) because she's the perfect oldest child. She follows all the rules. Like I said, she woke up on her birthday and started cleaning the windows. [00:12:01] She [ ] (inaudible at 00:12:01) and started cleaning the windows because that's what she wanted to do on her birthday was clean the windows. She loves helping out in the kitchen. She loves being useful. She loves watching her little sister.
THERAPIST: A good girl.
CLIENT: Yeah, she's great. But since her younger brother is bipolar and possibly psychopathic and her younger brother is very young and her baby sister is literally a baby, she doesn't get the attention. Dan gets a lot of focus. [Irene] (ph?) gets a lot of focus. Gregory also needs attention, but he's still so confident and charming, it's going to get him really far. He's not particularly bright, but he's charming and confident and he is going to be a great politician someday if he chooses to be.
THERAPIST: How old is he?
CLIENT: Six, almost seven. He's already hitting on little girls. [00:12:59] I don't know where he learned that from, but he's good at it; whereas Dan, clearly bipolar and terrifies me a little bit because he's an example I think of him as an example of what could happen to me had I not been so badly abused. Which is a pattern not learned that there are very real consequences for nothing sometimes. There is violence; that there is irrational behavior. For him, consequences are to go to your room, not you're going to set off a time bomb. They're going to come after you, that someone is going to storm in in terms of destroying your things because they're of the devil. Suddenly send your friends home because they sneezed one spring morning and now they're getting you sick. [00:14:00] Someone's not going to try to spin around in the car trying to smack you and almost run off the road. Just these things. Just these things will happen. He hasn't had to learn empathy, so he's really mostly interested in what people can do for him, what use certain individuals have. When he was three or four, he wanted some ice cream at 9:00 at night and his dad was like, "No, you're going to go to bed." He was like, "But in the morning, after breakfast, you can have some ice cream." He gets real serious and he's like, "Mom, if you don't get me what I want I'm going to go to a neighbor's house. I'm going to get a gun and I'm going to shoot you."
THERAPIST: He told them that?
CLIENT: Yeah. I'm like what the fuck? Bridget is like, "Well, he watches Transformers and stuff like that with his dad and in those movies, bad guys are always threatening to shoot people to get what they want, so that's what happens." [00:15:01] What was terrifying was that he knew he would have to go somewhere else. He had a plan.
THERAPIST: He had a plan in mind and formulated a plan?
CLIENT: Yeah. He knew he would have to go get a gun and how would he do so.
THERAPIST: Yeah, he's not thinking about danger.
CLIENT: He's not this compulsive . . . He's like, "How would I go about doing this? A gun will get me what I want. How do I achieve that goal?" As I said, he's very smart. He's very smart and I love that about him. I try to teach him that he just can't be this way and he doesn't want to share things. I'm like, "You should share that." Of course, I'm not going to tell him why he should share them and, of course, the reason you're going to give them is because people would appreciate you more if you were generous.
THERAPIST: Which is maybe ammo for . . ?
CLIENT: Which is a sad thing because it's all this [ sense of community.] (ph?) That's what conversation is, people saying things to each other to get what they want. [00:16:03]
THERAPIST: Not sharing.
CLIENT: Why be good?
THERAPIST: Why be good?
CLIENT: Because it's rational, Dan. Because it's rational. We're playing this game on Saturday, this card game, and it's semi-cooperative in that you can all lose. It's possible that every player loses, that the AI in the game actually wins. Again, there is one individual winner. He immediately starts being cut throat and would lose every single time because he will not work with us in the beginning. He's like, "No, I don't need anybody else to win." I'm like, "You do." This is the fallacy of his life. He doesn't need anybody else to win and you truly do. He's one of those daring idiots sometimes. Here's an example. It's stupid because it's so short-sighted and narrow-minded. [00:17:02] "Who is going to pay for things?" "I'll pay for things." No you won't. You won't. You can't afford to pay for the police and the firemen and the schools and the roads and fucking health care. You can't. You don't have that kind of money. You just don't. So when the meth-head is coming to your house to kill you, they probably can get in there because your neighbor paid more money for police protection so they're paying attention to him and not for you. It's stupid. It's fucking idiocy.
THERAPIST: Yeah, so there's a rational basis for cooperation.
CLIENT: Of course. We're tribal creatures. That's how we got here. That's Darwinism. That is Darwinism. We work together to defeat all the many things that want to kill us.
THERAPIST: You're saying that there's a concern that he doesn't have the instinct for it.
CLIENT: He doesn't have the instinct for it. He thinks he doesn't need other people, but you do. You absolutely do. Think how miserable you are when you aren't in a relationship with someone. [00:18:02] Think of how desperately you need people to tell you you're special. Where would you be without any of us? Dead. You would have killed yourself.
THERAPIST: What I think is so complicated for you is that the instinct to depend on a person who is very dangerous could be dangerous at times.
CLIENT: Certainly, so I've learned to be very good at picking out who I can depend on. Again, I didn't expect to rely on . . . but I still took the help when I could get it. Certainly, because it's only rational to do so.
THERAPIST: That's right. That's a good point because you were able to discern safe figures to depend upon at certain critical moments. [00:19:03] And I think, too, that you depended upon them in certain kind of I guess everybody does in certain ways with certain limitations on how far you'll depend upon them. You'll depend upon them for certain things, but maybe not on everything.
CLIENT: Yeah, I try to pass that on. I try to be helpful and I think I have been with many people, my brother most recently.
THERAPIST: Oh, yeah. Saved his life.
CLIENT: I suppose I did. But then he did all the work. All I had to do was take him and put him someplace and tell him where to go and what to do and he went and did it.
THERAPIST: Pretty huge, though. Got him away from your mother.
CLIENT: Yeah. Insane woman who kept him in a box. [00:20:02]
THERAPIST: Yes. What was the thing? He couldn't even ride the bus.
CLIENT: Too retarded to ride the bus. Don't let him go to a gym. If he goes to a gym, make sure you go there and find a female gym worker to tell about him to not let him be alone in the steam room or the men's locker room because he doesn't know. He might think it's normal. Like what? Like gay sex? So I'm like, "Kevin, do you think you're okay to go to the gym without being lured into gay sex? (laughs) Ridiculous, right? "So, Kevin, if you go to the gym don't get lured into gay sex unless you want gay sex, in which case . . ."
THERAPIST: Lure away. Take the bait.
CLIENT: Yeah. [ ] (inaudible at 00:20:54) plenty of times. (pause) [00:21:04] [ ] on the elliptical machines [ ]. (pause) He certainly needs to get around.
THERAPIST: When your mother says that stuff, that's in the midst of a [florid psychosis, this dichotomy in thinking.] (ph?)
CLIENT: That's a great adjective for that. You are saying [ ] (inaudible at 00:21:45). Even though I know what happens after I stop smoking weed, for weeks I will be crazy. [00:22:01] It will be as if I'm not even taking my meds or my meds are weaker.
THERAPIST: Is that right?
CLIENT: Yeah. I get really depressed for a few weeks afterwards and then I get angry, manic angry. I fluctuate for a couple of weeks and then I settle back in. I can't really afford to be crazy, but like in springtime, Carl, springtime is the best time to do drugs because everything is beautiful and clear and nice. The right temperature, you can just walk around and see how beautiful the world is and appreciate it in a way that is difficult to do in a normal way. That's why I loved shrooms. Shrooms were amazing, absolutely amazing.
THERAPIST: What about it? What was that like?
CLIENT: The shrooms, some people were talking about the suspicion that early [adversional humans used psilocybin to improve their senses. [00:23:00] Well this is what happens if you've ever been shroomed out. The first half-hour to an hour the first half-hour, things start to kick in. In the next hour or so your senses are quite sharpened. You feel like you're a superhero. All five of them are just incredibly heightened, like being able to see across the street the details in the leaves and just amazing things. Sense of touch is incredibly granular. You can feel the ridges in your fingers. It's incredible. If you touch your nicotine-stained fingers to your tongue, it's the most horrible thing. It's actually disgusting. Smoking is a very internal experience, almost like you feel smoke going through your lungs. You breathe it in and you just feel this amazing presence in the physical world. [00:24:04]
THERAPIST: Is it kind of a heightened sense of aliveness?
CLIENT: I suppose. The way I would describe it is that on shrooms you could see how everything man made is flawed and nature is perfect. It was so clear. You see all the little divots in the wall and they immediately jump out to you, like the ticks along the edge of the frame there, I suppose where it's been bumped against the wall when it was moved or dropped or whatever. All those little things just leap out at you, but nature is perfect.
THERAPIST: As opposed to when you look at a tree?
CLIENT: Yeah. Nature is perfect. You look at it now and it's decaying and it's falling apart. Everything man made is flawed and it's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Then it starts to move into you, all different kinds of stuff as you go. [00:25:01] Video games. Pixel-perfect. You can see every single pixel in absolute clarity and it removes the entire mask. You see so clearly the illusion. You're like, "Wow. I can see all the individual pieces." You become so good at video games. We used to play [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:26) all the time, which was a fighting game, not 2-D. I was good at it because I was good at those games. You would practice and practice this one character over and over again. I played all characters. I would [be on the wall] (ph?) through these characters, but I would play my favorite guy. My favorite guy had a serious flaw in his design. He was really, really linear. [00:26:01] There were a whole variety of things he could not do, a variety of things. He didn't have certain defenses. But when I would smoke weed I would get even better with the game. One day I took some shrooms. They were out doing stuff. I can't remember my mom wanted me to have dinner and I was like, "I'm going to be shrooming today. I'm not really going to want to eat lobster." That would have been really weird if I was going to be shrooming. They went out to do stuff and I dropped shrooms and was playing something on the PS1. They come back and he is like, "Wow. That's some teching." And he didn't realize I was on shrooms or something. We start playing and I'm destroying him. I'm destroying him and he's getting so frustrated. He can't possibly win. Everything is slow. I can see everything that's happening. [00:27:00] I can see it before he can. I'm destroying what I've never destroyed before. He seemed sort of frustrated and I just fall over laughing and I can't stop laughing because, of course, Psilocybin is a euphoric, as well as a poison (laughing). So I'm just laughing my ass off. I'm like, 'I'm shrooming. I'm shrooming. You can't possibly beat me." It was the funniest thing. And he couldn't. But you go and sit down and play a game of Star Craft and all of a sudden everything starts to move and change and you're like, "Wow. This is amazing. This is [insects] (ph?)." There was this tree that became a dragon. There was one tree twisted and sort of . . .
THERAPIST: Where was this?
CLIENT: At [Harold] (ph?). It was a 12-foot tree, maybe. We used to twist the branches. You go inside the leaves on the overhang. [00:28:01] You could climb up inside and read a book in there or whatever, so I'd go there sometimes. But my buddy had a bunch of shrooms and shrooms taste awful, absolutely disgusting, so I devised a way. What you do is you get a glass of water. Because I believed that shrooms should be done ritually. You need to respect the shroom [ ] (inaudible at 00:28:23) to take the edge off. We each got a goblet of water and a tiny little sugar in the center and had our shrooms all laid out in front of us and we would dip the shroom in the water, in the sugar, eat it. Totally doable. Totally doable.
THERAPIST: It takes away the bad taste?
CLIENT: Yeah, it masks the incredibly horrendous taste because your body is like, "You are eating poison. Why are you eating poison?" And it can make you a little nauseous. That's why I smoke weed, too. [00:29:00]
THERAPIST: [ ] (inaudible at 00:29:01)
CLIENT: Exactly. We start walking and Harold is made of red bricks. We have red brick pathways everywhere you go which, if you notice, in the Wizard of Oz there are two pathways. There's the yellow brick road and there's the red brick road. She takes the yellow. We used to joke that the red brick road came to Harold when I was going there. I'm getting into the tree and trees are alive, regardless. But I'm sitting there and it's breathing underneath me. The bark is skin. There's a knot that opens into an eye. It looks like a dragon-slitted eye. I go like, "This is great. This is great. I'm in this dragon tree."
THERAPIST: In the belly.
CLIENT: I get inside the branches. I'm actually in the large branches.
THERAPIST: You can climb up a certain distance and then it would be . . .
CLIENT: Yeah. I'm sitting in this tree in the branches of this amazing, living dragon tree. [00:30:01]
THERAPIST: What was that like?
CLIENT: It was wonderful. It was wonderful; safe and terrifying at the same time.
THERAPIST: Safe and terrifying? Wow.
CLIENT: I always had a knack for danger.
THERAPIST: It sounds like a womb-like experience.
CLIENT: I suppose. I suppose. Sheltered inside. I was hidden. Being up in the tree you were hidden. People couldn't see. You could see the world, but they didn't notice you were there because people don't often see what they aren't expecting to see. They just don't do it, right? You don't see the gorilla. People with black shirts, white shirts pass the wall. You don't expect to see to see . . .
THERAPIST: You don't expect to see a guy up in a tree.
CLIENT: Yeah. You just don't see it.
THERAPIST: Or a dragon become a tree or a tree become a dragon.
CLIENT: I remember I was dropping acid up there one time. I have a couple of knacks, a couple of knacks that I was really good. [00:30:59] I had one for avoiding danger when it came to drugs. I was always like, "I've got a bad feeling," and I'd leave before people got busted. I'm pretty good at that. If I were someone else, "Fred is a narc," is what I'd say. "Fred is a narc. When we do drugs, Fred leaves and the cops come."
THERAPIST: [He's making the call.] (ph?)
CLIENT: Literally, that's what I'd probably believe if I was someone else. Then again, I've noticed myself people don't pay attention, so they're cool. That's fine. I have a knack for it. I remember one time a bunch of us were walking down to this place called the Garden, which is on campus, along this tiny river. Our part of the river was more, I think, known as a brook, really. The raging river (sp?) we called it. It's the River, but there was nothing raging about it. It was so docile and small.
THERAPIST: It's a Native American kind of thing?
CLIENT: Yeah. The entire area was. [00:32:05]
THERAPIST: What's the Indian up there, by the way?
CLIENT: I forget the name. I forget the tribe. The river was there [ ] (inaudible at 00:32:15). We get down there and we're eating and it's dark and it's nighttime. We get down there and I go, "I don't feel good about this," so I'm behind the group and this one guy just kind of walks in and I just keep walking. I just walk away down the street. I go down the main road and come back around and I can see the garden really well. I'm 400 feet away and the security guards from the garden are shining their flashlights around talking to my friends about smoking weed. After all those guys leave I walk back up and they're like, "Where were you?" I'm like, "I had a bad feeling. I left." They're like, "Man." [00:33:01]
One time we were breaking into this abandoned building on the school property and I was like, "I've got a bad feeling about this," so I kind of backed away from the window in the dark and I see a security guard walking around. I'm like, "Crap." I slowly back up and stand in the shadow of a tree and stand absolutely still. He's right near me; he doesn't see me or anything. He's looking in the window. It's clearly open. I'm standing there totally silent. My friends start coming to the house and they're like, "Steve!" That's our friend, Steve. He used to be a security guard and was wearing his uniform around campus just to freak people out. I see this so I just walk up and they're like, "What the hell! Where the fuck did you come from?" I said, "I was just standing over here." So that wasn't more of an actual danger in hiding.
The other thing is finding people. I just kind of think about people and where they could they be and then I just walk. I just walk and people would follow me. [00:34:08] So we had some acid, some really good acid called Purple Jesus, and when we dropped it you want to smoke weed at the beginning because, again, it takes the edge off. We knew this girl, Reese (sp?), she had some. She was only in town for a few days and nobody knew where she was staying. It was summertime and all. They're like, "Fred, find her." Okay. They knew I could find her. I'm like, "This way." So we just start walking. I'm looking and I don't see her anywhere. We go to the Union Mart, the one 24-hour franchise place in Harold proper, and they're like, "Let's go get stuff." I'm like, "Yeah. I don't want to go in. I'm going to stay here." So they all go in and I was standing there. [00:35:02] I look across the street and there's Reese hanging out her window, just kind of looking out. I'm like, "There you go. Reese! Okay! My friends and I wanted to come up and say hey." She was like, "Yeah, sure." So we go up there and there was this girl, this awesome redhead who I later found out was into soft porn. That was great. We're up there and we're like, "Yeah, we want to drop some acid and smoke some weed." So they're like, "Oh, let's do that. Totally." So we did. We dropped acid and smoked weed. We were sitting there in the room and we were all smoking cigarettes and at one point Georgia turns to me and says, "Fred, you've been smoking this cigarette a long time." I go, "Yeah, I guess I have." She's like, "Are you going to light it at any time do you think?" I look at it and I'm like, "Well, I would, but I'd need my lighter for that, which is in my pocket and which, as was previously discussed, I no longer know how to get to." And I found out how to get to my pocket, got the lighter out and lit it. I'm looking around and we were really into the Grateful Dead at that time. [00:36:03] We were listening to Grateful Dead. And the other girl was, too. We looked on her wall and she had this amazing Jerry Garcia poster, absolutely incredible. I was like, "That actually really captures everything that he was about as a performer." I turned to her and I was like, "That's amazing."
THERAPIST: Like a kind of live shot of him?
CLIENT: Yeah. I go, "That's an amazing Jerry Garcia poster." She's like, "That's a blank wall." (both laugh) She's like, "It must be so much fun to be you right now." I was like, "It's pretty great." I'm walking after that and the world became an illusion. I was on a treadmill and the world was [protection] (ph?) around me. The world moved, but I did not. I came to this place, the Steinheim, which is a sort of castle-looking building [ ] (inaudible at 00:36:55). There was some mud patch out in front of it. I'm like, "Oh, it's like Candyland. This is the Molasses Pond." [00:37:01] We start moving into the woods and my friend said, "Now we go to Tiki Land. Darker. More primal." There were little tiki people running around in the woods not really, of course. The thing about it is we actually shared a hallucination. Quite often people begin to see the same sort of hallucination. So we all go back up to Lamda House, which is the frat house a couple of them were staying at for the summer, and some contractors were doing work on the ceiling tiles. There were a lot of those seaming strips, those long, white plastic strips that you put between ceiling tiles. Georgia and I picked up one or two and they, basically, were like fencing foils. If you held them the right way they were stiff and rigid, so we started fencing. [00:38:02] It was like we knew what we were doing. We were going back and forth and having exchanges and playfully stabbing at each other. And then my friend, Steve, jumped in "I am the [sneed] (ph?)" and we both turned and stabbed him in the heart and we were like, "That was pretty good." Acid is an amazing experience. It's an absolutely amazing experience.
Another time I did it and I remember we were listening to Fish in this GLBT (ph?) frat that they're visiting a friend so we dropped some acid and we were up there. It was an amazing experience. We were listening to Fish. You know Fish is jazz and just kind of rambles on and goes up and down and all over the place. It was like when I was in space on a roller-coaster ride, following the track, which was the music. [00:39:02]
THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah. What I was thinking about in all this is that those experiences . . . Like I was thinking how when you drop acid or even weed that there is a way the world kind of comes alive in a way that it doesn't without it. What I was thinking about is that in some way it's interesting because the way you describe it is that it's almost like you're describing a certain feeling of safety in being in that place. What I was thinking about is that the acid, what you were describing as you were going through the kind of descriptions was that you were always aware of the dangers and that you felt kind of safe going into this kind of what I would call almost a play space.
CLIENT: It is a play space. It's literally a trip. You're going to be somewhere else and the drug is going to take you there and you just have to lean into it. That's something a friend of mine told me with my very first acid trip in high school. He was like, "The drug is going to take you somewhere and you just need to lean into it. [00:40:07] Trust it taking you."
THERAPIST: Yeah, somehow you could trust it. I was thinking about it and it's almost like the Ironman itself gives some protection in some way. I was thinking about it in terms of you felt more safe to go in that area.
CLIENT: In a way, in that you could see the world in the way in which it really was. That was the thing. It's like all these things out here that people don't see. It changes a lot. All of a sudden you're like, "Ahh. Reality, or your perception of it, is fluid."
THERAPIST: There's something [ ] (inaudible at 00:40:50) about all that, going there. And you miss it.
CLIENT: I miss weed. I don't miss acid. Acid is incredibly dangerous. I don't recommend anyone do it, but shrooms are fine. [00:41:04]
THERAPIST: To the kids that . . .
CLIENT: Yeah, if you have kids at home. Shrooms are fine, though, but they are poison and you have to be aware that you're eating poison.
THERAPIST: There is a danger in the actual thing itself.
CLIENT: Yeah, and it's easy to eat way too much. I once ate an eighth of shrooms by myself.
THERAPIST: What do they recommend?
CLIENT: A couple of caps.
THERAPIST: Oh, an eighth, so that's a lot.
CLIENT: An eighth of an ounce. That's like a Ziploc bag, yeah. By myself.
THERAPIST: Whoa. Whoa. What do you think about that?
CLIENT: It just becomes too much. It's not even too much, it's that you cannot move or you could, but it's like there is too much reality and you just sit absolutely still.
THERAPIST: The way you described about the pot is that it sort of enhances your sensorium, in a way. An appreciation of nature, yeah, but feeling . . . [00:42:06]
CLIENT: It makes things more interesting, certainly.
THERAPIST: Color.
CLIENT: Yeah, it makes everything more interesting. I have to be aware if I'm smoking weed. I'm like, "What game am I going to play if I'm smoking weed?" because when I stop smoking weed in a few weeks, this game will no longer be interesting to me.
THERAPIST: It's kind of like life, though.
CLIENT: I suppose. I suppose. Then life becomes less interesting. Yeah. I like it, though. It will be better than the solitude, as well.
THERAPIST: Solitude?
CLIENT: I just want to be alone in my own bed.
THERAPIST: Is it easier you mean?
CLIENT: It's nice in many ways, you know? It's nice not to need anybody, just to have my thoughts. [00:43:07] My thoughts become enough. (pause)
THERAPIST: I was thinking about the parallel about Tony Stark. I don't know why, but Tony Stark building the Ironman.
CLIENT: Well it certainly makes everything better.
THERAPIST: He flies, he gets to experience a certain kind of way of reality that no one else does.
CLIENT: He gets to play a superhero, which is awesome.
THERAPIST: Euphoria. That's protective in some way.
CLIENT: Sure. (pause) But not [ ] (inaudible at 00:43:50), that's for sure. (pause) [00:44:01] I'm going to have to watch The Avengers again.
THERAPIST: What are you thinking?
CLIENT: It's just such a good fucking movie. They're making another one, like a Captain America II. [Thor is coming out.] Guardians of the Galaxy should be interesting. That's a Marvel property. I don't know how they're going to sell that. One of the main characters is Rocket Raccoon. He's an actual raccoon, not raccoon-sized, with a rocket launcher. I wonder how they're going to sell that.
THERAPIST: Is that right?
CLIENT: I'm a little worried about how they're going to do that properly. But they're also going to do [Catman] (ph?), Dr. Strange.
THERAPIST: It's almost [studio like. It's like Warner Brothers.] (ph?)
CLIENT: Yeah, pretty much. Ironman IV and probably V, two more Ironmans. [00:45:01] Ironman III is good, though. They really deal with a lot of stuff, like he has PTSD after the Avengers movie, Tony Stark.
THERAPIST: It's after that?
CLIENT: Yep. These fucking space aliens and gods and everything that he's dealing with, he's like, "I built a suit of armor [ ] (inaudible at 00:45:25)." He deals with all these other worldly, supernatural things.
THERAPIST: What is that?
CLIENT: He has anxiety attacks, actual panic attacks.
THERAPIST: I've got to see this.
CLIENT: Yeah, you do. It's great. Have you seen the first two?
THERAPIST: I saw the first one. I didn't see the second one.
CLIENT: Second one is great. Some people will tell you the second one is not as good, that it's too [ ] (inaudible at 00:45:56). It's a good movie. You've got to view them as one giant story. Two is transitory. Again, armor, world, beyond. That's how it goes. [00:46:11]
THERAPIST: And those were taken from the narratives in the comics themselves?
CLIENT: Yeah, largely. In III they merge a few different story lines together to make one. They merge [ ] (inaudible at 00:46:22) and The Sum of All Fears and The Rescue Armor.
THERAPIST: So he has PTSD in the third one from what happened in The Avengers. I saw The Avengers. That was all the attacks.
CLIENT: It was amazing.
THERAPIST: But he's affected by that. He does not come out of that unscathed.
CLIENT: He does not because he's just a human being. He's not a soldier like Captain America. He hasn't been in any war before this. He's not a monster; he's not a god. He's not like Thor. [00:47:02] [ ] (inaudible at 00:47:04) These are all people who have done this stuff. He's new to the game. He built a suit of armor. He built a weapon and because of that weapon he can play in the same league but . . .
THERAPIST: He wasn't [ ] (inaudible at 00:47:13).
CLIENT: He was literally just a rich guy who built an amazing part.
THERAPIST: Smart rich guy.
CLIENT: Yeah, a very smart rich guy. (pause) It's very good. Robert Downey Jr. He's actually good in everything. A Scanner Darkly, he was great in A Scanner Darkly.
THERAPIST: Is that the [rotoscope] (ph?)? Richard Linkletter.
CLIENT: Keanu Reeves is pretty much Keanu Reeves in all that he does. You can take anyone out to any of his movies and [add dude at the end of it and there it is.] (ph?) Bill and Ted was his best work. [00:48:04]
THERAPIST: Did you ever see My Own Private Idaho?
CLIENT: I didn't. I should check that out.
THERAPIST: I think it's like one of his earliest, first films.
CLIENT: Yeah, he plays some depressed guy or something.
THERAPIST: Yeah, like a scion. It's based on some Shakespeare. I forget which one.
CLIENT: Yeah, he's powerful in Much Ado About Nothing. They cut most of his lines in most of the scenes for Much Ado About Nothing. "I must eat when I have stomach." Must do. You must eat when you have a stomach.
THERAPIST: My Own Private Idaho is about these people, these kids. It's in the late '80s. It's when they shot it. [00:48:58]
CLIENT: I'll have to check it out. [ ] (inaudible at 00:49:03) See Ironman III. Check it out.
THERAPIST: I will. I will.
CLIENT: [ ] (inaudible at 00:49:14)
THERAPIST: Do I need to see II before it?
CLIENT: No, if you see The Avengers you'll be fine. Two is the whole demon in a bottle storyline so unless you want to see him wrestle with alcohol, there's no reason to see II. I loved II.
THERAPIST: I wonder if I did see II and I just forget it. Maybe I did see that because Cheadle is in the second one.
CLIENT: Yeah, Cheadle is in the second one. Cheadle is a much better [rogue] (ph?) than . . .
THERAPIST: I think I did see that.
CLIENT: People are like, "Oh, it's not that good." I don't know.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: I'll see you next Tuesday.
THERAPIST: See you next Tuesday.
END TRANSCRIPT