Those Who Hear Voices
by Greg Rubottom

     While serving time in the U.S. Army I, like so many other people my age during the early 1970‘s, became involved in the drug culture of those times. At the age of 19 and during my 15 month stay in Frankfurt Germany it was quite routine for my roommates and I to take doses of LSD, or some other hallucinogen, nearly any weekend we were able to get our hands on a supply. We also consumed quite a large quantity of hashish throughout the weekdays - along with our fair share of beer and other odds and ends of alcoholic origins - in order to keep the hope of the perpetual party alive. Although I enjoyed this drug induced atmosphere with friends, I was, and still am, a bit of an introvert and my experimentation with drugs often brought about a greater intensification of that introspection. I had over the course of the last year or so become particularly fascinated with LSD and its effects on me. For me, LSD had magically opened a portal in my mind to another world entirely. The perceptions that were awakened in me seemed so dynamic, intense and real, that the world of the unaltered mind at times seemed by comparison mere static boredom. I can recall experiences while under the influence of LSD such as gazing for hours upon the stones of some building and seeing there, within the veins of the rock foundations, vivid pictures of history living in a panoramic ever evolving organism. Chariots and horses, noblemen and slaves, a collage of vibrant past life painted via hallucination in stone. Experiences like this while under the influence of LSD couldn't help but instill in me an ever widening belief that the whole earth is alive - even in death - and that all of history may be somehow recorded in the very elements we interact with and our bodies eventually return to. I was no doubt becoming a true believer in the claims being made by people like Timothy Leary and others that LSD and drugs like it were essential catalysts for the evolution to a higher consciousness in mankind. Music was also becoming an obsession in my life during this period of time. I had been touched so deeply by the emotional power and mesmerizing beauty of music that I had in a profound moment of ecstasy one day made a decision that I wanted to dedicate my life to creating music myself. I was also growing accustomed to experiencing "revelations", so to speak, while listing to music under the influence. I had recently entertained the rather bizarre but captivating thought that perhaps musicians and other influential artists were people who had evolved to a higher level of awareness while here on earth. I had come to this idea partly because of my great awe for some musical talents - which I couldn't fully comprehend - not being of the naturally gifted sort myself - and partly because of my observation of the seemingly free and glorified lives that rock stars and other artists appeared to enjoy. The effects that music had on me were, at times, like a great spiritual encounter. And as a result of this I began to feel that it surely must be impossible for "mere men or women" to impart these "spiritual" things through music. I also began to wonder if the drug experience was perhaps a secret doorway to understanding such things and even a path to acquiring the power to become more than a "mere man" myself. It was during the beginnings of my mind's search into these thoughts that I had an LSD experience that I will now try to describe in as much detail as I can. While I served my time in the army I was stationed, as I mentioned before, in downtown Frankfurt Germany where I worked as a clerk typist in the office of army intelligence in the I.G. Farben building. I had come home one afternoon after a days' work to find myself alone in my 2nd story barracks room. Finding myself all alone I decided to treat myself to a solitary LSD trip - since I had managed to acquire a quantity of the drug earlier that day. I was looking forward to seeing where this trip might lead me. I slipped into some comfortable clothes and then reverently downed my tab of acid and settled into a soft chair to wait for the familiar mystical train to arrive. After about 30 minutes, as I felt