When you take LSD, there is a phenomenon known as “looping.” It is when you think a thought, and you keep repeating that thought, which hypothetically, or quite literally (as I might know), can go on for infinity.
When I was probably 15, I took a chemical known as LSA, which can be found in the seeds of Morning Glory seeds. We would grind them up, or chew them, and essentially, it is a psychedelic that does not have a limit in its potency.
Apart from it being an overall negative experience that scared two good friends of mine, I experienced the phenomenon of looping. I laid in bed and, aside from tripping into a different galaxy, I kept reliving the thought over and over in my head that I was going to always be a drug-addict, and be judged by people for being a stoner of some sort.
Hours doesn’t justify the time that elapsed over that night. It felt closer to months if I think about it, but it gives me a headache to think about it too much.
This phenomena can persist into sobriety – albeit on a larger, but subtler scale.
A friend of a friend told me that he got married in Vegas when he was young and drunk, and his ex-wife has disappeared off the face of the earth 25 years ago – not literally; She is in “hiding.” I relayed to this person the feeling of purgatory that I felt like I’ve been in for the past five years, and that if a person does not have closure on something/someone (i.e him), they can not continue their life story i.e “Looping.”
A small example of this in my life is that for the past year or so, when I returned to writing on this blog, the only playlist that gave me enough ease to write to is titled, “is anything ever right” – by Ben Bonkoske on Spotify.
Perhaps, it is a small gesture to be listening to a different playlist while I write tonight, but the bigger gesture is that that I am not looking for comfort in my pain and confusion as a platform to create solace out of its meaning.
Today when I was watching a documentary about Native Voices in American Literature, it reiterated the idea that we must have courage. And courage most fundamentally boils down to being who we are and not living our life in fear.
Did you ever hear the story about the guy who was afraid of his own shadow?
Maybe the past five years have been a hibernation, a very painful one where I really took the meaning of life to its fucking end. And I understand a little more, but it meant so much less.
And to end, with a another platitude. I don’t know why I complicated love so much (Insert reasons and excuses here), but love, at its core is this: You love someone, and they love you. You are with that person, and they are with you.
It’s not more complicated than that, apart from trying to not screw that up.
Ben Bonkoske 