Day 13 of the Experiment

Poetry as antitoxin, antidote.

Ann Shulgin¹: “You contain a universe inside yourself.” (https://transformpress.com/)

During the 1970s and 1980s, Ann Shulgin worked with her chemist husband Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin on creating, documenting and testing hundreds of new psychedelic compounds from their home laboratory in Lafayette, California. The couple tested the drugs on themselves, and then on a select group of volunteers. Ann Shulgin saw the therapeutic value of drugs such as MDMA in their potential to enable people to accept and love themselves, and come to terms with troubling or repressed emotions. They allow you "to see who you are without self-rejection," she said and recommanded MDMA especially for persons diagnosed with PTSD. (https://www.lgcstandards.com/PL/pl/Resources/Articles/TRC-psychedelic-research-ann-shulgin)

The Normalia drug: is it shocking out the ghosts inside me, is it my spell-breaking spell? The enchantment, I tell myself, is broken and thus dissolves. I cut the ribbon a long time ago, now the enchantment must be broken, and Normalia can help.

Ongoing radicalisation –

Fellow fear feared fellow foes

I feel what I feel, the feeling of being an outcast – having been cast out by

All of them, by now

There is nothing wrong with feeling the feelings I am feeling just now

I am fine now –

Comfort of the sky, comfort of clouds. Taking it in.

Soothing, it is soothing.

Sleepwalking, sleep-thinking –

Normalia = Shimmer?

Shimmer is a dangerous and potent chemical substance that features prominently in Arcane, an animated television series based on a computer game. It is a powerful, glowing drug that enhances its users' physical and mental capabilities, but it is also corrosive and wears down the body. It has the potential to lead to addiction and cause various physical and psychological side effects.

There is a long history of noble men and women¹ subjecting themselves to their experiments in order to enable new knowledge, to enable progress, without risking to hurt or harm others.

I decided to follow this path, to embark on the noble² adventure of self-experimentation: It is adventurous, because the outcome is open and the probability of failure is high, and it is noble because you don't subject others to the possible discomfort, the possible painful consequences or dangerous short- and/or long-term-effects of the experiment, especially when you are venturing into new territory.

Is it the noble thing to do – or is it just reckless curiosity³, to designate yourself as the test subject?

As part of my Phantomology project, I conducted a N-of-1⁴ experiment on myself called: The Normalia Experiment. The following daily notes document the course of the experiment, which was planned for a period of four weeks.

Day 11 of the Experiment

Does Normalia take my eyes away?

I feel like I don't have eyes anymore.

Restless

Legless

Something something

Blue eyes

My blue eyes are shining again

Their blue light is radiating

Asha Persson (2004) uses the several senses of pharmakon to "pursue a kind of phenomenology of drugs as embodied processes, an approach that foregrounds the productive potential of medicines; their capacity to reconfigure bodies and diseases in multiple, unpredictable ways." Persson emphasis the notion (from Derrida) that the effect of the pharmakon is contextual rather than causal.

Why am I allowing this to happen to me?

I continue taking it. I need to know. Suffering seems inevitable. The pain is real, but the ailment is of artificial nature. The artificiality of the illness I am experiencing tells me that it is not true on the whole. It is temporary (is this wishful un/thinking?), if I stop taking the drug, the illness will be over, or at least soon, after some time, days, maybe weeks, until the chemicals have left my system.

Oh the system. The down, the change, the chaos of the system.

This to understand, to undertake

The thin words

The lay of the land

Newness of souls that are reaching out –

Normalia

Taking Normalia and Lyrica

Lyrica against the toxic effects of Normalia  –

Day 7 of the Experiment

I am shaken today and depressed, and I thought about,

I am thinking about stopping the experiment.

See and understand. Am I ready?
Taking care of things, coming clean. Clearing the air.

Normalia: The effect is only a side effect, I think.

I feel poisoned,

a feeling of malaise emanating from my head.
Poison, antidote.

The awakening power of pain. Suddenly I feel the undoing power of pain.

There I am walking; there, there. There the mystery enfolds.

I know that writing is of utter importance right now – staying on track of the proceedings, so that I can really get a grasp of this new order, of this new system of myself that is emerging out of chaos, out of intoxication, subsequent to the poisonous effects of the drug, but also as a consequence of my new thinking, of my sorting it all, and sorting out, of my separation, rejection reaction, of my embracing the void.

One Buddhist method of working with chaos is using poison as medicine, as fuel for waking up. Instead of trying to get rid of something poisonous, it is inhaled, it is taken in as a whole, without resistance.

I am taking in, I am incorporating.

Normalia is entering, it is hardly a friendly takeover.

My pains are numerous, the feeling of wrongness as a bracket holding it all together, all the misery and discomfort.

The scientist-me notes: The experiment is doomed to fail, because the scientific mind behind it – the mind, which is supposed to keep a meticulous record of all events during the experiment – is compromised by the intoxication of Normalia.

Day 9 of the Experiment

Pharmakon means remedy and poison, cure and its opposite; in this way writing, according to Derrida (1972/2004), as the written word pharmakon, reveals another writing, masked by its derived or common meaning. Derrida introduced thereby what he called arche-writing – spoken language, but also thinking as an inner monologue, or what is experienced as private thoughts, could be called arche-writing. Writing, as well as spoken language, induces a divide between the intended and the actual meaning, thus leading to the conclusion that there are no fixed meanings.

For me, it is just the normal ambiguity that runs through all life experiences. Yes, there are no fixed meanings; and all these dualities, like good and bad, sick and healthy, sane and insane, cure and poisoning, are hopelessly outdated, they have fallen out of step with the times I saw.

Can you see time? Times?

I saw something;

Now my vision is blurred, my pupils are dilated, I am hypersensitive to glare and light, I have to wear sunglasses even indoors.

Everything is drying out, my eyeballs, lips, mouth, hands, feet.

I am drinking water, I am dropping eye drops, I am licking my lips. I am greasing my lips, I am putting cream on my hands, on the soles of my feet.

I am dreaming, it is a nightmare; it is the reality, the reality of pain: muscle pain, joint pain, head ache, drowsiness; the drowning of the brain in pain. I am dreaming, I am yawning, my nose is running, I feel sick, I feel nauseous.

The nausea induces dizziness, I stagger, I stumble along.

The Normalia Experiment

Day 18 of the Experiment

I am terminating the experiment, I am stopping the intake of the drug, I am acknowledging the truth of my body.

Normalia was the spell-breaking spell.

Day 15 of the Experiment

Random error.

The dream of the tarantula, sitting on the right side of my scull, tangled up in my hair, and, despite the horror, I had to grab it and try to entangle it from my hair - in order to get rid of it all, the pressure and feeling of sickness and drowsiness, radiating from the spot where the spider was sitting …

Where am I going

Sorting out sorting out

Letting the void in

A whole new direction!

Addressing the fear memory: you are safe now.

But are we ever? Safe? There is no safety and no security because everything changes all the time.

It is the system falling, the system failing

It is the downfall of the system, the failure of the system

It is a systematic collapse, a systematic failure

It is the fog in the landscape

The fog in the brain.

“Side”-effects of day 15: Drowsiness, restricted thinking, headache, runny nose, slight nausea, depression, sensitivity to glare, dryness of all mucous membranes, bleeding nasal mucosa, dry eyes. Anger that builds up and collapses. If anything remains, it is still the intrusions, memories, disturbances as reverberations of the perturbations/harassments from the past.
Fatigue –

Day 4 of the Experiment

Pain, at night, in my left wrist, so severe that I feel nauseous, but at the same time I'm so tired that I just want to go back to sleep.
I actually do fall asleep and in the morning there is only a slight residual pain, a stiffness in my wrist, a slight restriction of movement.
In the morning I woke up because my right arm had fallen asleep and had become painfully numb.
Now, after 7 hours of sleep, I am still tired and slightly disturbed, wondering whether I should end the experiment.

Day 1 of the Experiment

This morning I started to take the drug Normalia –

it is my codeword,

the drug is a common drug, well tested, a drug that is taken by millions, that is on the market since decades.

It is interfering with the neurotransmitters in the brain, it is changing the balance between different regions of the brain,

the intensity of communication between different brain regions.

It is interfering with the neuronal network of the brain, paving the way for new connections,

or destroying existing connections, or blurring what has been known, probably doing something like

splitting the skull – so that new insights, outlooks, new memories can rush in –

Day 17 of the Experiment

State of mind, day 17; thousands and thousands, I’d say, things on my mind, if you’d asked me: what's on your mind.
I have this hatred, and this need for justice, for recognition – it makes me so tired, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it and to empathise with it, I don't want to talk about it. I want to give it all up, let it all go. I want to sit down with death and have a quiet conversation.

I want to meet myself. I don't think I need a drug to do that. I can see myself, the universe that I contain. Embrace myself, see myself. Forgive myself and enter into an eternal covenant with myself.
I am processing –

But do I really have to endure nothingness? Endure nothingness, I don't know, I'd rather endure death. After all, death is something and not nothing. Sit down with death, as I said.
Filling the zero processes with content. Processing, processing.
Drawing single words, drawing spooky outlines –

Day 3 of the Experiment

Zombification happens in phases, is this a normativity-drug;

a drug that induces normalization – forces its consumers to normalize – this is what I want to find out.

Normalia – made according to the measure of the angle, made according to the norm /

Normalia – made to measure, made to measure, made to measure, made to measure.