Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are your thoughts on religious experiences? Have you had any?

Rick Rosner: Yes, but I haven’t believed in them for long.

Jacobsen: Was it drug-induced or naturally induced or what?

Rosner: I thought that maybe my train of logic could point in the direction of some truth, to some form of divinity or God, or being able to do things in the world beyond what you are allowed to do due to the world’s physics. That joy was quick; it was five minutes of delight, generally followed by a big “nah.”

Jacobsen:  Did you have any when you took LSD or anything?

Rosner: I took LSD, but I never liked LSD. It’s a pain in the ass because it lasts for way too long. Every time I took it, it lasted for at least 12 hours. I took it for insight only once, which was a bust. One time, I took it because a girl I was dating wanted to try it and wanted someone to take it with her. Another time, somebody gave me some, and I took some. I don’t know why the fuck I took it. The last time I took it, I wanted to see what it was like to take acid and then take the SAT. You mostly want it to stop because your perceptions are messed up, and your thoughts aren’t clear. I wasn’t confused, but I wasn’t thinking great thoughts either.

I wanted to sleep, but on acid, you can’t go to sleep either because you can’t reach the calm necessary to fall asleep. You can’t do fucking shit. I think I probably, knowing me, tried to jerk off to see if that would help. I don’t remember that, but I know how I am. So, I probably wasn’t able to do that. I remember taking a shower to see if that would help. It’s a pain in the ass. No, I didn’t obtain any mystical enlightenment, nor did I obtain any enlightenment from mushrooms, which is a much more manageable experience because it lasts only about a third of the amount of time as LSD.

And who knows what was in the various LSD I took? It would have been even more annoying if mixed with a little speed. In general, I’m annoyed with drugs because they don’t give me an experience that I find fun. I’ve occasionally had fun. I haven’t been seriously drunk since I was 20 years old, which is 44 years ago. But one of the times I got seriously shit-faced at 20, I had fun. I’m OK with being a little drunk, but I don’t love it.

I’ve only been high on pot once, though I tried to get high numerous times when I was younger. I couldn’t get high by smoking joints. I only got high from eating half of a pot brownie. Again, I found it annoying. I wanted to go to sleep and didn’t want to have these stupid, imprecise pot reveries. So, no insight from doing drugs.

Jacobsen: I took psilocybin a couple of times, but they were always in controlled circumstances. Timothy Leary talked about that whole thing—the set and the setting. It was controlled. I had wonderful trips; one very high dose was outside, and the sky parted, and I was seeing God, pure benevolent omniscience, all-penetrating Being. That was a powerful experience.

Rosner: All I saw was a janitor. I hid overnight. 

Jacobsen: You saw me. 

Rosner: OK, maybe. 

Jacobsen: Maybe you were looking down from the sky and seeing future me. 

Rosner: I hid in the library overnight on LSD, thinking that my ability to absorb information would expand hugely and I’d be able to absorb hundreds of volumes, which was dumb. But also, I was a stupid kid. I was 20 or 21. I ended up freaking out and had to ask to be let out by the janitor. I said, “Yes, I fell asleep while I was studying,” and the janitor didn’t give a fuck.

But LSD wrecks your perception. You have to see a face as a face. It takes many modes of information processing—shading and many other things. LSD will mess up communication among or within the modes, so you don’t see a face as usual. You see it like a polygon wireframe, which looks lizardy.

When I was looking at the janitor, I saw his face as a polygonal rendering, which looked scaly and incomplete. Your brain’s not able to do the processing it usually does. I wasn’t freaked out by it, but I was freaked out by being in the library, seeing the janitors walking by, and trying to hide from people. Thinking you need to hide from people when you’re high as fuck was uncomfortable to the point where I had to get out of there. But seeing the janitor looking all lizardy didn’t freak me out because, even though I was high, I understood this was a processing problem.

So no, I didn’t see God or anything.

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

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