So I’m sitting on the edge of a paddy wagon looking up at a male and a female Police officer and they ask me what drugs I’ve taken. I laugh diabolically and say “all of em!” The male Police officer casts me a withering glare and then asks “so why are you naked?” I look down and realise at this point I’m regaled in nothing but my birthday suit and a dog tag necklace my mama gave me. “Umm I dunno, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” I had no idea where I was, how I had got there or what was happening. I certainly didn’t know why I was nuded up to the max.

Fuck.

Let’s rewind to the events leading up to this.

It’s Good Friday eve and I’m at a house party. Nothing over the top, just a few bevvies, some sick tunes and communion with my old friend Harry Wong. At some point in the evening the host breaks out a small bottle of liquid LSD and starts dishing out drops like the fuckin candy shop owner in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Being the guts I am I demand two drops. The dude gives me a speech similar to the one Willy Wonka gives about the everlasting gobstoppers (everyone is getting one, and one is enough for anyone) but I press on and have a whinge and eventually he acquiesces and gives me two drops in the little well that your hand makes when you flatten your fingers and raise your thumb. I hungrily lick the minty liquid off my hand and prepare to enter bat country.

An hour or so passes and I start to wig out. This shit is definitely much stronger than advertised. For some reason I get upset and start yelling and carrying on like a nut job, I vaguely remember screaming at the people “I’ll always remember this, I’ll always remember this!” and start to question why we exist. Then I start to cry because I don’t want the Police to come and ruin the party for everyone so I make the decision to go to the main bedroom and be on my own for awhile.

This is the point where things start to go seriously sideways. I go to another place, a place I’ve never been before. It feels like I’m being taken out of this world and to get there I need to go out how the way I came in, unencumbered by anything on my mortal body. So I start taking off all my clothes and jewellery. I can remember being too fucked up to be able to undo the dog tag around my neck but this exit from the world seemed so right and so just that I recall thinking this other force drawing me away is going to take it off for me, so I just lay there waiting for them to undo the clasp so I can finally go home.

I must’ve left the room in my birthday suit and started causing more of a commotion because I can remember the people at the party around me, trying to talk me down. But it all just felt like a dream, I was going off to certain death and all of their chatter just fades away into the background like non-diegetic music in a film. While it seems strange that this is how I will meet my fate, the feeling of it being so perfect washes over me and off I go.

The next vague memory I have is being in a car and I feel trapped. It seems like I have to fight for my life so I begin lashing out like Bruce Banner when he goes into Hulk mode and starts smashing the fuck out of everything. I manage to escape the vehicle and I take off up the road like Usain Bolt in the hundred metre sprint final. Everything fades to black.

What ensued from here was incredibly powerful and surreal, but due to the addled condition of my psyche the memory of what happened is quite patchy so I will try and describe it as best as I can. I knew I was dying, but it felt like my death was for all of humanity; like out of billions of people I was the world’s chosen representative to go and fight the good fight at this other place I was being sent to. Much like Jesus Christ, I was dying for the greater good of everyone. How ironic.

My life flashed before my eyes. I giggle to myself. It is exactly in line with my personality, I am amused by how the macabre nature of what is happening is offset by how it challenges the essential core of who I am. I can remember running, running as fast as I can so that this thing can’t catch up with me, I don’t want to leave yet. Then time slows down and the feeling of urgency passes. I remember feeling like Barack Obama going out for a jog accompanied by his secret service agents. Someone is there with me protecting me. I turn around and poke fun at them “come on lads pick up the pace” and I start running faster. Everything fades to black once more.

Now I’m in another place and there are people there. I can’t recall their faces but I know in my heart they are the divine creators of the Universe and all that is within. They speak to me without words, telepathically communicating with me. All of the fear that I had about leaving this world begins to subside. They confide in me a secret that human beings have been trying to uncover for thousands of years – the meaning of life.

The Universe is a giant machine that is perfect in design. It is a super sophisticated mechanism that produces limitless energy, compressing time like some divine piston on its awesome down stroke. The mathematics and calculations used to create this machine are infallible; the Universe is perfectly balanced. All is as it should, was and ever will be. When we die, the energy that is contained within our mortal coils goes to another place as nothing is ever wasted.

Of all of the energy this divine machine creates, human beings are the most perfect and the most ingenious. We are like a cancer that replicates infinitum; you can never eradicate us. We are a cycle of energy that never ceases, no matter what happens our frequency will continue to resonate throughout the Universe like ripples in a pond.

As all of this is explained to me by these godlike creatures I begin to feel more and more at peace. I no longer feel afraid of the death I was trying so desperately to avoid. I submit myself to the divine perfection of the Universe and lay there waiting for it to take my soul onto the next plain of existence. You know how in some documentaries they record months of video that is then sped up to play over a course of seconds, like watching a flower germinate from seed, sprout from the ground and bloom and eventually wither and die? It was just like that; decades of my existence compressed into seconds. I leave my body and I watch it shrivel, decay and eventually turn to dust that gets blown away like the sands of time.

I am dead.

Except I’m not, because shortly after I get yanked back to reality at warp speed; kinda like when you’re in a really deep sleep and some stupid whore wakes you up by tickling the bottoms of your feet because you’re passed out cold after a weekend of drug fueled sex and she decides she doesn’t want to be in your apartment on her own and can’t wake you up any other way. Or something.

So here I am sitting on the edge of this paddy wagon looking up at a male and a female Police officer and they ask me what drugs I’ve taken. I laugh diabolically and say “all of em!” The male Police officer casts me a withering stare and then asks “so why are you naked?” I look down and realise at this point I’m regaled in nothing but my birthday suit and a dog tag necklace my mama gave me. “Umm I dunno, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” I had no idea where I was, how I had got there or what was happening. I certainly didn’t know why I was nuded up to the max.

Apparently I had been crawling along a major arterial road naked and a car almost hit me and called 000. I had grazes and bits of skin missing from all over me (apart from my face and my genitalia, I guess even when you’re hallucinating out of your fuckin mind you still somehow know to protect your face and your nuts!) and was pretty disoriented. I was still tripping balls and after coming out the other side of a near death experience I didn’t know what the shit was going on.

The cops were pretty cunty and obviously weren’t there to help. I asked for some water because I was thirsty and a blanket to cover my nakedness but all they were concerned with was to keep questioning me about drugs. I told them I wasn’t saying another word and despite me not being aggressive they opted to handcuff me and throw me in the back of the paddy wagon naked to take me to the hospital rather than putting me in the ambulance that was there standing by. Cunts.

Initially when I got in the back of the paddy wagon it still felt like there was another entity that was there protecting me, like I wasn’t alone. I started laughing like a maniac, quite amused at the predicament I was in. But as I bounced around with my hands shackled behind me I started to feel terror; these guys weren’t cops they were some kind of impostors taking me off to harvest my organs and I would soon wake up slumbering in a bathtub full of ice with my fuckin kidneys gone!

I started making a ruckus and beating on the walls of the cop car screaming for help. Through the narrow frosted slot of window I could see familiar lights and landmarks, I was close to home. This somehow made it worse as I was being taken further and further away from where I live. The female cop kept getting on the radio telling me to calm down. Fuck you bitch I want out!

Finally we get to the hospital and even though I’d been there before it still felt like some kind of elaborate, covert operation where my heart would soon be beating inside some old oil tycoon’s body in Texas. They let me out of the paddy wagon and I ask to be uncuffed, I tell them I don’t want to hurt anyone I just want to go home. The male Police officer takes the cuffs off me and they finally give me a blanket to warm me up and cover my junk.

There is a bunch of hospital staff there waiting; man this organ harvesting operation is big! How many people are in on it? The effects of the LSD still have a hold of me and I am resisting as they try and strap me to a bed to take me inside. I’m looking at the orderlies faces and they are morphing and stretching like some kind of monsters. In hindsight they were just ugly pricks and the acid was exaggerating that, but at the time it was terrifying. Am I being taken to an unused part of the hospital to be cut open like a stuck pig? It wasn’t until one of the female nurses tried to pacify me that I finally calmed down. She had kind eyes and promised they weren’t trying to hurt me; I was just being restrained until they got me inside and it would be OK.

As I was wheeled into the hospital, finally the fog of the psychedelic substance I had ingested was lifted and the thought occurred to me – this is actually happening! I wasn’t dead and I wasn’t the victim of an illicit organ harvesting operation, I’d just had too much acid and had gone for one hell of a rollercoaster ride through a part of myself that I didn’t even know existed. Everything was gonna be alright.

I had found the answer to a question people will go their whole lives without answering and I no longer fear death. Because I now know that after I leave this place my essence is going somewhere else, death isn’t the end. I’m not doomed to an eternity of darkness like I previously thought. The only thing I fear now is not living my current life to the fullest; not leaving an indelible mark on this world before I move onto the next.

For those interested, here are a couple of sources where people have come to the same conclusion – albeit it without having to go on the acid trip of a lifetime to get there:

http://truthisscary.com/2014/05/scientists-claim-that-quantum-theory-proves-consciousness-moves-to-another-universe-at-death-2/

I’m not sure I’ll ever take acid again. Not because I’m scared to (although the experience was about as hectic as it gets on any mind altering substance!) but because for me it has always been a learning tool. Every time I went on a ‘trip’ I learned something about myself and the Universe in general. I don’t think there’s anything else that substance can teach me now. I have the most amazing answer to the most amazing question that a person can ask themselves.

But hey – shit happens when you party naked.