Sublime

about this exceptional state of the spirit and of the senses, which without exaggeration can be termed paradisical as compared with the hopeless darkness of ordinary daily existence, is that it has not been created by any visible or easily definable cause. This acuity of thought, this vigor of sense and spirit, has at all times appeared to man as t

Hayes particularly recommends the experience to people in middle age for whom, as Carl Jung suggested, experience of the numinous can help them negotiate the second half of their lives.

This master of chemistry . . . emerged from his experience with LSD-25 convinced the molecule offered civilization not only a potential therapeutic but also a spiritual balm – by opening a crack ‘in the edifice of materialistic rationality’.

We went straight out drinking, and I picked up right where I left off. Always the object was to go out and “get wasted.” Though I sometimes had trouble holding my liquor, I was willing to try harder. I felt the key to successful drinking was the same as it is in musicianship—practice, practice, practice.

He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.