If you are just picking up, this the continuation of the write begun just below this.  We are picking up where the American recognizes my desire to take the trip to the desert to experience the second part of the requirement for “Stopping the world”, Peyote…..
                              I responded with an affirmative nod.  He began asking me questions about my reasons for wanting to take the walk into the desert.  I explained that it was part of my mission,  my desire to push the limits of my understanding and ultimately my understanding of God.  He looked at me with a questioning kind of respect and told me of how he had come to this town 15 years earlier.  We spoke for hours, all the while he kept trying to convince me that opening myself up to a separate reality could be dangerous to my “rational” self.  For those of you who read the original post know that I did take the walk into the desert where my new friend left me to experience one of the most incredible afternoons of my life.  I eventually made my way back from the desert and to the café where I first met my new friend.  I was looking pretty haggard and worn and the barman recognizing me said that John (the American) had left the key for his apartment and that I was to make myself at home.  This is where the story took a life of it’s own.  I thought that what I was looking for could be found in the hallucinogens of the tribal elders.  My experience in the desert had helped me to understand that the real truth was not in altering my state of consciousness with the hallucinogens, but to try to establish that heightened state of awareness in my ordinary, every day life.  I began questioning my beliefs and my reasons for even making this trip to Mexico.  These and many other questions were running through my mind when I fell asleep on Johns couch.  When I was awakened by the nurse, I had no idea where I was.  It was in a hospital of some sort,  and the nurse was ringing for the doctor in a panic.  When the Doctor came in he was followed by two other nurses and sighs of relief were permeating everything in the room.  After a few hours of testing and explaining I was finally made aware of what had actually happened.  When John left me in the desert with the Peyote and directions on how to return (this is all in the Altered States post in June) I had apparently gone into some hypnotic trance of some kind.  I had sat out in the desert for nearly two days.  When John my friend hadn’t heard from me, he became concerned because I hadn’t picked up my things.  I had told him I was to leave on the weekend.  He got a friend and a radio and drove out to the desert to look for me.  Apparently they found me near where he left me, sitting next to rock with several snakes lying dead near me.  I had been bitten 7 times by snakes, they were not  exactly sure which, but one was definitely a rattler they lay dead near me.  If they hadn’t brought the radio with them and gotten a helicopter rescue unit, I would have died before making it to a hospital.  So everything I knew as reality from the moment he had left me in the desert was ALL some big hallucination caused by the Peyote and the snake venom.  For two days people and reporters were all trying to get interviews and pictures of me.  My friends from Chicago had been made aware and were there to accompany me home after the anti-snake serums had done their job……….as the weeks passed on my recovery at home in Chicago I began having “lucid dreams” where I was re-living what I had experienced out in the desert those two days.  I began having visions in my waking state and began having serious problems concentrating on anything.  My mind was being overwhelmed with fear and panic, so much so, that I walked into the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and told them I thought I was going insane.  They placed me almost immediately, after I had told them what happened to me, into the psych ward for a 45 day (no visitors allowed) lockdown.  Those days in the psych ward would forever change my life and my notions about the nature of the human mind.  This is the first time I have told this story in any open forum and I know some people will be shocked that I haven’t told them what really happened to me then,  but it has been just in the last 5 or 6 years that I have actually fully understood…………it took a long time to get over the fear of my own minds potential.  I am able to talk openly about it now, and about the many things that have happened to me because of those two days in the desert…….I will begin to paint the picture more clearly for you in upcoming posts………I apologize to my friends that have not known the WHOLE truth on this matter…….I apologize for letting you think that it was some kind of mental breakdown……..it was my only way of coping…….more to come………..I am Dartanion2……..and that’s the way I see it……………cheers……..T   xx