063: Tool’s ‘Lateralus’ on 8 Grams of Mushrooms

Here's what happens when you take an 8-gram hero dose of psilocybin mushrooms to listen to Tool's 'Lateralus' album for the first time, completely alone. Spoiler alert: things very much did not go as planned.20 years ago, on May 15, 2001, Tool's maniacally-anticipated 'Lateralus' was released. The hype for this record is hard to put into perspective in today’s terms. You’d have to pull out all our favorite blossoms of cultural stimuli by the roots to really understand the context - remove the distractions of social media, iPhones, the proliferation of our online existences in the endless + massively distracting glut of "content" and hyperbole that it's become. Remove all of that, and you're left with the dirt-road beginnings of the internet as it was in 2001. News wasnt old 20 minutes after it broke. The "all your base are belong to us" meme, one of the first from the internet’s initial wave of weird humor, had arrived literally three months prior and was still going strong. Long-tail anticipation was still a feature of our collective culture, which hadn't yet splintered into a Plinko-game tsunami of subcultures and niches.The goal was to trip significantly while being soundtracked by a group of musicians whose entire existence within this project was dedicated to providing tools by which to dig deeper, explore the unknown, confront the discomforting. I would emerge, hopefully, with a little better of an understanding of my own life - or at least the connecting threads between my immediate circumstances and the many choices I make in life to get me there. Life doesnt just happen, and mushrooms have a distinct way of showing you the blossoms of consequence - good or bad - and fractals of expanding reaction to your choices, which fills your experience as a person and comprises what you call… life.I was completely unprepared for what I'd signed up for. I’d never heard of a “hero dose," let alone the relatively horrifying implications it carried. But it's typically understood to be about 5 grams. And my stupid, lonesome self was on my way to an 8-gram ride. Needless to say, the arrogance and ignorance required for such an adventure were exterminated with extreme prejudice during my trip. Also covered: microdosing, the Bavarian Beer Act of 1516, the Fantastic Fungi documentary, mycologist Paul Stamets, the glory days of Toolshed.down.net, Stoned Ape theory and more...