DOSE:

smoked

Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Cannabis Transport

I am a musician, and I often experience synesthesia when listening to music. I will sometimes see the music as it would be written in musical notation, or have a visual image of the performer performing, or sometimes I will hear the music so acutely, and understand what the composer intended so well, that it comes very close to “seeing” the music.

Nothing helps reach this level of audio appreciation quite as well as cannabis.

The year was 1987. I was in my first year of college. I had just turned 18, and had started smoking pot a few months prior.

CDs had yet to arrive on the scene. But digital recording was beginning to be used, especially in classical music. In my last year of high school, I purchased a digitally recorded vinyl record of J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, performed by Daniel Chorzempa. I was in love with this organ literature masterpiece. It had amazed me to no end in high school listening to it sober. But now, I had discovered the magic that cannabis works on music. It was time for a test drive.

I lived at home at the time, and two things my parents hated were drugs and classical music, so I had to wait for the right opportunity when they were both out of the house and not due back for a while.

We had a fairly high end stereo in the house with great speakers. I waited for an opportune time to present itself, and eventually, one did. I put a pillow between the two speakers, and got high, though I don’t remember how or how much weed I smoked.

I put the needle on the record, and lay down on the floor, with my head on the pillow between the speakers. The first notes of the toccata section thundered. Right away, I knew this was going to be special.

The toccata part of the work is pretty intense, and listening to it high for the first time, it just kind of swept me away with its majesty. Then comes the fugue, which is much more tempered, and as it progressed, I felt my body relax, and a vision formed in my mind of me sitting in a church in Germany watching J.S. Bach himself at the organ playing out the piece. It was, though, to be honest, more than a vision. I felt, in a very profound way, that I was REALLY THERE. And of course, it was like I was hearing the music for the first time, with such richness and depth and clarity, and the harmonic structure sounding so perfectly arranged, that it was like AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. YES.

When the work ended, I listened to it one more time. The same vision and sound enhancement recurred. The two times I listened to it were so magical and dramatic that listening for a third time would have been excessive. I put the record back in its sleeve. It was enough. Thank you, J.S., and thank you, cannabis sativa.

Exp Year: 1987	ExpID: 95856
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Oct 30, 2024	Views: 34
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Cannabis (1) : Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Alone (16)