Altitude training. I’ve had of

August 25, 2002

Altitude training. I’ve had of some of my best ideas at high altitude and in isolation. Brain function should be impaired in this situation? All my cracker jack prize psychological theories are substantiated by such findings. Deprive the body of its essentials and you will reach a higher state of function for a short time. Out of desperation your systems dig to deeper places to get what they need and in those places you’ll find some more exotic ideas. After that you are on your own. You crash. The little Jacques Cousteaus in your molecules start to dive into the Mariannas Trench of your body. Down there lurk phosphorescent creatures never before discovered. They have hidden down there in the darkness adapting themselves to the part of your physical system that is unexplored. When the sturdy horses of your body’s big systems turn to the wagon, lower their brows, snort and lie down in the road you must hop down and walk across the heat warped dust bowl alone. Inside you call all creatures from the inner depths. Rise to the surface with your alien shaped exoskeletons and iodine rich fast twitch fibres. Swim the wrong way down the vascular tubes and shake out the last stubborn nutrients clinging to the walls. The buzz you get from these stubborn and well cured nutrients is usually cathartic. Some hallucinate. They see the oasis that lies ahead. The hallucinated oasis provides a reason to move forward. First time aerobics class participants become aware how many muscles and tendons lie fallow for years. This is different. This goes deeper. Remember though . . .I am not a doctor.
Some turn to psychedelic drugs to reach this state. It seems easier and has been known to yield a mailbag full of indecipherable yet colourful “truths”. The clear and pure aphorisms can more easily be obtained through directly testing the bodies limits. Both can be bad for you. The physical stresses of drug use seem to hinder ones ability to do something good with the discoveries made on the voyage. There is an amotivational syndrome and a clothy and murky hangover. You get your wires crossed after a spell. You might forget what you “learned” an hour before and have no desire to remember it anyway. You need pure physical abuse like just plain staying up late, running too far, climbing too high, staying too long in the sun, staying too long in the cold and wet, or starving and dehydrating yourself. Minor chemical accelerants can be of help. Caffeine (a favourite), Sinutab, Advil, and MSG are pretty good examples. If one is living purely in the here and now then mushrooms and mescaline might be the way to go. Right at the time you feel you’ve “figured it all out”. If you come back and still think so then you are going to ride the pine in most social circles because too much spouting about your new theories will relegate you to the casualty category. By about 1975 people had stopped seeing any drug induced revelations as having credibility. If you say you got there through insomnia, isolation, excertion or starvation then you stand a better chance. That’s how buddha did it. Scientists work overtime and run their fingers into their wild gray manes while their cigarette smoke curls up to the arc lamps through the maze of glass tubes that are rendering and boiling new elements. Fast food wrappers litter the lab and they smell of funk and butane. To most people this paints a picture of pending legitimate discovery. This is more acceptable than the “naked in the desert and howling at the moon while painted to resemble the tin man from Wizard of Oz” variety of discovery. Ironically the survivors of Haight Ashbury now look almost exactly like these scientists. Under the lab coats they even dress the same. Some of the scientists ARE from the same background.
Currently I am about 3500 feet above sea level, tired and caffeinated. I have written myself in a circle and am contemplating a trip to the Black Rock desert for next week’s Burning Man. I have no credibility. I am not a doctor. A decent circular thinker.