Disclaimer: This post is meant for adults. The subject matter is about psychedelic drugs. I suspect most of the people that follow this account are adults, but if you're not an adult, this disclaimer probably wont stop you from reading this. With that said, psychedelic drugs can have very harmful effects on the psyche and mental state. THEY ARE NOT FOR EVERYONE. Experimenting with hallucinogenic compounds can be dangerous. Please think twice about diving into psychedelic culture. Although this post may in some ways glamorize drug use, experimenting with these types of compounds can have horrific consequences. You have been warned!
Wow, I enjoyed this one a lot! Couldn't put it down. I'm sure part of it was the subject matter and how it related to some of my own personal experiences in the 80s and 90s. As many of you know I was involved in the local entertainment industry in the 90s. I did security for entertainers when they came to town. I also did a little roadie work setting up concert venues locally. Then there's DJing and the whole rave scene in the mid 90s. That's when things got really strange 🤣 What a lot of you don't know is in the mid 80s I sold weed and hallucinogens (mostly mushrooms and LSD). The authors experience with psychedelic culture had a lot of parallels with my own experiences. The authors story is incredibly relatable to me.
Krystle Cole is the author of the story and the main character. She is a college student who is paying her way through college working as a stripper in a small town in the heart of Kansas. She hates where she lives and grew up. She hates most of the townies and they don't seem to like her much either. All she wants is to get through college and get out of the redneck / white trash town she grew up in. She's also incredibly lonely. One night as she analyzes her life, she prays for someone to meet that she can relate to and that will also fill her void of loneliness. The next day she meets Todd and everything in her life quickly changes. I should probably mention, this is a true story.
There will be some spoilers here but for the most part just about everything I'll divulge is written about in the first couple of chapters, after that she talks mainly about her experiences and the sequence of events that lead up to their ending. This was actually pretty big news in early 2000s. I remember reading articles about this in the newspaper.
So Krystle meets Todd who lives in a local decommissioned missile silo. He's rich, fun, and also in charge of one of the largest LSD labs in the world. She doesn't know this yet, but she senses his cover story is bullshit. He claims the missile silo is a spring factory making hi-tech springs for the government. On their first encounter he talks her into coming back to the missile silo with him then convinces her to do some MDMA (ecstasy). It's her first trip on ecstasy and she absolutely loves it. Not only does she love the ecstasy, but the engaging conversation she has with Todd on their first encounter together. She quickly decides that he was the answer to her prayer and almost immediately falls in love with him.
I have to say, reading the story I immediately get a bit of a creepy predator vibe from this guy. I also can relate to how she prays to meet someone, then this guy shows up the very next day. I'm a huge believer in synchronicity and for those of us that believe, you have to follow through when synchronicity presents itself. She does.
After her first trip on MDMA she quickly falls down the psychedelic rabbit hole. I think psychedelic people can relate to this more than "normies" can. I might post more about this in a follow up post. For now, I'll just say that psychedelic people usually have a much different perspective of things than normal people do. Probably one of the reasons governments are so concerned about psychedelics and why the penalties are so stiff in most places if you get caught with them. Psychedelics tend to overwrite our current "programming" and perceptions of society. As someone experimenting with these compounds and substances your first instinct seems to be to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
So our protagonist falls deep down the psychedelic rabbit hole. She begins taking large doses of MDMA, LSD, and several other entheogenic compounds and substances. The deeper she dives in, the more she loves what she discovers. (Psychedelics aren't for everyone, but those of us that get it, can relate to this sort of deep dive down the rabbit hole. Once you get a taste, you have to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.)
She quits her job as a stripper and begins to live full time in the missile silo with Todd. Life's good for the most part. She's in love. She knows something is off though and eventually Todd explains he's a chemist, he makes LSD, and the missile silo is their base of operations.
As she begins to meet some of his associates she quickly discovers that EVERYBODY is an informant for the government. Another thing I can relate to. My experience dealing with hallucinogens' was very similar. Informants were everywhere. Maybe I'll write about this in another post. For now, I'll just say that the higher up the ladder you climb the more and more government types you begin to meet on BOTH sides of the fence. LSD is a bizarre business!
From here things begin to spiral out of control. She also mentions CIA associations with some of the other players involved in the story. It seems you can never have a real LSD story without somewhere along the line discovering a CIA connection.
Ever wonder why you rarely hear about LSD labs getting busted? She touches on that too.
I got the impression that she may have watered down her accounts of government influence in this operation. She's a smart girl and I can't blame her. Once you start talking about CIA and connecting dots, bad things tend to happen. I suppose her vagueness is probably intentional, yet it's easy to read between the lines. Not to mention the lab is a decommissioned missile silo. The whole thing just screams government op to me.
So once you get past the start of her story and all the players, she begins to talk about her experiences taking high doses of these substances. Again, I found all her info incredibly relatable. The spiritual connections you make, psychic experiences you share with others, the way you change your perception of things and open up to new things. Again, this is a part of the story that only psychedelic people will get IMHO. Most normal people probably wont relate to her experiences because unless you've experienced it yourself, you just won't believe it. Sure you could say it's just the drugs, but ask any experiencer and they'll tell you there's MUCH more to it. Again, I think this is another reason governments are so concerned about psychedelics. Once you start experimenting with them, most everyone will come to the conclusion that there is more to the story than just a potent drug. I found her experiences incredibly relatable.
Another interesting thing I enjoyed about the book was the way she talked about early religion and how psychedelics may have played a part in early mans spiritual development. She talks a little about the bible, different aspects of Hinduism, and shamanism. I found her take on some bible passages extremely interesting.
For the most part I found everything in her story relatable and credible. She even touches on connections in the Netherlands, money laundering, and as I mentioned LOTS of government involvement on BOTH sides of the fence. This was a wild story to read and relatable. Like the author, I'm being a bit vague on a lot of my commentary on this as well. IMHO, her story is credible!
She ends the story by saying she felt like she was living in an Entheogenic Monastery for several years and how hard it was to reintegrate into "normal" society. Again, I can relate. This covers my rave years perfectly. From around 1995 until around 2005 it was like my life was on fast forward and fueled solely by rave festivals and large regular doses of various entheogenic compounds. It's hard to relate to normal society after that and everything feels slow after living your life this way for so long. You have very little in common with normal people. You can care less about their jobs and small talk that's almost exactly the same with every conversation. "What do you do for a living? Blah, blah, blah." To this day, I have a hard time interacting with "regular everyday people" that didn't share these same experiences. For the most part they probably couldn't understand even if they wanted to. It's not a feeling of being above someone, or better than someone, it's about perception and the stuff that really matters. Spirituality, love, light, joy. All this found in a completely different way than most people discover it. In the book, she explains psychedelics like taking an elevator to spirituality and everyone else is taking the stairs.
The ending of the story is kind of sad. Again perception. Todd does turn into a real creep in the end. Happy for the author, that it didn't end differently or worse than it does. For the most part, she's a survivor. In many ways, this is sort of a psychedelic love story that goes terribly wrong. She also reminded me a lot of the girl I dated in the 80s when all this stuff was happening in my life. I haven't thought about her in years, and she kept popping into my mind as I read this story. Relatable.
The book was 378 pages long in my Kindle. The author breaks the book into two different sections. Half the book is her story and the other half is Todd's published letters from prison. Small spoiler, but she talks about his incarceration early in book so not really.
I read her story in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. I read through a few pages of the letters from prison but it didn't feel right reading them to me. They seemed to personal and not really meant to be published. I also found the letters a bit boring and sad. I found Todd creepy at times but in the greater scheme of things he "MAY" have been a decent guy that just let things grow completely out of control. Like I said, LSD is a bizarre business. Regardless, I only skimmed through his letters from prison. There was an interesting section on stock trading which I bookmarked of course.
Anyway, like the subject matter, this book may not be for everyone. I personally couldn't put it down. There were a few negative reviews and I couldn't help but wonder if they were from government types that didn't like a story like this being released. Most of the reviews were pretty good though. I'm glad I read it!
Image of book cover taken from Amazon, Matrix animation taken from Tenor.com