"Tripping underwater, at the bottom of a lake. Aka "Psychoaquanautics" took place four years ago, and I’m sorry to say I’ve not been able to afford to vacation at the lake cabin again until this Summer.
Naturally the top item on my agenda was to get blasted out of my mind and go helmet diving again. I saw some troubling things out in the water last time I hoped to once again catch a glimpse of.
I came away with what I feel were valuable insights about the wisdom of becoming more versatile, able to survive in a wider range of mediums. However I received no closure concerning the strange shadow creatures which appeared in such detail, but had nothing to teach me.
First, some details about my diving apparatus: I'm using an electric, oil free pancake air compressor rated for continuous use at 150 watts peak draw, with a charcoal inline air filter and moisture trap.
I don't encourage anybody to imitate what I've done, but if you're determined to do so, those are all vital qualities for your compressor to have. The physiological effects of any trace impurities in your air supply are magnified when breathed under pressure. It's very important the air delivered to your helmet be as pure as possible.
Besides that, you really ought to take a scuba course. It's $600, but if you can afford to build your own surface supplied diving rig you can learn how to use it without killing yourself.
The most important thing is to stay at or above 21 feet, and to exhale on your way up if you need to ditch the helmet. If you hold your breath on the way up, because you were breathing compressed air, the air in your lungs will expand greatly on ascent and burst your lungs. This is serious, life or death stuff. Diving is no joke.
Anyway I've looked into hookah rigs, but they're gas powered and several thousand dollars. I've also looked into adapters that will permit me to attach a scuba regulator to my airline, but there's just something about helmet diving.
Your head is in air, if not totally dry. You're looking out into the water through big windows on all sides. It feels like you're in a space suit on the Moon, and in fact if you weight it right you can bunny hop in reduced gravity like the Apollo moon walkers.
This year, as I've enjoyed some success as a writer, I was able to afford some improvements to my diving rig. Namely a 500 Wh lithium battery and a 102 watt folding solar array.
The solar array only really puts out 40-50 watts under real world conditions. I have no idea where they got 102 from. If I used it in the Arizona desert, maybe. But it produces enough to significantly prolong the runtime of the compressor.
Here's a photo of my original setup. Here I am about to submerge. Here I am underwater. The helmet was made out of a 5 gallon square sided PVC jug, weighted down with rubber coated lead scuba weights bolted around the bottom rim to counteract the buoyancy of so much trapped air.
The only changes since then were to replace the lead acid battery with this one. I was grid tied during the original dive, basically only using the battery as an emergency backup. This time around, I didn't need the grid.
On to the trip itself! At around 1pm I dropped 225ug of really good, pure LSD from a trusted friend. I've had some of this stuff before and it's excellent, so I knew this dive would be something special.
I didn't wear my wetsuit this year as it was unseasonably warm, even for Summer. Consequently the water level was also about two feet lower. In the shallower layers it felt wonderfully warm, almost like bath water.
Even just swimming on psychedelics is unbelievably pleasurable. You feel like the first upright ape ever to muster the bravery to take a dip. It made me reflect on how many wonderful experiences require you to first overcome some sort of fear before you can reach them.
I exerted myself a bit, walking out far enough that I could submerge. Accordingly I took a minute for my breathing to slow down before putting the helmet on, so the compressor would be able to keep up with my respiratory needs.
I waded a ways further, watching the waterline gradually rise up to my nose. Being able to simultaneously see above and below water, I felt something like a crocodile, or human submarine.
But then I submerged, and knelt down. Separating completely from the surface felt amazingly liberating. If you've never been diving, or only snorkeled, you've been chained to the surface all that time.
Once you devise a means to breathe underwater though, you can break those chains. The surface no longer has the magnetic effect, pulling you back up as your lungs begin to ache. You can just descend, deeper and deeper, watching the surface fade away.
It felt sentimental, weirdly. Like leaving home for the first time. Watching the familiar world of light, smell and sound recede above me felt like being an astronaut in a space capsule, watching Earth pull away slowly through a porthole.
I continued wading until I could stand upright and the surface was about ten feet overhead, wanting to be properly deep. I rarely go deeper than fifteen or twenty feet on these dives, not wanting to push the compressor too hard, especially on solar/battery power.
I became acutely aware of my heartbeat. Everything in my field of vision pulsed subtly in time with it. Because of the millions of specks of algae out in the water, I could see the currents moving around me.
I thought about how these currents are analogous to ones in the atmosphere. How the jet stream and gulf stream are similar, and connected. The ocean is a sort of "inner atmosphere", far denser than air but similar from a fluid dynamics standpoint.
The helmet felt huge on me. I felt very small, as if the helmet was a building I was inside of. An underwater skyscraper. I envisioned little stairs and walkways mounted to the interior walls of the helmet, and little people busily traversing them.
This is something my brain does in enclosed spaces. I call it "colonizing". Imagining how best to partition the space for human occupation, even places where humans would never realistically want to live.
Then, I began to perceive forms in the shadows out in the water. They solidified and took on apparent mass. Last time I'd seen a sunken civil war cannon. This time I saw a sunken WW2 fighter aircraft.
As I watched, it grew, and became more technologically advanced. Soon it was enormous, resembling something out of Macross, looming above me. I could see the engines, the wings, the control surfaces and landing gear as if it were life sized.
Then I began to see a squid, lazily pulsing its way across my field of view. Made out of nothing but acid distortions to light and shadow, it had uncountably numerous tentacles.
Last time I'd seen sea life as well, but mostly schools of shiny fish, sharks, crab and lobster. I did briefly see what looked like a shark, but I reminded myself I was in fresh water, and it vanished. Like Wile E. Coyote only falling once he realizes he's not standing on anything.
Then I felt something rush by in the water. Realistically just a current, but my mind made me see a fast moving, massive shadow to explain it. I became sure there was something in the water with me. Something big.
I practiced breath control to calm down, not wanting to have a bad trip someplace I could die if I lost my wits and made a mistake. But the shadowy mass returned, rushing by on whatever side I wasn't looking.
Like it was circling me. Checking me out. I knelt humbly and said "I mean you no harm. I welcome you and am ready to receive any teachings you would like to share."
When it came into view, it was unbelievably grotesque. Like a flower made out of flesh. As I watched the petals spread open and three huge tentacles reached out. Where they came together, a cluster of eyes.
New eyes formed rapidly, like bubbles, rising to the surface only to then burst and be reabsorbed into the fleshy mass. Like it was constantly remaking itself right in front of me.
I imagined the potent stench of rotten fish. Runny black fluid wept from various open sores, or orifices, all over it. "Of course I am welcome here" a booming voice said in my mind. "This is my home. What are YOU doing here?"
I recalled hearing a similar voice last time, asking the same question. I repeated that I meant no harm and had only come in search of wisdom. "I can't teach you anything. I'm not a teacher. I'm just a regular guy. You shouldn't be here, my wife is giving birth. Nobody else is allowed in here."
As I watched, I saw another creature. Not the face this time but a massive pulsating orifice surrounded by dozens of small, thin tentacles like a sea anemone. It bulged, and some horrible creature began to come out. Their baby I guess.
It was stomach turning. Just the nausea from the acid I think, but it influenced my mind, making what I saw all the more wretchedly grotesque. The baby was surrounded in some sort of sack of living tissue which was torn open. It began sucking in water through its gills, and beady black eyes began to form in the center of the three tentacles like on the larger one speaking to me.
I congratulated the two on becoming parents. They answered that actually it takes seven people to complete their reproductive cycle but thanked me for wishing them well.
"Now get out of here" the booming voice said. "You don't belong here. Wrong dimension, wrong physiology. You weird little creatures constantly appear in our home, babble incomprehensibly for a few hours asking us to teach you, then vanish. It's really a pain."
I apologized and turned away. For a time I just sat crosslegged looking up at the surface. It really is mesmerizing, it undulates like a water bed. Rays of sunlight penetrating through flicker and dance as the moving waves continually disrupt and redirect it.
I saw all sorts of little characters in the water. Everything I saw that seemed to be alive and had a body also took on a personality. I could hear their thoughts, and reflected on what the day to day life of a fish or crawdad is like. Gobbling down marine detritus and insects, happy for the chance, not knowing any better life is possible.
It made me think about how we can control our own happiness/unhappiness to some degree by controlling what we desire and how much. The anticipation of getting something is often so much better than the thing itself that remembering that fact, and talking ourselves out of extravagant purchases we don't really need as you might talk an impatient child out of an expensive toy can eliminate a great deal of your dissatisfaction with life.
When I turned back, I saw something out of an H.R. giger painting. Tentacles sliding in and out of mushy openings, which were themselves surrounded at the rim with smaller tentacles. I heard a louder heartbeat, and felt it. I heard muffled, bestial grunting.
It was repulsive yet mesmerizing. One of several creatures evidently making up the writhing mass noticed me. "HEY! I thought I told you to GET OUT OF HERE!!" I protested that I wouldn't leave until I received some wisdom.
"FINE" it sighed, separating from the mass and approaching me. "Let me see...Whenever you're creating something, don't try to force it to happen. Nothing worthwhile ever has to be forced. Truly great works of art or any other creation are always the organic, emergent outcome of many different confluent factors, each of which had to independently develop to the right point before they could come together into something amazing."
I pointed over his shoulder and asked if that's what was happening behind him before I interrupted. He got mad and vanished, as did the writhing pile of tentacles and orifices behind him. I felt a strong hostile energy pushing me out of the water, as before.
I felt so weak on my way out. I'd been weightless in the water. It was so comfortable just to sit on the soft sand at the bottom, or float. It made me reflect on how pursuing comfort excessively has a weakening effect, and there is greater fulfillment to be found in applying yourself to a degree that is taxing, but not exhausting. Utilizing your body and mind to its full potential brings satisfaction that cannot be had from leisure.
I tromped my way towards shore, collecting the airline into loops around my forearm as I went. Finally I was in water shallow enough to remove the helmet. Part of me didn't want to. It's the same part that tempts you to shut off the alarm and snuggle back under the covers instead of getting up. Or the part that makes you want to spend hours in the bath until you're all pruny.
I feel comfortable and at home in water. It muffles sounds, dims light and otherwise mitigates my sensory issues. Water touching every part of my skin at once also gives me a tactile consistency not available in air, and is a more pleasurable overall sensation.
As I trudged onto shore and set the helmet on the dock, I thought about humans living underwater. The past, present and future of it, with all the manned undersea projects currently underway and on the horizon.
Are we not wanted there? It's our ancestral homeland. Don't we have as much right to it as any fish, crab, shark or squid? Can we afford not to establish a permanent presence in the ocean on a planet that's 70% ocean?
I imagined the sea level rising to the point where many people spend as much time in the water as they do on dry land, and how that might affect our future development. The sea can feed everybody if taken care of and properly managed.
After stowing the helmet, compressor and airline in the container I keep them in while not in use, I lay on the dock and watched the clouds. I was only underwater for perhaps two hours this time, so I was still fully "in it".
I got to see some really spectacular cloudmorphing. The clouds looked like they were breathing. Like they had little waving cilia on all sides, like protozoa. I imagined what the inside of our bodies look like to microorganisms.
Probably it's just "the universe" to them, and they wouldn't be able to recognize they're inside of a gigantic living creature even if they were as smart as we are. We'd be too big for them to see.
That's it for my second helmet dive. It was everything I hoped it would be and more, even if it was less spiritual/inspirational than before and got a little bit weird in the middle. The open eye visuals (OEVs) were spectacular. Underwater is the ideal environment for cool OEVs.
I think this is because psychedelics distort stuff that's visually ambiguous the most. So the ever-changing shapes made of light and shadow underwater are just about perfect for this.
It's the same reason why OEVs are so good in other dimly lit environments, like when I tripped underground. The visuals sort of mix elements from OEVs and CEVs because it's dark, but not as dark as the inside of your eyelids.
That's all for this time, boys and girls. Don't try this at home, or if you do, study the engineering and physiological principles relevant to diving extensively before you even think about getting wet.
Stay Cozy!