Through the Looking Glass with Laguna Meth

This week, we talked with Michael from Laguna Meth.

After his first experience with a Bart Simpson tab,  his way of viewing the world switched, and so did his stance on these compounds.

What he thought were substances for the weak changed his life by allowing him to see the facade forced into his mind by the media and schools since birth and pursue something more powerful. Music.

Here follows the interview! 

 

 

What drew you to entering the psychedelic world?

I was 16 years and 9 months old. I was very physically fit and looking to get into Westpoint Military Academy as I wanted to help the USA continue to be the greatest country on earth. I felt those who smoked and took mushrooms were weak and wasting their life.

I had two dreams about this one girl from high school hanging out in random places in Los Angeles that were far from our area and soon after would encounter her right in these very places. I said nothing to her and just kept on my way. Then, one day in high school, she just approached me and asked me for a ride home as I was a junior with a car, and she was a freshman with no car. She took my number and said she would like to hang out. I really was captivated by her. She phoned one day and invited me to come over and hang out at her parents’ house as they were out of town. She said we could chill in the hot tub and take mushrooms.

I went off and told her how stupid that was and how she would never amount to anything, I called her two weeks later to apologize, and she said she was now dating this sketchy drug dealer guy and couldn’t talk to me. I hung up the phone, and my mother, a victim of the fall of the American dream and a bit nuts like most boomers, began throwing furniture at me over something small I didn’t even do.

I was pretty unhappy, and at that very moment, my phone rang. It was an old friend who had no longer spoken to me for a year because I criticized his druggie/slacker lifestyle. He said he and some others were going in on a sheet of acid and were short two dollars, and if I could pitch in. I had always loved Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles in general, so I quickly looked up if you could die from LSD as you could from heroin and coke, and once I found out you couldn’t, I called him back and told him I would join them and bring my 2 dollars. They were Bart Simpson tabs.

 

How would you describe your first psychedelic experience?

As I dropped the tab, I remembered the saying that ‘once you take LSD, you are never the same, ‘ and I was totally into that. As I put it in my mouth, I was listening to I’d rather fuck you by NWA.

We went to the movies, and I thought everyone in the theatre was so cringe and unempowered. I began to throw popcorn at them and then went to the back of the theatre until the film was over. Time passed very fast.

Then we went to Subway sandwiches, and I took my footlong sub and threw it on the windshield of a douchey-looking guy in a new BMW next to us at the stoplight. I looked at that sandwich and didn’t feel like it was food.

 In retrospect, it was brominated wheat with GMO veggies, hormone-riddled cheese, and antibiotic-tainted meat with lots of seed oil in the bread and dressing.

That’s probably why the LSD helped me see that Subway was more something you throw on a BMW than eat.

I had never smoked marijuana before, and after Subway, we went up into the hills and smoked. Once I smoked, I felt like I was able to enter a world where all possible dimensions exist, I saw a giant Walrus in the sky and all these beautiful colors and glittery shapes – a voice said: ‘Do not go to Westpoint you can only help the USA and the world with music’ At that time I loved music but generally felt musicians were entitled, bratty and kind of anemic. I said: ‘Music?’ What? 

Later that evening, the most important thing happened.

We went back to our friend’s house and smoked out of a big bong by the swimming pool. I had one friend on my left and one on my right. I began to see this large pink elephant and then a sphere like in The Wizard of Oz with a beautiful fairy lady in it, the bubble with the lady came closer, and I thought: ‘This isn’t real, it’s just the LSD’ and it began to fade away, then I thought ‘no it’s real, it feels real’ and then the orb came back stronger and slammed into me with the lady inside of it.

At that moment I saw every possible dimension of reality all at once, it was night, morning, afternoon, cold, warm, and each friend on either side of me was happy, sad, angry, contemplative, broken, inspired, etc. It was like there were infinite earth and people around me, then all the guys went to sleep, and I stayed up, we were at the house of Ray Manzarek. Who was in Chicago that night, and his son was hosting us.

I went into the library, which had lots of African/Asian objects and statues, as well as stuff from the 60’s and the Doors, and at least one writing by Jim Morrison (a journal or piece of paper I don’t remember). I was going to touch it and look but decided not to go near any of it, all of a sudden, the air itself became a weave of what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, it was like the coding of the universe.

The next morning, I was still slightly tripping, left without sleeping, and drove an hour out to the desert to wax and wash the car of an LA stuntman (I had a car washing business). He said he had taken his wedding ring off and couldn’t find it for weeks but felt it could be in the car – as soon as he said that, I saw a beautiful purple ring floating in the air and then into the car, I followed the ring until it stopped in this one odd corner behind the seat and stick shift and there was the ring, the guy was shocked.

Soon 12th grade began, and I dropped out after the first day, then I had a dream a month later with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and myself in heaven, he gave me a very passionate kiss like a dog would to an owner (not that I am an owner or he a dog) on the head and said ‘ I give you the gift of the melody.’ I woke up and went to the family piano and wrote my first melody.

Two years later, during a Bob Marley day festival, I looked up at the sky and saw a similar walrus figure, while the entire sky looked to be made up of different sizes and shaped plates with hieroglyphic-like writing all over them. It was as if it was some ancient coding or programming to create existential reality, including the sky.

In another instance, I had only smoked marijuana, but at the very moment there was an earthquake in Los Angeles, I heard a rumbling from the sky, and there were two giants, a man, and a woman, probably a hundred feet tall each, if not more, walking alongside a carriage with children in it being pulled by horses.

This apparition only lasted a few seconds, but I could clearly hear them murmuring to each other in some foreign language, as any adult couple may do, as they were strolling along with their kids, speaking about general things.    I am convinced that this was connected to the earthquake and somehow opened up the atmosphere for me to see this through psychedelic eyes, as I had recently taken LSD and was now high on weed, which, at that time, generally brought me back to some level of psychedelic reality.

 

 

 

What would your post-psychedelic person would say to yourself before taking psychedelics?

I’m not sure.

 

How did psychedelics change the way you see the world as a person and as an artist?

I saw through the facade, the media, schools, all of it, how it was not real and not serving earth or man, as an artist it sizzled away the artifice and programming forced into my mind by the media, schools since birth,

Music.

 

Why did you choose the name Laguna Meth?

I had some friends from Laguna Niguel, some of their friends lived in mansions but just did meth and played video games, their high achieving parents were not around as they were busy being corporate superstars and indulging in whatever they indulged in.

I always remembered that one spooky fall afternoon in San Francisco I saw a street sign wavering in the wind, the sign was Laguna Street, it made me think about those kids on meth in Laguna Niguel and I thought ‘the American dream, the California dream is just a myth, Laguna Myth’, then when I needed a name for the project I realized Laguna Meth was a great statement because you think you have the idealistic Laguna beach dream lifestyle but there’s also a lot of neglect and kids on meth under that facade, I thought ‘how can you have an American dream when there is a CIA/FBI killing and/or spying on America’s greatest minds and achievers, starting coups all over the world and ruining the lives of millions if not billions via geopolitical and institutional treachery.’