It is said, it is rumored, it is whispered that adrenochrome does not exist, that it does; that it produces psychoactive effects, that it does not; that this, that that, and the other thing; that it is neither one nor the other, but quite the opposite… What will be… will be, then, and what will this substance do or fail to do? Keep reading and, very soon, you will know.
By Eduardo Hidalgo
We return to our reports on adrenochrome trials, and in this article, we present the trip report from the sublingual administration.
Summary of a trial with 25 mg of adrenochrome administered sublingually (November 2011), covering approximately 20–30 hours, condensed from notes made by the subject (E. Hidalgo Downing… yes, indeed, Downing, not Domínguez, I am completely sure of it. Downing, like the Judas Priest guitarist. God, what a cross to bear! How many more times will I have to say it?).
First, we must point out that we opted for this route of administration because it had been used in numerous studies in the 1950s and had proven to be highly effective. Furthermore, we took into account that this method of ingestion—in contrast to injection—bore greater (and obvious) similarities to the way it is supposedly taken by reptilians, Satanists, and cannibals. Thus, in an attempt to get as close as possible to their experience, we chose this method of consumption and used a dose—25 mg—that fit perfectly within the threshold usually used in old psychiatric experiments (15–30 mg).
Second, we must warn that, on this second occasion, there were—at least at the beginning—no contaminating variables of any kind: we had not taken any psychoactive substance previously (neither the day nor the night before), nor any other drug at the very moment of administration (although after a while something did fall in, but hey, it was nothing much… you will have the opportunity to find out later).
Third… we will skip the fluff and tell you what happened:
The first weekend of November, that is, just five days after I had injected adrenochrome, I made a titanic and formidable effort at restraint. I behaved well, slept well, and, as I have noted before, without any prior consumption, I got up on Saturday morning around 12:00 PM or so. I took a bath, got dressed, and did all those things. When I was ready for action, I proceeded to call my dear friend Manuel, whom I had decided—after consulting the I Ching (just kidding)—should be tasked with the mission of being my babysitter and external observer (and, at this point, don’t ask me why the man—who knows me so well and could clearly imagine what was coming—didn’t refuse outright, because I don’t understand it either). The fact is, I called him to tell him I was ready and to ask if he was too. And, as expected, he was (Don Manuel is, first and foremost, what he well knows and calls “a man of order,” ha, ha, ha, ha). So, there was nothing more to say. I headed over to his neighborhood, to his house, which, from then on, would be remembered by both of us forever as the stage where the first adrenochromic ritual ever held in Madrid proper took place (in the barbarian provinces of the outskirts, you know that the merit and the medal belong to the landlady’s house of Chema, in Colmenar Viejo—Colme to the natives—among whose frenetic hordes stands out another good friend, José Carlos Bouso, the first researcher in Spain and the entire world to have official permits to carry out clinical studies with MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in women who are victims of sexual assault).
Anyway, the appointment agreed upon, I prepared to go to the bathroom to perform, in private, the act of consumption, if you want to call it that. This time, I proceeded with absolute neatness and perfect manners: I calmly took the vial of adrenochrome, opened it, and poured its entire contents onto my sublingual glands. Afterward, I looked in the mirror and… I was horrified: Good God! What a fright! My entire oral cavity was overflowing, to the max, with a cannibal-holocaust red color. The image was much more shocking than when I ingested the semicarbazone. That time it surprised me and caught my attention, but, damn, this time it actually scared me: I looked like Hannibal Lecter caught seconds after having devoured the entrails of poor little Porky. Holy Mary… how scary! I thought about taking a photo, but I concluded that, to make it worthwhile—instead of just reflecting absolute disgust—it would require the services of a professional photographer, and I didn’t have one on hand. Of the two I know—Miguel Pérez Pardo and Javier Marín—the first would be in bed or at the bar (his bar, our bar, the Tapas y Fotos), and the second, well, the second I’d better keep quiet about (what a character, ha, ha, ha, ha).
It was exactly 1:42 PM. I recovered from the shock, used some mouthwash (everything was back in order), and went out to the street.
Once again, I was in a very good mood. So much so that, suddenly, I found myself completely cracking up (it was 1:49 PM; that is, barely 7 minutes had passed since the dose). And so, walking like a madman—crying, stumbling, and zigzagging with laughter—I spent the rest of the walk (about half an hour) until I reached the train station.
Right off the bat, the “yellow” of the traffic lights caught my attention. I don’t know if it had a special touch or brightness, but it caught my eye, which instantly made me realize that I am colorblind and that this yellow color is “really” (or for the parliamentary majority) red. In fact, I had always called it red myself, until recently, while walking with my children on that same street, I realized that I had spent my whole life calling what I had always seen as “yellow” by the name “red.” Héctor, age 3, as the traffic light color changed, would tell us: “green,” “red,” “green,” “red.” Jorge, age 7, looked at me stunned, burst out laughing, and asked if I was stupid or something when I asked him: “Seriously, man, what color do you see that traffic light?” “Damn, Dad: red, how else would I see it?” “Well, I see it as yellow, ha, ha, ha, ha.” I had known for ages that I was colorblind, but I had never realized that I called the red of the traffic lights by its “true” name due to a matter of mere linguistic imitation and not because of what my senses dictated (let it be noted, anyway, that when it comes to traffic lights, whether red or yellow, I distinguish them perfectly from green, so, in visual terms, I am impeccably qualified to competently drive a motor vehicle; it’s another thing entirely that I don’t feel like getting my license).
The memory of these things made me cry with laughter. And I laughed even more when I noticed that, besides seeing the “red” as “yellow,” I saw it a bit blurry, at the same time that I remembered I am nearsighted (one diopter in each eye) and I wasn’t wearing glasses (damn, I had to give up wearing them: I would leave them on restaurant terraces, I would drop them and step on them in bars, they would break while hanging from the collars of my shirts when I picked up my children… and anyway, if I only needed them to see far away—up close I had to take them off because they bothered me—and I say: to see far away you don’t need glasses, you just have to get close enough… and, besides, it’s much cheaper, since the last pair cost me 20,000 pesetas).
I kept laughing like an idiot, while, from the coloring and the blurriness, I started to focus on the plants. They were talking to me! The plants were talking to me! To understand them and capture their message, you only need to know how to interpret their codes… this one needs pruning; here you have to mow; that one lacks water; iron chlorosis—it needs Nitrofoska… It was clear, I saw the world with different eyes, although, again, it had nothing to do with adrenochrome but with the fact that, after spending decades working as a psychologist, I am now a professional, certified gardener, ha, ha, ha, ha.
I continued on my way and crossed paths with a group of tourists on bicycles, consisting of what appeared to be a father and his three young children. I couldn’t help but hear what they were saying (since they weren’t exactly speaking in whispers, but shouting).
The supposed father: “Nobody can… blah, blah, blah, blah.”
One of the supposed daughters: “YES! YES, YOU CAN!”
I cracked up again. Memories of my sister’s husband—the living embodiment of the combination of the typical clueless tourist and the mad scientist, the epitome of living in the clouds—intertwined with memories of my childhood, when my mother spoke to me in English and I (and my twin brother) answered her in Spanish (and that’s how we ended up, with three older sisters who are totally bilingual, and us, little bumpkins who barely defend ourselves enough to get by if we need to satisfy some need or suffer some setback in remote and strange lands—like Uganda, for example—where, paradoxically, even the dumbest kid in the class speaks better English than we do, ho, ho, ho).
And just then, I reached the last stretch of my walk. And, as I had never done before, I looked at the name of the street I was walking on: “Calle de los trenes” (Train Street). Ha, ha, ha, ha! It can’t be true that we are this dense here. I imagined the Municipal Board, in full session, deliberating on the nomenclature to assign to the street map.
The Mayor: “Let’s see, what name should we give that street by the station?”
The Deputy Mayor: “Well, ‘Train Street,’ right? I mean, I think so.”
The Mayor: “Ten points, buddy, you nailed it!”
The Board: “Say no more, ‘Train Street.’ Next item: that path that goes toward Húmera.”
Deputy Mayor: “Well, ‘Húmera Road,’ dammit! We look like idiots.”
The Board and the Mayor in unison: “Approved!”
And so on until the whole map was filled out…
I couldn’t help but think: “Damn, at some point I should move to live in a place like Leganés, where they have a street dedicated to AC/DC, and while I’m at it, I’ll steal the sign.” Which, by the way, I wouldn’t be the first to do, since, as you might know, every other day they have to put up a new one because the “hordes of the power of the liter” and the “heavy metal is not violence” crowd (they say nothing about urban vandalism) take them to their homes as trophies, day in and day out.
Still dying of laughter, I entered the station and sat on a bench to take notes (this time I brought a sheet of paper and a pen). While I was writing, I felt a slight ringing in my ears. I smoked a cigarette. The ringing went from slight to intense, and no, it wasn’t that a train was approaching, wailing. Otherwise, I didn’t notice any stinging or pain or anything of the sort, except for a huge hole in my stomach—let’s call it hunger, with no further embellishments.
The world appeared to me veiled by a slight, very slight, patina of unreality. People still seemed super-freaky to me, and looking at them provoked uncontrollable laughter. So, again, I stopped looking at anyone. In fact, on the train, I chose not to sit down to avoid, as much as possible, making eye contact with anyone. However, in the end, laziness won out and I took a seat, staying sideways—as if turning my back on the staff—and dedicated myself to looking out the window, watching the images pass by like in Patty De Frutos’s video “I Called the Future and NO ONE Picked Up”[1], only better focused.
I looked at my hands and observed that my thumb was stained with adrenochrome, only this time, instead of reminding me of blood, it gave me the impression that I had been eating Risketos©.
To be continued…
