It was five in the morning on an early Saturday in the summer of 2000, near Karlberg’s commuter train station in Stockholm. The sun had just risen, and eleven brave young men were about to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries by letting a colorful paper tab — each soaked in 200 micrograms of high-quality LSD from the Millennium Hoffman batch — dissolve on their tongues.
This was the trigger for a 12-hour intense, collective psychedelic experience as we made our way to Järvafältet, an old military training ground bordering various nature reserves in Kista and Solna.
Henrik Dalin, the rootless, free-floating cannabis philosopher with whom I had recently formed a meaningful connection outside the student party on the boat Patricia a month and a half earlier, unexpectedly appeared at the station steps. He wore red-tinted lenses in his unique sunglasses, looking as unpredictably wild as he was intellectual.
The group was introduced to Bamse and Ludwig Fischer, the dubious guides for our excursion — two relatively young yet very experienced psychonauts. Bamse’s philosophy was that all children are already “tripped out,” meaning they are untainted by modern society’s unnatural programming and unauthentic impressions, and that a powerful dose of LSD was the quickest way to return to a newborn interpretation of reality and its potential.
Ludwig, on the other hand, compared the experience to pouring a can of gasoline over the brain and setting it ablaze — with the idea that all uncertainties could be burned away over a single weekend.
Now, we found ourselves standing in a vast, deserted field in unexplored territory. It was time to take the plunge and place the paper tab on our tongues to begin the journey. If we delayed too long, the trip would end too late, possibly resulting in unnecessary loss of sleep during the coming night.
It was a nervous yet beautifully destinyladen moment for all of us, as it was the first time for most of us crossing this threshold — knowing there was no turning back from what we were about to see and experience.
Bamse explained that if anyone had a phobia, they could set the intention to overcome that fear during the trip. Personally, he was determined to rid himself of his fear of bees.
I sat in the middle of the field, waiting for the promised effects to take hold. Someone lent me a portable CD player loaded with the album “Are You Shpongled?”, along with a pair of headphones.
As I sat there, and after familiarizing myself with Shpongle’s melodies for a few minutes, everything began to flow for me as my psyche was forced to stop denying the overwhelmingly beautiful world that was unfolding before my eyes.
I noticed that I was suddenly breathing deeper and fuller than I could ever remember. It was as if the substance had transported me to the very intersection of creation — where everything was new and genuine again.
Meanwhile, Filip had borrowed my sketchbook, without asking, and drawn a simple yet insightful meta-map illustrating how people’s vocabularies — or “stores of words” — functioned as linguistic bridges to different realities. The LSD tabs, he suggested, created a shortcut to a secret reality, free from the constraints and distortions of language.
This drawing both mirrored and explained the complexity I was experiencing, in all its simplicity. In my wonder, I forgot who I was. Trees, stones, grass, winds, roads, music, flowers — everything became a single, unified being, a substance — and that substance was Me, and nothing else.
I will end my description here. It’s enough to say that my life — and my perspective on what was possible — were completely transformed after this magical glimpse into eternity, on Järvafältet in Solna, on a beautiful Saturday morning in the summer of 2000.
