It was September of my junior year in college, a week after Jimi died from an accidental overdose and a week before Janis would ride out on a midnight rail. It was just two years since MLK and RFK had been killed. Nixon still wanted us to go and kill Vietnamese men, women, and children to keep the world safe for capitalism. There didn’t seem to be much risk in risk-taking.
I felt so experienced at twenty years of age and twenty trips that I agreed to drop acid with this guy, Deck, who I knew had a car and high-quality stuff. He was very rich — the Georgetown student body was incredibly wealthy. I didn’t fully get that ‘til senior year when I had a girlfriend from Palm Beach. Deck was even more self-centered than most of us and he was attracted to experiments – he once anonymously (but not hard to guess) deposited 10K (68K in 2022 dollars) in another student’s bank account. Ha-ha!
There were three other Georgetown guys with us on this trip–two fairly nerdy guys I had never met and another junior I met freshman year when he was introducing himself as Gale Sayers, the superstar running back for the Bears. His real name was Daniel McCormack. As a freshman Dan had struggled some with Erik Erikson’s fifth stage of psychosocial development: identity vs. role confusion.
We wanted to be tripping on the beach at dawn but we left a bit late — around 4:30 after some nighttime booze and weed. It was two and a half hours to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. On a nicely hidden dune we dropped the acid and smoked some PCP. Yes, a bit much. We lifted off around 7:30. We found a good spot on the beach to drop our stuff and I started wandering by myself.
At some point I found myself hip-deep in the ocean where the sunlight was shining across the water, right at me. I was there for who knows how long but I slowly realized that I am the son of God, not just me, but all of us are the sons and daughters of God just as Jesus was except that Jesus really got it!! So, the trinity is really the creator, all of us, and the Holy Spirit!
I was very grateful for this revelation and inspired even more than before to follow Jesus–not to worship- but to follow or accompany.
As I began to return to temporal consciousness I turned from the ocean, now my Jordan river. I asked a thirtyish woman sitting in a beach chair what time it was. I had dilated pupils, crazy long hair and was wearing boxers but she was cool. She told me 9:30, which seemed impossibly early. I had been here only two hours?
I walked slowly back to our base. Dan approached me and asked, “do we all have to drown now?” Ah, I thought, the psychedelic meltdown. This is going to be a challenge. Good thing I just learned that I am a child of God and a channel of love. I reassured him that no, we didn’t have to drown, we didn’t even need to wade in the water.
I asked Dan why he would think we had to drown. He told me that when he was six he was at the beach with his family and his four year old brother drowned. So, was it now his turn?
Whooof! I silently and quickly asked for help from the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, St. Patrick, and Jiminy Cricket because I knew that Deck wouldn’t care and the other two didn’t know Dan and were too befuddled.
I told Deck we had to leave. We walked over the dunes toward the parking lot where I saw a melting mass of multi-colored metal. Melting metal was somehow not as pleasant as the gently breathing turf I had enjoyed on previous trips. I couldn’t believe how high I still was—and I made a mental note to avoid the acid/angel dust combo in the future, maybe avoid any of that. I felt at the limit of my ability to maintain myself, never mind take care of Dan.
Sunday traffic. Lots of it. Four hours to return to D.C. I was in the middle of the back seat with Dan, reassuring him repeatedly that he was safe, we were all safe in the car and that we would get back to our homes. I wondered how the fuck Deck was able to drive. It hit me later. He probably hadn’t taken that much of the drugs—it was another experiment where he could observe us. Or he had been tripping so regularly that he had high tolerance and couldn’t get off that much. Or he was the devil.
We finally got back to DC., nearly back to ground level. Dan was still struggling with survival guilt and the cosmic blues. I brought him into his house. Fortunately, two of his housemates were there. One went upstairs with Dan and I filled in the other guy. It seemed like a safe handoff.
Dan didn’t finish the semester. He had to take a medical leave and went home to South Bend where he later graduated from Notre Dame.
I went back to my dorm room exhausted but warmed by the glow of my oceanic experience. It didn’t take me long to develop reservations about an LSD/PCP facilitated revelation. I knew I would need to explore spiritual reality more seriously and step away from combustive drug mixtures.
It took me twenty years to get to an AA meeting, sobriety, and a relationship with my higher power. More has been revealed, but the Rehoboth experience has always stayed with me.
James Hannon writes about his experience fifty years ago on a Delaware Beach.