The psychonautic journeys of Escohotado in Ibiza

PalmaThe philosopher Antonio Escohotado is a psychonaut, a traveler of the mind, a rational explorer of consciousness stimulated by drugs, marked by the Ibizan experience. Escohotado arrived in Ibiza, "the adopted homeland", on December 31, 1970 with his eight-year-old eldest son, attracted by the desire for adventure and experimentation with drugs, the sexual revolution of free love, the counterculture of peace and non-violence, musical psychedelia (a more appropriate term than 'psychodelia' which avoids linking music with the illness of psychosis, and associates it with the psyche and psychism), the simplicity of rural life, naturism, and the fraternity of community life. From 1970 onwards, Escohotado was part of the tribe of the long-haired, the hippie "moral and political protesters", the children of the flowers who stayed to live on the Island to enjoy the individual freedom offered by that communal and virgin psychedelic paradise.

Escohotado recounts in Mi Ibiza privada (Planeta, 2019), how he adapted to the communal experiment of non-sectarian brotherhood, which arose spontaneously, without premeditation, dogmas, leadership, or messiahs, without falling into confrontational dynamics, cultivating autonomy and unconditional freedom to live and let live in contact with nature. He also explains how he helped to energize this communal spirit by transforming a farmhouse into a nightclub with live music and performances, where he aspired for everyone to forget their daily worries and problems and, in line with this idea, Manuel Sáenz de Heredia, his partner, named it Amnesia. The investment in the rental and adaptation of the farmhouse located between Ibiza and San Antonio was made possible with money from a maternal inheritance. Be that as it may, Escohotado's Amnesia has nothing to do with the current macro-discotheque.

Natural curiosity and the context encouraged Escohotado to undertake his own psychonautic journeys of self-exploration stimulated by various types of drugs. In his inner journeys, he sought to reach different states of consciousness that would overstimulate his perception and intensify his experiences and sensations.

Altered states of consciousness

Escohotado learns to travel through altered states of consciousness, influenced by the knowledge acquired from reading Carlos Castaneda's accounts and his thesis on the effects of substances such as peyote, datura, and psilocybin mushrooms, titled "Don Joan's teachings (1968).

For Escohotado, drugs are a “spiritual fuel”, an impulse to enjoy, explore and know, which moves consciousness towards self-knowledge, and allows him to discover a reality made of dreams, with the enthusiasm of achieving that the idea of “make love and not war” fully acquires all its sexual and political meaning. He had his own cannabis plantation, from which he obtained marijuana and hashish for personal consumption.

On one of his trips with lysergic acid (LSD) he describes the visual alterations it causes, the visions and changes in the dimensions and appearance of perceived objects, strange thoughts and occurrences, and changes in the perception of space and time.

The Ibizan adventure ended abruptly in 1983, when he was accused and arrested for drug trafficking after spending three months in preventive detention. The trial took place five years later in Palma. The Court of Appeal sentenced him to two years and one day for attempted drug trafficking, which meant he would have to serve at least one year in prison. Despite maintaining his innocence, he did not appeal the sentence and spent a whole year locked up in the prison of Cuenca, where he requested to be kept incommunicado to make the most of his time to read, document himself, and write a story about drugs.

The ethical commitment to the legalization of drugs and the fight against prohibitionism leads him to openly share his autobiographical experiences. Thus, he recalls in a text written in 1978 during his stay in Ibiza that the trips and psychic excursions with drugs did not begin in Ibiza, but in Madrid, five years earlier. According to what he recounts in this text published in the collective volume "Theory/theories of Ibiza (Gorgon Books, 1983), he made his first initiatory journeys with LSD at gatherings with Carlos Moya, Eugenio Trías, and Fernando Savater, at his Madrid home in 1965. He also recalls that his interest in pharmacology dates back to when he was 14 years old, when a neurologist tried to induce an epileptic seizure in him with an injection of sodium pentothal.

In this writing, he transcribes some of his travels, alternating them with the ideas of the metaphysics treatise he is writing. He explains, for example, the experience of thinking he is dead and how he feels he does not lose contact with the world and the ability to contemplate the scene as if he were a subject who is at the same time an object of observation. On another of his travels, he has an encounter with a pharaoh that sexually excites him. Among the visual effects, he notes how the letters of an open book turn over and invert while the house next door rises capriciously. He also recounts one of his Ibizan trips from Can Milà, which began by chewing hallucinogenic mushrooms accompanied by Pat, a Canadian girl, and which takes him to a tiny cove where time stops and he sees himself inside Pat's dilated pupil transformed into a sphinx, who also points with his finger to a ring in memory of his mother. In the following memory, he flees the cove running nervously, after Pat shows him a log with an image of a cross. He is aware of being pursued and only feels safe on Figueral beach, surrounded by tourists and constructions. A few days before this psychic journey, he had lost the ring, but good fortune willed that a few days later he recovered it from the hands of a French woman who had received it from her lover in the dream cove.

Evolution of dreams

In his travels, Escohotado maintains his judgment and the contemplative ability not to be altered and to decide the evolution of dreams. He compares drugs to Aladdin's lamp, to the magic of the genie capable of fulfilling any desire. He feels that when he travels he spies on himself and is exposed to his deepest gaze with the risk of losing his mind. Little by little he learns to control the outbursts of panic and the fear of losing judgment and memory, and to remain serene and contemplative halfway between consciousness and expanded consciousness.

One of the lessons learned from the Ibizan experience with drugs is that “the imaginary never approaches the real, neither in audacity nor in inventiveness”. He also learns that psychic excursions transcend the routine limits of consciousness, and teach us to get out of ourselves and overcome solipsism. Traveling is similar to philosophizing and thinking fluently, adapting to the transit and the unfolding of life. He knows that pharmacological journeys must be undertaken with good sense and safety, having knowledge of what is consumed, and avoiding very toxic substances, such as plants and compounds of scopolamine and atropine, which cause irreversible damage to the nervous system. As a good traveler, he feels like a dragonfly that does not drink, eat, or sleep; it moves aimlessly and reproduces during its winged metamorphosis. He knows that during travels he cannot lie to himself, that emotions and feelings become transparent to the view. He recognizes that to travel safely he must consume visionary drugs, because they are the ones that never erase the consciousness of traveling nor the critical spirit, which allow him to link consciousness with reason and follow the path of knowledge and love, and thus not stop being his own friend.