Improve your Indoor Air Quality by 99% by Optimizing the Use of HEPA Filters

TL;DR: You can achieve much greater reductions than 50% of PM2.5 with a HEPA filter if you are clever about how you use it. Using a "concentric shells" approach in a 100m^2 apartment has allowed me to enjoy air with up to 99% less PM2.5 than outdoors.
Some of you may recall that QRI held an event called "Cause X" a year and a half ago. Indeed, Dony Christie (whom I recently credited for sounding the alarms in mid-January about the coming coronavirus pandemic) presented: "The researching of possible Cause Xs as itself Cause X". I think this is a great idea, and it is already bearing some fruit…
Recently, Lukas Trötzmüller reached out to me to follow-up on one of the causes I proposed at the event. Namely, to subsidize HEPA filters as a potentially EA-level intervention. Here was my justification:
[Subsidizing HEPA filters] might be a highly effective way of improving the health-span of a country's population in a cost-effective fashion. As Robin Hanson has argued over the years, if we truly cared about the health of people, we would be spending more resources on the top 4 drivers of health (diet, exercise, sleep, and clean air) rather than on extravagant medical interventions designed to convince us that "an attempt was made." Clean air, in particular, seems easy to influence at a rather minimal cost. HEPA filters capable of providing clean air to entire apartments (reducing by 10X the PM2.5 concentrations in the apartment) can cost as little as $70, with an upkeep of about $30 a year for renewing filters, and about $20 a year for electricity. Fermi calculation would indicate this would cut the average person's daily PM2.5 exposure by half. I haven't worked out the math concerning the amount of micromorts prevented per dollar this way, but the numbers seem extremely promising.
After stumbling upon the Cause X post, Lukas and some of his friends decided to do a more thorough cost-benefit analysis, which was recently posted on the EA Forum: Cost-Effectiveness of Air Purifiers against Pollution. I mostly agree with his analysis (and I commented on the post with what I thought was missing). His conclusion?
Air pollution is one of the biggest public health problems of our time. Simple air purifiers are surprisingly effective at reducing the harm. In our sample calculation, the intervention easily meets WHO criteria for a "highly effective" intervention in Austria, and the criteria for an "effective" intervention in India. With just a few small improvements to cost-effectiveness, it would qualify as "highly effective" in India too.
There are many ways in which effectiveness could be improved: If the bedroom is shared by two people, effectiveness doubles. Our calculations were made for 10 hours per day of use. Many people stay home for longer than that, and would correspondingly benefit more from an air purifier in their home. It is plausible that we could find more energy-efficient devices and optimize location, placement and timing. Furthermore, devices could be preferentially given to individuals which are at special risk of pollution-induced illness.
Buying air purifiers for people to place in their homes is probably not a promising EA intervention: Cost-effectiveness is two orders of magnitude worse than GiveWell-recommended charities. That being said, there might be much more cost-effective ways of helping people get access to air purifiers. We might lobby governments to subsidize those devices, or to make HEPA filters mandatory for public buildings and vehicles.
I've been quite surprised by the results. It seems that using an air purifier has solid health benefits, both in very polluted and in averagely polluted locations. It is surprising that in affluent countries, where people can easily afford these devices, air purifier use is not commonplace. The health benefits are clear and well-studied. I have installed a homemade device in my bedroom, together with a PM2.5 sensor, and plan to place a second device in the office.
If you're interested in air pollution, air purifiers, or would like to collaborate on future research please get in touch.
I take this as a sign that encouraging people to sketch out new EA causes can be of very high-value*. Indeed, holding semi-regular "Cause X" events might be a great way to find completely new cost-effective interventions to improve human and non-human welfare across the globe.
Now, the topic of air purifiers has been on my mind again lately. And the reason should be quite obvious. Namely, that in September of 2020 we in the West Coast are currently experiencing one of the worst air qualities in the entire world due to the forest fires. I've been recommending friends and acquaintances who live in this area to get a HEPA filter NOW, since the fires are expected to continue for a month at least (and the worst is likely yet to come as we are only in the middle of the fire season). Unfortunately, a lot of HEPA filters are now out-of-stock, in what mirrors perhaps the spike in demand for PPE at the onset of the COVID pandemic. As they say, the prevention is better than the cure – I happened to have both air filters and N95 masks on hand before these two events, but not everyone is as lucky. Ideally, everyone in the West Coast would have at least two air filters from the start (I'll get to why in a minute) but we do what we can with what we have.
Similarly to how early official advice for how to protect against COVID was deadly (e.g. downplaying the importance of masks early on), I am dumbfounded by the low-res and relatively useless listicles of advice I see for how to deal with the smoke from the wildfires. Yes, staying indoors and avoiding exerting yourself is better than nothing. But we could do much better than that. In particular, I think that a little cleverness in positioning can go a long way in optimizing the effectiveness of HEPA filters for maximum health. Below you will find a brief account of my experience with HEPA filters in a fairly-insulated ~100m^2 (~1100 square feet) apartment in California over the last few years (YMMV) and what I recommend you do if you find yourself in a similar situation:
The basic claim I want to put forth is that the ~50% reduction of PM2.5 quoted in most studies can be massively improved upon with a little work. In particular, with two air filters intelligently placed I've been able to achieve a reduction of PM2.5 in the 95 to 99% range. But first, what equipment am I using?
We've owned four air quality monitors over the last few years – one I sacrificed by giving it to a friend who went to Burning Man to get some sense of what the air over there is like (answer: really bad), and another one I forgot at the house of a cousin pre-COVID which I haven't had a chance to retrieve. The two I currently own are: Temtop LKC-1000S+, and BIAOLING's JSM-131. They both make very similar measurements for PM2.5 and PM10, which also agree fairly closely with the values I get from PurpleAir and AirNow. That said, Temtop seems to be better on the whole – it is even more correlated with the values I get online, is faster (it takes only 1 minute to adapt to a new environment vs. 3 or 4), and is far more granular (it does not jump in increments of 3). So below I will just report the values from the Temtop devise.We've owned two air purifiers for about 3 years – the LEVOIT LV-H132 with H13 filters. It's really similar to other LEVOIT models, and as far as I can tell, indistinguishable in its performance:

So here is my experience over the last couple of years:
With no air filters the difference between the PM2.5 outside and inside is small, typically in the 20% range. So let's say the air outside is 20PM2.5, then inside with all the windows and doors closed for many hours, the reading will be no less than 16PM2.5. This is one of the reasons why I feel like the advice of "staying indoors with all the windows closed" is not really that useful (and in my experience people tend to believe they are staying out of harm's way that way, which is very much not the case).With one air filter on in the living room, with all of the inside-doors open, I get a stable state where the reduction is in the 60 to 80% range. With two air filters on in separate rooms but with all the inside-doors open, the reduction is a bit higher, in the order of 80 to 85%.When I have only one air filter on inside one room with no door to the outside (and closed windows), the reduction is more dramatic, in the vicinity of 90%. This makes sense, as both the "surface area" to the outdoors, and the volume of air to clean are smaller.The best outcome seems to come from having (a) one air filter in the living room, and (b) a second air filter in the room I'm in with its door closed. This is what takes the PM2.5 value to be as low as 1 to 5% of what's outside. For instance, by using this method, when the air quality outside reached 400 PM2.5 outside a few days ago, I was able to enjoy a 5PM2.5 inside my room (!!!). The living room would be at 60PM2.5 and the smoke still somewhat noticeable, but once inside the bedroom there would be no way to detect there was anything off about the air.I've generally found that the biggest point of entry for PM2.5 is not the windows (which seal pretty well) but the doors that lead to outside. The air also gets in more efficiently when a bathroom vent is on (obviously, as this causes a slight pressure differential with the outside).Once a room has been cleaned (i.e. the filter has been running inside it for one or two hours), it takes up to 6 hours for the room to become half as dirty as the rooms it's connected with through doors. I was really surprised by this, actually. But yes, even though most doors do not work as airlocks, they do dramatically reduce the airflow between rooms.
Based on the above, I would offer a few heuristics for how to maximize the benefits from your HEPA filters:

First, use the fact that your place likely has "concentric shells" that separate the outside from the inside. If you have more than one filter, distribute them along the shells: it is much better to have one filter in your studio and another in the living room than having two in the living room. Each shell's "outside environment" is the shell surrounding it, so make use of the fact that there is this "sequence of relative outdoors" and place a filter on each of them when possible for an exponential reduction of PM2.5 as you move inwards.

Second, if you only have one filter, place it in your bedroom when you sleep and in your studio when you work.
Third, if you are living with other people, you can basically do this iteratively: clean the air in your room, then pass the filter to the next person, who will clean the air in their room and pass it along to the next one and so on. If each person keeps the filter for one hour, by the time it gets back to you, the air inside your room will still be very good.
Fourth, if you have filters to spare, I would recommend placing one right next to each door that leads outside, as this is the place from which you will be getting most of the particles (assuming your windows are pretty good).
Fifth, if you have the stamina for it, you could in principle partition your place into more concentric shells using plastic sheets and tape. Then you can filter the innermost room, then filter the second innermost shell, then the third, and so on until you reach the shell that is connected to the outside doors. If done properly, this will have created highly clean air for the entire apartment. More generally, once you are done cleaning the air of one concentric shell, you can move the filter to the next one. Think of it as a "moving airlock" that cleans the air one step at a time from the center to the edge.
More generally, I would encourage you to notice that thinking in terms of more dakka really does pay off when the air outside is really bad. Don't just say to yourself "well, I have a filter so I'm doing all I can already" because the above heuristics (and plain just getting more filters) can dramatically increase the effectiveness of the air filtration. Be thirsty for clean air – crave that 99% reduction!
Now, what about even smaller particles? A lot of people worry that particles smaller than PM2.5 may be the most harmful to health, and HEPA filters may leave them free to roam. Is this true? Thomas Talhelm wrote a wonderful answer to the Quora question "Do air purifiers remove PM2.5" where he shows that not only are HEPA filters effective at removing particles around 2.5 micrometers in diameter, but that they are in fact even more effective at removing even smaller particles. He shows the results of a few of his own experiments using a professional-grade air quality monitor capable of detecting PM0.5 particles.
And what about CO2 concentrations? Scott Alexander has written about the importance of maintaining a low CO2 environment for optimal cognition. I agree with this, and arguably the measures I've proposed above may lead to a lot of CO2 in one's living space. I do happen to also have a CO2 monitor, which shows around 600PPM when the space is very well ventilated, but can reach upwards of 1200PPM if we've kept all windows and doors closed for several days (and it seems to stabilize around there). This is worth it, I think, when the choice is between 5PM2.5 and 400PM2.5. But I think you can actually have your cake and eat it too:
The solution I've found is what I call the "FF procedure", which is "Flush and Filter". Don't just open a little crack in one window hoping that that the CO2 you are removing will make up for the PM2.5 you are getting. Even if you are filtering the air inside, when the air outside is outrageously bad (e.g. 200+PM2.5) you will notice a fast reduction in the quality of air inside. A formal treatment for how to approach this problem optimally will undoubtedly involve playing with differential equations, but I think my solution is pretty effective and I think minimizes the total exposure to PM2.5 while also giving you good CO2 levels. The idea is to wait for a time when the air outside is not as bad and you then open all the windows and turn all the fans on for an hour and a half or so, which will effectively replace the air inside with the air outside. You then quickly close all the windows and turn the air filters on to their maximum capacity. The drop in PM2.5 will be quick (and indeed exponential), while you will now enjoy fully restored CO2 levels that will last for a day or two.

*I would point out, as another example of this paying off, the light we've cast on the issue of cluster headaches and how easily they can be dealt with thanks to psychedelics; it is partly thanks to this work that now OPIS is lobbying for the decriminalization of psychedelics for migraines and cluster headaches in Finland – I have to say that being part of the effort to reduce the incidence of cluster headaches in the world (if successful) will give me tremendous joy. Fingers crossed that it works!
[Featured image taken from: NASA Earthdata on September 10th 2020]


Psychoactive Anecdata

[Epistemic Status: anecdotal data; this is not a list of "life hacks"; it is intended as a list of interesting research leads; don't take drugs unless you really know what you are doing!]
I'll mark to the right of each anecdata:
n=x when I can remember clearly how many people have said this to me up to n = 10 (e.g. n=7 means that 7 people have told me this)n=x/y when I know that y people have tried it and of those x have experienced thisn>1 when 1 < n < 10 but I don't remember exactly how many people have said it, and pattern if it's a pattern I've observed across more than 10 people pooled from online trip reports and conversations from email exchanges, forums, group chats, private messages, and things that have come up at IRL discussions (e.g. at festivals).
Psychedelics
The "best" phenethylamines in terms of the balance between mind expansion, euphoria, and low bodyload are:
2C-B (low bodyload, high euphoria, unlikely to freak out at <25mg) [pattern]2C-C (like 2C-B but also relaxing, unlikely to freak out at <40mg) [pattern]2C-D (particularly easy on the body relative to other phenethylamines, unlikely to freak out at <30mg) [pattern]2C-I (more trippy and stimulating than the above, unlikely to freak out at <25mg) [pattern]
Among some of the worst 2Cs (but perhaps not worst phenethylamines) we find:
2C-P (particularly bad bodyload, inevitable vomiting above some dose) [pattern]2C-E ("just too weird" for a lot of people, strong bodyload) [pattern]2C-T-2 (high bodyload, strangely similar to LSD in headspace) [n>1]2C-T-7 (same as 2C-T-2) [n>1]
IV Psychedelics
Do not ever IV 2C-E as it leads to instant extreme crams, nausea, and general bodily discomfort. [n=1]The come-up of IV 2C-B is very fast relative to oral administration (5 minutes) and the peak is a lot more intense as well. 5mg results in an intensity of experience comparable to 35mg oral at its peak. [n=5]Within 10 minutes of IV 2C-B one feels an intense urge to defecate. [n=4/5]While IV 100μg LSD takes a full 30 minutes to show the start of effects, IV 300μg takes only 5 minutes to show pronounced effects. [n=1]Ketamine is reportedly experienced as a "completely different drug" when the ROA is IV vs. IM vs. intranasal. [pattern]IV Ketamine gives rise to a distinct metallic taste in one's mouth within a few seconds of administration. [n>1]
Anti-Tolerance Drugs
In Anti-Tolerance Drugs we gave a list of drugs that, when taken in conjunction with painkillers and euphoric substances, can lessen, prevent, and even reverse tolerance. But "drug tolerance" is not a natural kind. Indeed, there are many systems of neuroadaptation that prevent drugs from exerting the same effect over time. Nothing makes this clearer than the typically life-long loss of "magic" to MDMA after a few experiences, which stands in contrast to the largely reversible tolerance to ethyl alcohol post-PAWS. Indeed, "drug tolerance" can mean tolerance to reduced action for: antidepressant effects (SSRIs), lessening chronic pain (opioids), increasing executive function (modafinil), enhancing motivation (amphetamine), "the magic" (ketamine, MDMA), the sense of unity and interconnectedness (LSD), otherworldliness (salvia), and so on. Indeed you can have a drug that generates tolerance to one of its effects but not others. For example, Slate Star Codex's nootropic survey found that despite the common wisdom that prescription amphetamines stop generating a sense of euphoria after a while, most people who use them clinically for ADHD continue to experience an enhanced focus on the drug for many years. In this vein, the following anecdata highlights how anti-tolerance drugs have a much more subtle and multifaceted effect than just "reducing tolerance":
DXM and other dissociatives seem to potentiate both the analgesic and euphoric effects from opioids, increase constipation, and leave pruritus the same. [n>1]Proglumide reduces both the intensity of opioid withdrawal as well as the tolerance to their analgesic, sedative, and constipation effects. It does not affect euphoria or pruritus. [n>1]Ultra-low dose naltrexone (ULDN) reduces tolerance to analgesic and sedative effects from opioids but not euphoria ("it makes opioids more sleep-inducing but a lot less fun"). Interestingly, ULDN prevents constipation from opioids. [n>1]Black seed oil and ashwagandha reduce the tolerance to the analgesic, sedative, euphoric, and pruritus effects of opioids without influencing constipation. These effects are milder than all of the above. [n=1]Agmatine potentiates the analgesic effects of opioids without an effect on other facets like euphoria or constipation. [n =1]Turmeric primarily increases the sedative effects of opioids without changing much of anything else. [n=1]Anti-histamine anti-cholinergic drugs (such as diphenhydramine) potentiate the sedative and analgesic effects, but leave constipation and euphoria the same. They can increase restlessness. [pattern]
Drug Combinations
In addition to all of what was said in Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails:
DXM does not mix well with a bunch of things: 2C drugs [n>1], noopept [n=1], tianeptine [n=1], phenibut [n=1], ethyl alcohol [pattern], most nootropics. [n=1]This seems to be especially bad for high-bodyload 2Cs as described above. [n>1]Vaporizing DMT while on ketamine "slows down" and in some cases "freezes" some aspects of the hallucinations of DMT, allowing you to inspect them more closely. It also prolongs the DMT experience for a good 3 to 5 minutes. [n=3]Taking 30mg of MDMA and 30μg LSD at the same time, followed by 10mg 2C-B four hours later, gives rise to a very positive synergy that allows you to maintain easy executive function while having trippy thoughts and a very high hedonic tone. It's a smart and psychologically safe state. The combo has very mild hungover effects relative to how great it feels. [n=4]
Nootropics
Coluracetam is surprisingly psychedelic. [n=5]Mixing coluracetam and weed gives rise to a mild LSD-like mindspace. [n=4]Rhodiola Rosea has a distinctly "dopaminergic quality", which is rare among nootropics other than L-tyrosine. [n=3]Most racetams (piracetam, oxiracetam, aniracetam, etc.) successfully mask the verbal impairment (both comprehension and execution) caused by weed and/or alcohol (up to a point!). [pattern]Agmatine (500mg) significantly blunts the intensity of orgasm. [n=1]Agmatine (500mg) can be used as a replacement for NSAIDs like aspirin and ibuprofen for mild to moderate pains and aches. [n=1]
Surprising Analgesia
Microdosing LSD (5 to 20μg) can substantially reduce the pain of very bad premenstrual syndrome (PMS). [pattern]Microdosing LSD can also reduce the pain associated with shingles. [1<n]

Psychoactive Anecdata


The Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a Thing

[Excerpt from The Secret of Scent (2006) by Luca Turin, pgs 108-111]
Some Strange Clues
It has been said,* correctly in my opinion, that theories define facts as much as the other way around. Nowhere is this more true than in structure-odour relations, where all knowledge is anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence has a sort of slippery, jelly-like quality to it, and theories are needed to congeal the stuff together into single, solid facts. 'Anecdotal' is often used as a pejorative term in scientific circles, meaning unreliable. In practice it often means isolated, and therefore hard to assess. Think of a new field of science as a large jigsaw puzzle. Pieces are discovered one by one, and at first they are unlikely to fit together to make a picture. Things can look distinctly unpromising, sometimes for decades. But if you can bear the pain of feeling stupid and the humiliation of being wrong, anecdotal evidence is the call of the wild, the surest sign of the undiscovered. Columbus set sail on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered using anecdotal evidence. Life-saving remedies based on plants, such as aspirin and digitalis, were found by scientists who paid attention to anecdotal evidence.
Scientific problems typically go through three phases. In the first phase, a few bold explorers discover a new land and map out its basic features. In the second phase, boatloads of immigrant scientists arrive and colonize the land. In the third phase, statues are erected on town squares, sometimes to the original discoverers, more often to the able administrators who build the roads and railways. Smell, as it happens, did not follow this pattern. Scientific colonies never thrived on this particular island. Every few years, a new set of scientists claims to have cleared the jungle, but their cities are eventually overgrown and get lost in the weeds.
In smell, the difficulty is compounded by two additional factors, one obvious, the other more subtle. The first is the supposed untrustworthiness of the smell sensation I've mentioned earlier which makes strong men and women doubt their own noses. The second is that when facts, especially anecdotal ones, remain unexplained for long enough, a kind of question fatigue sets in, and they become accepted without being understood. The situation brings to mind a quintessentially British cartoon I saw once where a dinosaur strides past a terraced house, and a couple see it from their living room. Wife: "What was that?" Husband: "Oh, just one of those Things." The fact that we can smell functional groups is just such a Thing.
Functional groups, as we have seen, are the specific structures of one or more atoms that are responsible for the chemical behaviour of a substance. Examples are thiols (-SH), nitriles (-CN), and aldehydes (-C(=O)H). The little hyphen indicates that these groups are, of course, attached to something and that the Something varies hugely. But the remarkable thing is that the Something matters little to the smell of the molecules. What gives the game away, especially to the casual observer, is the fact that types of smell are named after chemical groups: sulphuraceous, nitrilic, aldehydic, corresponding respectively to -SH, -CN, -(H)C=O. This is particularly clear in the case of -SH. All molecules which contain an -SH group smell (a) strong and (b) reminiscent of rotten eggs.

A word about the description 'rotten eggs,' since only a tiny minority of readers will be old enough to remember them. Eggs nowadays come with time stamps and serial numbers, so they seldom get a chance to rot. The rotten eggs smell is today more likely to be experienced in an oriental market (the durian fruit), by opening the gas tap on the stove (a small amount of an -SH compound is added to make sure we notice it), or best of all by going to an Indian store and asking for kala namak or 'black salt'. Black salt, as its name does not indicate, is actually pink and is a type of rock salt that must come from Hell, as it contains ample amounts of Hell's Kitchen smell, namely the HSH molecule. HSH is -SH repeated and smells bad twice over. Put some kala namak on your tongue and you will see what I mean. The first thing you will notice is that it reminds you mostly of a very intense hard-boiled egg smell. Clearly, eggs, even when fresh, are itching to fall apart. If you've done any chemistry at school, you will also recall the classroom when the teacher was making one of those stinks for which chemistry is famous. Beware though, the culinary satanism of kala namak is beguiling: a tiny amount in blackcurrant ice cream, strawberry daiquiris, coffee, and chocolate does wonders, as long as you don't let anyone know you did it.
Do all -SH compounds smell identical then, i.e. of rotten eggs? Not a bit, actually: they smell of all manner of things, from grapefruit to garlic via blackcurrants,  but they all have this sulphuraceous (i.e. from Hell) character. The grapefruit compound is particularly instructive. It is called pinanethiol. Thiol means -SH, so pinanethiol means pinane-SH.

Remove the -SH and the rest of the molecule (pinane) smells like pine needles, as it should, since pinane is a major component of turpentine oil, itself extracted from pine. Add the -SH back and, having smelled the pinane by itself and familiarized yourself with kala namak, you can clearly smell the parts of the molecule. That is to say you smell both the pine needles and the sulphur. Smell another very strong -SH compound like H₃C-SH, or methanethiol, for a few seconds till the nose (mercifully) tires of the hideous -SH smell, then go back to pinane-SH. Surprise! The sulphur note is now almost gone and the molecule no longer smells of pinane-SH, but instead smells of pinane tout court. This means that this molecule smells like the sum of its parts. In other words, -SH is a primary, though the other smells are not. But how does that work? How do we know what parts it's made of? This, as we shall see, is the greatest mystery of smell. Looking for an answer will take us amazingly far afield.

* Paul Feyerabend, among others, convincingly argued this view in Against Method, required reading for those who believe the scientific method is something which can be written down and followed like a recipe.

Comments:
On a recent conversation I had with Luca, I shared with him the fact that there are anti-tolerance drugs that can lessen (and even reverse) the physiological tolerance to drugs such as painkillers. He was seriously surprised by this fact. Despite spending a whole career studying biological regulatory systems, he had never in his life heard of anti-tolerance drugs in academia. Upon hearing this, he shared that in his experience, most of the innovation in science comes from people who work hands-on in the field, as this exposes them to a much broader evidential base than you would encounter when doing research in a strictly theoretical way.
Thus, he has learned far more about consciousness from psychonauts than he ever has from academic psychopharmacologists, and has learned more about electronics from radio amateurs than professional electrical engineers. In other words, the people who actually tinker with the inner mechanisms of the systems they're interested in are the people to ask for "weird and novel phenomena", rather than (only) those who study the field academically angling for a university post or a narrow job in the industry. Same, of course, with the science of smell: actually tinkering with aromachemicals can give rise to discoveries one may never stumble upon by merely studying scent receptors in a lab. Needless to say, the best outcomes will come from seamlessly blending both worlds; but for that to happen we will have to embrace phenomenological reports as acceptable leads for research in science.
See Luca Turin's recent series on the science of smell on youtube: The Secret of Scent (including a video on the objections to the vibrational theory of olfaction).


Spiral

[Excerpt from Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved (published in 1990 and usually abbreviated as PIHKAL) by Alexander and Ann Shulgin, pgs. 98-103]
Part Two: Alice's Voice
Spiral
When I finally gave it a name, I called it the Spiral.
This is how it was. Lying down for a nap time (as a child) or at night for sleep, I would have reached that point of relaxation where one is not very much aware of the body. The small itches and discomforts have subsided, and the mind is beginning to drift. When I sensed it beginning (I never knew when it was going to come), I would immediately snap into alertness, excited and pleased, then I would just lie quietly as it unfolded.
The first thing that happened was a change in my breathing. It became increasingly shallow, to the point where my rib cage was barely moving at all.
If someone came into the room and talked to me, as sometimes happened, I could open my eyes and answer normally; the experience continued uninterrupted inside my head.
Every part of it, every stage, was the same each time. It was always in black and white. There was no color anywhere, and try as I did, especially around the age of fourteen, I could not force color to come onto the screen. And I could never extend it, by so much as a few seconds. When it was finished, it was finished.
First came the image-sensation after which I named the entire experience – the spiral. I felt my entire self drawn rapidly into a tiny point which kept shrinking, until it could shrink no further, at which time the microscopic point became a tunnel in which I continued traveling at great speed, inexpressibly small and implacably diminishing.
Simultaneously, I was expanding. I was expanding to the edges of the universe, at the same tremendous speed as that of the shrinking, and the combination, the contraction-expansion, was not only an image, it was also a sensation the whole of me recognized and welcomed. This experience of myself as microcosm-macrocosm lasted exactly four minutes.
The image of the spiral is found everywhere that the human has left his mark on earth. It has been cut into rock faces, painted on huts and clay pots, traced on the walls of initiation caves. I'm certain that it has been important to all the races of man because it is a symbol for the experience I'm describing, and for the concept, the understanding that the intellect forms out of what is initially not an intellectual, but a soul experience of the Alpha and the Omega.
The next stage came abruptly, as did all the changes. I was looking at standing figures which were vaguely human, dark thin figures being pulled into elongated shapes, like the sculptures of Giacometti. They stretched out, arms and legs like black string, until it seemed they could elongate no further, then the scene changed and I was watching obscenely rounded bodies, Tweedledums and Tweedledees without costumes, their small heads and legs disappearing into their puffed, bloated flesh.
The sensation accompanying this stage was one of discomfort, unpleasantness, a feeling of something grating on my soul. I once timed this part and the one that followed; they lasted a total of six minutes. I disliked them intensely.
Abruptly again, the inner screen became white, a horrible dead-white, nasty and aggressive like the underbelly of a sting-ray. After presenting itself for a few seconds, the flat white began to curdle from the outer edges into black, until finally the screen was totally black. A thick, awful, dead black, a pool of tar in an unlit cave deep underground. After another brief pause, the black began to curdle at its edges into the white again. The process repeated itself once, and the sensation was similar in every way to the previous one: irritating, grating, a feeling of unpleasantness that approached repugnance. I always endured it with a mental gritting of teeth, knowing it had to be gone through because that's the way it always went and it was not to be changed.
And then, finally, I broke out into the last stage, the final part for which I had always been and always would be willing to undergo the middle parts.
Now I was at the edge of an unseen cliff, looking out into a very different blackness, the deep, cradling blackness of the infinite universe, of space which stretched without end. I was completely happy and comfortable in that place, and would have stayed there indefinitely, had I been allowed, breathing in the beautiful darkness and the exquisitely familiar sense of infinity as a living presence, surrounding me, intimate and warm.
After a moment of this pleasure, came the greeting. From the upper left-hand corner of the universe there came a greeting from Something which had known me, and which I had known, since before time and space began. There were no words, but the message was clear and smiling: Hello, dear friend, I salute you with respect-humor-love. It is a pleasure with laughter-joy to encounter you again.
That which greeted me was an entity so far removed from anything in human experience that I concluded, when I was an adult, trying to find a way to describe it to myself, that even the word, "entity", could not be applied; a word creates boundaries, it says this is the shape of what you are describing, as different from other shapes which are bounded by other words. It had no shape, no form, no definition, no boundaries. It was. It is. It was my oldest friend and it greeted me as its equal. I always replied to it with a rush of love and delight and my own laughter.
Then it was over.
It had taken exactly twelve minutes.
It was something I'd always experienced, taken for granted, and had given no thought to when I was very young. Not until age fourteen did I take a good look at it and recognize it as unusual, something peculiarly my own, my secret private treasure. I also got very analytical about the whole thing, began my habit of timing it and made the first of my unsuccessful efforts at altering it. But I didn't decide on a name for it until many years later, discarding "Microcosm-macrocosm," as too long and unwieldy, and settling on the simpler "Spiral."
It had probably been going on since I was born. There's no way to be sure, of course, but because it had been part of my life ever since I could remember, I tend to assume it was familiar to me from the very beginning. My mother said something once about having seen a change of some kind coming over me occasionally when I was a baby; she said she didn't worry about it because when it passed, I appeared to be quite normal.
It always (with one single exception) came under the same circumstances, when I had settled down in bed for a nap or for the night's sleep, but well before sleep itself took over.
The one exception happened when I was around fifteen, shortly after my father had been transferred to Santiago de Cuba as American Consul. We were staying in a hotel, while those responsible for helping us find a home were still busy with their search. My father and mother, my brother Boy and I were having lunch in the hotel dinning room and my eyes focused on the butter plate on the table. In the exact center of the round plate was a single pat of butter, and somehow the sight triggered the familiar feeling I associated with the beginning of the Spiral. I was surprised and very pleased, because it was a new thing to have it start under such unusual circumstances.
I was also pleased because it was my special thing, and in asking to be excused from the table to go up to my room, I felt a certain sense of importance, which was rare when I was with my family. I said just enough to make it clear that my strange "thing" was beginning, and my parents grudgingly gave me permission for me to leave. I reached the room upstairs in time for the completion, the wonderful last few moments. It turned out to be the only time it ever happened that way – when I was out of my bed, involved with ordinary matters of daily living.
I tried to make it come, searching out all sorts of images of round space with dots in the center, but nothing worked. I never found a way to make it happen. It came when it chose to, unexpectedly, once in a while. The times it chose had no apparent connection to anything else that was going on in my life, either generally or in particular. In twenty-five years, believe me, I looked for every possible connection; I found none. When I was very little, I think it might have happened as often as once a week or so, but as I grew older it came less and less often, until around age twenty-five, when it happened only twice in one year, then never again.
The discovery that I was not alone in my journey into the interior cosmos came as a complete surprise. It gave me a great deal of excited pleasure and opened up a whole new series of questions. I happened when I was around twenty two, and – interesting enough in itself – the two proofs came to me within a single four month period.
The incidents were astoundingly similar.
The first one took place one evening when I went to a party given by a friend in San Francisco. I was in the host's kitchen with several of the other guests, doing what people usually do in strange kitchens at informal parties – talking, drinking and munching potato chips and carrot sticks – and after a while one young man named Evan and I found ourselves alone, deeply involved in a conversation about unusual experiences, mostly read about or heard from others, the kind of conversation that seems to come about more easily, somehow, in the midst of a high energy, noisy party than at any other time.
Suddenly Evan was telling me about what he referred to as "a really weird thing," which had been happening to him ever since he was very young. I remember the prickling that spread up my back as he began describing it, and I understood immediately the look that gradually came into his face, a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety (She's going to think I'm crazy; why am I talking about this?). I tried to make it easier for him to continue by nodding encouragingly and once – when he faltered briefly – I volunteered what I knew was going to be the next image, and he looked startled, almost frightened, drank a bit from his glass, muttered, "Yes, exactly", and continued to the end. His end was not mine; his journey came to a close after the black and white curdles. I thought, with a touch of pity, that he seemed to have missed the best part, although he did have the wonderful spiral at the beginning. I was glad I hadn't prompted him further. When he'd finished his story, I told him I'd had every one of the images he had described, and that he was the first person I'd ever met who shared the experience. I said nothing about my own different ending.
He was staring at me, and I wasn't sure he'd really heard what I'd been telling him. Finally, he smiled and said that I was the first person he'd ever told about this private, "crazy thing," and he couldn't believe – it was so extraordinary – that I actually knew what he was talking about. He said that he had always wondered if the experience was a sign of insanity of some kind, and it was such a relief to know that somebody else had had it. Neither of us felt it necessary to add that, in a situation like this, it was also reassuring to see that the person who shares your strangeness appears to be relatively sane and reasonably functional.
I smiled back and said I understood exactly how he felt. We left the kitchen and joined the rest of the party. I never saw him again, and didn't particularly expect or want to. It was enough to have heard one other person repeating what I knew so well, and it was intriguing to know that my journey, or process, had gone farther, longer, than Evan's; after all, although I was more than willing to give up exclusive rights to the whole thing, I didn't mind retaining a little bit of superiority.
The second incident was almost identical to the first, the only difference being that the young man (whose name I forgot almost immediately) was talking to me in somebody's living room, instead of the kitchen, in the middle of another noisy party, when he began describing the "strange vision" that he, too, had had ever since he was a small child. His, also, ended short of where mine did, and he was astounded and obviously very relieved to know that there was somebody else in the world who knew about it.
Both young men seemed quite unremarkable, although pleasant enough and intelligent. I never saw the second one again, either.
I remember wishing briefly that I could put an ad in the Chronicle or Examiner, something along the lines of, "Seek contact with others who have experienced…," and of course, the imaginary ad stalled there.
It happened – my beloved Spiral – for the last time when I was twenty-five. I had no way of knowing, of course, that it would not come again. It may or may not have been a coincidence that, within three weeks of the last time, I had my first encounter with a psychedelic material, the Divine Cactus, peyote.

Has the above ever happened to you? Did you experience the Spiral as a kid? If so, please let us know!
See also:

Essential Therapy (excerpt from the narrative component of TIHKAL, "the continuation" of PIHKAL)
Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails (ideas for how to systematically explore the subjective effects of drug combinations)
The Super-Shulgin Academy (imagining what it would look like to carry out the work of Shulgin at a grand scale)
SSC Book Review of PIHKAL

Featured Image Credit: Matthew Smith

Spiral