I wanted to talk about Bill Hicks after I watched that doc, "American: the story of Bill Hicks," because I was really having a problem in the first few weeks of being sober, wondering how I was going to live with out my "crutch." How was I going to have a good time, how would I deal with my social anxiety, how would I be able to deal with stage fright. Would I ever be the life of the party again?
So, when I watched this I was drawn into this story arc--the rise of a comic prodigy at the age of 15-- the inevitable crash and burn with drugs and alcohol, and then subsequent rise from the ashes to be even greater and truer than ever before, I guess I had an Opra-esque "Aha" moment. I'm sure Bill had been the life of the party, and I'm sure he had good times for a while being the center of attention and the recipient of so many back stage "perks."
The irony is, that the guy was very libertarian when it came to drugs, and he has always strongly refuted the "all drugs are bad" and "just say no" propaganda that had been shoved down are throats for most of the 1980's--some of the great highlights of his stand-up routine involved LSD: When telling as story about a guy who supposedly jumped out of a window on acid because he thought he could fly, he said, "Well what an ass***e. Why didn't he try it from the ground first?" I have been a huge Bill Hicks fan for many years, so I found it very enlightening to find out more about his sobriety--especially in light of how strongly he opposed government intervention into your life regarding drug laws--and how committed he actually was to it in the last few years before he died, because while he alluded to it in some of his stand-up, not much else was known about this aspect of his life.
Cleopatra1, I would like to think that he got to have his "sober" alien experience as he was dying. I read a fascinating book about DMT called, "The Spirit Molecule." DMT, as I'm sure many of you know, is a tryptomine which naturally occurs in many plants (ayahuasca being the most well known) and emanates from the pineal gland of our very own brains--and is thought to be responsible for dreams, visions, alien "experiences," and near death experiences or NDE's. Our pineal glands seem to produce a lot of DMT during certain experiences--dreaming, and very, very stressful events, in which near death or even death would certainly qualify.
So, with that in mind, I hope Bill had the Alien experience or contact with the "other" that he so desired to have with out Psilocybin, as he dissolved into the Ether and everlasting oneness with all that is.