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If I Stop DreamingJohn MacBeath Watkins
If I Stop Dreaming...
What if you one day realized you were God...and everything was your fault?
By John MacBeath Watkins"If I stop dreaming , the world will end," I told Dr. Motherwell.Motherwell was a plump, earnest man in his fifties who wore a white shirt anddark, narrow tie. He had graying hair, the prison pallor I had come to associate withoffice workers, and an expression of uncomprehending sympathy."So, when you sleep…""It's not that," I said. "It's in the daytime, when I'm interacting with other peoplein the world.""What are the nature of your hallucinations?""Right now, I'm hallucinating that I'm talking to you." It sounded so sophomoricthat I was embarrassed."So," Motherwell said. "You hallucinate that you are living a perfectly ordinarylife."
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If I Stop DreamingJohn MacBeath Watkins"Exactly. And by dreaming it, I make it exist." I had not thought this would be soeasy to make clear. I had a moment of euphoria, and thought I could hear someone playing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' on a theremin. That seldom happens anymore."So, why an ordinary life? If by dreaming it is so, why not make yourself rich?Why not give yourself many beautiful lovers?" He paused a moment. "Wait, are yourich? Do you have beautiful women raining upon you like a plague of frogs?""No, doctor," I said ruefully, "I can't imagine such nice things happening to me.""And so they don't."I nodded."You…have considered the possibility that you are not, in fact, hallucinating,haven't you? What if the world exists beyond you, and you only have a small place in it?What if you strut your little hour or two, and then are gone, like the rest of us? How doyou know the world will stop existing if you stop imagining your own small place in it?""I realized what was happening a few years ago," I told him. "In college.""College?" A look of understanding and relief stole over Dr. Motherwell's face."Tell me, were any illegal drugs involved?"I hesitated. I didn't want him to get the impression this was just a doper's dream."It was the one time I took LSD," I confessed.I knew that ergot mold had been used for 2,000 years as a migraine cure, but I couldn’tget any, and besides, the side effects can be distressing and sometimes fatal. There wasanother drug I knew of that sent blood to the same parts of the brain, and that was LSD.
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If I Stop DreamingJohn MacBeath WatkinsSomeone had told me people who tripped regularly didn’t have migraines. I thought itwas worth a try. I already had hallucinations that went with the migraines. I would see aglowing aura around objects and people. I thought the hallucinations without themigraines would be preferable to those that accompanied the migraines.I took what was supposed to be a small dose, one that my dealer told me I couldfunction while taking. Drug dealers, it seems, are not as trustworthy as pharmacists.Who knew? Before long I was beginning to think it was a mistake to go to my classes onthe drug. This is understandable, because the side effects of the drug that I consideredundesirable were the effects the drug dealer was selling. No doubt my dealer thought hewas doing me a kindness. My marketing professor would have said he was customer-centered.In Lit, we were discussing Robinson Crusoe for some reason. It was a book mostof us had covered in high school, if not junior high. There was this very smart girl, Leslie Norman, who thought it was just dumb that we had to do such a juvenile book. She hadread it when she was a pre-teen."…and before he swims out to the wreck," she was complaining, "he takes off allhis clothes, right? Then when he gets there, he starts putting things in his pockets. The book's just not that well written, is what I'm saying."The thing is, with the aid of LSD I could see him taking his clothes off andswimming out to the wreck. I could see him putting things in his pocket. Before thelecturer could intervene and get us to look at why the book had become part of themythology of our culture, which was the point of us reading it in English 101, I leaped in
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