What psychedelics do according to my rudimentary layperson’s understanding of the science based on reading part of one book (consider this a disclaimer!), is suppress the control of a central part of the brain that both coordinates input from various sensory-gathering parts of the brain and also regulates the traffic of that input, preventing collisions and even certain conversations. When that part of the brain is no longer in control, the other parts commune, connect, create–associations birth originality. Whether I’ve nailed or destroyed the science here, the description applies to writing. Writing is all about unexpected combinations. When the stream of one story meets the river of another, I call it cross-currents, energy and rapids crashing through.

I used to fill spiral notebooks with freewriting. Grab a line from a poem, a newspaper, and go. Keep your hand moving, freewriting guru Natalie Goldberg told us, and don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Be specific. Pages of specific free associating produced characters, conflict, images, dialog, interior musings. Splashing in a sea of language with all its roiling powers, in love with all of it. Later, I’d go back and find connections. Oh, this character, the heartbroken one, is in love with that character, the one struggling to leave. And this interior grappling? It’s the aftermath of that scene of there. This character is that character!

Lifting the controlled boundaries between your senses, your insights, terrifes your wonderful, hardworking central organizer. But all those various inputs are already there. You can draw on them and let them dance in unexpected ways–even without drugs. You do it when you dream, and you do it when you write. (No wonder writing terrifies our brains.)

There’s a moment I encounter often. It’s really pretty nonverbal. I’m writing and an idea of a word–what to write next–surfaces and it’s outside of what would be expected. Something inside me objects, dismissing it, and I have to push past that objection. Say to myself, what’s the worst thing that happens if this is stupid, wrong, nonsensical? I’ll go back and replace it. Over the years I’ve bolstered the part of me that is willing to take risks, find unexpected connections, see where they lead, and maybe look silly, gazing astonished at the salmon-bellied beauty of this place.