Smart drugs don't get cyberians high or stoned, but they do seem to help them cope with complex computer problems, ego-bending philosophical or spiritual inquiry, odd hours, a highly pressurized work environment, or a creativity lapse. The most common perception among users is that they have gained the ability to deal with more than one or two parameters of a problem at the same time. A computer programmer, for example, gains the ability to track three or four different interdependent functions through a series of program commands rather than only one. Smart drugs give some writers the ability to keep half-a-dozen plot points in mind at once. Psychedelics users report the ability to download more of the information and realizations of a trip when they augment the coming-down period with smart drugs.
A typical smart drug user receives his supplies from laboratories in Europe, then creates his own regimen based on self-experimentation. ''Personal neurochemical adjustment,'' as users call it, is designer consciousness. Earth Girl's distributor, Lila Mellow-Whipkit, a large, bald, hedonistic smart drugs enthusiast, loves explaining how this neurochemical self-modulation fits in to the new paradigm. He often sits behind Earth Girl's Smart Bar sharing his wealth of data and insight with newcomers.
''Personal neurochemical adjustment – the equivalent is personal paradigm and belief adjustment. And there's a basic presupposition stolen from cybernetics that's used in NLP [neurolinguistic programming]: the organism with the most requisite behavior – the broadest variety of requisite behavior – will always control any situation.''
To Lila, smart drugs, NLP, and cybernetics are all basically the same thing: programming.
''In other words, if two people interact and they're trying to get something done, the one who has the most variety in behavior is the one who will be in charge and decide where it's gonna go. It's an excellent operating presupposition. It works most of the time, because that person's more able to compromise and come up with ideas, they're less stuck. Think about children who are getting a good Christian education right now. Where are those people gonna be in the future? They're gonna be what Hunter S. Thompson called `the doomed.' They are the doomed. They have one belief system; they have one basic operating strategy, which is the avoidance of pleasure. That's about it in Christianity as far as your real life. You get to kneel and pray to this dead guy.''
What Lila argues is twofold. First, smart drugs and nutrients open up new neural pathways, allow for new thoughts and more flexibility in conceptualizing. Those who take smart drugs can understand more patterns and survive better. Second, and more important, the implicit argument he makes is that the idea of smart drugs and the willingness to experiment with them are themselves heralds of the new paradigm. Not only is a smart drugs user more equipped to deal with the increasingly complex reality matrix; a person willing to take smart drugs is already coping better. He has taken the first step toward becoming a designer being.
The Readiness Is All
Downloading the massive information wave emanating from the end of time is no easy task. Sure, a stockbroker can use smart drugs to help himself draw broader conclusions about certain market data, but cyberians have always known that the real destiny of these chemicals is to foster the processing of the inconceivable.
Mark Heley had just graduated Cambridge when he first found smart drugs. An experienced psychedelic explorer, Heley already believed that the earth is heading toward a great bifurcation point. As a would-be usher of the final paradigm, he knew what was required of him: a hierarchical leap in his mind's ability to identify, process, store, and articulate the complexities of eschatological acceleration. Mark was already smart – very smart – but he'd need to be even smarter to face the challenges ahead. He knew that smart drugs were going to play a major role in the formation of Cyberia, and he knew he was going to be a part of it.
At that time Earth Girl, who hadn't yet abandoned her given name, Neysa, was visiting England. Her mother was a New Age extremist, and Neysa, age eighteen, had left the West Coast to get away from what she saw as trivial and fake spirituality. She wasn't going back until she knew she had something to fill the vacuum.
As a writer for England's ID, Heley exploited his Cambridge philosophy education to become an articulate launcher of cultural viruses. In articles and lectures on topics ranging from permaculture farming techniques to technoshamanism, Heley defined the ways and memes of cyberian culture in London. He was DJing for a house club and running a ''brain gym'' (brain machine rental store), and in the process he gathered a wide following for a twenty-four-year-old. Neysa, for the time being, was just hanging out. When they met, they knew it would be forever.
In many ways, Heley and Neysa are opposites. He's an intellectual who grounds every psychedelic revelation into a plan. He's all business, and even his most far-reaching DMT experiences mean nothing to him if he can't process them into concrete realizations about the nature of reality. If those realizations are to be worth anything, he must also quickly determine how to communicate them to others through articles, chemicals, club events, or cultural viruses. Heley is a mind. So much so, that his body, often neglected through aggressive chemical use and lack of sleep, revolts in the form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which incapacitates him completely for weeks or even months at a time.
Neysa lives through her body almost exclusively. She can feel what she calls spiritual ''weather,'' evaluate people at a glance, and predict events in the weeks ahead entirely through her body. She is incapable of articulating her experience through words, but has developed her own "language of heart,'' which takes the form of a smile, a touch, an embrace, or even sex. Wherever she goes, a cluster of admirers forms around her looking for the security that her carefree yet self-assured manner offers them. With the help of Heley and his cyberian epiphanies, Neysa was able to embrace the New Age ideas of her mother in a new, cyberian context. Then she was complete: Earth Girl was born.
Where Heley valued smart drugs for their mental effects, Earth Girl saw them as a physical preparation for the coming age. They both knew that smart drugs and the cyberian designer minds that the chemicals fostered needed to be broadcast to a wider audience. America was ripe and ready. A few books on the substances had come out in the United States, but popular, club culture had no idea what was going on. Together, then, they decided to put smart drugs and cyber culture on the map.
After severing ties with his partners at the Mind Gym in London, Mark Heley came back to the Bay Area with Neysa and a new idea: Smart Bars. They could distribute the drugs as healthy fruit drinks over the counter right next to the dance floor. Mark's media savvy and pharmaceutical experience could develop the idea into a workable concept. Neysa's personality and flair made her the perfect barperson and iconic representation of new, designer being. Their mission was clear.
In San Francisco, Heley was introduced to Diana, a Berkeley dropout who, with her friend Preston, was running Toon Town, an underground roving house event for kids fed up with haughty dance hall atmospheres. Heley's multidimensional language and strong ideas soon earned him Diana as his new girlfriend, as well as a position as one of the coordinators of Toon Town. Heley's presence quickly manifested as an infusion of cyber-culture viruses. Rooms were set aside for brain machines, virtual reality demonstrations, sales of books and tapes, and the infamous Smart Bar. While Preston would later resist Heley's metabrainstorm, for the time being it made Toon Town the highest profile house gathering in town. That, coupled with Diana's gentle pleading and positive attitude, kept competition between the two men in check.