In preparing for my first experience of Adam, I read some short reports of others' experiences and I asked questions about the differences between Adam and LSD, which I had taken twice in the previous six months. The three of us, with a guide, started to walk to a secluded beach that we had heard of.

About half an hour after taking the drug, I lay down on a blanket and began to shake. I surrendered to it peacefully, but I began to be torn between the realization that I was naked and that the sun was strong and I could get badly burned. I felt these thoughts holding me away from allowing the effects of the drug to take over. Then I sat up and put on my sweat suit and lay back down. At some point I found a palm-sized stone and held it in my right hand. I felt energy from it. I felt I understood that all of existence is energy -- life.

I surrendered completely to the experience. I felt cold and I began to shake all over. A growing sense of freezing that started from behind my right ear and travelled across my throat to below the left ear, almost like the tingling sensation of dental anaesthesia. I felt my jaw forced wide open to the point of pain in my jaw joints. I wondered later whether this was related to a tonsillectomy at the age of five. While in this strange, dark place of pain, I suddenly felt a very gentle touch on my right hand and I came back with a flooding sense of gratitude that our guide was there. It was as though I were being bathed in love and joy. I heard gentle music playing on the tape recorder near my head. Soon I was back completely in the immediacy of the present and the glorious surroundings of sea and rock and birds and plants and sky and sun.

I remember sitting on the blanket, looking up and down the beach, watching the others on the rocks and under the waterfall, playing together, and I thought, "Why am I sitting here by myself? Why am I not included?" Then I got up and went over to the rocks, but the others had left. I enjoyed being close to the water, I loved the feel of the rocks and the sense of connectedness. I was aware of time being, as it were, timeless. I had no sense of needing to do anything. I felt the freedom to simply respond to any urge that occurred. When I wished to join the others, I did so. When I wished to be alone, I was so.

After awhile I was aware that our guide and E were lying side by side not far from me. E seemed very sad. I watched them for some time and wondered whether to confront E, and finally I decided to do so. After a while the guide left us alone. Gradually E got closer and I began to feel almost claustrophobic, but without panic, which would have been my reaction without the drug. I quietly disengaged and I walked away feeling clear that I could leave because I wanted to, without having either to reassure the other or battle the other, or myself. I could simple separate myself from another; I did not have to separate myself from myself, as I have so often in the past.

I moved away from the rocks at the other end of the beach, to where I had last seen the guide. He had climbed up onto a rock above the waves, which I found was part of a stone bridge. I moved and sat on the bridge itself with my legs spread so that the water seemed to pound between them. I felt and exulted in the force of the sea pounding through me, into me, a part of me. I was the sea, I was me, I was both, and I was the rock. As I described this several times during the following week I spoke of the femaleness of the sea. I felt myself as the rock being penetrated by the sea -- surrendering to that powerful and exultant, sexual, male/female union of rock and sea, when the distinction of male and female seemed blurred, when each is the other and the self as a whole.

The next morning I wrote: "I awoke this morning with images of male genitals of different sizes and shapes. I thought about our guide and E, and of how different they are. I became aware of myself, of my femaleness and the feeling of tenderness and curiosity about the male. I suddenly felt that my homosexuality had been a search for understanding and acceptance of the femaleness of myself. I felt so at ease yesterday with nakedness -- my own and others'. I looked at our friends' bodies, which were so very like an ancient fertility or earth goddess. The great round shapes, breasts, stomachs, hips, all firm as though she were made of wonderful fruits, not soft, but ripe, glorious."

I enjoyed gazing at D's body and what she was doing with it. The top of her body was so thin and young and her belly was large and round as though she were pregnant. Her head reached forward, lips pursed in an almost monkey expression. Her evident joy -- no, immediacy -- being totally where she was; and the feeling I had was that she was glad about the experience. I became aware of feeling repulsed by E but at the same time compassionate. I had no desire to cuddle close to him and I had no sense of fear or anger when he evidently wanted me closer to him. I could allow his caresses and his kissing my brow -- not an unpleasant sensation -- and then easily, and without hurting him, drift away.

All day my cold seemed gone, no stuffiness, no coughing, no pain in my throat or chest. The next day my cold came back with a worrisome sharp pain in my chest, but that lasted for only half a day. The effect of the drug was evident to me for about five days, giving me the feeling of being more open and connected with people and with nature than I usually feel. The greatest shift in myself is in my attitude towards the understanding and the appreciation of the men around me.