Travel Really Expands Your Mind

My high school friend Scott was always a bit more avant garde than the rest of us. While we slipped easily from Simon & Garfunkel into Crosby, Stills and Nash, Scott listened to Pink Floyd's early work Atom Heart Mother.

While my closest friends and I were happily planning dance parties with cute girls from Edison High, Scott was smoking pot in his headphones, or at least until he became the Neil Young to our Marx Brothers. His preppier look, which belied his counterculture tendencies, fit in okay with our unofficial after-school uniform of cords and white t-shirts, and we found common ground in the the Band, Moody Blues, Beatles and pursuing cute girls.

I can't remember if he told me he dropped acid or not, but I always assumed he must have at some point, either as a senior or after graduating. He did say that he thought seeking an alternative reality, whether through religion, games, television or some other channel, was a natural human need like hunger and thirst,  and he certainly studied psychology writings on the subject of hallucinogens.

At that time in the early 1970's, LSD's hay day had faded under government scrutiny of bad trips and deaths caused by the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals experimental product, even if some otherwise normal, successful people believed it to be enlightening and some doctors regarded it as promising for breakthroughs in fields like autism.

The deaths of people like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who glorified the drug-excessive lifestyle of the '60s, made many people including myself leery of Timothy Leary's magic potion. I'm certainly not trying to make a case now for using LSD, but there is something to be said for getting outside of our quotidian realities and searching for the interconnectedness of everything.

While the Moody Blues sang Thinking is the best way to travel, I would turn that on itself and say travel is the best way for thinking.

By traveling, we all gain greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. We understand that we have infinite alternative realities, and we don't need to risk the dangers of drugs to discover truly amazing experiences. However, if you want to avoid a bad trip, take a lesson from the acid trippers. Some people on LSD threw themselves from multi-story windows believing they could fly, and far more drifted into frightening dreams when they didn't have a trained psychiatrist or other "guide" like Timothy Leary to keep them on the right mental course.

Why take a chance with your body and finances as well as your mind? I will guide you to the right vacation and help you get the most of it. As always, you pay nothing more than you would pay dealing directly with the cruise line or packager like Pleasant Holidays. Peace of mind comes at no additional charge. Better service leads to better trips!