The Horton Dilemma [ONC 2022]

Another Author's Note

WOW I actually finished this novella right in time for the three-month deadline. I am seriously so proud of myself. *pats self on back with both hands*

I am a huge lover of sci-fi, and I especially love sci-fi featuring or centering on drugs, particularly futuristic designer drugs. I've always wanted to write my own, and now I have! Woot woot!

Now, I want to be clear: I never want to glorify drugs in my works. There is and has always been a lot of drug use and abuse in my family, and some of my own personal traumas are largely due to drugs. Drugs can be sooooo, soooo bad. I absolutely know this. 

But it cannot be ignored that psychedelic drugs (and closely related drugs, like ketamine) are definitely in that gray area between harmful and beneficial. They can absolutely be harmful, but their benefits are being proven again and again, and they are being used to treat everything from PTSD to alcoholism to depression. (They are also used for less serious / non-treatment-related purposes, too, like inspiring creativity. Heck, I just read an article about moms microdosing on mushrooms; they claim it makes them better parents.) So: this novella tries to offer a neutral-ish perspective? 

There is a LOT of reality in this book. Entity contact? That's a real phenomenon. So is ego death. So is people's tendency to attribute consciousness to inanimate objects after having psychedelic experiences. And much of the metaphysics (and related) topics are real, too. They are not my own ideas; they're just regurgitated nonfiction. (I'm not that cool.) 

Much of this book is inspired by Rick Strassman's The Spirit Molecule, a nonfiction book where Strassman discusses various studies on DMT he performed and some of the conclusions he drew. Many of his studies' participants experienced entity contact, and many of those participants actually believed they had contacted creatures from another world. Strassman ultimate decides not to invalidate these experiences by suggesting they might not be real, but at one point, he says he was worried that he was inducing a sort of mass-psychosis amongst his participants. (Some of them discontinued believing after a time.) (P.S. I believe that Strassman was instrumental in helping institutions, include the government and academia, to understand how detrimental the restrictions to studying DMT and related drugs were to his study. I think he is part of the reason there are so many studies moving forward so much more smoothly and with less restrictions currently. These studies are the reasons we are now actually treating people with these drugs.) 

Back to entity contact: I just don't think we can ever truly discount the idea that there may be worlds outside of our own, which is why entity contact absolutely fascinates me. It supposedly only happens with DMT, which I have never done, and that also fascinates me: what's so special about DMT? (Strassman has lots of ideas about this, namely that DMT is the spirit molecule and facilitate's the soul's entrance and exit out of the human body, which I don't fully buy, but his ideas interest me nonetheless.) 

Fun fact: I have experienced the ever-elusive ego death, and before you judge me, know that I used a completely legal substance (salvia is legal to buy in Arizona). An experience like that truly rocks your world. What is real? I found myself wondering that a lot after forgetting I was a me, after merging with what I can only describe as the cosmic totality. Do I think that I actually left the world and joined the cosmic consciousness? I have no idea. Maybe. Maybe not. I have no fully formed beliefs about the nature of reality; I'm open to the possibilities. Whatever my experience meant, it was really weird, and definitely caused me to question reality a lot!

Izzy's teaching philosophy sort of aligns with the writing philosophy I used for this book. I hope readers end with more questions than answers. I hope the content from the subchapters can be used as frameworks for interpreting the events of this story, which are very much open to interpretation. Multiple interpretations exist. Paradoxes exist. Play with your ideas. Imagine the possibilities. Exercise your brain. 

Anyways, this book turned out every bit as weird and wacky as I was picturing. I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I wrote it for myself, MWAHAHA. One of my new year's resolutions was to write more things for myself, as some of my recent writing projects have been focused on marketability, which can be super draining. Writing this was FUN. 

I also wrote this to see if I could, and YES I could. I did it. I actually wrote a lengthy novella in three months. Now I must go celebrate.

Thank you all for reading. Seriously. I appreciate it so much...every nice comment, every critical comment, every question, everything. (And please, keep 'em coming: this is a first draft, and I just know somebody is going to uncover a plot hole. If that person is you... PLEASE ALERT!)

I'm so glad I participated in this contest. Not only did I accomplish this huge feat; I also made new friends on Wattpad, and I'm getting to enjoy those friends' novellas. Wattpad has been awesome. 

Thanks again! XOXO -Ronni