Getting high is not a new concept promoted by the younger generation. Even saints have been indulging in intoxicating substances like cannabis for ages. In fact, humans have been consuming drugs since thousands years ago. Yes, we aren’t claiming this, a study recently revealed that people in Spain were getting high on hallucination drugs about 3,000 years ago, the BBC reported.
While you might have come across many temporary options for ‘relaxation’ and ‘contentment’, a man has got permanently high. You ask, how? By drilling a hole in his skull. Yep, that’s right.
And we can’t wrap our heads around it.
British-born author Joe Mellen, who is also a psychedelic adventurer, drilled the hole in his skull not once but three times to get high and alter his consciousness, VICE reported in 2016.
According to the website, Mellen had begun smoking weed after dropping out from post-graduation college. He experimented with auto-trepanation after learning the process from Dutch academic, Bart Huges in the 1960s.
For the unversed, trepanation is a surgical procedure where a piece of bone is drilled, most commonly from skulls. The procedure is mainly performed to alleviate pressure on the brain after an injury over the head.
Talking about his first attempt, Mellen told the website, “I was living back in London, and it was 1967. At that time, I was broke, and I certainly couldn’t afford an electric drill, so I bought a hand trepan from a surgical instrument shop.” However, it wasn’t successful back then.
Mellen tried it for the second time a year later. “I used the same method with the hand trepan. I did remove some skull, but I was unsure as to whether it had gone all the way through or not...I think I went through a tiny bit, but I don’t think it was enough,” he added.
Mellen had his final attempt of trepanation in 1970. “I was using an electric drill with a 6mm bit and that was a lot more straightforward,” the man told the website.
While his drill cable broke at first, he got it repaired, and tried the process again. “Quite a lot of blood comes out, and the drill bit goes in by an inch. I bandaged it all up. It took two or three days for the skin to heal over the hole...I was feeling great because I’d done it, but then I noticed after about an hour I started to feel a lightness, like a weight had been lifted off me,” Mellen said further.
Joe Mellen talked about his attempts at self-trepanation in his 1970 book, Bore Hole.
Not just Joe Mellen, British aristocrat, Amanda Feilding also tried this process after meeting the same Dutch-based Bart Huges, the Scientific American reported. According to Feilding, a hole in the head expands your consciousness and enhances the effects of psychedelics.
Wooaaaah! That was scary AF. Digging a hole in my head? Nope! Never.