Chapter XVII: Drugs-Part IV of IV

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Monday.

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Monday is the day for some reason, perhaps cosmic intervention, that I always ended up tripping for years. Regardless of the substance, situation, or outcome, always on Mondays. It was odd, but I was getting a cosmic education in who I could be, so I rolled with the flow.

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College came and went. My stubbornness garnered me the energy to push through and graduate undergrad as a somewhat mediocre academic and even return to begin graduate work the following year. Still deeply lacking purpose, or direction in life, continuing to micro-dose and occasionally going the full McKenna, slowly but surely I was starting to heal.

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I kicked off graduate school by moving into my first apartment down by the river. It was a tiny little cracker jack box, composed of two rooms, and an unreasonable amount of closets. My first crab shell. It was perfect. There was a further reason to savor this time in my life. Having gone under after the bubble burst my parents chose to move back to Florida to take care of my aging Alzheimer’s ridden Grandmother. They were now more than a thousand miles a way, living a separate life from mine. I was free to fuck off and do as I pleased.

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First, I got a dog.

Now, I didn’t just get a dog.

Like all dog owners, I got the best dog in the entire world. No really, look at your dog right now, that’s the best dog in the world. We can all have the best dog in the world.

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Life is hard, get a dog.

Meandering my way up to animal control, I rescued this pupper doodle named by the staff there, Tommy. He was lab/pointer mix, about 40lbs, bone thin for his frame, paperwork alleging he was around three years old, it appeared he would be the perfect sized dog for my first apartment and what was essentially my first dry run of being a parent.

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Nothing in life is simple, and bringing Tommy, who was quickly renamed Nova Tiberius, in my life was fraught with challenges. First and foremost, he’s not a lab/pointer mix.

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He’s a Labradane. Yeah, that’s a thing. Black lab and Great Dane.

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Oh yeah, he wasn’t three years old either.

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Closer to five months.

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I had before me, a puppy. A puppy that was going to be 100lbs one day.

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What. The. Fuck. Have. I. Done?

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Steer into the skid Rue, the only way out is through.

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His puyppyhood was nothing short of the hardest, scariest, most exhausting thing I’d ever experienced in my life. It was always the absolute greatest thing that could have ever happened to me.

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Nearing the end of 2015 my life was for the most part stabilized. I was working three jobs, keeping distance from my parents, spending time in therapy every week. My co-dependent friendships and relationships were beginning to fray and fall off, and while that seemed like a bad thing at the time it was much needed. Things were genuinely looking up.

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FRIDAY…… October 31st, Halloween 2015.

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The veil is thin.

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Why not go the hero’s journey?

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Why take take five dried grams to the dome?

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It was the first time I’d ever tripped with Nova. He was not a fan. To be honest, neither was I.

Having not cleaned up my diet in the days prior, and only downed about 16ozs of water prior to eating the mushrooms themselves, my body was not as prepared for such a trip. While all deserve to trip how they want, I’ve discovered a certain formula for preparing my body for an intense psilocybin trip that works for me.

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Understand, these are the things that factor in to my preparation before I consume any psychedelic substance. You should develop your own list of things to look out for if you ever plan to use medicine at this level. Again, this is just what I stop and take note of when planning out a trip.

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I look out for changes relating to the following things-

-Obesity

-PTSD

-Alkalinity or lack there of in my gut biome

-Date of last anxiety attack.

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My body was still obese but I wasn’t my heaviest. Nightmares, shock-mares, sleep paralysis, all were occurring minimally at the time. Anxiety attacks were also on the downturn.

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However, as I was working three jobs and in grad school, I was drinking about sixteen energy drinks a day. My body was not optimally prepared to take five grams straight…..

and my brain responded...accordingly.

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I was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, it was about twenty minutes after consuming 5.25 grams. Watching as the walls began to curve outward, I knew this was a trip best experienced on my back laying in the bed. But, walking into my bedroom, something stirred in me.

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Get in the tub.

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You need to be in the water.

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Folding my long legs into the bathtub, I let the warm water cover me up to my breasts. A few moments passed. I gazed out from the tub into my bedroom upon Nova sleeping in my bed. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Pure of light, love and compassion. For some reason this incredible creature loved me. Weird.

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Turning my focus back to the water that covered my body in the tub I noticed what appeared to be little waves crashing over my knees. Clearly a hallucination, but a deeply interesting one, I sunk into the water further.

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The waves grew taller, my breathing grew shallow. My body was acknowledging the freak out before even I was consciously aware of it.

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But, it wasn’t exactly a freak out.

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Hours moved at a snails pace. By one hundred and twenty minutes in, I’d had to call in help from friends because this was not something I could handle alone.

I fought the trip.

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Hard.

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“I’M GONNA DIE, I’M GONNA DIE. I’M GONNA DIE.” I got myself in a loop that last until hour three.

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I was a stereotypical dipshit who’s trip had gone sideways and didn’t know who to correct course. But, no I wasn’t. I was just overwhelmed. I could course correct. I knew it.

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Gazing into the eyes of the friend that had come to my aid, I apologized for my failures as a friend, confronted the fact that I wasn’t even really a human with a developed personality, and that I’d been spreading toxicity for a long time. Tears fell as I acknowledged all of my shortcomings. All of the behaviors I’d been conditioned by my mother to follow I’d carried into adulthood.

No more.

No more selfishness.

No more bullshit.

This can’t continue.

All surrender.

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All reality began to disappear. Finding myself falling into a void, I was suddenly naked, scrawny, cold and in darkness, surrounded by others who were naked, tightly packed into a space and suddenly….

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BOOM!

We were falling into one another and hitting the ground, feeling as if I was unable to take a breath. Like as if the air was thick with a poison. Doing my best to life myself from under the others, I couldn’t. I surrendered and just as quickly as I accepted the surrender I was elsewhere.

Still naked, scrawny as shit, barefoot, running through a bamboo forest. The sun was setting and the light was casting warmth through the stalks. I was running towards something but I didn’t understand at first what exactly it was. Gaining speed I was nearing what appeared to be the edge of the forest.

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Able to decipher more clearly what I was chasing towards with each step I took further it became apparent upon reaching the edge that I was staring down Ganesha.

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The remover of obstacles.

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Understand, at this point while I knew the importance of Ganesha, my focus in my own personal studies had remained on the teachings from the Buddha and not teachings from mainstream Hinduism. Not even in academia had I placed further emphasis on studying Hinduism outside of what was needed to further my understanding of any one topic.

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But there he was. Standing at the edge of a field that spanned beyond the bamboo forest I’d emerged from. Why was he there?

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The warmth of the sun skin kissed my bare skin as I starred down upon bleeding feet. The forest had done a number on my legs. Nothing new. I didn’t want to keep running towards him, I didn’t feel as if I had the strength to muster even within this vision. Feeling the shift in my own gut, I knew if I didn’t continue onto him I would lose out on the lesson. Pushing myself with one last gust of strength, I ran through the orange tinged field towards my destination.

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However, the close I got, the more of Ganesha disappeared into smoke.

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Screaming, running faster I reached the end of the field grasping at empty air. He was gone. All that existed was a large doorway to a path I couldn’t discern on the other side. Blocking the path now was no longer Ganesha, it was a human with their back turned to me. Grabbing the shoulder of the human and attempting to turn them around so I could face them,

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......it was me.

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I was the person standing in the way.

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As soon as I touched the secondary version I me, it disappeared into millions of particles, being rapidly absorbed into my naked, out of breath, scrawny, bloody footed body. The particles assimilating into me built me back up, I was no longer bone thin, bloody or breathless. It felt as if,

I was whole. Filled with light once again, like a child as if something had enveloped me with love.

 

The warmth faded around me. The cold of my wood floors in my cracker jack box could be felt on my feet. I opened by eyes and was home, holding Nova. He proudly serving as my guide back to reality.

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Guess it’s better to trip on the weekends with dogs instead.