Cafe Hitch-hike

2019-10-17

Integrating

I guess it does take a long time to process psychedelic plant medicines, and I had 2 retreats in the past 3 months. Things are finally starting to make sense. The plant medicines I took didn't really tell me anything I didn't know, but showed things more clearly, much closer to me, and from a different perspective.

I had some amusing visions. One was set in one of those fabricated neighborhoods that were made in the desert where the military tested atomic bombs in the 1950s (I later learned they were known as doom towns). They wanted to see what would happen to neighborhoods in the case of an atomic explosion, and turned footage into creepy propaganda pieces. Instead of it being the 1950s (the heyday of American power, and its mindset of the ideal White, suburban nuclear family with a stay-home housewife), it was the 1980s (during the **coughs** golden Reagan era which is my generation's equivalent of that).

I was dressed like a June Cleaver of the 1980s, and I greeted my husband with a roast and dinner on the table when he came home from work. I think tinny muzak played in the background. I didn't look much like myself or how I ever dressed. My smile and hair looked like they were kept in place with shellac. My takeaway was following that lifestyle would had been as inauthentic like that whole setting. Perhaps being in that type of setting would had been my own doom town.

My intuition has been sharper than a tack since then. It already had been sharp, but... yikes! I got visions of my mother when she was pregnant with me (hahaha, psychedelics are famous for provoking in-utero or childbirth scenes). I imagined my mother, at age 19, was by herself in the delivery room with only a nurse and doctor. While she beared down, she thought, no one told me it would be this way! But, she had the most amazing experience when she saw me. She really did fall in love, and every time she gave birth, she felt it all over again. She was reborn every time (which might explain why she delivered 6 natural births).

The next thing came to me: her mother was nowhere to be found. I asked my mother about that, and she confirmed it. I never remembered Mom saying if her parents visited her in the hospital, but the psychedelic trip pulled that up. Why didn't they visit? I was going to be the first grandchild they'd get to see soon after birth. Whatever the reason might had been, Mom had no guidance and little support. She was unprotected and had to figure everything out for herself. She wasn't sharp but had a big heart, and the world just ran all over her. She had no one to show her how to protect herself. The vision changed my feelings about her, along with what she told us over Uncle Joe and Grandpa's gravesite.

I then imagined myself in the room next to her at the head of her bed, being her doula, and whispering to her through her sweat and pain. I told her she was doing great, she was not alone, and that I would stay by her. She still had physical pain, but she felt better and considerably calmed.

In terms of the intuition, I also think it got better because things I already knew were better connected because some things didn't have the stark boundaries as they used to.

The psychedelics also lowered a lot of walls within myself that kept me from seeing what was behind them. At September's retreat, I took something called kambo. The guide said it would unblock energy blockages and imbalances. I was like, 'uh-oh, this ought to be interesting! I bet I have all kinds of twisted stuff needing to be untwisted!' I was expecting a tough reaction, but didn't get it. I can't say the same for a woman 2 mats over from me. I was going to sit next to her because I liked her shirt, but changed my mind cos I got a weird vibe. She got a very bad reaction to the kambo and had to be walked by 2 people to the infirmary.

Kambo brought out mostly grief and a small amount of anger. I had visions of those who died, especially Remy and our relationship. As flawed as it was, he was able to go to the end of his life mostly in the way he wanted. He got to have great times with his best friends, was reunited with his estranged father, traveled, bought a new, kick-ass Harley, and... had a pretty, raven-haired girl who didn't bring him heavy problems. A lot of his jagged edges were softened; Cricket actually asked what happened to the French-Canadian asshole everyone knew and loved, and thought an alien took over his body. His Uncle Lukey (leukemia) was no joke at the end and Remy also was financially crushed, but he was able to have great times with people he cared about, and cared for him. That was a great way to go. This came to me after the kambo.

About 2 hours after the kambo, the wall that surrounded my fears, frustrations, and anger with my work also went tumbling down. I cried on the shoulder of my guide for a whole hour, terrified and not knowing what to do. Those and other realizations were no longer compartmentalized or hidden neatly like in some box in the back of a closet. Those were in front of me, and I didn't know what to do.

I have to admit I felt a little dazed after I came back from Europe and even more so after the second experience in September, but I finally feel like it's making better sense. I guess I have some decisions to make for the short and long term. I have some plans, but I also am checking out what is going my way (from the actions I take) and coming in my direction. I wonder what the trips did to my health. I'm very healthy and am now in menopause, and my blood pressure, weight, and carb counts are better than they were before.

I'm glad that I was able to go to Holland for the first retreat because these retreats are becoming illegal. The Dutch justice system enforced a ban one of the medicines I took. People can still work with it but must dilute it with something else like truffles. The place I went to last September that has a religious exemption to provide it, but it is under a microscope, and rightfully so. At least 2 people died after retreats there, so it is only a matter of time before the government and the local press tear the place apart.

I thought the second place I attended was reckless in how they administered the plant medicines. The medicines themselves are extremely powerful, and I'd never recommend those to anyone unless:
**they already did a lot of work on their issues
**can stay functional and be without withdraw symptoms from medications for at least 2 weeks before taking the plant medicine, and this includes alcohol and cannabis
**have support like a trained therapist or highly capable community help them integrate it
**possess adequate inner strength to handle it
**the place is impeccably secure and safe, and the guides are beyond trustworthy

Plant medicine is wickedly hard on the spirit and the body! It's more than puking or getting the runs. Inner defenses are absolutely stripped. The mind is wobbling through many states, and getting a psychotic break is a very real contraindication, along with panic, extreme anxiety, expulsion of intense emotions, and paranoia. The strangest thing I felt on my second retreat was weakness. I was too weak at times to prop myself up from laying down, and that's a pretty sorry state to be in. I was defenseless! My body temperature plunged and I was freezing although it was warm outdoors. Also, the risk of dehydration was high, so I drowned myself with water throughout the retreat to not get exhaustion or other big problems linked to dehydration. Even once the retreat is finished, its psychological effects stay for quite some time. Coming down from a retreat is not the same as coming back from a fun vacation.

I didn't realize psychedelic retreats are becoming very hip, but I'd say taking them is like handling fire, weapons, chemicals, or any other thing that can be both positively or negatively functional. I guess now that I have all this information, I really can't go back what I knew before. Once a person knows certain things, it's hard to unknow them, especially of they have a strong anchor in the memory. It's not easy to maintain the status quo once certain things are out in the open, and to not act on them would kind of be a misstep to say the least.

Before anyone decides to pursue plant medicine, I'd ask, "are you prepared to know what you don't want to know or scares you? Better yet, are you willing to address those things, or even make changes because of that?"

I'm not in the process of dropping everything. I didn't find some quirky self-truth that compelled me to drop everything so I could live in a van and be a wandering, storefront psychic (hahahah), or that maybe my calling in life is something contrary to who I think I am (like quit being an educator and become a dominatrix, bahahaha). But, my mentor recently suggested that I think grand and dream a bit. I definitely am in the process of making better sense of this, and hopefully taking that right direction.

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