Just Grow

By the middle of May, I still hadn't unpacked. Not really. The bed was put together. The couch was in place. The dishes were out of the boxes and filling the sink. But otherwise, mostly not.

I had been back in New York for a few weeks. The joy of reigniting my friendships and the spring slowly warming into summer. It was all beautiful, and while I was in my head a lot over why I was back in New York, I was hopeful and I felt alive again, for the first time in a long, long time. 

I had spent time with my family. I had walked my new city a few dozen times. I was settling in.

But I was also avoiding the mirror. I was avoiding my bank account. I was out later and later, more and more regularly. Catch a show. Maybe go with friends elsewhere after that. Disappearing into bathrooms with small groups. Et cetera. We don't need detail, but suffice it to say a shame was slowly creeping over me. I justified it with "you're home! You're just celebrating a bit! That's totally normal!" 

But I refused to talk about it. To even write about it. The shame slowly creeping over. I knew what was happening.

I sobered up a few years back for about two years. It was necessary. I've talked about it before. However, my goal was never to remain sober. Never to always spend my life "in recovery" or to always classify myself as an alcoholic. It worked for some folks, and I respect that, but in my view abstinence was dangerous and often led to disastrous consequences. My goal was always to "get back to normal". To be a regular person again. Someone who could have a couple of beers at a barbecue. Or go out to dinner and have a glass of wine. Someone with control. So, just before the pandemic, at a restaurant in Burlington, I decided I was ready to try. To see if I could be normal. If I could keep control.

I ordered a glass of cabernet. Ate dinner, finished my wine, and left.

I'm not going to say it was the most delicious glass of wine. Or that I was in love with the sensation. Nothing like that. It was fine. It tasted all right, but something had changed in me. Maybe it was the complete caution and nervousness I applied to the situation. Maybe the years of meditation, reading, and course correcting had actually changed my view on it. I'm not sure, but whatever it was, to me, that glass of wine in a pizza place on Church St. was... okay.

From that point, here and there I would have a casual drink once in a while. Once or twice a month. Always cautious. Always pleasant. On nice days, I'd sit on the back porch and have a hard seltzer. When restaurants in Winooski began offering drinks to go, I had a margarita in a cup and walked by the water and enjoyed the sunset. 

I maintained, easily, the next two years in that fashion, until I moved back to New York.

The idea of which had always sent red flags up in my mind, even to the point where in a song I wrote in Austin about how much I missed home I added the line; "New York's no good for me, I always drown there".

And so I was home, going out, worse and worse, and making excuses.

Then

Sitting on my couch one morning, drawing in a small black notebook, a text comes through.

Barb: "Do you wanna do DMT?"

Psychedelics and I have a rocky relationship. Some of the darkest moments of my life had been in the aftermath of LSD trips. The way my inner monologue will shift and mutate into abuse and sadness. But, I had taken an appreciation for psilocybin in the last handful of years. In Burlington I had begun microdosing after reading a lot about it's positive effects with both depression and addiction (which I gladly agree with) and occasionally taking larger doses which usually left me in tears of joy, gratitude, and love. I had read about positive effects of DMT as well with similar issues, but there are also plenty of people who have had intense and negative experiences. So, it was up in the air how I'd react to it. 

I had wanted to for some time, and had gone hunting for it in the past, but a person I respect told me once "when it's time, it will find you."

I was sitting on my couch, a little hungover, deeply ashamed, and feeling very lost in my new life. Very afraid of fucking it up, and wondering if I even had the strength to pull myself out of it or if I'd drown. Again. Staring at a text, saying it was time.

"Yes."

*****

Over the years I have learned that the best way to do drugs, especially psychedelics, is to respect them. Consider them an entity. Treat them as you would a person, in a sense. Reckless behavior begets reckless results. Respect begets respect. It isn't a fool proof system, but it works often enough that I believe in it.

Barb, her partner Jimmy, and his brother John set the whole thing up. Barb gave me some pointers on how to prepare, most of which I was familiar enough with already from reading about psychedelics and addiction, but I took careful notes. The primary rule was to fast for a day. 

There were other steps I wanted to take though. In the notion of respecting drugs as entities, I wanted to approach the situation as courteously as possible and I began to consider the history and usage of DMT. 

DMT is the primary reason ayahuasca reacts with folks the way it does. Though ayahuasca is prepared and ingested in a far different fashion than what I was expecting (inhaling vapor and disappearing for ten minutes), the primary ingredient was the same, so I figured doing my best to emulate the preparatory practices used in those journeys was a good way to start. Obviously I'm not a shaman, and as far as respect goes, I figured blindly imitating one would be disrespectful. So I approached it in a way that was natural to me, respectful toward the drug, and true.

I fasted, and I meditated off and on throughout the day for an hour or so each time. Prepare my body. Prepare my mind. 

When I went downstairs, I expected to inhale vapor, trip, and be in bed with a new experience in a relatively brief period.

We did not inhale vapor. 

John had acquired two bags of powder, from which we would mix spoonfuls into liquid. The three of them had done this before and had used chocolate milk, so that's what we were going to use.

I was asking a lot of questions. I felt unprepared, and nervousness settled in, but I tried to keep my mind calm and I figured asking questions, getting answers, would help. 

The two bags of powder were of ground up roots that both have high contents of DMT, though I won't tell you what they were. You'll have to do your homework. I will say though that they are from two different parts of the world, something that becomes important later. 

A third bag had another powder. A sort of suppressant which effectively shuts down a process within your stomach that normally neutralizes the effects, which we had to take first. 

Clinking my spoon against the glass. The powder clumping in the chocolate milk. I pushed down as much anxiety as I could, watching the little clumps spin helplessly around the glass. They weren't breaking up, so I just threw it back. I didn't taste it at all.

We talked for a while. Afterward we thought we'd order pizza. We listened to music. We laughed. I was going to do it. I was with friends. I was home. It had found me. I was safe and I was going to do it.

The time came and we discussed whether or not we wanted to do one of the powders or the other, or mix them. 

We mixed them, which in retrospect does not seem respectful to the drug, but it's too late now. 

A spoonful or two into more chocolate milk, and down it goes. Nothing left to do now but to just go.

We joke a little more. They tell stories of the last time they did it. It sounds fun. Light. The way they tell it it reminds me of my lighter mushroom experiences and I begin to feel better about the whole thing. 

We decide to head outside and start a fire. Sit in the night around the fire, enjoy the experience together. We all pile logs into the pit. We have bottles of water with us. We begin to talk, and much sooner than I expected, it begins.

 *****

I first noticed it in the flames. First orange, then greens, blues, pinks, all shifting and blending. 

"So beautiful," one of us said.

"The fire?" another asked.

"Yeah," I said.

And then, in the dim evening light and I felt watched. Seen. I felt the same as when you walk through an office where you don't work, but many people are. They see you. Nothing is wrong but they see you. I felt seen all of a sudden.

Behind the fire the back wall of a garage, and beyond the garage two large trees across the street. The trees watched me and the one on my left was no longer only a tree. It was a woman. A deity. In my mind I knew her name (though it doesn't belong here) and when I thought her name, I felt a sense of acknowledgment from her. She watched. She was powerful, and beautiful, imposing, but I felt a great sense of justice emanating from her. 

I was silent but the other three were talking in calm voices. I was only picking up occasional words or phrases and never really knew who was speaking but it felt as though we all were one voice through four mouths. I remember speaking and finishing other peoples sentences and other people finishing mine and it was smooth and easy. 

One of us got up to piss in a compost heap behind the house and I became fixated on a series of vines growing on the wall of the garage. The leaves swayed slowly all in time with each other and when I pulled my vision away from the details and saw the vines as a whole organism it seemed to nod to me, as if to say, "yes, whole organism."

One of us began to throw up somewhere behind me. 

I had no idea how much time had gone by. It didn't matter.

"It's really hitting me hard this time," Barb said. 

I nodded in the dark and John and Jimmy said "yeah."

"I have to go inside to shit, but..." She stood up and wandered toward the back door and came back. 

"I have to go inside to shit", she said again, "But, I'm afraid to go in the house alone." She paused. "No, I'm... Oh damn. No, That's my problem. I'm afraid to be alone. I'm just, I can't live alone. I can't ever be alone." She stood for a moment and absorbed the thought. She said more, and more that seemed intensely profound to her, and she walked into the dark, toward the house.

I laid down on the bench I was sitting on and stared up at the canopy of pine trees above me. The trees all seemed warm to me. Excited that I was seeing them. Excited that I was under them. They wanted to show me something and then I could see the math of it all. In the distribution of the needles on branches. In the distance between branches. In the motion of their sway.

"Look," they seemed to say. "You have to see the order of it."

And I did. 

We've all seen trees sway in a breeze a million times. But I saw something else that night. Some amorphous explanation that I am having trouble articulating now, but still I understand. The order of it. 

The order. Whole Organism. 

I was being taught.

After a while I realized Barb was back and now Jimmy was gone. John had been talking optimistically but I don't know about what. I sat up again.

"We thought you were asleep," Barb said. "You were down for a while."

Time meant nothing to me then. It means nothing, really, ever. I was just allowed to see it that night.

"No, just seeing."

I began to watch the fire and when I looked at the light and the way it bounced off of the ground and the metal disc behind it I realized that I had been hit much harder than I initially thought. The ground was lined with rows of large glass eyes that watched us. That focused on whoever spoke. I was silent and they never looked at me, but she did.

A woman. Behind the flames. Framed by the metal disc behind the fire. She looked right at me. She had dark black hair. Round eyes, that did not seem happy that I was seeing her. That I was being taught. She reminded me of Hindu deities, with vague snake-like features and suddenly I knew her name also (and I won't write that here either). I tried to look away from her but I couldn't. I was locked in and the others were talking and she never looked away from me.

Someone else threw up behind me.

"I have to shit again," someone said.

The woman did not want me there. She didn't speak, but it was clear. I was no longer welcome there. 

"I'm going to go try to shit," I said.

"You can use our bathroom," Jimmy said. 

"Thank you. I'm going to use the comfort of mine though. Kick my feet up."

"Good idea," Barb said.

I didn't say I'd be back. I didn't plan on coming back. I wasn't welcome. I felt a sorrow from somewhere above me, and I walked up the back stairs into my apartment.

*****

I had left the string lights in the kitchen on. They were intensely overwhelming. I was having trouble walking and the space I occupied felt different from the space I could see. The floor. The walls. The dimensions entirely. I saw my kitchen, but I was somewhere else.

I turned the lights off and found my bedroom. I didn't have the energy or balance to turn off the light on the nightstand so it stayed on and I laid on my back staring at the ceiling, trying to catch my bearings. My ceiling is finished with square tiles and the lines between them glowed and bent and swapped places. They traveled left and right, disappearing into the ceiling and dropping down onto me and I felt them touch my skin. I felt them enter my body. I felt the electricity of them as I absorbed them. 

And then I could hear the electricity. In the house. Loud. A hum, multiple hums. A choir of outlets and phone chargers and lights. Deep in the walls and above me in the ceiling, I could hear every wire and somewhere in my body I wished we never left the forests and caves. We didn't belong here, in this world. 

We were here now and there was nothing we could do about it, but we never should have left.

The wall to the foot of my bed was finished with chaotic "artistic" spackling swirls and globs and then those swirls formed shapes. Those globs coalesced. And then with all the glow and electricity of the tile lines, her form came through and as if she were projected onto, and slightly protruding from, the wall, she was now in the room with me.

A tall woman. Wearing large squared jewelry. A large neck piece. Something similar to a crown or hat. Something else around her waist, and on her wrists and at first she was looking to the left but as I began to become anxious her head turned and she looked directly at me. 

You're okay, a voice in my mind said.

You're okay.

Immediately I felt calmer.

I watched her form sway and move as the tiles above me had, but she was in the room with me. I cannot express that strongly enough. 

Without thinking I remember saying out loud, "What do I do?" and my insecurities and fears about my life at that point flooded over me. 

Her face became calm and I couldn't hear the electricity anymore. It seemed as though she was smiling at me, but her face hadn't changed.

You need to see, I heard it say again in my mind. Difficult. You will be okay.

At that moment I wasn't in my room on my bed anymore. I was outside. Downtown at night. Watching me. Wearing the boots out because I thought they looked cool. Drinking. Being loud. My hair pulled into a perfect bun even though I was more comfortable with it down. Afraid of aging. Afraid of disappearing. I used to be something to see. I was rebuilding that without thinking about it. To be the show. To be the center of it all. Drinking. Cocaine in a bathroom. Again somewhere else. Best dressed in a dive bar. 

Deep shame came over me. 

You need to see.

I was intensely embarrassed. Ashamed. Crushed.

You need to see.

I was smiling at people. Taking shots. Then it was me a year ago. Calmly making tea in my kitchen. I was playing with my cat. I was painting. Then it was me with my family a few days after coming back to New York. Hugging. Smiling. I could feel the happiness pouring off of me. The relief. The looks of hope in my families eyes and then I was back in a dive bar bathroom and then I was five years back screaming in my kitchen in the middle of the night, drunk and high and bleeding and then I was driving to Plattsburgh with my mother, getting me to Florida. Then I was back in my room.

"I don't want to be that."

She was silent.

"I'll cut my hair. No more bands. I can be that person. I don't want to be who I've been."

You don't have to destroy. Just grow.

"I'm a fucking idiot."

You don't have to destroy. Just grow.

Images of me a year later. Smiling. With my family. We are at dinner. Laughing. Happy. Images of me in the apartment. Settled. Living. Playing guitar calmly in the afternoon.

Something good is coming. Grow.

I began to cry.

Just grow. Difficult. 

I was still more embarrassed than I had ever been and the room was spinning around me.

Something good is coming. Just grow. You don't have to destroy. Just grow.

And she was gone. Just electric lines and shapes, and soon, even those began to fade.

I laid on my back and watched my room spin and felt the bed under me. And I decided I was going to delete my social media accounts and reached for me phone. The light was too bright and the screen was wrong. It was a pool. A pit. It felt malevolent and I felt nauseous holding it. I set it back down, rolled over, and was finally able to turn the light off.

*****

The effects mostly wore off after it seemed she was done, but some residual things, trails and whatnot stuck around for a little while. I eventually got up and moved around my apartment. I looked out the window and the fire was out. It was around two in the morning, according to the stove, which meant I had been under for about five hours. Way longer than I had been prepared for.

Eventually I tried to look at my phone again but it felt somehow sinister and I left it alone for a while, eventually only texting Barb to apologize for bailing the next day.

The words "You don't have to destroy, just grow" stuck with me. It was like I could see me with a future, instead of just this present-moment me that afforded so much headache. I didn't cut my hair. I didn't buy sensible shoes. I didn't quit bands. I just stopped going out really. None of that means much to me anymore other than a night out once in a great while. I have my friends and if they're only my friends when I'm out, when I'm a dangerous spectacle, then they aren't my friends. They aren't important. They are shadows. It might seem obvious, but you are on the outside. Of course it does. I've never seen myself presented in the way she showed me. Intensely difficult to see. To be dragged through, but she was calm with me. Patient. 

Much more was shown to me that night, but it is irrelevant for this moment. 

It WAS the time when the DMT found me. I hate to sound like one of those people, but that night put me back on track, and I am deeply thankful for it. 

Oh, and one last note about what I was shown;

She had said to me "Something good is coming", and two weeks later I met Rosemary.