"That's the thing about epiphanies, they seem so very obvious after you realize them"

this is copy-pasted from an AMA on reddit from someone who'd gone through MDMA therapy for PTSD. Kinda buried in the comments, someone asked what kind of epiphanies she had, and she just exploded with this. 

(Duncan Trussell also had a really interesting podcast with the guy running the study: duncantrussell.com/rick-doblin-from-maps/)

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As you said, it is very personal. Not that I don't want to share, but I'm afraid I won't be able to convey the importance of my epiphanies. That's the thing about epiphanies, they seem so very obvious after you realize them. So, I will share a bit, but understand that these are some of the biggest realizations I've ever made in my life, no matter how inconsequential they may seem.

I never wanted to have children. I knew how hard it was being a kid and I didn't want to purposefully impose childhood on anyone else, especially one I knew I would love completely. And children were a burden to their parents, one and all, no matter how much they were loved. It was just a fact. I didn't want to create a burden.

I met my husband and fell in love, despite what I thought was my better judgement. I couldn't help it. He was a bright and shiny person. Even tho we were so very different from each other when we met, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but him, and it was obvious he felt the same way.

But he gave himself to me effortlessly and completely. I was always waiting for the end, because I thought that's what always happened. Guys did not stick around.

So I made the most of our time together but always expected him to not be there some day. Then, after years of consideration he decided to take MDMA with me. That night became known to us as our wedding night. That experience gently pried open my wounded heart and let David in. I realized, "Holy shit, this guy really does love me. And that kind of love is real?! Whaaaat?!!"

Trying to be brief here... At one point we were lying on the floor together. Listening to music and I turned my head to face him and a material flowed from my head and face to his. The material seemed to be just a little bit out of this realm of reality. Just outside our normal perception. It reminded me of the way water took form in that movie The Abyss when it was trying to communicate. But this stuff was warm and humming. And it connected David and I. I finally saw past all the fear I had and accepted him. At one point he said, "Give yourself to me, we deserve each other." I had no idea he even understood I was keeping myself from him.

We had always been inseparable, but now, we were bound in such a way that death wouldn't even be able to separate us fully.
But I digress.....

Even after bonding that night, it would take years for David to convince me to start a family. I would say, "Things happen, David. You don't know the future." And he would always reply, "I'm not going anywhere." We repeated this conversation over and over through the years. Him always trying to reassure me, almost out of habit. Like we knew this was an open wound I had that may never heal. As my partner he promised to put salve on it any time I asked, ever. And he did. Until one day I pressed the conversation a bit further and said, "you may die, ya know. Then what?" And his reply was,"Well, there's nothing I can do about that."

I was beginning to believe him, that it was worth it to have a child. We began trying to get pregnant.
Five years went by and finally the doctors said we couldn't conceive. About 6 months later I was pregnant. Surprise. Shock, actually.

We were elated and really needing to shift gears in our life to accommodate this great news. And we did. And we were all so happy and in love with each other.
Then he fucking did it, he died. He left.

After a decade of him promising and promising, I fucking fell for it. I fell for the great lie that all single parents fall for. And now not only me but my beautiful daughter will suffer eternally for it. I was livid. At myself for BELIEVING him.

He tricked me!

That's how I felt.

One of my epiphanies addressed this feeling.

When you suffer from PTSD, you really feel unsure of everything, especially yourself. I was nothing. I didn't even understand how my heart was still beating. I couldn't do simple math anymore. I was a waste of space, I felt.

MDMA took me back to my childhood and showed me how far I went to be happy. Always, no matter what the circumstance, I figured out a way to ascend. I could trust myself. I did know what was best.

I had forgotten this because I felt my intuition was faulty because I denied it (not wanting to have a baby) and "fell" for David's line of "I'm not going anywhere".
David WAS telling the truth. As far as he had control, he would not leave.
But at the scene of the accident, when I knew he was dying, I remembered something I read in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that said when someone is dying you shouldn't beg them to stay but put them at ease about the transition, instead. So I quit begging him to wake up and told him "Stay if you can, but if you can't, It's okay. Don't be afraid."
The feeling of him dying really shifted into a different stage at that moment. I felt him begin to really go. Before it was a halting erosion of him, after I said that to him, it was more of a steady flow of him leaving.

I felt like he did make a choice at that point.

Boy, I asked a lot of that man. "Hey, don't die! It'll hurt my feelings!"

Anyway. It occurred to me that I am intelligent and capable. At one point my counselor said do you really think anyone could convince YOU of anything? MDMA took my hand and showed me how powerful I was. How I did utilized my intuition and intelligence all my life and overcame A LOT. I wondered how I was even sitting on the couch in Boulder? Because I was so fucking resourceful! I was an incredibly capable person with a tremendous drive.

I know it sounds like I'm boasting here, but I needed to know this about myself. I was only ever okay because I was all of these things. I knew plenty of people who had the life I did who were not in good shape at all. I was. I am. And I will be, so will my daughter.

David didn't trick me. David allowed me to think it was him who "made" me acquiesce to have a baby. Turns out, I wanted a baby just as much as he. I wanted to spread all the love David and I had and make more of it with our daughter. ME.

He was kind enough to allow me to pull whatever tricks on MYSELF in order to be happy. Need me to reassure you forever about how I'm never leaving? Gladly. Need me to allow you to blame me for getting us into this whole baby thing? Gladly, my dear. I am strong in ways you are not and vise versa.

He was amazing. We were amazing. MDMA let me see that EVERYTHING that man did was out of pure love. And I am WAY too smart for my own good.

After realizing my daughter wasn't a "burden" David duped me into. She and I finally were able to meld into each other like we had before the accident. I missed her so much. And she missed me. 

-hevasmyboyfriend

By My Account

It always starts with grays going white. A glow radiates through the trees, their bark emanating light. At this point, I knew the next events in an experience like this. The world started bubbling. The limbs of trees twisting. The world seemed to breath as I did. We were one.

I found you all up on the hill, fools under the tree. Laughing and giggling. Rich was hidden on the grassy knoll above, poised to shoot us with an imaginary sniper rifle. It was framed perfectly as I ascended. I took my time.

And, like clockwork, I plopped down and indulged in the show before my eyes. The twists and turns of branches, the buds of leaves beginning to grow for spring. The light. The light! That golden light from the sun! I live by it.

And then disaster.

Honey. Fucking honey. Adrian and Deanna seemed to be the only ones who understood what had happened. I sat and couldn’t decide what to do. I saw Adrian distressed and I rose to help. And then I sat down again when I couldn’t decide what to do. I didn’t know if cleaning it in the pond was a good idea, but I went with it anyways.

Jesse was already down there, silhouetted by the light bouncing off the lake. It was so bright it was blown out. I looked on anyways. I watched as Adrian and Jesse cleaned the belongings and themselves. A ritual bath.

We went back for Deanna, Rich, Scott, and Argentina and met halfway. But we learned that they had left the honey and trash up there. That didn’t sit well with me. Experiences like these always connect me more to nature. I’m all too aware of dangers and trash. I couldn’t let this happen. So I took the ring from Bilbo once more and worked with Sam to find Mount Doom and get rid of this fucking trash. Déjà vu.

That started the lap. Adrian and I spent the whole walk to the dumpster in the parking lot picking up other people’s trash. Plastic out of place. At this point, I’m lost for words. My mouth can’t keep up with my thoughts. The ego death is truly settling in. The word “OVERWHELMING” flashes in my head. It keeps flashing in my head.

When I can’t talk, I think. Not all my thoughts are good. I was bumming myself out. In order to stop thinking, I started breathing. It kept me grounded. I don’t know if I took a single breath automatically.

When we did talk, we spoke of our predicament as young working individuals. Was this trip our break? Am I supposed to call in sick and just go skateboarding instead? I don’t see any break in sight. And then I’m thinking about work and I go blue. I breathe.

Back with the others. Pack up all your stuff. Back around the lake. I move slower and slower. Lost in existential thought, I think I roll my ankle. But what if this experience doesn’t make me aware I rolled my ankle? I want to fall asleep. Breath. Why do I always want to fall asleep when I don’t like something? How could I even fall asleep right now? What if I never see light again? Light is life. Darkness is the absence of light, but not of life. Don’t fall into the darkness. You didn’t bring a flashlight.

Jesse and I sit on the bank of the lake for one last look. The sky is going purple. I’m lost in thought. I’m lost in breathing. Jesse is lost in his notebook. The trees are shifting. Is there bioluminescence on these plants or is it glitter? Everything is trash. The trees are shifting and the lake is a mirror. The sun is setting. We decide to go.

Begin the existential play: Two men descend a mountain. As night begins to rise, the two work their way down the path, switchback, switchback. And then a bright light! “Is that a fucking star?” The twinkle. Was it getting bigger? Holy shit it’s coming right at us! I hope it’s coming at us. That is a fucking star.

We’re almost at the bottom. We are at the spot where the trail forks and we turned left, up the hill. Right were we ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches hours before. Down the path, to the right. Always right. The darkness, that pitch black abyss. I thought it would swallow me. If it all goes black, it’s all over. I’m not ready to accept death. I get lost in my mind. I have a good sense of direction but I feel lost. Jesse and I grab onto each other. It didn’t help yelling help. It made me more afraid. Back to the fork. Fuck that. The road is bubbling. Back into the abyss. What if I miss a step? I’m going to break an ankle. It has been foretold. Through the blackness. Oh yeah! There was a river!

The road! The road! We’re almost home.

I have to pee. So do I. And we did.

Across the street. I wanted to stay on the road. Jesse yells help at boy scouts. I freak out. I’m not going to interact with children! I’m crazy! They stop. They stare. It is still. I keep walking. They keep singing. What the hell is going on?

Ow. Ow. Ow. Fuck. Thorns. Ow. Keep going.

We asked for directions to 6. Wrong loop. I thought we would never find you guys. I thought deep down we were going to be in the wrong campground even though I knew we were in the right one. I thought it was over. I was lost.

I was amazed we had found you guys. For a while, I thought maybe my mind was tricking me. Maybe I was imagining all of this. Could this be part of the experience? I sat by the fire. I didn’t want to move. Life through fire. Calm at last.

And then the stars. And blants. And bed.

I wouldn’t say I had a bad trip. A majority of what is above suggests otherwise. I think each experience, both within a trip and without, has the ability to fluctuate. I definitely had fun at times: the visuals, the giggles, some of the thoughts. The world seemed that much more beautiful to me. I was taking each moment at a time. I was working on my breathing and trying to brighten myself up.

The fear is as valuable as the euphoria. Fear of death, fear of ego, fear of never coming back, fear of being lost, fear of darkness. Out of fear grew love. Love of life, love of self, love of experience, love of knowing it’s all good, love of light. The light especially. I loved the golden rays of the sun. Shafts forming as the sun fell from the sky. In retrospect, always bring a flashlight. Always. No matter what. Learn from mistakes.

I will say, a week after this whole experience, I can’t say much has changed. My week was stressful and I still got mad. I smoked far too much and I was really lazy. I have been making lists of things to do and trying to do all of them. Writing this debrief has been on the post-its since its inception. I think I can gradually get into it. Life is overwhelming and I need to just face the days and start getting my life in order. No more should do or will do. Just do.

There is more but not right now. This seems like a plausible end to this journey, this post. Other things will come up, come back and I’ll relay them. That’s it, that’s all, for now.

Number Three

We hiked off from our campsite, down the trail and across the road, up the zig-zagging mountain trail until we saw a little path leading off the trail.  It eventually led to a tree that we sat on and in to mush on our munchrooms.  From the tree you could look into the tops of the trees a bit further down the hill, where a bird was chillin and looking back at us, and in the distance you could see the top ridge of the adjacent mountain range. I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of shit in my backpack, including the peanut butter, the tapes, the honey, and my surprise necklace beads.  Needless to say, I had an over-materialistic mindset going into this one.

  I felt the usual surge of adrenaline that kicks off the experience, and we ran back through some brush to the trail.  I said hello to a cactus and Jesse noticed.  I talked to Rich and Deanna a bit about how they were feeling.  Eventually we made it to the lake.  

  When we saw it at first there were some families gathered on the beach, and fishermen on a dock that ended in an octagon.  I wasn't sure how good of a location this was going to be.  The lake was kind of small and we were right next to a parking lot where all these families and fishermen parked to spend their day.  But we walked around to the other side of the lake and found ourselves the only people on the other side.

   We went off our old road down to water's edge, and watched a duck named Henry, who kept hanging out by us even though we were a pack of humans.  I left the group to go pee, and heard an awesome bird calling.  After a bit more time hanging out by water's edge, Jesse suggested getting to a warmer spot out of the wind.

  The group walked back up to the road.  The last one up was Adrian, dressed in full winter gear - hat, coat, gloves, etc.  It was still sunny and no colder than 50 degrees.  We walked until the trail became a bit old and covered in grass and fallen trees.  I noticed the sun hitting all the flies in the air, making everything look super-Miyazaki.  The mushrooms started taking effect sometime around here.  We found some stumps by the side of the trail and I sat down.  Jesse suggested sitting on a log further back.  Once we got there I noticed some cool rocks that seemed like a definite cool spot further back.  Jesse and I went over to them and commenced chilling.  

  

  The group eventually followed.  From afar, Josh looked like a different man, and asked "is this how you see me now?" Deanna discovered being barefoot. I put Broken Deer on and started coloring.  Scott came over and asked us if we'd noticed the rock we were sitting on.  But back to coloring–having the number of crayons we did felt amazing.  I was seeing so many colors.  Jesse, Scott, and Josh were sitting in the spot I was drawing and all had matching dark gray-blue color pallettes. The trees looked beautiful, taking on a strange alien-natural quality.  There were so many layers of trees to draw, with the sun shining out from behind them.  And the shrubs behind the trees were awesome and alien-psychadelic looking too. Another thing I remember about this part was seeing Deanna with her notebook of art and seeing how a cohesive character she was.  The art was really just part of her.

  It was around this moment when I took the necklace-making beads and string out of my backpack and discovered that the honey jar had become unscrewed in my bag.  The bottom of my pack was a pool of honey.  There was honey on everything.  My hands and arms were sticky and covered in honey.

  Not good.

  Not fucking good at all.

  My awareness of the doom grew steadily.  Rolling up my sleeve, a bunch of the honey stuck and pulled on my arm hairs.  I realized I couldn't touch anything.  I felt like an animal must feel when it's overtaken and attacked by a swarm of some smaller, lesser animal.  I began vocalizing to the group: I needed help. This was not a one-man cleanup.  I needed water.  Deanna had a towel, I gave Adrian my water bottle.  Water, towel, we had found a solution miraculously quickly.  I held the towel to receive and Adrian poured some water down on it.  The three of us watched as, like an absurdist cartoon, the small pour of water was released from the bottle, hit the towel in my palm, and scattered out and off the towel in several droplets, leaving behind not a hint of wetness.  I think I screamed "AAAA."  We laughed but still needed a solution.  We grabbed the extra tie-dye shirts out of my bag, got them wet, and started wiping shit off.  But I was freaking out, and Deanna insisted that I needed to go to the lake.  Something like the phrase, "You and the lake needs to happen."  

  I hated leaving Adrian and Deanna a mess to clean up, but I had to start dealing with shit and that meant starting to get clean, so I emptied my backpack and brought it down to the lake.  On my way down I was seeing how this was a microcosm for my life.  I take on too many things, I don't spend enough time thinking through with preparations, and it leads me to messy situations I don't want to be in.  I could imagine my dad stressfully telling me to slow down, take it easy, and think.  I looked down and saw other friends flocking towards the lake to help my situation.  Thank god for my friends, but goddammit I hate ruining the freedom of this trip by making them have to help me.  My mind was racing with negative thoughts, and I was trying to get grounded on a reason for being OK, when I came down the hill to the edge of the lake.  Pine cones were sprawled out in their natural-repetitive-fractal kind of way, and the sound of my footsteps were quieter.  I saw Jesse, in a stage framed by the edges of the trees, standing in the sunny lake, rinsing out my sasquatch shirt.  I took a moment to gather myself and told myself everything was going to be ok, and went to greet Jesse.

  I'll never think of the word "idyllic" again without thinking of the image of Jesse knee-high in the lake, submerging and lifting my sasquatch shirt to get the honey out.  Some real Huckleberry Finn shit.  I took my shoes off, placed them on a conveniently-placed patch of grass, and went into the lake.  In my panicky rush I forgot to roll my pants up so they got a little wet.  Stupid me.  Before I put the backpack in the lake, I thought I should get honey off everything that was inside it.  The first thing I found was the top strip of plastic from a bag of peanuts.  I took it out and started washing it in the lake.  God dammit, am I really gonna start by cleaning my trash?  This is why I don't get things done, I get caught up in dumb pointless shit, the equivalent of washing trash.  But I had to get the honey off, and then I think I put it in my pocket.  Then I stuck the whole backpack in the lake and started scraping the honey out with my hands.  At one point a little plastic glow-stick connector fell out, and I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings, reaching for it before it got swept away in the water.  It didn't though, and I had to pocket that too.  Soon the honey was actually coming out of my bag, and I realized there was an end in sight.  Eventually it was clean and I walked back out to let things dry.  A couple times I noticed more of me was sticky, and I had to go back in the lake to get cleaner.  

  I was really paranoid about the campground host coming by, or anyone really, and looking like a drugged out idiot.  But my belongings, laid out on the grass in a Wes Anderson type style, were the most normal camping things one could imagine: a backpack, a headlamp, an apple, a lighter, shoes, a shirt.  I sat down on the awesome curly grass and tried to calm myself down. Josh and Jesse were there to help, but they had to go back to tell the rest of the group what was going on, and to come chill with us.  I stayed back to give them a reason to come back, in Josh's words.  I was worried I'd go to a dark place but I knew I had to face whatever would come.

  This gave me some alone time to chill.  I couldn't tell if I was fucking up hard, or just making a normal mistake.  I looked at the rock next to me, and the patterns on it seemed to create a laughing face.  Laughing with me or at me?  The way my shirt was laid on the rock started to do the same thing, and I made myself look at something else before I lost it.  And this whole time I had all these self-critical and panicking and overwhelmed feelings swirling through me, with some old optimistic me trying to cover them all with this narrative that everything was gonna be fine, with a newer me seeing it as just an attempt to restore an old habit that's been beaten down by reality.  And in some fleeting moments by the lake, this beehive of thoughts just became noise, and since it was just noise it contained no thoughts, and suddenly I was left as me, existing by this lake, serene.  Like I said, this happened for a few fleeting moments.  In one of the longer ones, I kind of felt like who I am was reduced to its core.  And I saw myself as this lighter, shinier/brighter version of my father.  Thinking on it now, of course that's what I am, a mix of my mom and my dad, and my mom has a pretty enthusiastic/bright personality, so that makes sense.  But in that moment, and for most of this particular trip, my dad was in the forefront of my mind.  And by the lake I saw myself not as a mix but as a modified version-up of my dad.  

  Also, randomly, I felt a similarity to Matt Kenseth.  For those of you not in the know, Matt Kenseth is a soft-spoken NASCAR driver from Wisconsin.  When I watched NASCAR back in the day, I didn't root for him or anything, because he just wasn't that exciting.  But he drove a black and yellow car, which growing up was my favorite color combination, and he won the championship the first year I watched NASCAR.  And even though he only won one race all year, he won the overall championship by just being chill and steady and doing what he needed to do for the big picture race by race.  Maybe this connects to how I do things somehow?  Or how I used to, before I tried to do too much?  I can reflect on this more later, just wanted to note it.  In the moment I think I remember a laugh escaping me, because I was just like, why the fuck is Matt Kenseth of all things in the universe popping into my head right now?  Could just be a childish reflex, maybe tied into thoughts of my dad.

  Thoughts must have swelled up again, followed by another one of these clear moments.  It was just me existing and everything around me was what we call nature.  And I looked up at this tree, and it was incredible.  It represented such a foreign and rich intelligence, one that I knew little about.  In that moment, the cloud of thoughts from before, mainly generated by my own idea of criticisms that people in my life or in the society we live in would have of me, was replaced by a very powerful idea of criticisms that an archaic human would have of me.  If you ever listen to an Indian elder talk about modern-day America, it was kind of like that.  Almost as if the land itself was criticizing me.  And while the previous thought-hive concerned my inability to integrate perfectly into the modern social-financial-technological construct, this thought-hive concerned my ignorance to real fucking life.  Humans used to live with nature, and in doing so understood it in ways I can't even imagine.  And I'm just some idiot from the city who brought all his toys to the forest.  I could feel the disgust that an old Indian would feel towards me, disgust even almost from the trees around me.  And I respected this disgust so much more than the self-critical thoughts about integrating that those thoughts didn't even really bother me for the rest of the day, and haven't really since.  Because this new disgust was much more real, much more justified.  I brought trash to this forest.  I rely entirely on things that pollute and slowly destroy this absolutely sacred fucking thing that we call wilderness, but is in reality a complete miracle of beauty incarnate before our eyes.  And everything else that I worry about, about people thinking I'm weird or different or not professional enough, is all absolute and utter horseshit in comparison.  But I knew that I wasn't lost forever, that even sensing this disgust was a positive, that I had the power to change and to learn.  As I was looking at this tree, with it's bizarre alien wisdom beckoning me to know it, these amazing pink geometric patterns in the sky appeared, maybe triggered from a glint on my glasses.  And I thought about how the only way to gain this knowledge is to immerse myself in nature as much as possible.  Even as I write this, the idea of spending my life doing anything else seems trivial.

  Instead of some kind of mystical knowledge, instead of some cool new things to think about or see out in the world, instead of making a bunch of super-interesting art or feeling a bunch of super-interesting sensations, I'd instead been reduced to my minimum and shown in complete clarity a simple "do this."

  

  Around this time everyone came down and realized how awesome the lake was.  Now that everyone was back, I still felt the urge to be responsible.  But now, instead of being responsible to other people, my urge was fueled by responsibility to the forest itself.  Josh was on a responsibility wavelength in that moment too, so him and I set off to make sure all our trash was cleaned up.  Also on my mind was trying as hard as I could to keep this from being a bad trip.  We went back up to the site and saw everything left behind.  We gathered it up into bags.  I ate a bite of my banana.  We turned to leave and saw an old Bud Light can in the ground.  We kinda tossed around the question of should we bother picking it up, and both kinda agreed that we should.  I distinctly remember Josh, with the classic, irritatedly defeated tone of someone relegated to fix EVERYTHING, yelling out "Might as well!" and from there we walked back towards the parking lot, picking up any trash that was left behind on the trail.  And in doing so I felt myself building up value and meaning almost from scratch, from what I had felt reduced to by the lake.  We were both trying to be responsible, and I related to Josh how even in real life I was trying to be responsible to so many different parties and people, and there was just so much to keep track of that it's almost impossible.  And for all I know it still might be.  I kind of erupted on Josh with a bunch of built up thoughts, mainly about how I want to be the person that's relied upon, but in doing so I feel guilty for relying on anyone else.  I also feel boundaries with people where I can't ask questions, either because I imagine it would be rude, so I don't learn out of politeness, or because I'd feel stupid for asking.  But even though these thoughts were back in my mind, because habits die slow and they've been kickin around in there for a while, I still had this seed inside me that had been planted by that damn tree.

  Once again there was a great moment of relief when Josh could bring his trash to a dumpster.  He washed his hands in the spot that was at first occupied with people, then we went out to the octagon dock to chill.

  Someone had left a water bottle there. We picked it up, and started throwing away more trash.  I knew I had to, because that felt like the only thing I had.  But ultimately it was moving trash from the ground to a receptacle.  Not that it's futile, because the animals and plants shouldn't have to deal with this trash everywhere (I thought "do it for Henry" in this moment), but it goes into the bin and then what?  Like everything else that was happening, this spiraled out into a representation of all kinda of other problems with the world.  We both realized just how much shit there is to do, both on the scale of global-political shit, and on the scale of our own lives.  I told Josh how my dad always tells me to take a break.  But I just have too many things that I either need to or want to do that my breaks don't even feel like breaks.  We both felt overwhelmed by the amount of shit there was to worry about.  This had been cycling through my head for an hour at least.  I tried but I couldn't just let myself forget about it, I  felt like I had to apply my mind to it, like a word problem.  There are obligations to other people, obligations to work, the responsibility of making a living to provide for yourself adequately, legal requirements to be in society, obligations to your own health that have to balance with your budget and your insurance, plus the obligation to not make the world a worse place, to pay attention and not let the world's population slip into an Orwellian or Wall-E type of dystopia that it feels like we're moving towards with little resistance from the people, because they just have too much other damn shit to worry about.  All represented in this metaphor of moving trash from the ground to a bigger receptacle that is also still on the ground, knowing the trash isn't just gonna disappear, just be moved, and keep being created.  I still haven't untied this web, and would love to hear if anyone has.  In these moments on the far side of the lake, I guess everything really did feel futile.

  In the midst of talking about how there was too much shit to worry about to even keep track of what we should be worrying about, we suddenly realized that we SHOULD be worrying about whether our friends were still where we were assuming they were.  I looked to the beach-of-sorts where we'd been hanging out, and saw a Jesse that upon further inspection reveled himself to be a tree.  But we looked across and saw a single person in red.  Josh asked if that was Deanna, and this is when I talked to Deanna across the lake, to make sure everyone was where we thought they were, which they were.  The other assumption, that our path connected to that beach, also proved to be true.  We'd noticed the sun was starting to go down, and that all the families and fishermen had left, so I wanted to get back to camp to get warm and dry.  Scott was all about this.  Jesse and Rich were caught up in some arts, and I had to wait for them to shoot something and show me a video before telling them we were going back.  I was glad they at least got to have a playful time.  And fortunately my backpack, despite its wetness, wasn't too heavy, being emptied of all non wet things.  I wanted to get my wet pack and shirt back to camp though, and put dry warm pants on and get by the fire before I was stuck in 40 degree darkness with cold shit, so I led the way, picking up trash with my left hand while I talked about pinecones with my right.  Deanna and I talked about how obvious it is that math works, because it's just humans' discovery of what was already there, and we talked about the fibonacci sequence and it's presence all over nature.  Deanna and I also talked about how dumb it is that people are scared to try new things.  She said something like "You're not gonna die.  Or you are, but like whatever."  It felt perfectly like the opposite of all I'd ever been taught by authority figures.  We also realized that each of us wanted to be more like the other one, and had a weird moment trying to wrap our heads around that one.  Around this time the sun was setting, and we stopped to look at the pink-purple sky, realizing we were stopping in the exact same spot we'd left the trail the first time, and that the stars/planets were coming out.  Also around this time, we heard running behind us, and Rich came to catch up with us, me assuming that he had left Josh and Jesse a bend or two behind us.  I guessed that they wanted to chill in the dark and stargaze.  Sounded cool, but I had a mission.  I would not learn until much later how far gone they literally were.

  Our group had a chill walk back down the hill.  Adrian brought up his sense of self or lack thereof, and we talked about how values and taste are both these auras everyone has, like when you test a chemical or whatever, I'm not a scientist.  Anyways, I must've come down as we came down the hill, and getting into new, honeyless clothes felt great.  The night was great and joke-filled, and sausages were delicious.  Even though I think it's more moral and healthy to eat vegetables, I felt like I'd learned through my conversations with Josh and Deanna that you can't be concerned with every minute detail and just have to take the pressure off yourself.  I really felt like all my concerns and naggings had been lifted and replaced by the over-arching idea that I just had to get back to nature, and that everything else I could relax about. So as far as takeaways, I feel a great urge to simplify my life, but also to do all I can to direct my life back into the wilderness uncompromisingly.  The seed is strong, but the coming months will reveal the strength of the waterer.

  Also, somehow Jesse and Josh made it back through a mile of zig zaggy trail in the dark night of a new moon with no light, but that's their story.

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Homer's BBBQ from Dental Plan on Vimeo.

Shroomies with Some Clems and Friends

It’s easy for me to say that this is an experience I will never forget, but I can already feel it fading. The images slowly slipping away as I remind myself of Kort’s absurd getup, Jesse’s goofy smile, Scott’s backpack-attached limp body, and that meadow at sunset. But still vivid in my mind is each atom of cold air melting into my skin, my internal chaos clashing with the still natural world, and everything in constant flux—flowing, curling, tied together by string. Through everything that was going on, I felt an incredible sense of peace and safety. Through all of your moving bodies, I felt home.

Below is a log of the events that transpired.