trip sitting

Hello, reader.  How are you doing?  People who use drugs are my people.  So it makes sense I would try trip sitting.  I don’t partake of much drugs myself.  But users, addicts, people who have issues with substances are dear to my heart.

content warning: brief mentions of suicide

Why is that?  I think because crazy people are my people, 100%.  We crazy people do a lot to try to get by and find pleasure in a world that can be dangerous and feel uncaring.

In fact, my friends tell me how bleak it is over and over.  They tell me they’re bleaked out.

When friends mention the world as a dystopian hellscape, I immediately think of

• flowers
• sunrise
• rivers and creeks with water flowing over beautiful stones
• childbirth and babes
• trees
• how the forest floor smells
• breasts
• touch
• desert mornings
• huge rocks under my bare feet

It’s a big objection inside me.  Something like–if you think the world is bad, you’re not doing it right.  Please try again.

Sure there’s war and so many kinds of violence, climate change, evil, predation.  But goodness is also everywhere.  We make it when we love each other.  And pleasure is so available, in art and food and being alive to nature.  Goodness is caring for one another and forming community.  We can choose that every day.

What’s real?  The bleak, the ecstatic.  I guess it’s all real.

are you experienced

My close friend wanted to do acid, so I offered trip sitting.  I didn’t want her walking out into the street while having an altered state.  Keeping her safe is important.  Maybe I could help her eat food, drink water.  I could comfort her if she freaked out.  Being there for people is a big deal.

True I had no experience trip sitting, but I spent a little time with my mom when she was getting ready to die.  Not the very end, but I know an altered state when I see one.  Also I had a best friend long ago with a schizophrenia diagnosis, and I comforted her for hours as she freaked out about parts of life that others never experience.  The red cars and people wearing red shirts come to mind, as well as things too gruesome to repeat.

I have a few deescalation skills up my sleeve, and ample intelligence and compassion.  So I decided I would be good at trip sitting.  Bring it!

friend

I love my friend, and her life is entwined with mine and Ming’s.  We mention often being chosen family.  Her body is a place I can relax, and her mind delights me.  She’s wildly creative and breathes newness and learning everywhere she goes.  That’s what I need.

I trust her.  We have shared projects.  Of course I respect her and want to support her in various ways of doing what she needs to do.

I believe in the transformative power of travel, including drug trips.  Never have I used shrooms, peyote, acid, DMT, San Pedro.  But I always wanted to try.  When will the time be right?  Seems silly to make myself more incapacitated when responsible survival is hard already.

Do I recycle everything I could recycle?  No, it’s a lot of work to figure out the rules at our new place and follow through with washing every can and bottle.  Is our home clean and organized?  It’s been a minute since we moved, but we have many boxes to unpack.  Am I facing sketchy choices I’ve made lately, and working hard on old trauma?  No, I’m avoiding emotional pain and turmoil.  So much healing work I need to do.

I want to get my things more in order, before I intentionally take risks like drug trips.  I hear voices as my norm, and I work very hard to stay in shared reality.  So leaving earth on purpose always seemed counterproductive.

trip sitting

But other people are not me, and I love freedom.  My friend ingested the acid earlier in the morning than I expected.

Please don’t think I’ve been insulated from the harms of the world.  I have a great life these days with Ming.  We’re housed indoors with a rent we can pretty much afford.  We have all the food we could eat, never going hungry.  We have resources, including skills and deep love that sustains us.  Healthcare is crappy, but if I break my arm, I can get help.  Overall, I have what I need.

But we’ve known lean times, and our ACE scores are terrible.  All that to say we’re privileged at the moment, but not entitled.  Probably you can tell, when you spend time with us.  Our lives are great, but decades back, not so much.

Ming was sleepy.  He got up to move laundry, then we lay in bed.  He dozed on my body.  I was anxious to get to our friend’s house to care for her.  I wanted to be there for her in a new way.

Feels good to have a role.  And I was curious what it would feel like to support her though sacred drug trip emotional spiritual work.

passport

When I got to my friend’s place, I wasn’t prepared for how much work it would be to partly set my needs aside and show up for her.  The substance is a 12 hour trip.  The whole time I was trying to evaluate how much she was in another world, and how much she was her regular self.

I refilled her Stanley with water and encouraged her to drink.  I heated up leftover rice and lentils for a nourishing meal.  She did some creative activities.  She also rested on her bed, and I was picking up trash in her room.  When I’m over, sometimes I help clean up as something to do as we hang out.

A plastic bag was on the floor, which I peeked into.  Wow, her passport.  A toothbrush, some tooth powder, a wrapper for a weed edible.

“What’s this stuff?” I asked, showing her the passport.

“Oh, that was in a suitcase that got wet,” she said.

“Your passport is expired,” I said.

It was hard for me to read the little words without my glasses, but yet: date of issue, date of expiration.

“Did you see the picture?” she asked.

I looked at the picture.

“You are much prettier now,” I said.

My friend is trans.  The picture from 12 years ago, she looks like a man.  It makes me dizzy, to see old pics of my trans friends.  I struggle to wrap my head around what self is, as well as transition, costuming, identity, and the violence we’re running from.  I mean the violence of the assholes who yelled at her on the street for years, and all the other trans hate and queer hate.

cocaine spoon

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s a cocaine spoon,” she said.

I started crying almost immediately–I’m crying now as I type this.  I held the cocaine spoon in my hand.  It was beautiful and terrible.  There was a pretty inlaid handle part, and a tiny spoon at the other end.  Not sure what kind of metal.

Then I got a message from God.  If my usual thoughts are images, feelings, and sometimes words and phrases in 12 point Times New Roman, this was a fully formed sentence in 30 point bold.  The sentence was:

I’m sorry you needed this to be happy.

I put the cocaine spoon on my friend’s altar with other sacred objects.  Yes, it was a tool someone used to try to find happiness, escape, pleasure, social success.

I cried thinking of her deep pain, the harrowing pain of her bestie who killed himself a few months ago, and so many people who it’s not enough, that list above that starts “flowers.”  I’m sorry it’s not enough.  I thought of my dad and other relatives.

Mostly I’m sorry this love I’m offering is not enough.  Bliss can be found in my body, and I can sing to you.  I can cook you some delicious foods.  I’m sorry you still want drugs, sweethearts.  You think the drugs are good, but not sure you remember the bad parts clearly.

sad

“Did I make you sad?  I’m sorry,” my friend said.

She noticed I was crying, as I sat on her yoga ball and she rested on her bed.  I stood up and held her hand.

“It’s not you, sweetheart,” I said.  “It’s drugs.  It’s my family.  You don’t make me sad.”

She accepted my answer, and I was sorry I was crying during her trip.  I was not there to bring her down.

harm reduction

Then I went to therapy–I have a weekly one o’clock that I attend in person these days.  My therapist has a comfy office with many fun toys.

We met over zoom for almost a year?  If I had known about the toys, I would have gone way sooner.  A plush manatee toy is my favorite.  I like to hold and pat the sweet little manatee toy.

It’s normal for me to cry during therapy these days.  I showed up wanting to talk about pain in community when access needs aren’t met, and about how jealousy is ruining my life.  But then I started talking about drugs, leaving out specifics, not 100% on rules about mandated reporting.

I won’t recount all that I said to my therapist.  But there are two parts I would like to tell you.  From a bit of a rant, not about the friend I was trip sitting, but more about many drug using friends over the course of my life, as well as suicide.  Something like:

I can’t watch the people I love destroy themselves.  Why do they destroy themselves so slowly?  They are throwing their lives away.  I’m working harder on their survival than they are.

Then about the friend I was trip sitting, I mentioned how I told her where I keep the narcan in my bag–it’s in the front pouch.  Then I said something like:

Why am I a harm reductionist?  It’s not random.  We don’t become harm reductionists recreationally.  We do it because someone died before we were harm reductionists.

heart

My therapist puts their hand on their chest, when I’m crying.  I don’t think it’s a tradition, like how I say, “Thank you for helping me,” at the end of every session.  I think they put their hand over their heart to keep it from spilling over.  Or they love me a little bit as I suffer, and they’re holding their heart back from loving me too much.  I’m just a client after all.

My heart is hyperactive.  It runs all over the place, loving everything–I can put my hand on my chest also, but there’s no hope.  My heart is a freak who could leap over any barrier.  A hand is nothing.

As I wrap this up, I would like to tell you one more thing about trip sitting yesterday.  I was paced for it to get easier.  After my friend peaked, as she started coming down, it got way harder.  She had trouble when she was speaking, as she would start a thought and forget what she was talking about.  She seemed unhappy.  Also she wavered on her feet a few times, like she might fall over, almost like a drunk person.

Next time, if I find myself trip sitting her or another, I would like to have more breaks and maybe more specifics of ways I can help.  Getting Thai food was a good idea.  She liked her noodles.  My green curry was divine.