I had a friend come over who’s not in any 12-step fellowships (yet). He’s much younger than me and sees me as somewhat of a mentor (poor sap). He looks crestfallen as I meet him in my driveway. His head his tilted down, shoulders slumped, he smiles at me with a vacant look on his face. His face is unanimated like he has lost part of his spirit.
I lead him inside to the couch and make him a coffee. He absentmindedly pats our puppy, a little joy returns to his heart, but he still looks a shadow of his once vibrant self. I hand him his coffee and sit at the table facing him. “What’s going on brother?” I ask.
“I can’t handle my family.”
“Haha, join the club, mate.” I say
He squeezes out a smile and then looks down and pats the puppy again.
“You live with your mum and younger sisters yeah?”
“Yeah. She is just angry at me all the time. I’m only really staying there to help her, but nothing is good enough. I try and do the chores she asks, but there is never any thanks, only criticism at where I didn’t meet perfection.”
I allow a pause as he looks down and pats the puppy again.
“How does that make you feel?” I ask.
He looks up in thought. I am tempted to suggest some words, but hold off.
“Angry, sad. I don’t know.” He says shrugging his shoulders.
“Disrespected?” I ask
“Yeah, that’s it.” He says narrowing his brows.
“Unloved?” I double down.
He takes a large sigh and rests his chin on his chest. I drink my coffee waiting for him to regain his posture. With wet eyes he raises his head. “I leave and stay at friends and when I speak to her all she does is guilt trip me saying how much she misses me and I’m part of the family, and my sisters need me. Then she lectures me on having to do all the things that she never did as a kid. I always thought I was loved, but this feels anything but. I want to help. I want to be there for her, but I can’t go on like this.”
“Have you told anyone else.” I ask.
“Yeah I told my auntie and she just repeated everything I said to her to mum. I was devastated. I feel like there is no one else I can trust. I’m tempted to go and live with Dad, but that would break her heart” He says.
“Your dad is in Indonesia yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not the worst idea. It’s about growing up. It’s not for pussies. Historically kids your age were off to war or hunting expeditions. And in those cultures there were rites of passage to prepare them for that. You would have been sent out the forest for a month to fend for yourself. And your dad wouldn’t have skipped the country.”
“I used to be pissed he left, but now I can see what he was up against, I sort of get it.”
I get it too, his mums a right cunt, but I’m trying to be impartial. “It’s a about breaking the bonds of childhood. We are forced by necessity to look up to the caretakers in our life when we are children. Your mind needs to feel secure so your body can function properly without too much stress. We are designed to ignore hypocrisy from our elders and believe the fictions they tell us because it does more good than harm – when we are young. It’s so important to feel loved and secure when you are young. It’s a feature not a bug to believe the lies our parents tell us. We have to ignore the things that don’t make sense in our family just to survive. But you’re a man now.”
“A friend suggested I try ayahuasca.” He says.
He knows my history of psychedelics so I suspect this is the information he came for. I think for a moment and notice the absence of much excitement about the topic. I was so obsessed with psychedelics for years. They ran their medicinal course for me and became mostly recreational. Then I had a spiritual awakening from taking myself through the AA Big Book and they lost their pull. I remember a story from my research that intrigued me.
“There is a story about the American Indians, I don’t know how true it is, but it gave me an additional excuse to explore psychedelics after being clean for 15 years. They didn’t start doing peyote ceremonies until after the white man came, and it isn’t wasn’t all tribes. The tribes that faired the best and were able to assimilate; retain their culture, but live in the unavoidable white man’s world, were the ones that adopted the peyote ceremonies. Psychedelics are a bridge from the old life to the new. They certainly helped me, until they didn’t, and I couldn’t stop taking them, but that’s another story.”
“So you think I should?”
“I think everyone should be open to it with caution, some with a lot more caution than others. I would suspect you are pretty safe.”
“I have tried LSD once.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah, it was great.” He says with a sparkle in his eyes that had been previously absent.
“That’s what I took. Solo LSD psychotherapy. Doctors probably wouldn’t recommend it.” I say with a smile. “But it was great for me. I was able to let so much of the past go. And it really helped with the grief of my sons sickness. MDMA is good too after the LSD, but you can only take that once a month.”
“Do it with me?” He pleads.
To be honest, I’m tempted. It feels like a noble cause. I could use my experience to help guide him. To be the guide that I needed as a kid. But my wife will be upset, my NA friends will feel I have betrayed them, and it may take me months to stop. Still… here I sit relatively scar free from every time I have relapsed over the last 5 years.
“I can’t mate. I’ve made a commitment to recovery. I would let too many people down.”
Red Pill Recovery 