My first trip at fourteen years of age was a strange one. It showed me life was just a big movie, and that I was the star of that movie, just like the words from that song that came on the radio after Uncle Rolly picked me up from the police station. There I was a long-haired maiden of swift mind, seeing the little pieces of life and how they all fit in. But it was all about how I handled it. It was all about how each individual handled it. Many say that drugs made them feel a connection. I always felt a connection, with nature, and my family, with each encounter life brought me. But ultimately, it was all about what I did with that experience. 

As my parents’ first child, I was used to figuring things out for myself, and later, showing my siblings. I sat there pondering at the police station, I was underage, and there wasn’t much they could do but call my parents to come pick me up and I’d basically be slapped on the hand. It would all be over soon, so bad trip, no, learning trip yes. AS was every trip after. 

Once I came home tripping my brains out and went down to my basement room. It was also where my cat Lulu was having her babies, only in the laundry room. Charlie our Welsh Terrier was forbidden to be down there, only the more he was forbidden, the more he tried to find a way in there, see what those tiny little things were mewing behind the barricade. The instincts of his breed were trained to catch small rodents. He broke through the barricade and killed all the kittens. Mother told me, “He didn’t know any better, he couldn’t help himself. It’s his nature.” I saw this as the circle of life, death just a part of it. I also had not even had a chance to bond with these kittens so had no attachments to them yet. 

Then there was the acid trip at Grant Park, where Sly and the Family Stone were supposed to play but never showed and a riot ensued. Brenda Rose and I sat on the edge of the bowl-like arena of the Grant Park Shell. The whole scene turned into a cartoon. We were not a part of it; in it, but not of it. I was to learn much more about this concept in my Source Family days with Yahowha. We hitched home and rode the psychedelic wave into shore.

Today the longer in the tooth me has been re-introduced to psilocybin, only not the kind I used to pull from the cow patties in Maui and gobble by the handful. Micro-dosing seems to be a thing right now. I will concur because of Neuroplasty- the process by which your brain synapses become reconnected. It’s not a psychedelic high, but a deep reflection on being reintroduced to one’s personal operating system, like one used to be. It’s making me feel like myself again.