Handle With Care

It’s been a minute since I have engaged in the glorious Galveston community. Regretfully I moved to Colorado following my daughter and leaving my ex-husband. Lest I digress. But the fact of it is once a Galvestonian, always one. My hopes are to return for retirement with the dream of settling in a lovely old home, raise some goats, and to offer a practice of functional medicine in the community.

What a great segue to our topic, Psychedelics! In the mile “high” state in which I currently reside, a city near Denver has an interesting quandary going on. If you keep up on national news you will know it is legal to use but there are a bunch of weird laws that roadblock buying, distribution or growing it.

However, there is endless amounts of free-for-all mushrooms growing all over the mountain sides. I went on a hike in Golden Gate State Park last spring at an elevation of 10,000 feet. While stomping up the side of this front range excursion, the firefighters I was with went into arduous detail about the beauty and variety of mushrooms growing in the wild. Some weird one full of worms they were going to make soup with…pass. But there was a particularly beautiful one that was pointed out. Lovely orange and red with white spots straight out of a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Not the southern quest of digging through a pile of cow s**t to boil down the most disgusting brew known to man to do a little “trippen balls” for the afternoon.

Amanita muscaria, even the name blossoms up a vision of beauty. It’s got a bunch of explanations in Wikipedia, but basically the psychoactive affect is obtained by virtually walking the balance of your life on the edge of a deadly knife. This beauty is also deadly. So you get so high you don’t even know or possibly care the next person you don’t see is the coroner. Being zipped up snug as a bug in a body bag. Amazingly enough, it is quite popular in its use on a pretty routine basis.

I just completed my 500-hour yoga certification and have been looking into all sorts of meditation retreats and I will be damned if you can’t go to the Buddhist community and experience an ayahuasca journey. Apparently, you can go get high as F**K and find your inner yogi at the same time.

Being a nurse, specifically an addiction recovery nurse, I see all types of combos used with psychedelics and I also see the results of substance-induced psychosis. I just recently had a patient I was sure she was going to spin her head around and spit green pea soup at me. She had mixed a little PCP with a little meth and bingo! She did not create something cool like a tank full of sea monkeys. Nah my friends, she manifested a major psychotic break that led to rolling in the floor growling and welcoming in a new lifelong buddy called “schizophrenic break.” What does that mean in lay terms? A whole lotta coocoo for a long time to come.

I am not saying chewing a little bark or swallowing a few cow patty mushrooms is a bad thing. I am just reminding you everything that has some sort of mind-altering capacity be it PCP or alcohol, has real life risks. When you are 20, it seems like you can do anything and live forever. But folks, handle with care and do with caution. I revive patients weekly from the edge of death who believed the same things.

In ending, here’s a little story about a one-time psychedelic user who had no idea she had underlying significant mental health issues just waiting for the right trigger. She did a little micro dot, and next thing ya know she woke up in jail, after drowning her toddler and slicing them open because she could see its bones through its skin while she was tripping. She now lives in a forensic psych unit as a lifelong resident. So, whatever your pleasure of choice, handle with care. Know your underlying health issues if you choose to go on a little journey in your mind.

In therapeutic environments, psilocybin is being used in control studies to aid in anxiety and depression treatments.

In conclusion, handle with care, do your research and find your joy.

Namaste my friends!