Psilocybin Trip Report – physical healing attempt

Trip Report – physical healing attempt
Psilocybin Cubensis May 2007

Background: 

This one completely different than any other for me. My now ex wife had been deathly ill after a rare complication from a surgery and finally we had found the cause to be the fact that in this surgery they had cut the main trunk of the vagal nerve near her stomach and she had a very bad reaction to it. This has left her with severe nausea vomiting every ten minutes for almost two months straight and she had begun to speak of suicide. Add to this that pic line for nourishment had become infected and almost gone to her heart only stopped by first line intravenous antibiotics. This woman was the strongest human being who I had ever met so for her to speak of suicide both alarmed me and made me realize just had bad was her suffering by that point. We had finally discovered at this two month point that the sedative Lorazepam (Ativan) that relieved the nausea for up to two hours allowing her some respite and some much needed rest. In my own work with the mushrooms, it had been suggested that they could help in the healing with this reaction to the vagal nerve being severed but this would require her to take them, something she was not prepared to do even in a well state. I found some information on enema dosing but she was not game. I should say that I never suggest them to anyone only in this circumstance was the exception. Finally I determined to do them myself in a healing attempt but had little faith in it or in myself as a healer but was desperate and my thought was that it could not hurt. I really felt that if she herself would do it, it would help but it appears this would be the closest I could get to that happening. 
Dosage: 

I had been saving aborts for a while had in mind for some special occasion and I can't quite say why other than I felt they may have a certain … flare? I measured out six dried grams of mixed cubensis from five different strains and looked at the gnarly pile in the palm of my hand with satisfaction thinking well this application qualifies as a special occasion, I suppose.

Set and Setting: 

Mindset in this case kind of dovetailed with setting, I feel. My wife and two dogs are in a motel having sold our house right after she had this surgery that was suppose to be a rather simple affair, mind you. Now I am trying to get her in with a specialist at John Hopkins since the surgeon apparently hands off the 1% of the patients who have a negative outcome to lawyers so as not to slow down the assembly line work of his medical business. We were suppose to be heading out west for a summer of car camping having sold everything and then driving through Mexico to Belize where we were going to move and buy a jungle lodge to run.

Now we are staying in a motel near the hospital that is not in the best neighborhood. My routine for tripping is in the morning on an empty stomach with two of my most trusted plant allies, coffee and cannabis. For coffee I had to walk about a 150 yards to a 7-11 going through a small, urban forest strewn with a varied and disturbing array of litter including panties and condoms. I am glad to see my wife is still sleeping when I return. I sit and write up intentions reading them over emphasis upon this being a healing attempt for my wife so I am determined to not get carried off in any other directions in this trip something so far never attempted and for which I have little confidence in pulling off, really. I had always gone in with only the best intentions and the very thought of trying to direct the experience felt like something of an anathema to me so this trip now felt daunting and challenging to say the least. I should say that for me this was never about something happening within my own mind but about an interaction with a separate entity or at least with a symbiotic entity created by the Psilocybin interacting with my own nervous system. So now I speak to (this entity) prayerfully asking and asserting at once what I need from this experience. I had only recently recalled that years earlier I had been given my power animal in a dream and that it is the Great Blue Whale. Large part of my preparation is looking at pictures of Blue Whales then closing my eyes and visualizing them in my minds eye. This I continue doing even while eating from the anomalous little pile of aborts on the desk before me. Their smell and taste are especially strong. The only real faith I can muster this morning, try as I may, is not in myself but in this Blue Whale power animal. For whatever reason, I do have a lot of faith in the Blue Whale Power Animal.

My wife continues to sleep probably beyond exhaustion and I have to give thanks to the Ativan – and no cannabis didn't help at all, unfortunately. I am now not looking at the time as is my custom but at some point I feel like it is starting to come on seems like maybe a half hour or so has passed? One of my only three power items is a little brass bell it's handle shaped and imprinted with the shell of a tortoise and I close my eyes and ring it gently next to left ear to see if there are any closed eyed visuals but no so I decide to go into the bathroom and brush my teeth of the lingering funk of the aborts. The sound of the bell it's vibration is also intended to dispel any negative energy or spirits as well. 

By the time I am in the bathroom, I feel them coming on strong now so much so that I feel looking in the mirror may not be the best thing at this point since I do not want to get carried away into a heavy trip but to focus on the healing attempt and while not even sure this strategy is best, I go with it. But suddenly I find myself closing my eyes as my head tilts back still standing in front of the bathroom mirror as my head explodes with visions the likes I've which I had never known before. I am in a desert landscape and arising from the dust like a dust devil is a whirlwind vortex rotating counter clockwise as I stare at it in wonder it becomes a double helix of a DNA strand whirling formed of skull masks that look like Aztec Death Masks shaped like human skulls and there are .. millions of them? They are the grains of sand forming this rising vortex whirlwind and within the eye socket of each mask I see human eyes that are alive staring out and, as is not uncommon I had noticed even tripping on LSD, I seem to be able to see each individual mask, each set of human eyes, as well as the whole whirling DNA strand of masks rising up into the sky at once and as I actually tilt my head back, I feel myself falling and snap open my eyes holding fast onto the sink now and staring at myself there in the mirror, eyes lit up like car lights in the wet night.

Whoa. I smile, you little stinkers, I knew you would try to carry me away! I whisper to myself in the mirror.

Even eyes open just looking at myself there staring back, I feel myself again going now going away and I close my eyes and call upon the Great Blue Whale and visualize the Whale in my minds eye and to my astonishment, it works and dispels the Aztec Death Mask DNA strands obviously trying their best to take me away. Normally O my would that have worked a real attention getter! The healing I assert and open my eyes returning quickly to the bed fortunately only a few steps away in the hotel room. As I lay down next to my still unconscious bride, I feel a little better about my intention to not be carried off into this trip but rather to try to bare down on it with some control. This is such a counter intuitive thing for me to do. I lay on my side with my wife on her side behind me and she curls up next to me and puts her arm over my side and I pull it gentle over and place her hand upon my heart and hold it there with both my hands and I pray and breathe deeply and before I know it, I'm in this strange lucid dream state that I had once before on my first high dose experience. As before, it is very real and does not seem at all like a dream rather like I am in some alternative reality. My last thought I could recall was upon The Blue Whale visualizing it mainly, the vague thought of “help me”. I am aware that I am within a mushroom experience that is the strange thing and I am standing upon what seems like clouds but it is solid and standing next to me is The Blue Whale. I look over at it in wonder. It is enormous and it is as if it is standing upright next to me towering above me like a building.

A stern, demanding voice startles me away from the Blue Whale, “Why are you here!” It booms deeply.

I see then before me and just above two men who look like business men (maybe doctors?) only they are in white, flowing robes like perhaps priests might wear? The are standing behind a pure, white marble alter that comes up to about their waist and behind them is a single white column and from behind the column shines a blindingly white light but I stand with the whale just in the shadow of the column enabling me to see them but still they are cast in a halo glow. The one on my right had spoken but both of them are glaring down at me and I have the strong sense that I am not suppose to be here. They are obviously not happy about it! I cannot speak the deep, boom of his voice has rattle me to the core as my mind fumbles, “for the healing” but before I can translate it into words, the other one on my left says in the most disdainful tone speaking to the Blue Whale, “THIS is what you bring us, now?” And the way he says “THIS” is clearly referring to me and clearly implies that to these two I am evidently less welcome than dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.

The Great Blue Whale says simply, “He is with me” and just rewriting this years later now brings me to tears how it made me feel. I have never felt so comforted and validated in my whole life before or since. 
The two look at each other then and I sense that the Blue Whale clearly pulls some weight with them. A significant beat passes then the disdainful one on my left says prissily almost, “Well, alright then so it shall be!” and he then takes is right arm and winds it around in a full circle dramatically once, twice, thrice and with the third circle flings something invisible at me underhanded the way one might pitch a softball and I feel an electric shock in my heart and “wake up” there on the bed feeling my wife's hand blown off my chest just as I make a startled cry and fly out of the bed. My wife wakes and looks at me and I somehow manage to say, “it's nothing” and she rolls over to her other side and goes back to sleep while I try to catch my breath with some difficulty. I am trembling and very aware of what just happened in fact just being back in the room instead of there where I was is blowing my mind and I find myself looking around the motel room in wonder, “what the hell,” I mutter softly. Both my dogs are now at my feet and I manage to kneel and pet them and tell them everything is alright. They are obviously disturbed. I plop down in the straight back chair at the desk next to the bed and put my head in my hands, closing my eyes -

MISTAKE!

I open my eyes immediately just closing them and I'm gone again and I think about it now trying to reason with myself, grappling with what just happened – what DID just happen? I think back to it and replay it in my mind that electric jolt to my heart from that … that … what? Priest? Healer? How could a healer be such a fucking asshole? Did it actually blow her hand away or did I throw her hand away when I startled and jumped out of bed – yes, I think that must be it, I pushed her hand off me is all? I think well maybe the fact that her hand was on my heart was why he sent that charge into it? I take the joint I had rolled and step outside to burn one trying to get a handle on things. The dogs want to go out but just the thought of placing leashes on them and then holding onto the leashes – O that is far too much! It would be all I could do to light the joint. By the clock, it looks like I had been out maybe an hour, hour and a half? Very strange, I think, now outside smoking gratefully, usually so much happens and I feel like how does all that is in the trip get packed into so little real time back “here” but this time I find myself wondering what happened it seemed pretty fast “in the trip” just the Great Blue Whale and I standing before the two … asshole healers … then boom I'm out and back here and yet had to be over an hour's time passed?

I test closing my eyes and powerful closed eyed visuals explode each time and I think well OK the healing is over maybe so I can just relax and enjoy this? But somehow that feels wrong and I resist it and just want to come down. I am oddly down like I can walk and function pretty well, considering? I go back in and began writing it up and it is very hard looking at the computer screen the letters are very tiny and seem to be at the end of a long tube and as I write it up, I think that I should cut my finger and have my wife take some of the blood. No, that's crazy!

No, do it.

I get some yogurt out of the fridge and spend a long ten minutes having a surprisingly difficult time just pricking my finger but finally did so and bleed a single drop onto a small spoonful of yogurt and look at it bright red against the pale vanilla yogurt - “Inoculation” comes to mind strongly. The mushrooms are insistent, “Inoculation” they mean for me to inoculate her with some of them that is in my blood, however tiny an amount that it might be. They are adamant that I do so. I wake her as gentle as I can and to my surprise, she takes the teaspoon of yogurt smiling and then just goes right back to sleep.

I sit on the floor and cry then thinking, “OK this is over”. And it is. I considered it a failed healing attempt nothing dramatic happens in terms of my wife's healing. I spend the rest of the day it seems fully coming down.

Extremely Short Story, A Field Trip!

A drone from an alien race far, far away comes across earth and does it's job reconnoitering the third planet from this galaxy's sun finding it to be barren of any lifeforms whatsoever. In nearby galaxy where the aliens have a science station, one of their astro-archaeologists gets the transmission from the drone that includes among other information a photograph of Mount Rushmore.

She shares the photo of Mount Rushmore with her co worker and asks, “from that dead Galaxy XW42753, this the third planet from the sun, what do you think?”

After a moment, the co worker responds, “clearly wasn't always dead and if any of them were to have had life, likely would have been this one - vaguely humanoid. I say you and I go take a look, get the hell out of here," smiling broadly. "Wholly unnecessary but who doesn't love a field trip!”

“By the scale of what we have here, obviously going to be another case of a high tech self destruction pretty much the same developmental place as usual, guessing … but, I agree let's get the hell out of here!” She, also smiling broadly.

It was a true miracle that never ceased to astound her that their people had somehow made it past this extinction zone in sentient, planetary evolution. Anyway, she could only agree - who doesn't love a field trip.

Following the Mushroom Path - The Beginning

Voice Phenomenon - very interested to hear (no pun intended) other experiences with this? 

I read somewhere once that full auditory hallucination happens more with lower doses and that certainly was true for me happening three times all on fairly low dosage as I was titrating up at the beginning of my own work with psilocybin for healing. These three episodes happening on three consecutive weekends.

1) Three grams dried cubensis on a Sunday mid day alone my two bedroom rambler. It was a late fall day and fairly warm so I recall right after actually eating the three grams going all through the house and opening all the windows to let in as much fresh air as possible. (I stayed inside wasn't sure how I would be reacting and in a fairly conservative suburban neighborhood in the city - this was my first try with them) Sitting down in chair kicked back just in quiet, I felt them coming on and thought it felt like I recalled LSD trips coming on many years earlier when I had tripped a lot in my youth. It felt like a roller coasting easing up to the very top just before cascading down the big run and suddenly with eyes closed I had a vision of myself as if looking down from above watching a videotape of myself going through the house a few minutes earlier opening all the windows and as I am seeing this, a voice as if someone sitting right next to me says clearly, "you inhabit your body the way your body inhabits this house" ... and that was it and I felt myself come right down as if the roller coaster had come to the bottom and just stopped - time to get out.

It seemed as if that is all that this experience was meant to "do" for me?

2) The next weekend similar as above same chair quiet Sunday mid-morning this time 3.2 grams and similar feeling going up with a sense of peaking in fact thought, "O here we go" just a strong sense that "this is it" and again I hear plain and clear as if someone were sitting right next to me, "Light is God". I should note here that I kind of interpreted this "statement" in a manner that would become common later when another type of voice phenomena kicked in. Somehow I "knew" that what (they) meant was, "the closest thing to what you humans think of as a 'God', is light". Again, a quick almost complete comedown again as if this was the "point" of the whole experience. This also while I didn't realize it at the time introduced me to the later form of voice phenomenon that lasted for months without even taking psilocybin in the manner of the voice being very succinct need me to fill out the full meaning, often. I should note that in all case the voice/s (never was clear if singular or plural) were alien to me and not something arising from my own unconscious.

3) The very next weekend, same set, now 3.6 grams and as this comes on feels considerably stronger than before and I have clear sense that this will "do it" - although, must admit that was not quite clear what "doing it" would entail? To be clear, I was not expecting to hear a voice with this at all and in this case even though I had heard this voice the past two times, still was not expecting that to happen. But I hear that same voice again clear as if someone were sitting right next to me say, "you haven't crossed over yet" and again that strange sense of starting to peak then just coming right down but this time I am smiling from ear to ear and thinking, "YES! So you CAN cross over!" and I felt ecstatic with hope. Unfortunately, due to some problems in the grow room, as it were, I was out of ammo and went on to have several more "crop failures" so that it was a couple months before I could continue my efforts.

These were the only times I heard any kind of auditory hallucination. After my breakthrough experience with five grams, I went into a state of mania lasting five days during which time I did not sleep at all. By the end of these five days, as you might imagine - working long hours the whole time this being Monday through Friday - I was getting pretty punchy. I did lay down for three hours and quiet my mind as best I could each night laying in a kind of light meditative state. This whole time I had a strange feeling in the left top side of my head with a feeling as if a beam of energy were constantly beaming into my head right there. It was a visceral feeling and at times was like I could almost hear a sizzling sound. I was sitting at my desk in despair on Friday evening having told no one about this having done it all alone for security reasons with my head in my hands thinking, "holy fuck I have broke my fucking head, man. I really did it. What the hell is going ON HERE!?"

Then a thought "spoke" to me in my head but this was like nothing that had ever happened to me before I can tell you that. I like to think that I was a reasonably intelligent and sane person if having been suffering from severe depression for most of my adult life now 47. All I can say is this "thought" was clearly not my own thought. It seemed clearly to come from the same source as the auditory voice I had heard months earlier on the lower dosages. It seemed to be responding to my heartfelt head in hands question as to what the hell was going on with me since this trip by stating, "I am the New Creature. I am here to save the biosphere".

Mother of God was something of my response to this. Then nothing else I had no idea what this meant but afterward for months a thought-voice in my mind interacted with me only one other time making what I would call a universal statement like this one but otherwise directing itself to my personal emotional and spiritual growth constantly interacting with me and my own thoughts in the most loving, compassionate, wise manner I could imagine showing me more love than I had ever experienced in my entire life and helping me over this time become my own friend within the confines of my mind instead of my worst detractor.

The Machine - short Essay

Maybe at the very core of the fantastic mind control exercised upon especially it seems the American people for at least decades is this unshakable belief that once every four years we the people get to assert ourselves by electing a savior figure who we seem to believe with blatantly unfounded certainty will then act as our champion and right the wrongs we feel are set upon us. It's metronomic , man, you can hear it coming if you put your ear down right upon the railroad tracks. The rigid form of it all and repetitive nature hint at the fact that what our collective selves have become now is not a nation but actually a machine. Perhaps it is better to say that the machine has become us but either way we are the nuts and bolts of this gargantuan metal thing that now spans the wide world with its most obvious manifestation being the military covering now the surface of the earth and under the surface of the earth, the vast oceans of the earth and under the oceans and the air above the earth even into space. But the machine is as subtle as it is rigid not subject to the human weakness of cognitive dissonance so spreads itself out through the land in every direction taking the form of roads, wires, above and underground cables and connections of all kinds while also, of course, lighting up digital networks of unfathomable complexity and most profoundly and insidiously perhaps this machine we have become reaches seamlessly across time and space via the nearly invisible pathways of our own minds humming and chirping with power some of us hear it constantly calling this phenomenon, tinnitus. I try to resist the inexorable machinations but if truth be told it is the machine itself that types these words as much as “I” do so. Like characters in a science fiction movie wherein some other worldly intelligence infects humanity like a virus this machine the manifestation of what has been called the trans-humanist agenda thought erroneously to be off somewhere in the near future moves through us now with all the cheerful alacrity of a meme.

 

Burning Bridges - short-short story

The three of them sit watching impassively through a ghostly fog the long, winding tail of some ancient, defeated army in straggling retreat tattered white flags flagging limply overhead in the still, cold air. No one says a word heads mostly bowed as light but steady drizzle falls. It is their army after all and at this point what is there left to say of this sad parade?

When the last of it has passed and crossed the bridge, the pessimistic, craggy faced commander of their most unholy trinity says, “here we go again”, spitting without much conviction into the mud. “Check the powder,” he tells the optimistic youngest of the three, getting up slowly from the old tree stump they are sitting on.

“Why bother,” says the middle one, “it's either wet, or it's dry”, still seated, “and if it's wet, nothing much to be done about it”.

“If it's wet,” the youngest says heading over to the wagon, “then we might as well just follow on and forget about this bridge”.

The commander stretching grandly yawns loudly then tells the middle one to go move the horses who are too skeletal to eat at this point over to another patch of ground with a few fronds of river grass sticking up from the desolate earth. The middle one does so without complaint for he knows the horses are at least as hungry as they are, poor bastards. Plus they are needed or else the three of them would have to pull the damn wagon themselves.

“Boss,” says the middle one, “maybe we should be eating this river grass ourselves” only half serious, laughing and then coughing.

“Goddamn miracle, powders dry” announces the optimistic one, glint in his green eyes glowing slightly in the diffused evening light of the fog. He stands next to the wagon, tall and thin anyway but as skeletal now as the two horses with his sharp high cheek bones very well chiseled by the hardships of near starvation and defeat. He grabs a net out of the wagon and follows the commander down to the river bank where the commander throws in fishing line baited with worms they had picked up earlier off of the surface of the sodden earth.

The commander baits their one hook and tosses it out into the dark, slow moving water while the middle one joins the optimistic one below where the commander has his line to have their first go with the net, a two man job. The middle ones hands are shaking a little, his short, thick fingers, and he knows not why as the optimistic one joins him and they spread the net then heave it out as far and wide as they both can manage in one, practiced grunt. He's a head shorter than the optimistic one but his squat, big boned body is perhaps more powerful than the two others put together.

“May God give us some fish tonight,” the middle one says as the net settles and they begin to pull.

“At least we have some potatoes and some of that scallion I found the other night left,” says the optimistic one pulling.

The commander quietly watches and feels his line keeping his prayers to himself. He looks over to see the first cast of the net come up empty and watches the two move a little ways down river to heave another toss.

Dusk finds the commander back at the wagon starting a small fire next to the wagon to cook some dinner of potato, scallion and four goodly sized fish gathered by net. The fire is no easy task even though the drizzle has abated with the world so thoroughly soaked from the early Winter rains now upon them for the last week.

“Why don't we have any security with us?” the middle one asks the commander, “it's a little spooky here all by ourselves”.

“The general doesn't think they're dogging us any longer,” the commander answers.

“I trust he's right,” the optimistic one says, “or if he's not right, I hope at least that no one slays us until after we eat”.

“If no one is dogging us,” the middle one asks, “then why are we bothering to burn the bridge still, I thought that was the general's point to slow down their pursuit?”

“The general's not taking any chances is why” the commander explains. After blowing a small fire to life, the commander says, “good news is this is the last bridge to burn and we'll be on home ground… bad news is, the way things are looking, we may be here a week before we get a dry enough spell to get the job done.'

They all three look over to the bridge a bit wistfully where they can see only the first third or so of it due to the combination of the fog and the quickly settling dusk falling around them.

“We're expendable,” the optimistic one says thoughtfully, “I mean … I guess that's how he looks at it. Just the three of us if worse comes to worst.”

“Three men, sure,” confirms the commander, “we're expendable”.

Failed Trip Report

Trinity Site, New Mexico
By David Sky

New Mexico? Where to even start this story? Such a weird place overall just gives off these Alien vibes, this very strange energy. If a flying saucer were to rise up over a craggy, red rock cliff, would almost seem like it belonged there ... hard to explain but you stand around alone out in that high desert for a while and you might see what I mean.

So I'll start here kind of zoom in past wilderness areas mostly in the high mountains as sublimely beautiful as any location on earth to the south central area of the state a vast high desert with nothing much standing higher than sagebrush and where to this very day there are precious few humans as you drive for hours sometimes before noticing a driveway leading to a ranch. The mountains here are treeless and barren in their beauty. Six to nine inches of rain per year is all that stands between life in death for the entire ecosystem. While for sure possessing a rugged beauty, the landscape yet wore on me in ways I never would have anticipated. Walking out anywhere meant coming into contact with a flora and fauna always to me appearing on the verge of dying from thirst and I found that this just made me uptight constantly setting off the alarm of that unfortunate childhood gift, “hyper-vigilance”. It made me look up at the sky expectantly even though I knew that it had not rained in a month or more and likely wouldn't be raining for another month or more. The constant clear blue sky such a sharp electric blue that it almost hurt my eyes to look at actually began to get on my nerves after a while.

“Dammit man, hang in here, Everybody, it's got to rain eventually” I'd often mutter aloud, a nervous tic and a kind of incantation - “Everybody” being an inclusive handle covering a lot of ground like every barely living thing out there.

But I made some peace by buying a place up at 7,000 feet on the eastern side of the 12,000 Sierra Blanca mountain on a steep mountainside surrounded by pine forest this oasis of green on the edge of the million acre Lincoln National Forest only 130 miles north of the Mexican border. The various mountain ranges rise up like little islands of green punctuating the vast sea of near-death high desert nothingness that dominates so much of this state, the 5th largest by landmass in the USA.

My ex wife now read about how the historic Trinity Site a national monument to the first test of an atomic bomb (only in America) has an open house for visitors only twice per year and it was coming up the following weekend. My first thought was, No. Hell no. But then a plan blossomed up from the desert of my unconscious rising up verdant and beautiful to me like the high mountain forests of New Mexico and I said, “O yes that sounds interesting”. It was only about a two hour drive to the northwest of where we lived in the little vacation village of Ruidoso.

The next Sunday we were off on a very interesting trip winding down out of the high mountains through the Lincoln National Forest – home of the real Smokey the Bear. Driving northwest away from the 12,000 Sierra Blanca that involved losing 3000 vertical feet in elevation over about twenty miles and when you look back up to the mountains above, it looks to me like something worthy of worship under the nearly always bright auspices of a New Mexico sun. Here in the flatland down below some hedonists maniacs with tons of cash had built a sprawling suburban infrastructure of paved streets with street lights and infrastructure of electricity, water wells and septic areas all on twenty acre plots out literally in the middle of nowhere with a green golf course in the middle of it appearing about as out of place as I feel most of the time trying to sell the lots for preposterous sums this land that the BLM can't honestly give away. There were exactly two rather large homes within the huge development all visible since there is not a solitary tree in sight.

“You get a 20 acre lot!” a sign bragged. 20 acres all practically gasping their last gasp, I thought. No thank you never was much into golf it's a bourgeois sport.

About 15 minutes out from the gate into this Trinity Site Nuclear National Monument, I take out of my shirt pocket 3 dried grams of Psilocybin Cubensis mushrooms that I had grown myself – this a strain called Amazonian – and begin chewing on them.

“Seriously?” my wife asks, shaking her head, never a fan of my mushroom experiments.

“I told you about this last week. It's a dirty job but by God it's got to be done. We'll be at the gate in fifteen minutes and I won't start tripping for 40 minutes and it's a small dose, anyway, so it's not like I'll be getting out of hand. I'm sure a lot of people marvel religiously at this wondrous monument. I anticipate this being a highly internal process. Not like I'll flip out and embarrass you,” I promise as reassuringly as I could trying to exude confidence reassuringly , never an easy thing for me.

“So what then you can through some psychic alchemy or something, you were saying transform the negative energy from the bomb into positive energy? … it's that fantasy you we're talking about, just to be clear? Jesus I thought you were joking. I should have known by now you weren't,” she says with practiced incredulity.

“That's the one.” I insisted a little indignantly, “It's an honest plan of noble intent”.

So I chew the three grams slowly allowing them to dissolve as much as I can in my mouth as Jana' drives on toward the gate. The government only opens this monument twice a year for public visitation of the site.

When the gate finally comes into view, she says, “you know you're insane, right”. It isn't a question and I ignore it.

I am now starting to feel excited about the plan and look forward to channeling the power of an atomic blast, praying silently for strength and protection. “This is not insane. This is history we are making, you should be psyched”.

Then we drive up to the gate to find it closed and locked not a soul in sight, a drab outbuilding inside the high, barb wire topped fencing a couple hundred yards away with a lone car that appeared to have government plates parked outside. Big Signs in enormous block letters have very intimidating warnings about trespassing.

“Damn,” Jana' says. “ Apparently, the open house was Saturday, not Sunday”. She looks at me laughing. “I'm kind of relieved, I have to admit. Sorry though. Can you draw your psychotic energy from out here?”

I ignore the psychotic energy remark but it is kind of funny looking around at nothing realizing that this really and truly is the middle of nowhere and back when the bomb was exploded in 1945, was no doubt even more so. I think, of course, of Oppenheimer's, “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” and how he got that from the Bhagavad Gita and the thought strikes me that this wasn't likely the first hydrogen bomb exploded on earth – and the mushrooms aren't even coming on yet. One thing the mushrooms had already taught me is that everything always happens for some good reason even if I can't fathom what that might be so I shrug it off.

“Let's go down to that restaurant near 25 by the Rio Grande that has the micro-brews on draft, what do you think?”

“Sure,” she says, turning around in the dry dust of nowhere, “it's only another 50 miles or so.” Distance in New Mexico is a relative thing for sure.

The three grams hits me about half way to the restaurant a lot harder than I had anticipated and I make a mental note to nail the opening day at this Trinity Site next year and give this another shot.

But I don't.