It calls to me, this thing I’m doing, I was lying by the pool when I heard it tickle. It waits for me to sit down, open my lap top, be here. I rarely know what I’m going to write. Today in the morning sunshine that slants from the back casting shadows of bougainvillea across our sun beds, not yet the laser heat of afternoon when we’ll move the parasols to find shade, we talked about psychedelics in medicine and the use of ketamine. It’s the only one that’s already legal in the UK, a clinic in Bristol is rolling out its use for PTSD, anxiety, chronic pain and depression. We used to use it a lot in Australia, not the we who drink our coffee together here but me and old friends from there who brought it from India disguised as rose water. We use to dry it out on plates in that harsh light, the crystals appearing in sparkling form on tin. Mostly we snorted it at parties, a breakfast of champions, a line and a shot of vodka at the ironing board we used as a bar, but my friend liked to mainline and I did it a few times to see. I was telling my friend here how I never knew the depth and breadth of its psychedelic properties until I shot it in my veins and it shot me, faster than DMT, a supersonic speed to the place of its existence, so fast I recall a travel sickness, a g-force too much. She loved it. I stepped back. It frightened me. And now its medicinal use is at the forefront of medicine, this way to help people who’ve tried everything else; I hope it will become the first port of call, not the last, and I don’t mean ketamine singularly but all of them, the march of psychedelics as medicine. I’ve been practising a DIY version for quite a while now. Six months before the black box opened in my head and all the truths came tumbling out, the jigsaw puzzle made sensible and complete, I’d been taking high grade THC in capsules, not knowing but feeling the call and the drive, that tickling, the same that brings me every day to here, to say something out loud. A wider knowing, a drop of consciousness that knows itself as part of a whole, that has the whole picture. On my best days this experience of that connection is all the connection I need.
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I have friends who are exploring psychedelics as treatment for mental and emotional health issues. It won't be something I do. But I certainly hope that it helps them.
More brilliant writing sending us places, taking us places with each sentence, each description.......