u/AtLeastIHaveDresses

I’ve worked in hospitality for over 20 years and the number of people I’ve seen with savage sunburn on overcast days is significant. The UV index is still 9/10 at that altitude and you can and will burn despite a bit of cloud cover. Protect your skin!

WOOOOOOO!

I threw my back out in Friday. It’s the worst it’s ever been. I can barely walk and can’t stand upright for more than 10 seconds. I texted him for water and he made me wait 45 mins before bringing a cup with ice and telling me I could fill it myself at my sink. He then left the water and other items out of reach. He only came back to hand them to me when I asked pointedly in the family group chat if he could come back and bring me the stuff that he left out of my reach.

Later griped that “he just laid down” (in the middle of the day) and left the room seconds after dropping off food (also out of my reach) This was the fourth literal time in 3 days he did anything at all for me. I still can’t get to my kitchen. The griping was bc I asked him to bring me some snacks from my car to tide me over so I wouldn’t have to ask him to bring me food again that day.

I feel like I am trapped in Hell. Hell must be being totally helpless and having someone who actually hates you be the only one around to help.

Imma use the actual track in my own defense, ofc.

Watch your speed, folks. This song is way too much fun to drive to.

Me: sitting in my car jamming to some Stereolab waiting for my pickup order

You: IS THAT A KING GIZZ LICENSE PLATE?!

We’ll both be on the floor at FH rave night. Coincidentally was there to pick up a new Apple pencil to finish making an art card for that show. Sorry I was just a bit too high on edibles to trade deets. DM me and I’ll make sure you get a card.

The guy who got to the KGLW plate before me lives in a neighboring town. If you wanna start a fan club I’m down

Okay. It’s been a hot minute, like.. maybe 4-5 years since penetrative sex. I’m 50, have been in full blown meno w no periods for 3 years. I don’t struggle as much as I used to with other symptoms (besides rage but I’m gonna blame that on my soon to be ex husband for brevity) so I’d rather pass on HRT. I’ve been using estrogen cream on a tight posterior fourchette (the tissue across the 6’ o clock position so to speak) for about a week bc that’s my main problem but do I need dialators? If so what kind? Once past that tight spot of tissue I don’t think there’s a problem but as things stand now there’s no way I could accommodate any size penis, it’d be like trying to shove a cucumber into an elderly mouse’s earhole. What do we think? (I’ve been to pelvic floor PT for other issues and it helped me with those but I kinda loathed being touched that intimately in a clinical setting and it would also be expensive + a long drive.)

Normally I would focus on the cool trippy things I saw or felt, but this is a medically-focused recovery-centered trip report for a very important reason: to help other people like me. Yes yes I love a good party but this is serious.

I am an older woman in menopause, and I also have a cPTSD diagnosis. It’s a bit like a nervous system blowout. Like using a DC center negative power supply on a center positive device. Short-circuited. The smallest breath of a perceived threat is enough to trigger a somatic response that can put me in a state of internal fight/flight/freeze even when my higher brain hasn’t realized what even happened. If it escalates, I can: freeze up and be unable to speak entirely for hours, self harm, become despondent enough to want to die, experience physiological reactions to extreme stress (once my hands curled up and locked to my wrists and I tried to use a stick to uncurl them bc I was so confused).

My partner shares quite a bit of the same trauma history as I. Very different presentations, but many same wounds. For 20 years, we have done a remarkable job building a functional and loving (if odd and unconventional) relationship and raising our children to be shockingly well adjusted considering what a mess their parents are.

Recently, due to many factors, we realized our healing journeys HAVE TO diverge for a time because we kicked that can down the road for 20 years. And if we ever find our way back together healthily, we beat the greatest odds there are. It’s practically a goddamn national tragedy. There aren’t enough words for the pain and anguish of divorcing the love of your life because it’s the only shot you have at ever being a better partner for ANYONE and not dying a bitter, hate filled lonely old woman.

In this context, I traveled back to my home city to see some gal pals I haven’t really partied with in 30 years for ladies-only mesc-fueled pool party.

I knew that on paper I was challenging every principle of set and setting that exists. Wrenching, emotionally agonizing divorce. Uncertainty about the future. Processing the profound loss of certain aspects of the relationship that were crucial to my mental health (the support of HIS parents, my “found family” among them.. I have been honest with my MIL that I love her more than my own covert narc of a mother).

It was a leap of true faith. I never felt anything to fear in this psychedelic space. But I was also partying w some ladies that are blunt and can tend towards undiplomatic or harsh. I had to be prepared to go fuck off in my own little world, so I did. We began at the time I like to begin, 11am. I brought my DAWless travel rig of synthesizers and a midi controller and studio headphones in case I needed to block everyone out. My dose was about 630mg fumarate.

For twelve hours I was made whole. It was accessing the entirety of my being of who I was before anyone hurt me. I could see it all. I laughed at it even. I radically forgave everyone in my life for being complicated and I didn’t START by forgiving myself, I FINISHED by forgiving myself so completely that I released such a weight of regret and self-doubt I felt like I threw off fifty sandbags from my body. My soul soared above all of the hurt and pain effortlessly. I was born again anew as a newborn baby just cracking open it’s eyes to the first light.

We all know how much the damaged brain loves a shortcut from hard work. But I was unencumbered by pain, so why would I seek to avoid accountability? If accountability doesn’t feel bad because I have radically forgiven myself, what’s to fear from accountability? It’s just truth. Truth isn’t scary. It’s just the truth. I know what being codependent on anything feels like on the inside. This is not that.

This is not a post about the amazing entire universe that bloomed and lived and loved and died in my synth tracks during the time I put on my headphones for solitude. This is not a post about the numbers of layers of color that are present in the pitch black darkness of my eye mask. This is not a post about the extreme fits of laughter my friends and I had about the weirdest tangents. All those things happened but that is not why this medicine is important.

Mescaline has given me the power to see myself unblinkingly, so totally, and lovingly that light is cast into every shadowed corner of my mind and it turns out that the only demons that were hiding there were false constructions in my own mind.. made in a time of sickness.. I was using to torment MYSELF because that was the only pattern I learned that thought *comes in*.

I’m so so so grateful. I’ve deleted some old trip
reports off here but never this one. This is the important one. I will owe a lifetime debt of gratitude to the plant, to the peoples who came before me in the history of the plant, to the people who made the tek possible, for the people in this very subreddit who turn out in the comments when people try to cast aspersions on the “medicine” framing.

It’s really real. I’m so glad.