The World's Most Dangerous Road (cont)
“What is wrong with friend?,” the old man asked.
“He was knocked unconscious by an alpaca. The doctor said he was just sleeping. When he woke up, well, look.”
“Pfaaaaaaaaaaaf”
“Ah, yes. I see this once before. Spirit of friend and spirit of alpaca tie together. Only medicine of plant bring back to normal. I study medicine since young boy. You want? Yes?” Suddenly it all clicked. Jason had heard of these types of folk before. Witch doctors they were called. He was skeptical but what else could be done? After all they were thousands of miles away from home.
“Just fix him please.”
“You want medicine too?”
“Oh what the hell. I’m not going to let Tim do this alone.”
The old man set a pair of cups in front of the two friends. There was a strange brown liquid mysteriously brewing inside. One sniff almost made Jason puke.
“Okay, now drink. You may feel a little funny.”
posted by Chris Fleites @ 6:11 PM
6 Comments:
Caballeroso!
Is this a real story, cause if it is....you hav eto inform me about your ayahuasca Xperience....
Great writing by the way....
hey alan,
The story is both real and fictious, based on the south american travels of my roomate Jake and his friend Tim. While the plotline is made up, Jake and Tim did go down the world's most dangerous road on bike and they did meet a shaman who initiated them into the Ayahuasca experience. While these events do not relate to any particular occurance in my life in the future i fully intend to be an active participator in the rain jungle's medicinal rapture and see how it relates to the cornucopia of spiritual exploration this world is blessed with.
About four years ago another roomate, robbie, and i ordered Banisteriopsis Caapi (MAOI) and Syrian Rue rootbark (DMT). We boiled the mixtures separately for three hour and consumed it shortly thereafter. Apparantly i poured too much lime juice concentrate into the rue pot making it practiclly undrinkable. On top of that i didn't keep the MAOI down long enough and spend a good time heaving before any chance of absorption into my system. Robbie, on the other hand, made it and saw the world around him turn into sheets of liquid waves. While the experience was far removed from its typical contextual setting it was an interesting way to learn about what we were getting ourselves into. I recommend thorough research before you participate. Anyways, let me know if you have any questions. This is a topic thats dear to my little cat heart. Also, if you want an anthropological/philosophical perspective on these substances check out the writings of Terrence McKenna.
LoWa
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First, I sympathize with you completely and hope everything turned out fine in the end. Second, you're absolutely right there is a lot of misinformation out there that makes it difficult for people to make sincere choices about the substances they ingest. The prohibitionists exhaust their engerygy in pointing out the bad and the anti-prohibitionist exhaust their energies pointing out the good. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. However one can't deny that despite the fact that substance use is a relatively frequent facet of our culture, there are minimal incident rates (less than driving a car or even boozing). This is surprising considering the black market that illegality has created is primarily motivated by greed and quality control is practically non-existent. What's more surprising is that the actual rates of latent psuchological problems manifesting themselves in drug users occurs no more than the rates of the rest of the population. This, of course, is not to say that everyone go out and party, but that people must take the time and learn about the benefits and risks of the activities in which they plan to engage. ON top of this everyone is different and has the potential to react tot he same thing in different ways. My personal experiences have been both rewarding and at very few times tormenting. I too have since lost the lure and began exploring the space behind the veil through meditation and writing. The entire culture fascinates me though because right now it represents something more than opening dusty windows to let the air in. I see it as a struggle of personal freedom, of self command, of being in charge and takign responsability over what you do with your body. This is not the government's business and if as a people we are ever going to overcome this substance problem we aren't going to do it by having the government tell us what we can and can't do, we are going to have to do it ourselves.
Anyways a great site for information is erowid.org While they are blatantly anti-prohibitionist the site does not sink low by only exposing the sides of the issue that correspond to their stance. They look at the matter with an objective perspective telling both the good bad and ugly. They also have experience reports so you can get a taste of how these substances have affected those in the community.
I'm sorry you had a negative experience but look at the good that came out of it: meditation, discipline and lots of love. Your writing is great too. Sometimes we have to take a step back to move forward. I say it doesnt matter which way we take the step so long as we're moving.
LoWa
I totally agree with you my friend. Substance use has a lot of pros and cons, and its consumption should never be taken lightly. There are experiences beyond our control, unexplored states of mind that can transform us and make us see life through a different shade. I agree that my two months of insanity have at the end made me more appreciative of everything, but i feel that out there are many people that are coompletely lost and have no way of coming back. I am currently working with an organization that goes through the streets of Madrid (im dominican by the way), and we visit homeless people. Many of these people have developed severe mental illnesses after consuming hallucinoges such as LSD, Peyote and silocybin mushrooms and haven't had a chance to make it back to reality. I caught the train back cause all the support i got. In my case, i had always been a mentally healthy individual, and never felt deppresed in my life. But many of the people that go into Psychonautic exploration (im leaving out the hedonists and junkies), really have no idea of the grounds theyre getting into.
I agree Erowid.com is extremely anti-prohibisionits and sometimes it can mislead people looking into psychoexploration to be overly confident and falsely leads them into thinking that its a rather "safe matter", when is actually not. I disagree with you when you said that drug users have the same probability of suffering mental illnesses. After talking to many shrinks i found out that there are A LOT of people going into mental hospitals or under severe treatment after consuming hallucinogens, but that the family hides it because these types of problems bring shame and social criticism to the whole family. So to close my point i have to say that the numbers out there are of people that are having mental problems related to hallucinogens in particular are very misleading, and i would suggest you not to trust current Publications, cause you and me know how media works. We always finish up crashing into the wall of reality, finding out by ourselves how things really work.
Spirit of friend and spirit of alpaca tie together. <- Grrrreeeeeaaaattttt...
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