Remember that section of Craigslist? Where you can… I don’t know, supposedly find someone who you felt connection to but never actually exchanged numbers with? I remember one night I idly scrolled through the posts, fascinated by the display of humanity.
It reminded me of my coming of age years before cell phones when things like that really happened. You could meet a friend or a crush, and then never have a way to find them again.
I was reminded of it again because of my oldest. Last year, his Spanish teacher was a dear Jamaican granny of a woman whose room was full of empowering posters. She clearly had a passion for teaching and the best interests of her students at heart. Then she abruptly left that November.
I left on a chilly, bleak Tuesday afternoon. My family drove me to the train station, and I got on the train and sat, disbelieving, as it headed south towards New York. I read, dozed a little, and tested the new data plan the Chaplain had set up for me that would work on both sides of the Atlantic.
I arrived in the New York after six. I wasn’t in a rush and had time to come above ground at Penn Station and wander a few blocks in a few different directions. I hadn’t been to that part of New York at night in ages. The huge LCD billboards were new to me. There was a man playing pop on a saxophone, the sound soulfully bouncing off the buildings. I dipped into a tiny pizza place and bought a slice, then stopped in another place for a fruit smoothie.
From Penn Station, a train to Jamaica would connect me to the Airtrain to JFK. The process was super easy and I made it to the check-in line at the airport in plenty of time, which is good, because check-in was long and disorganized. That was my first preview of what to expect from my budget airline, and it was a trend that would continue with abysmal and insanely expensive food on the flight.
Usually, flying for me involves a great deal of anxiety. I love travel, but flying is a means to an end. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped on a plane, and I dread the thought of using the airplane lavatory. I usually prepare for a flight with dramamine, and I’d brought my CBD oil. I did take the dramamine, but didn’t need anything else, and didn’t find the flight to be stressful. As it turns out, when you aren’t responsible for anyone besides yourself, a flight is surprisingly uneventful.
When I first heard Michael Pollan’s interview on Fresh Air, then read his book, I knew I was onto something. I would read articles on Medium about microdosing LSD and wonder if I had the balls to ask friends to ask friends until I found someone I knew that knew how to get some. But we live in Trump’s America, and my husband is a legal resident, not a U.S. citizen. Doing something illegal and putting my family at risk wouldn’t be worth it.
During this time, the Chaplain and I were deep in talks about if, how, and when I should pursue trying psychedelics for personal development, spiritual breakthrough, and relief from depression and anxiety. We started with a fuzzy goal of wanting to make it happen by around my 40th birthday.
I wiki’d where it was legal to use psilocybin, a substance that has shown real promise for treating depression and anxiety. I came up with two places that seemed like they might work. I started with Jamaica. I was specifically looking for a guided retreat. I wanted it to be a safe, purposeful experience, and I wanted to get as much bang for my buck as I could. The retreats offered in Jamaica sounded amazing – a week long, with three different psilocybin experiences during the week with a day in between each one. The cost was about two grand, not including airfare. But cost aside, I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to leave my family for that long. Or if I even needed to do it three times.
Given the specs of the Jamaica retreat, I knew it would require waiting and saving, which I was OK with. But I was feeling very stuck. So now that I had an idea about the legality of it, I just searched, “guided psilocybin retreats” and up popped the Netherlands. Instead of saying, “Yes! It’s legal!,” the Netherlands chooses a more subtle approach of allowing it without condoning it. The retreats in the Netherlands were significantly shorter (a weekend) and significantly cheaper (even with airfare). Also, an important factor for me – they offered women’s-only retreats.
It’s December 6. While I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, I found out that’s the day the Dutch celebrate Christmas. The day I arrived was the day they turned on the Christmas lights. It felt meant to be.
Today, I got updated Ancestry DNA results – that put the Netherlands smack in the center of two overlapping circles, my own Venn Diagram of genealogy. So, I’m celebrating some Dutch heritage, and feeling festive.
This week, I’ve been watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating chocolate-covered raisins, and meditating for 40-50 minutes a day. Last year, I was doing two of those things. I’ll let you guess which ones.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up a series of posts about my trip. I’m feeling an apprehension that I haven’t felt before about posting. Sure, I felt a twinge about the sex books, but this trip feels bigger than that.
I could whitewash it. But as they say, if you’re going to lie, you’d better hope you have a good memory. I don’t, which is why I write everything down. So I’d rather tell the truth than try to keep my story straight.
I went to the Netherlands because what I wanted to do is illegal in the U.S. That makes some people uncomfortable.
I don’t want to put a disclaimer up about my content, but I do want to invite you, if you choose to keep scrolling when those posts start coming, to keep an open heart and to stay curious. It’s been a phrase that has been coming up in my life for 3/4 of a year now – that invitation to stay curious.
It’s a lot easier said than done. I often get judgemental, indignant, and hurt before I remember the part about curiosity. So go ahead and feel those other things, too. But remember the curiosity.
When I’m packing for a trip, I always spend some time working out which books to bring and how many. I typically think I’ll read more than I actually get to. I also usually travel with my family. But this most recent trip, I’d be traveling alone. So the books I was bringing were going to get my full attention. Also, I was going on retreat, so it was important that I was putting the right stuff in. I needed to bring books that were physically lightweight and easy to carry since I was traveling alone and not checking any bags.
In addition, I was super, skin-crawling anxious ahead of this trip, and knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything too heady or deep, at least on the way there.
Crazy Rich Asians met the criteria on all counts.
