Mallory's Camera

It was 45° yesterday, so I tromped.

Pretty fabulous being outside without freezing!!!

The five-mile loop into Highland and back exhausted me, though.

When you’re old, you lose muscle mass and endurance very quickly.

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I had Big Plans to be Incredibly Productive when I got back from the tromp.

But I wasn’t.

My mind goes into such a fugue state when I tromp, like my whole metabolism decides to meditate. Very difficult to rebound from this state with any degree of what passes as competence in this world. Another reason why I hate winter: Prime tromping time for me is around 4:30 in the afternoon after I’ve put in a solid day of work. But, of course, in the winter, it’s night at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Since I couldn’t work, I watched Michael Pollan’s documentary How to Change Your Mind on Netflix.

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I like Michael Pollan’s musings on food a lot.

But his book about psychedelics? How to Change Your Mind?

I’d give that one a Meh-.

I read it when it was first published five years ago. I found it…. Well. Coy is the word that comes to mind.

It works well as a documentary, though.

I hadn’t seen that link between LSD culture and the Vietnam War protests myself. Makes sense, though.

So, Nixon’s declaration of the War on Drugs with then-California Governor Reagan’s backup was really an attempt to staunch protests against a senseless war.

Subsequently, of course, the War on Drugs launched the multi-billion-dollar recovery industry.

Which is why the War on Drugs continues.

If there wasn’t a War on Drugs, all those Sunnyside Havens would go broke.

All you have to do to break an addiction is to take an opioid blocker like naltrexone before you drink or ingest. Then proceed to drink or ingest as usual.

It really is that easy!

The opioid blocker will keep you from getting high, and when your brain does not get the dopamine reward it associates with drinking or ingesting, it loses the urge to drink or ingest.

This is actually a protocol called the Sinclair Method, and there is currently a movement underway to make naltrexone an over-the-counter drug.

I doubt that it will succeed, though, because like I say, the hospitals and insurance companies that run all those rehabs would lose Big Buck$.

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I tripped many, many times as a teenager and in my 20s. I credit LSD with allowing me to restructure my mind after surviving my childhood.

Of course, I didn’t know that was what I was doing. I thought I was just getting high!

But subsequent research into psychedelics has shown that this is indeed the effect produced by this particular class of drugs.

Last time I did acid was some 35 years ago at a Grateful Dead show while I was living in Sacramento.

It was a good trip, and Ichabod was with his Dad that weekend, but I still felt funny about it.

It’s not a good idea to be a parent and take drugs, you know?

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Recently, though, I’ve been thinking I might like to trip again.

The prospect is a wee bit scary.

The first part of any psychedelic trip is ego loss. It can be frightening, especially if you’re heavily invested in your ego.

I was such a neglected, abused little creature back in the day that I didn’t have much ego, so I slipped easily past the three-headed dogs and other monsters guarding the Doors of Perception to frolic relatively effortlessly in the garden of the Infinite.

But now. I have a pretty fixed and immutable idea of who I am. And I suspect that ego baggage would be difficult to jettison.

Thus, it becomes a cost benefit analysis: Are the heebie-jeebies I would doubtless experience at losing my ego luggage worth a visit to that other plane in all its fractal glory?