Taking
the Left Hand Path…
Again
By
Preston Peet
posted at DrugWar.com
April 19, 2005
(Remember Waco!)
"Madness is not enlightenment, but the search
for enlightenment is often mistaken for madness"- Richard
Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of
Narcotics
"Ugh, hey man," I gasp into the cell
phone between the pounding throbbing of my head and the retching
of my guts, "you have to come over right now, right away.
I am so sick right now, we cannot wait any longer. Come right
now." I hang up the cell phone and lean back over the side
of the bed, throwing up yet more dinner from the night before
into the small green bucket V has put next to the bed. She's not
doing a good job at even pretending to be very sympathetic either.
"I told you you shouldn't have done that last one,"
she points out as I heave miserably into the bucket, my long hair
dragging through the sick.
The Reason and Rhyme This Time
The night before was Wednesday, April 13,
2005. V and I had gone out with her mom to eat at Red Bamboo,
my favorite restaurant in NYC, a vegan place that makes the best
food ever. Afterwards, we'd gone to Madison Square Garden to see
Duran Duran play an excellent show, taking all three of us right
back to 1982, where I for one hoped to be leaving a lot of very
heavy luggage behind.
Having taken ibogaine, a very strange, amazingly
beautiful and awesomely hallucinogenic African root with extremely
beneficial anti-addictive qualities twice in two weeks back in
August of 2004, the use of my pain killers had gotten out of control
yet again within scant months, with me going back to dissolving
and banging much of my meds, once more-and very quickly this time
too I noticed right away-running out of cooperative veins into
which to fix, losing any sense of pain relief from the use of
the opiates, shooting right past pain relief into nodded out dolphin
headedness, to the point where I often find myself waking up with
my forehead lying on the beeping keyboard of my computer and my
back and leg still killing me even at that overloaded level. I
was trying to edit my current book project each day, all day,
with just one eye open because I was having trouble keeping both
my eyes open simultaneously, much less focused. I take the pain
meds so I can sit and work at my desk without wanting to leap
out the window in pain, but it's no good if I can't stay awake
to work because I'm doing too many meds at a time. So I've decided
to do another ibogaine session, to do a re-set basically, to start
my body and mind over at square one again, cutting my tolerance
and giving myself a clean slate upon which to again try to maintain
a semblance of normalcy and control.
The Terror!
But even though I've made the plans, set
everything up perfectly timing it out so that when I get the sufficient
and surprisingly hefty amount of money needed to obtain the ibogaine
in hand, the ibogaine is weighed, ready and waiting, and although
I have already taken ibogaine twice before already, I'm terrified,
both of the actual ibogaine session itself, and of the thought
of giving up the needles again. There's almost no feeling in the
world like that nearly instantaneous gratification I get when
ill and in pain, and finally register that vein-"just seven
seconds from Hell to Heaven," as a friend once put it. "Is
there even any point to going through with this?" I wonder
to myself quietly in my mind all week. So all day Wednesday I'm
asking V to dole out my pills to me, more than usual, much more
than usual, using the excuse that the next day I'm taking the
ibogaine so it's ok to have one last blowout basically. By the
time we go eat and see the concert I'm already so stoned V is
making cracks about my half-lidded eyes and acting aggravated
with me, but I carry on, knowing I've only a few more hours before
I have no choice but to stop if I'm to go through with taking
the ibogaine-because I must wait twelve hours between taking my
final shot/dose of opiates and actually taking the ibogaine.
We get home from the show, and V passes out
in bed almost immediately, after I convince her to give me nineteen
more pills, "to hold on to hon, I'm not going to do them
all right at once," I say. It's true too-because I don't
do them all at once, I do two shots of six pills one after the
other then pass out in rapid order, and then climax with yet another
shot, this one of seven pills-but only doing this, the last and
biggest shot of them all, after V wakes to my beeping computer
and already much more than sufficiently nodded head. I do the
last shot at 2AM almost exactly, then gather together all my needles
and toss them into the trash. Good riddance, I think groggily
as I stumble to the bed and pass out.
Waking at 8AM, right when I would normally
do my next shot, I realize I still have six more hours to go,
that I'm only halfway to the point where my ibo provider will
feel safe that all the opiates have left my body, after much research
and comparing of notes with other researchers and providers around
the world. Ibogaine not only allows me to step away from my habit
without the worst of those troublesome withdrawal problems, but
it also has the effect of increasing any opiates' effectiveness
in my body were the two combined. This could lead to overdose,
or some other medical complication none of us wants, so I try
to go back to sleep as best I can, but I already feel weak, and
sick and know this is going to be bad. I still have no idea though
just how bad.
Two hours later though, I'm picking up the
cell phone and giving my friend the aforementioned call. "Get
over here, I'm sicker than I've ever been in my entire life,"
I groan into the phone. I never have had issue with nausea from
withdrawals up to this point in my life, but at that moment, all
I could do was lay there puking my guts into this disgusting bucket,
growing more miserable and sorry for myself by the second. "I'll
be there in about an hour," my friend says, "just hold
on bro, I'm coming."
The Rescue Ain't Pretty, But It Sure Is Sweet
Whoever thought up the idea of putting anti-nausea
medication into a capsule to swallow is a friggin' idiot, because
the first thing my friend did when he arrived was take out a little
brown capsule and tell me to eat it, saying we had to do it immediately
so the medicine could take effect before taking the ibogaine,
to avoid my puking what would be the most expensive puke of my
life were I unable to hold in the ibogaine-which itself causes
severe ataxia and nausea both. I eat the cap, feel it hit my stomach
and sit there for a few seconds, then next I know, I see it floating
around in the bottom of that awful bucket. "Am I going to
have to fish that out of there and retake that?" I think
to myself, completely out of my head in agonizing dope sickness
and accompanying hangover pain too.
"Bro, there's only one other way to
get it in you if you can't swallow it," my friend says when
I tell him I honestly do not think I am going to be able to eat
any capsules full of ibogaine. I know I'm not going to be able
to hold anything down, it's too late and I'm way too sick. I tell
him I know, so he runs to the drug store around the corner from
our apartment to buy a baby syringe, into which he mixes each
dose of ibogaine I subsequently end up taking, wiping it liberally
with Vaseline before handing it to me to shove up my bum. I'm
so sick I'm at the point where I was willing to undergo anything
to relieve myself of that agony, that any degrading indignity
was bearable compared to what I was suffering.
When the ibogaine suddenly began to take
hold of me, bracing me and wrapping me in warmth, I was nearly
simultaneously hit by the chewable Dramamine I'd remembered having,
so the nausea all fled, and my itchy, crawling, aching skin and
muscles all suddenly unclenched, like a cramp suddenly letting
go, and I lay back in the bed and began to drift into PEACE and
LIGHT.
Liquid metal began to make its twinkling,
shimmering appearance around the edges of the heavy curtains V
had hung over the windows for me that morning to keep out as much
sunlight as possible, as the keening pitch began to grow in my
ears, breaking through a barrier inside the deepest part of my
ears it seemed, massaging my skull with its clear buzzing drone.
Flashes of light began to shoot about the room, almost as what
I'd imagine photons to look like were I able to focus that tightly,
though all lights were extinguished to the fullest we could manage.
Then I was gone, to the Holodeck again and again and again, entering
a waking vision state that took me places and showed me things
I can only attempt to adequately describe, for nearly 40 hours.
There was a lot of scenes of the US military,
with my continuing to come back to these situations involving
the US occupation in Iraq. I watched the spreading around the
globe of various peoples that once lived close to the Earth in
peace, in those places such as Australia with the aborigines and
their Dream Time, North and South America, the places where the
wheel was never invented and the Catholic Church hadn't subverted
everything to its will yet-but then watched as a dark blot spread
from the "Old World" into those peaceful, glowing places
of peace to decimate those peoples and their entire histories
from the face of the Earth. I traveled far into space, out amongst
the stars, over huge cities and towering structures right out
of an Ian M. Banks sci-fi novel.
According to those who stood guard over me
and protected me while I was away under the influence of the ibogaine
(having taken what turned out to be 21 milligrams of ibogaine
per kilogram of body weight), I seemed remarkably peaceful for
most of the time, lying mainly motionless on the bed for hours
at a time, telling my friend to "let me sleep," each
time he'd come in to check on me. I don't know how deeply or even
if I really was ever asleep during that time, but I was in bed
out of my head on ibogaine from Thursday afternoon, at around
2PM, until Saturday mid-morning, when I came to my senses without
an opiate habit and with almost no withdrawals and first began
to try and get out of bed, which I could only manage for the briefest
of moments for most of the day.
Is There A Meaning To This At All?
I need time now, to think about what I experienced
and what it means to me, and to decide what I'm going to do with
whatever it is I decide I've gotten out of subjecting myself to
this somewhat trying and definitely dangerous but incredibly special
and beautiful process yet again. I'm considering taking up yoga
and perhaps some other forms of pain control that will not only
entail driving up narcotic prescription drug habits to increasingly
frustrating and crippling levels. I have again successfully managed
to utterly reset my habit, currently taking just two of each of
my prescribed meds, orally, per day and managing so far to maintain
an optimistic outlook on the situation and a grip on my pain issues.
I'm busy editing my latest book project for the Disinformation
Company, which is a great thing to focus on right now, due to
my being unable to sleep very well and having an almost manic,
up-ness to my mood from having so recently taken ibogaine, again.
Will I manage to stay away from using rigs this time? Will my
tolerance go through the roof or will I find a new path? Who's
to say at this point? All I can do is take things slowly, make
no rash decisions or undue haste about much at all right now.
I've seen the optimistic enthusiasm after ever single treatment
I've ever been through where I spent any time clean and was able
to experience life in safety away from all triggers and possibilities
to score-but then I've experienced that glee, that assuredness
myself, that feeling that I could conquer the world only to find
myself right back at rock bottom more than a few times now in
my life. So no promises beyond simply trying this time.
"Because of their courage, their lack of
fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes.
The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person
knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be
worthless. The creative person is flexible-he is able to change
as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision
and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened
by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are." -Frank
Goble
