Journey # 3....Who Are These Guys?
Synchronicity and Friendships
“The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-hand experience is a fool and a fraud.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.
You can find the earlier pieces on my acacia journey here in case you missed them..
https://www.outsidemyinside.com/s/magical-elixirs-and-plants
Do you recall that water lily that was telling me it was going to bloom in my last writings, well, of course, it was in full bloom when I had my coffee the next day. I had no doubt that was going to happen.
Moving forward to early 2019….
Recently I downloaded some conversations my mate Joe and I had during the early months of the Acacia Experiment. We were deep into it now and I was eager to drink again. There were doorways to wander through and roads still to travel. I had accepted the invitation and I was not shying away from the learning. I still was unsure what that learning was going to be but I felt drawn to the plant teachers.
The conversations with Joe were about his continuing research into the possibility of making a smokable form of the plant and communications he had been having with people on the Facebook Plant Page. This was a garden of information, psychonauts, psychos, and beautiful people. We were eager to learn and listen to what this community offered. It was a fertile area for discovering more about plant medicine during this period.
As with any online community, many things changed as the population grew. Sometimes I think there was too much acid in the water. More on that nonsense later.
Joe had a chat with a nurse on the FB page and she was interested in drinking the plant. I figured since my mate had worked in the medical field this was someone he knew from previous employment. He told me she lived near me in Sydney and gave me her phone number so I could arrange to give her a ride the next weekend. I chatted to this Heidi person on the phone and we arranged for me to pick her up the following Saturday.
A few days later I gave Joe a call.
“Joe, how do you know this Nurse Heidi?”
“I don’t know her. I was just talking to her on the Plant FB page.”
My mind sort of went into a spin.
“Hold on. Without meeting us this 20-something woman wants to get in a car with some middle-aged dude she does not know and drive to a semi-rural property to drink plant medicine with two dudes she has never met?”
“Yeah….” Joe tailed off.
“She must be either downright crazy or a wild free spirit of some sort”, I said.
We could be some weird cult for all she knew. We were definitely becoming disciples of the acacia.
I messaged Heidi on the Saturday we were to meet and told her I was on my way and would call her when I got to her home. I was eager to meet her and find out what her deal was. I thought that anyone who would jump in a car to drink psychedelics with strangers was going to be a freakazoid. She had asked me no questions and I was like this person has no interest in set and setting. If I were her I would be checking the boot of the car for shovels and axes and handcuffs.
“Hey, Heidi, I am out in front of your place come on out when you are ready”, I said down the phone line.
“Hey Paul, great. Hey, before I come out can I ask you a few questions?”
This is what I wanted to hear. There was some concern in her voice. I found out later a friend of hers had questioned her decision to trip with strangers and told her she should make sure she was safe.
Long story short she asked me how I knew Joe, my background, some questions about me, and psychedelics.
I breathed a sigh of relief that Heidi did have some smarts and asked the right questions. I told her this on the phone and we laughed and she decided it was safe to come along with me.
I had been thinking that Heidi was going to be some blonde-haired Swiss figure skater type and her last name was as plain as Smith. Alas, this is where some weird synchronicity pops up. You may recall my first Acacia Tea journey when I was first starting to take off and I was taunted and teased by South American females to drink more. It was full-on and kind of odd that this Aussie plant was showing me Indigenous people from another continent.
I see Heidi walking towards the car and she is not of European stock. Her brown skin and looks are very South American and I find out soon enough she has a Peruvian background.
Sure, whatever, this has nothing to do with my first DMT experience.
Yeah, not at all?? Right?
You can be the judge but I know what I know and understand. I kept this weird thing quiet until we got to know our new friend better. I was a little freaked out.
Heidi and I got to know each other on the 90-minute drive and we talked about what I had written about above. I even joked and said, “Yeah, don’t worry I have no shovels or rope in the boot of the car, Joe has them all!”
There was a good energy between us and I was looking forward to the experience with someone else along for the ride tonight.
The 3 of us hung out for a while and relaxed into the late afternoon when we ingested the Syrian Rue. We all had the same amount of tea made from the same 2-3 grams of seeds. We learned something over the next 90 minutes. Heidi was not a very big person and she should have been given a lower dose of seeds. She experienced nausea and a bit of sedation and she decided to hold off on drinking the plant.
Heidi huddled under a blanket and Joe and I drank the medicine and went on our inner journeys. There was thunder and some lightning and other weird creatures in the trees and our souls. We were concerned about Heidi but she rested and purged at times. Towards the end of our time with the plant we asked Heidi if she wanted to drink as it was getting late.
“Yeah, sure, I will have a bit. I am feeling better now”, she said.
Joe poured some into a cup, Heidi came and sat next to us and Joe held the cup for her.
He brought the cup to her lips and ….
As the cup touched her lips there was the loudest thunder and the longest flashing of lightning that lit up the back sky for what seemed like 15-20 seconds.
Talk about some sort of sign. A sign of what, who knows, but it brought much laughter and some tears to us as her sipping the tea was punctuated like that.
Heidi turned out to be a soulful and lovable human. She brought a sweet touch and lightness to the gatherings she attended. It was a good balance to the Joe and Paul bi-coastal USA humor that bounced between us.
This journey, for me, was not so much about anything that came to me on the night. It was more about community and a sense of love and beauty found on a patio communing with nature. In many ways, these experiences were not solitary, they were cumulative. I found that sharing these moments in a safe, protected, and loving capsule with a few people met my needs of set and setting. Vulnerability, to me, was very important.
In short, the accumulation of these experiences was overwhelmingly positive and joyful. They also brought many more questions to the table, but I will delve into that as I continue sorting through these stories and integrating some of my learnings as I do.
From this point on I was out on my own again, house-sitting around Sydney and holding down my corporate job, and working on being single again. This single thing after 15 years of being hooked up was something I had to get used to. I was not depressed but I was lonely and alone. The crowded house of a wife and kids was no longer my environment. How do I work this?
OK, maybe I was a little depressed.
In short, I sensed I needed to reconnect with myself. Of course I was torn by my sex drive and a lifetime habit of being coupled up. Little did I know I was headed into 18 months of celibacy. In Paul Busch’s years that is a lifetime….but I found out it was just what I needed.
This plant, the acacia, was holding out a branch to me. I was offered the leaves and I drank from the cup. Choosing life and love and growth seemed the way to go but I still had to shake off some demons. They fell away easier than I thought they might when I look back. It was not just the plant but the conversations I had with Joe and many others during this time of experimentation that helped me heal.
Of course, healing was not in a straight line but it seemed to be accelerated by the magic of the acacia.
More people were coming into our circle when I was there and when Joe was holding court with the plants while I tended to my full-time job. As noted, I was also moving from house to house and starting my period as a housesitting gypsy. I found this time liberating in ways that still sit positively with me today. I became a minimalist and purged myself of many of my belongings from books to my CD collection.
As we move forward with this tale we will delve into meeting more spirits, smoking DMT and more revelations.
So far what I had been integrating into my life was a level of calmness that had not been with me for some time. I was calm and centered. There was one ongoing issue though that is pretty normal with these deep experiences. I could not stop telling people about the plant.
We sort of felt that the world would be a better place if everyone got some of this into them and maybe we should be involved in making that happen. We were looking at what we were experiencing and wondering if it was in our heads or something else. What type of communication was taking place between us and the plants and the spirits encountered?
Oh yes, the spirits are going to make a return.
