The Right Way to Trip
There is only one right way to trip with psychedelics: safely. Beyond that, the universe is your oyster.
This year I enjoyed two holy—and very different—psychedelic worship services. Both were exactly right. I’ll call the first devotional “sacred” and the second “silly.” In both services, I communed with God. In the sacred ceremony, she held me like a baby as I sobbed and mourned. In the silly ceremony, she clapped me on the back and joined me in howls of laughter. One ceremony was not more holy or righteous or better or blah, blah, blah than the other. There is no “straight and narrow pathway to God.” The Divine gives no shits how we enter the holy of holies. However we get there, she welcomes us.
The sacred ceremony was in the mountains of Montana, with sound baths, cleansing rituals, burning sage, and tightly-scripted activities for intention setting and integration. A trained guide and extraordinary musicians led the ceremonies. The solemnity of that service sent me deep into the mystic, where I communed with my deceased father, a World War II naval navigator who had charted his ship’s course by the stars.
To my father, the stars were working tools, majestic in their timeless certainty. Somehow, I connected with him through the North Star, the lodestar that he had used countless times to determine his ship’s place in the universe. That night, as I gazed in wonder at the North Star, my father was there, and I was there, in a place where the Montana sky melts into Heaven.
I always figured I would meet my father in the mystic. Contemplating that meeting—spiritual giant that I am—I thought, “That motherfucker owes me some apologies.” Well, weird things happen in the mystic. Filters get removed, and the stories we tell ourselves take on more nuance and clarity. In the realm of the unreal, reality often emerges.
“Hey,” I said, in a rather unspectacular way to greet the dead.
My father chuffed like a bear, exactly like I do when I am around people I love beyond words and I am too scared to say, “I am so fucking blessed to be with you, but I am scared that this moment is a mirage.” It racked my heart. I live with the same pain of that desperate isolation, knowing that, at some point, I will fuck it all up and be cast adrift—alone—in the universe.
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In an instant, I no longer saw him as my tyrannical father. I saw him as a man, an anxious, brilliant, lost soul with no glimpse of a spiritual or emotional lodestar, a man certain that sea monsters would devour everyone he loved, if only he dared to love.
As I communed that night with one of the complex gods who created me, he started to get scared and push me away, refusing to be loved. I had matured; I had changed; and I said, “Stop. We’re not doing that. I love you. Take your time, and tell me that you love me. I’m not going away.” He calmed down.
That night, I remembered how funny the man was. I had completely forgotten. I don’t believe I have ever met a sillier human, when he was at peace. I had erased that part of story, and just remembered the long chapters when he was afraid and he was cruel. Again, I, too, know what it is to be afraid and to be controlled by shame.
In the mystic, the filters dropped and the story changed. I ended up apologizing to my father. I don’t control him. I control me, and I didn’t do a very good job of that as he was dying. I was hanging on by my fingernails, and I returned his cruelty. I had a score to settle. I deeply regret it, and I told him so that night. I have no idea how things landed on that side of the apology. Again, I don’t control my father. I control me. I did my best that night to account for my sins and to pledge to show up better. It was a holy experience, made possible by that curated, sacred ceremony.
As for the silly ceremony, well, you really had to be there. The rough outline was to (1) get together with safe people in a safe space, (2) ingest psychedelics, and (3) see where things went. No real plans, just costumes, props, chips, and dips. Many modern-day Puritans think laughter and fun diminish, rather than multiply, divine connection. Those psychedelic bean counters would call this ceremony “recreational,” to which I say, “Pashaw!”
To me, worship is connection. When I connected with my father, that was a sloppy with tears and spittle kind of holy. In the silly ceremony, when a giant twirled marvelously in a flowing silk gown above our giggling cuddle puddle, that, too, was holy: a hysterical with elation and pinky swears kind of holy, where we laughed and danced our way into the mystic, there finding and worshiping each other as very strange and marvelous gods.
In the silly ceremony, we enjoyed an impromptu sacrament of Fritos and Port wine, which was blessed with words of love and affirmation from each god-person in that mystic clubhouse. Our sacrament was corn, oil, salt, fermented grape juice, and love. It was real. It was much holier than any formal and fictional encounter I ever had with someone else’s macabre concoction of flesh and blood and guilt.
Both ceremonies—sacred and silly—were holy. They were safe, and they were exactly right. I get that people have a hard time understanding that play and fun can be worship. My experience tells me that the Divine doesn’t get caught up in human-made distinctions and dogma. Rather, the Divine is ready to meet us and bless us, however we enter the mystic.