Yeah I’m not selling anything, so you are free to take it or leave it. I was really responding to Jordan in the most compassionate sense I could. The idea of moving addictions, problems, or anything else that causes ‘bad’ vibes from inside to oustide, for me and my compatriots, has come form the many times I have done this for my own friends, and the positive outcomes of this ‘scene change’ has helped many friends bring themselves back down to earth.
For example, I know a lot of young kids that are addicted to getting high. Many of them have been able to walk completely away from getting high everyday, just by learning about who they are as we hike in the moonlight up on their alteration of choice.
The alteration changes what it is when you are walking in the ‘shades of death’, as opposed to bumping and grinding at a club, or at a house party.
What changes is the stimulation of the outdoors, especially at night, brings your senses to a new awareness.
My Elder KatieTwoKnives taught me about nightwalking, about turning off the flashlight, and getting in tune with my senses. I can be high, I can be tripping, I can be drunk as a skunk, but when I’m night walking, those affects take a backseat, and as it has been done for my friends, it has been done for me.
It’s hard to sit here and type what that is, but it has shown me jsut how little the ego is inside of our heads. When you bring to the front all of your consciousnesses, like the activity of nightwalking does, the part of you that is ‘fucked up’ get diminutized, less important, less in control.
Sitting around a campfire can be just sititng around the TV, so, maybe ‘just drinking and camping’ doesn’t give you maximum impact, but as a guide who takes people out camping for their first time on a regular basis, The change I see, is amazing.
I know what ya’ll mean about ‘drunk world’. Sure, the bar people are my friends when I’m there, but they aren’t calling me the next day for lunch. I get that, and it is what it is, and they are who they are, and I dont’ feel hurt by that at all in the slightest. I ahve friends all across the globe, and all across the spectrum, so when the drunks stay to the drunks, the pillheads to the pillheads, and the potheads to the potheads, that can’t be injurous to anyone but them, they who identify with the drug.
I’ll be honest, having had a father who has a serious drinking (but really, emotional) problem, I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to handle life. I guess I’m glad I became a man before I touched any substance. The sumemr I went through my ritual, afterwards, I tried acid, adn pot, and drank a little. I always felt good. I always accentuated the positive effects.
Sure, I have gotten sick, but when I think about how fun that was before, the sickness was only like a pinprick.
But then, two weeks ago, something bad happened to me. A friend of mine, a bit older, someone else who ‘shamanizes’, got pretty drunk, and was having inappropriate feelings towards a poledancer at a party. Sure, she was absorbing every little bit of alpha male attention she could get, but she wasn’t about to fuck ups on the spot. Well, after a little bit of talking to my friend, I was able to bring his behavior back into check, but at then, he said he felt like I ‘deflated’ him a bit, and wanted to go home, so at 6 a.m. and drunk as hell, we left the hotties on the pole and in the hot tub and made the march home.
We got to his house, ate some cheese and crackers, and passed. out. I drank waaay more pumpkin wine than he did. I woke up at noon. When I did, I saw that sometime in the middle of the night, he pissed all over a chair and his coffee table. I woke him up and I was like, WTF, dude? He rembered doing it, and then remember how his dad usedd to do it all the time, and himself, had never done it before that day.
So he and I had a talk, and he was surprised by all these feelings our crazy night had made him feel. He and I have had a lot of deep conversations like this since I left town, and I think we’re better for it.
I guess the point of me telling this is that our lives are a journey, and none of us ever arrive anywhere, be it ‘sober’ (high on life, sugar, accomplishment, anyone? everyone?), be it ‘clean’, be it ‘drunk’, we’re all all over the map, and some day, maybe even I might wake up and piss my coffee table and recliner.
I say, take the journey in stride, do everything whole heartedly, and take care of yourself. Don’t avoid those scary things you find in your altered and sub and meta consciousnesses, face them, find them, get to know them.
MY question is, do you ever get to know and deal with yourself when you run away form yourself, or if you face that self?
Maybe some drunks are running away from their sober self? I know I’m better for not doing a different drug everyday so that I’m high all week and all month. But I don’t seem to know addicition, either.
Be drunk. Try to find sober, and deal with your behavior. Don’t blame the booze, blame yourself. Ask why the booze teams up with yourself to give you permission to do this things your civility holds you back from. Maybe there is a good reason why you are pissing your bed, or your couch, maybe it’s not bad at all, maybe it’s a type of self-communication.
If I’ve learned anything here – what ‘is’ isn’t ‘it’. All things exist at the same time, in the same place, with different names, and different shadows.
