The Road to Rapé

This week when I went to therapy, my therapist had this big orange and blue bracelet, not like a friendship bracelet but a big-ass wonder woman style beaded shamanic bracelet. So I was like “Uh, you got a new bracelet?”

And he was like, “Oh yeah, I got this last weekend at an ayahuasca ceremony.”

Now I know how he sits through hours and hours of boring people talking about their same boring problems that never get better, by being on residual ayahuasca. I doubt that it stays in your system that long though since it makes most people barf.

I asked him if he puked and he said “Yeah, but not from the ayahuasca. It was from the Rapé.”

I was intrigued.

Have you ever seen in movies where a shaman takes a gigantic tube thing and blows tobacco and Amazonian herbs into someone’s nostril? It was like that. It made him barf for most of the night so he didn’t really feel the earlier dose of ayahuasca.

When you’re barfing your brains out, they say it’s like spiritual cleansing. They don’t call it getting sick, they call it getting well.

I can’t try this stuff because I don’t want to break my sobriety (23 years and counting!) but I like to hear about it second hand. I think it’s funny and interesting and a little gross. Just hearing about his weird escapades makes me feel less depressed, and that’s saying something.

Then we tapped about a bunch of stuff because this past week has felt emotional. I’m working on an essay for my thesis (which I can’t write about here because hopefully, I can get the essay published in a literary journal somewhere) but it dredges up a bunch of gross, sad feelings that I was too numb to feel when actually living through them the first time. Thinking about it now, when there is a smidge of executive functioning going on up there, is kind of painful and I feel depleted.

Also, kind of bloated, maybe because I’ve been compulsively eating to counteract any unpleasant emotions that come up. Nothing a couple of cans of whole corn kernels couldn’t solve. (Just kidding, see book - The Corn Kernel Diet. Yes, I bought the kindle version for $2.99. I was curious and I love corn. I’m from Nebraska.) Also, I hold out the magical belief that someday I’ll find some kind of diet that I can stick to that will transform my life. Obv., the Corn Kernel Diet was way up there in the likelihood of solving this problem.

But for real, I’m so tired and the regular people in my life would never get it so I can't keep talking to them about it. The only person who really understands, and who I can talk to about it (over and over and over and over) is my ayahuasca therapist and he can only listen because he’s probably on a residual nose tobacco high and also because I’m paying him to. That just reminded me of a line from Pretty Woman.

Then, I went to my doctor and had some lab work done and nothing was wrong. Again. Which is insane.

All they found was low iron but I’m too tired to remember to buy iron supplements so I just go around being tired all of the time.

Hmmm, what else?