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039 - Psychedelic Columbus

Mar 19, 2018, 56 min read

Program Notes

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https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Today’s podcast presents a powerful round of story telling that took place in a Columbus, Ohio bike hangar. The event was hosted by the wonderful community of Mind Manifest West.
“Mind Manifest Midwest is a psychedelic society based in Columbus, Ohio. Since 2016 we have hosted speakers to talk about some factual aspect of psychedelia. Our in-person community meets to share stories, promote harm reduction education, and create models for responsible transformational psychedelic use.”

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567 - Psychedelicize Yourself

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568 - We Become What We Behold

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon

00:00:23 ►

2.0.

00:00:25 ►

Guess what? This is going to be the first podcast from the salon that begins our 14th year of these podcasts.

00:00:33 ►

And I thought that it would be appropriate to begin this new year with a Salon 2 track by Lex Pelger and featuring some of our fellow salonners.

00:00:43 ►

and featuring some of our fellow salonners.

00:00:48 ►

So Lex’s program for us today is another of the storytelling gatherings that he recorded last year on his Blue Dot Tour.

00:00:52 ►

And, well, the one that we’re about to hear comes from Columbus, Ohio,

00:00:56 ►

which is how I came up with the title for today’s podcast, Psychedelic Columbus.

00:01:03 ►

And that’s just my attempt at a little humor in thinking that

00:01:07 ►

maybe somebody is going to come across this podcast title and think that it’s an expose

00:01:12 ►

of Christopher Columbus. Obviously, it doesn’t take very much to amuse me. Anyway, since this

00:01:20 ►

is the first week of another year of podcasting, I’m also going to post the next

00:01:25 ►

installment of the Terrence McKenna course that I’ve been playing on the Salon One track,

00:01:29 ►

and I expect to get that out before the weekend, so another Salon One track podcast will be coming

00:01:35 ►

to you in a few days. Now, here is Lex Pelger and our fine friends in Columbus, Ohio.

00:01:44 ►

This is a story about my last suicide.

00:01:51 ►

I’m Lex Pelger, and this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:01:57 ►

Hello, everyone.

00:01:59 ►

I’m excited to get back to sharing the psychedelic stories from the Blue Dot Tour.

00:02:03 ►

Today comes from one of my favorite stops of the whole trip in Columbus, Ohio. But just one announcement before that.

00:02:11 ►

The Terrence McKenna Archives is having a crowdfunding campaign. The very hardworking

00:02:16 ►

Kevin Whiteside deserves all the support that we can muster to help him digitize and save

00:02:20 ►

Terrence’s legacy. I’ll put a link to that in the episode notes.

00:02:31 ►

As for today’s stories in Columbus, a combination of a strong community,

00:02:37 ►

a beautiful performance space, and a friendly bike hangar, and a supportive loving vibe led to a powerful night. These stories come from a group of friends and strangers who know how to listen

00:02:43 ►

to each other share about the goods and bads of these substances. The range of their experiences speak to the power of these

00:02:50 ►

drugs, and I can’t imagine anyone listening to these stories and not learning some lesson about

00:02:54 ►

psychoactive use. And most importantly, you can hear how vital it is for people to have their

00:03:00 ►

story heard, and for them to be strong and courageous enough to step up to the microphone and tell everyone. My hat goes off to all the storytellers everywhere.

00:03:20 ►

My name is Max. I heard about this event the other day. I was at work at my job at the CBD store on High Street.

00:03:29 ►

A gentleman came in promoting this event. Where is he? Right there in the back.

00:03:36 ►

Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I came here to hear you guys’ stories.

00:03:42 ►

But interestingly enough, I guess I’m going to be the first one to tell mine.

00:03:47 ►

When I was 17 years old, I graduated high school, and I had had some loose experience of smoking pot.

00:03:54 ►

I was really into it, but I really had never touched psychedelics or anything like that.

00:03:59 ►

I didn’t really know what they were all about. But I was curious. I was infinitely curious. So, when I moved to Athens, Ohio for my

00:04:07 ►

first year in

00:04:09 ►

college

00:04:10 ►

at the Ohio

00:04:13 ►

University,

00:04:15 ►

I really didn’t know what was going to

00:04:17 ►

happen, but at one point

00:04:19 ►

there, winter semester,

00:04:21 ►

I had discovered

00:04:23 ►

lysergic acid. and I had had a couple

00:04:28 ►

experiences with lysergic acid the first time I ever did it I took two tabs

00:04:32 ►

of white on white non-perforated blotter paper

00:04:35 ►

and had a very fantastic and enlightening and just

00:04:40 ►

kind of wisdom instilling

00:04:44 ►

18 hour stretch where I ended up by myself for a large period of time.

00:04:49 ►

I was into it. I was curious. I wanted to know what this whole thing was really about.

00:04:57 ►

A few weeks later, I had learned that a buddy of mine had come to possess some dimethyltryptamine in its crystalline form.

00:05:11 ►

And long story short, I experimented with that hot off the trail of my LSD success, I guess you would call it.

00:05:20 ►

And one night I went into my friend’s car by myself and closed the door.

00:05:27 ►

And I laid down in the seat and I had this little vapor pipe.

00:05:30 ►

Someone called it a meth pipe.

00:05:32 ►

Can you hear me?

00:05:35 ►

Oh, okay.

00:05:36 ►

And just like this, I vaporized some of that DMT.

00:05:43 ►

And long story short, I hurt myself.

00:05:49 ►

Badly.

00:05:53 ►

I was just turned 18 at the time and I had no idea the power of what I was fucking with.

00:06:11 ►

I was curious. I was partying. Party man. Athens. All right?

00:06:26 ►

I don’t know if you guys have heard. I was 18 and I spent a thousand years in that car in the dark by myself.

00:06:31 ►

I spent so long there that I’m still there right now.

00:06:32 ►

In part.

00:06:33 ►

I don’t want to be all droopy and dreary.

00:06:36 ►

This is a positive talk.

00:06:37 ►

I’m going to end it positively.

00:06:39 ►

But what I tell this story about,

00:06:41 ►

the reason why I came here tonight

00:06:43 ►

and I wanted to be a part of this is that

00:06:46 ►

I stumbled into something in my youth that I had no idea the power of I had no idea the spiritual

00:06:51 ►

significance of and I and I hurt myself early on I sort of expanded my consciousness beyond what I

00:06:58 ►

was ready for I spent a long long long time inside my head before I knew there was a community,

00:07:09 ►

before I knew that there were people who had wisdom,

00:07:13 ►

people who could have warned me about something like that.

00:07:17 ►

And later that night,

00:07:21 ►

it’s difficult for me to talk about the night that this happened to me because I spent so long in this place of dilated time and space and just darkness where there’s nothing and that’s all I

00:07:31 ►

am and that’s all we are and that’s all it’s ever been it’s just this big

00:07:36 ►

fucking ocean of nothing and it fucked with me I I had to re-remember my mother’s name, my brother’s names.

00:07:48 ►

I had to re-remember why I was in Athens in the first place.

00:07:51 ►

Oh, to go to school. Oh yeah, right.

00:07:54 ►

Yeah, I dropped out after that. I was done.

00:07:59 ►

And now I’m here today with you guys.

00:08:02 ►

Excited, because now that I know that there’s, at least locally, a community where we can talk about these things.

00:08:08 ►

And we can get the information out to the youth who, trust me, the kids younger than me, they’re all the more curious than I was.

00:08:17 ►

And they’re going to get their hands on these things.

00:08:19 ►

And they’re going to self-experiment.

00:08:21 ►

And they’re going to self-experiment.

00:08:29 ►

And we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the human community at large to get the word out about these things.

00:08:31 ►

Stop being ashamed.

00:08:33 ►

Stop being quiet about it.

00:08:35 ►

Stop being abashed because these things are illegal.

00:08:37 ►

Fuck the drug war.

00:08:41 ►

It is destroying our community. it is creating bad things like okay that’s

00:08:47 ►

what the law is but we owe it to ourselves to not comply with that we can

00:08:51 ►

spread this information in the light of love in the light of optimism because we

00:08:55 ►

owe it to the generations coming up now they’re gonna experiment with the same

00:08:59 ►

substances we’re here talking with about tonight and that there’s not an

00:09:02 ►

established community of leadership and rites of passage and things like that where these kids know someone they can trust to talk

00:09:09 ►

to about these things it can be bad but then on the bright side we saw earlier the benefits these

00:09:16 ►

things can can reap imagine children getting their hands on these things with supervision and i don’t

00:09:22 ►

mean children i mean budding adults.

00:09:25 ►

Getting their hands on this type of wisdom

00:09:27 ►

with a structure,

00:09:30 ►

with some guidance.

00:09:32 ►

Like, I know it almost sounds cliche,

00:09:35 ►

but the sky’s the limit.

00:09:38 ►

Like, these things have the power to…

00:09:40 ►

You guys already know.

00:09:42 ►

You guys already know.

00:09:44 ►

But I just thank you all for being here

00:09:46 ►

and tell your stories.

00:09:47 ►

Get this information out there.

00:09:49 ►

Don’t keep it a secret

00:09:50 ►

because that shit happens

00:09:52 ►

when people find out about this stuff on their own.

00:09:54 ►

Thank you.

00:09:59 ►

This is sort of almost my psychedelic origin story, like I was saying.

00:10:10 ►

Before Symposia existed, once upon a time, I was a chemical engineer working at ExxonMobil.

00:10:20 ►

And so, yeah, I had spent my life in high school getting good grades so I could get to a good school, get into a good program, and get myself a good career.

00:10:30 ►

So I took chemical engineering. That gets you lined up for a good career and all that stuff.

00:10:35 ►

Did all that, landed the job, and for a while I was happy, you know?

00:10:43 ►

I really had all the things that are supposed to make you happy.

00:10:50 ►

And it was for a while, it was really cool.

00:10:52 ►

There was a lot of cool stuff to that job.

00:10:55 ►

I got to work on solving problems that had not been solved before.

00:10:58 ►

I was working on algorithms for optimizing transportation.

00:11:03 ►

Interesting stuff, and I had good co-workers.

00:11:05 ►

We spent days on the whiteboard solving interesting problems.

00:11:10 ►

But eventually I got to a quarter-life crisis,

00:11:15 ►

and I was not happy.

00:11:19 ►

I was making good money, and I had a house, I had a good career, and all the things, all the check boxes, you know.

00:11:32 ►

But I wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t like what I was going through.

00:11:35 ►

I didn’t see myself as, and partially inspired by some LSD experiences I had,

00:11:41 ►

I didn’t see myself as wanting to climb a corporate ladder the rest of my life.

00:11:47 ►

And that’s about when I heard about ayahuasca, which someone described to me at the time,

00:11:52 ►

it’s like acid for people who do acid. And as soon as I heard about ayahuasca, I knew I

00:12:03 ►

needed to go experience it.

00:12:09 ►

And in all honesty, part of the reason was I was just curious.

00:12:11 ►

Like, what is this?

00:12:13 ►

What is this thing people are talking about?

00:12:15 ►

So I did my research.

00:12:17 ►

I looked at different centers. I went to Peru.

00:12:20 ►

And I ended up spending a week and a half in the Peruvian Amazon.

00:12:26 ►

I spent, it was six ceremonies,

00:12:30 ►

so we had two nights on, one night off,

00:12:33 ►

two nights on, one night off,

00:12:35 ►

two nights on, one night off.

00:12:38 ►

And a lot of things happened in that time, as you might imagine.

00:12:45 ►

But I’ll focus on one particular message I received.

00:12:49 ►

So coming into this experience, some more background to it,

00:12:52 ►

I kind of had in my head the fantasy.

00:12:55 ►

Ever since my first time, a year after I started that job,

00:13:00 ►

I took my summer vacation, two weeks backpacking in Europe.

00:13:04 ►

And that was the first time in my life

00:13:05 ►

You know, I had two weeks of vacation at my job

00:13:08 ►

But I was meeting people who were just traveling and that blew my fucking mind, you know, like wait

00:13:14 ►

What do you mean? You’re just you’re just traveling you can do that. Oh someday that’s gonna be me, you know

00:13:19 ►

And so here I am now fast forward. I’m in the Amazon and I’m debating, do I want to take a leave of absence from my job, have this nice cushy job kind of waiting for me when I come home, or do I want to quit my job outright?

00:13:37 ►

And because I’m a Batman nerd, ayahuasca spoke to me in terms of Batman movies.

00:13:44 ►

ayahuasca spoke to me in terms of batman movies specifically the dark knight rises which is like one of the weakest of the batman movies

00:13:51 ►

but nonetheless it’s suited so um you know there’s a scene where bruce wayne

00:13:58 ►

spoiler alerts here if you have the dark knight rises um it was a long time ago, so I think we’ve got it. He’s in a prison, and he’s trying

00:14:08 ►

to escape, and he’s climbing out the sides of the, it’s like an open roof prison for some reason,

00:14:14 ►

because that’s how they are in Gotham City or whatever, and then he gets this part where he

00:14:19 ►

has to jump. He’s on this like cliff thing, and there’s another one over there, and he’s, you know,

00:14:24 ►

he’s got a safety rope attached to him, and he’s got to make this jump. And of course he jumps and he

00:14:29 ►

misses. He misses every time. And then eventually he’s talking to the old wise man. And the old

00:14:37 ►

wise man says, your problem is fear. And Bruce, of course, says, well, what do you mean? I’m not afraid. And the man says, that’s your problem.

00:14:45 ►

You have to be.

00:14:47 ►

Do the jump without the rope.

00:14:49 ►

And that’s the message I received over and over.

00:14:53 ►

Jump without the rope.

00:14:54 ►

Jump without the rope.

00:14:55 ►

Jump without the rope.

00:14:56 ►

It was repeated and repeated and repeated.

00:15:01 ►

I still was questioning it.

00:15:04 ►

I wrote it down in my little notebook.

00:15:05 ►

I always have a notebook, and I wrote it down.

00:15:07 ►

Jumbo got the rope?

00:15:10 ►

But it was the right move.

00:15:14 ►

It was. I thought about it.

00:15:15 ►

And it ultimately was the correct move.

00:15:18 ►

It took me some time to get my ducks in a row.

00:15:22 ►

But I did.

00:15:23 ►

I quit my job.

00:15:27 ►

I went to Burning Man. And I took a one-way flight to India. And 15 months later, came back and the rest is history. Thank you.

00:15:49 ►

I sat in the back of the room my name is John by the way

00:15:50 ►

and listened to things

00:15:54 ►

and I reflected upon when I was a young man

00:16:00 ►

and I ran into these friends of mine

00:16:01 ►

that were several years older

00:16:03 ►

and probably back then

00:16:06 ►

we referred to them as my drug friends.

00:16:10 ►

But they were doing LSD

00:16:12 ►

and they were smart.

00:16:16 ►

Like one of my friends

00:16:16 ►

had tested out of his,

00:16:18 ►

nearly his entire senior year of high school

00:16:20 ►

because he was hyper intelligent.

00:16:24 ►

But yet he said, hey, you seem to be the type

00:16:29 ►

of person that might enjoy doing this with me. And I went, okay, let’s go try it out.

00:16:35 ►

And some of my first experiences were very casual, more party oriented. But yet it was

00:16:42 ►

with these people that were a little bit more focused than I was. I

00:16:45 ►

categorized myself as a late bloomer. And the intent and the focus of what all those things

00:16:53 ►

were doing inside my mind at the time wasn’t quite so clear. And then, as a lot of other people have

00:16:59 ►

said, they went to college and did the fine, upstanding, right thing to do, get a degree,

00:17:07 ►

they went to college and did the fine, upstanding, right thing to do, get a degree, pursue a career,

00:17:12 ►

make some money, which is what I did. And I stopped doing things like that. I probably casually smoked marijuana, drank the ever-present, supported and beautiful, legally sellable alcohol,

00:17:23 ►

syllable, alcohol, and kind of had a nice quiet existence.

00:17:26 ►

And it got boring.

00:17:30 ►

And then I did something weird.

00:17:31 ►

I learned how to speak French.

00:17:34 ►

And I kind of went to France.

00:17:36 ►

I’ve heard these backpacking stories earlier this evening.

00:17:39 ►

And I came back to the United States,

00:17:40 ►

and I met these people from other cultures that spoke other languages.

00:17:42 ►

And while there was no drugs involved in these adventures,

00:17:45 ►

they were mind-expanding and mind-opening.

00:17:49 ►

And I went, I don’t want to live my life like this anymore.

00:17:52 ►

And then fast forward a little bit,

00:17:54 ►

where I have a new group of friends

00:17:56 ►

who are a little bit more communal

00:17:58 ►

and a little bit more huggy and a little bit more lovey

00:18:00 ►

than I’ve experienced in a while.

00:18:03 ►

And there might be bicycles involved, I don’t know.

00:18:08 ►

But there are. And so I reacquainted myself with a drug that I’d not ever taken before,

00:18:16 ►

which is psilocybin. And I had a few pretty intense trips on psilocybin, but I was still a little bit skeptical.

00:18:27 ►

And then I took a little pause, and I had some moments alone with this drug in smaller dosages, and it was nice.

00:18:40 ►

It was calming.

00:18:48 ►

was nice. It was calming. I used to do this thing where I would take about a gram and a half and I would go to bed and fall asleep. And I would wake up hallucinating. And it wasn’t like I would be

00:18:57 ►

shocked awake in my bed. I would just lay there with my eyes closed and seeing all these visions and thoughts.

00:19:06 ►

And I had a lot of these processes going through

00:19:08 ►

about relationships that I had.

00:19:10 ►

And I would open my eyes, and I’d be in my bedroom.

00:19:13 ►

And it would stop, and I would giggle.

00:19:16 ►

And I would close my eyes again.

00:19:18 ►

And at some point in time, since I didn’t take a huge dose,

00:19:22 ►

I would fall asleep.

00:19:23 ►

I’d wake up in the morning, and for the next 10 days, I just felt like a warm hug all over me.

00:19:31 ►

And so in December, I got in a crashy crash and I broke my kneecap.

00:19:37 ►

And I later on found out that I have a bruised bone in my foot.

00:19:42 ►

And that was just like right before Christmas.

00:19:41 ►

found out that I have a bruised bone in my foot.

00:19:44 ►

And that was just like right before Christmas.

00:19:48 ►

And around January, second week of January, I realized the full impact of,

00:19:50 ►

oh, this is going to take a long time to heal.

00:19:53 ►

I’m really not going to get a break.

00:19:55 ►

No one’s going to let me go sit on my couch and heal.

00:19:59 ►

So I decided the one thing I was going to do

00:20:01 ►

to make myself feel better

00:20:03 ►

and try to persevere through

00:20:05 ►

some of the pain and discomfort and more like lack of doing things that I like to do, like

00:20:10 ►

ride bicycles, even though it’s wintertime, people do ride bicycles in January. Yeah. I was going to

00:20:17 ►

microdose. And what I did is I found some things and I took about one tenth of a gram every other every two days for about eight weeks.

00:20:30 ►

And that basically helped me level out and not maybe get depressed, maybe not lose energy.

00:20:41 ►

But I don’t have like a lot of cognitive things that I can like put my finger on because I wasn’t have a lot of cognitive things

00:20:45 ►

that I can put my finger on

00:20:47 ►

because I wasn’t getting high.

00:20:49 ►

I wasn’t altering my reality,

00:20:52 ►

but I was providing myself

00:20:53 ►

with supportive medication

00:20:55 ►

that boosted my energy,

00:20:58 ►

and it helped me get through

00:20:59 ►

the dark and dreary months of January and February,

00:21:01 ►

which everyone knows can be hard around here.

00:21:04 ►

Then throw on top of that,

00:21:05 ►

I’ve got to work at a grocery store

00:21:07 ►

and stand on my foot for eight hours.

00:21:09 ►

And I have a broken kneecap and a bruised foot.

00:21:11 ►

So I’m fully supportive of pursuing psychedelics

00:21:19 ►

and medicine as well as other psychological endeavors.

00:21:23 ►

And that’s my story.

00:21:37 ►

So, I was 15 years old, and I was in high school, and like most people, I was not very happy about that.

00:21:49 ►

So, you know, I’d definitely been smoking pot and drinking from whoever’s, you know,

00:21:55 ►

parent’s liquor cabinet or whatever bum we could convince to buy us a 24-pack of Natty Ice

00:22:01 ►

or something like that.

00:22:07 ►

But, you know, I was a smart kid.

00:22:08 ►

I was.

00:22:10 ►

I read books, at least.

00:22:12 ►

Whether or not I was smart remains to be seen.

00:22:14 ►

But I read those books.

00:22:16 ►

I read those dare books, those, you know,

00:22:19 ►

the ones that, you know, they were real thin.

00:22:21 ►

They were probably maybe,

00:22:30 ►

if you really put it down at 12-point font, it was like 30 pages of text, but they were like 85 pages and real thick bound thing.

00:22:32 ►

They said things like, cocaine.

00:22:38 ►

So I read the whole series, you know, and I was like, I would really like to try some LSD.

00:22:43 ►

You know, so they did their job. So a man who, you know, I’m just going to make him a name

00:22:47 ►

because I can’t out some rando living his life someplace.

00:22:51 ►

But a man named, I don’t know, Jerry Wentz.

00:22:57 ►

You know, that’s a terrible name for a 15-year-old.

00:22:59 ►

But he was about 16.

00:23:00 ►

Anyway, so he was older than me.

00:23:03 ►

He was some skater kid.

00:23:04 ►

And about at lunch as a freshman

00:23:08 ►

in high school, I was 15, this guy, Jerry Wentz, he hands me a little piece of paper,

00:23:17 ►

and it was free. And he handed it to my friend, my frenemy, I guess. And I have to make him another name for him, and we’ll call him Baltimore.

00:23:27 ►

So Baltimore and Jerry are responsible for everything that comes after this.

00:23:34 ►

So I put this little

00:23:36 ►

piece of paper on my tongue in a public

00:23:40 ►

high school at lunch.

00:23:47 ►

And, you know, I’d been sneaking off whenever I possibly could to go smoke dope, so I thought,

00:23:52 ►

hey, what could possibly go wrong?

00:23:59 ►

So after lunch, I go to algebra class, which is actually the class I usually skipped. By the way, I’m a scientist these days, so, you know.

00:24:13 ►

In algebra class, I was sitting there hiding in the back as I usually did, drawing, but I couldn’t draw.

00:24:21 ►

I couldn’t actually really hold a pen anymore. And I’m looking at this

00:24:27 ►

lined piece of notebook. And back in the day, I’m going to date myself, this was the 90s, I

00:24:35 ►

thought about taking LSD as frying. And I’m going to say this possibly may have influenced my

00:24:45 ►

and I’m going to say this possibly may have influenced my experience because I felt a bubbling in my head

00:24:47 ►

and I started scribbling like a child

00:24:53 ►

like holding the pen in my fist

00:24:56 ►

and just scribbling on a piece of paper

00:25:00 ►

and I mean anybody who wandered back

00:25:04 ►

would have probably quickly seen, you know,

00:25:06 ►

that there was something wrong.

00:25:08 ►

I was peaking in algebra class, and I can’t really, I don’t have the words for that.

00:25:15 ►

That was the ineffable part of it.

00:25:17 ►

But LSD is a long-lived molecule, you know, so I got to advanced earth science and ran into Baltimore, who had not been having as quiet of an experience as I.

00:25:30 ►

And I had an older brother who knew about drugs, and his friends also knew about drugs, and they knew that Baltimore, there was something going on with Baltimore.

00:25:39 ►

So, oh my God, I’m just realizing that I named him Baltimore because y’all symposia kids are from there.

00:25:46 ►

Anyway, so they’re trying to collect him. They’re like, okay, he’s yours now because he was in my class.

00:25:54 ►

And he’s white as a ghost and he’s sort of messing around. And I’m like, oh shit, I have to manage this person

00:25:58 ►

or else I’m going to get screwed. And an entirely different story is that a year before, my sibling was interfaced

00:26:09 ►

with the authorities in a very negative way as a result of LSD. So I had mortal terror

00:26:16 ►

of that shit happening. So I managed, you know. And we went home. We got on the bus, you know, back to my house,

00:26:27 ►

and Baltimore finds the PAM spray, that liquid spray for, you know,

00:26:31 ►

keeping your Salisbury steaks from sticking to something,

00:26:35 ►

and he has a lighter, and he’s amusing himself

00:26:38 ►

by, you know, creating clouds of flame,

00:26:42 ►

and it’s creating oily shit everywhere. And I’m

00:26:46 ►

freaking out because I realize, at first it was

00:26:49 ►

mirth, but then I realized, oh my god,

00:26:50 ►

you’re making a mess of everything.

00:26:53 ►

So I’m like, cleaning up frantically

00:26:54 ►

as my mother walks in the

00:26:56 ►

door, and I’m cleaning it up, and he’s

00:26:58 ►

oh, wait, wait, nope, I said I would

00:27:00 ►

tell the truth.

00:27:02 ►

Once I realized what happened, I grabbed a pool cue, half

00:27:11 ►

of a pool cue actually, it was like unscrewed, and chased Baltimore in a violent rage around

00:27:20 ►

my living room until he blocked himself in the upstairs room, my room, where he collapsed

00:27:28 ►

into a, well, we’ll talk about that in a minute. And at that moment, my mother walks in and I’m

00:27:35 ►

cleaning up, trying to deal with what had thrown me in the rage in the first place. And my mother

00:27:42 ►

walks in and she’s like, what are you doing? Actually, she didn’t even ask, but I realized that things were wrong, and I just said, uh, and I told her the truth.

00:27:51 ►

I said, you know, Baltimore was fucking around with the PAM spray, and so I’m cleaning it up.

00:27:56 ►

I’m sorry? And she was like, oh, okay. So then I called my friend, and I called my other friend,

00:28:04 ►

who, you know, whatever.

00:28:05 ►

His name’s Nate.

00:28:06 ►

He didn’t care.

00:28:08 ►

Called Nate, best friend in the whole world.

00:28:09 ►

And I said, you need to deal with Baltimore.

00:28:12 ►

Get him out of my house.

00:28:13 ►

He’s going to blow my whole shit up.

00:28:15 ►

I’m fucked.

00:28:16 ►

And he’s locked me out of my own room, by the way.

00:28:19 ►

So I can’t get him out.

00:28:20 ►

And he’s weeping behind the door.

00:28:22 ►

Which is a problem.

00:28:23 ►

It’s a big problem.

00:28:29 ►

out and he’s weeping behind the door, which is a problem. It’s a big problem. So my friend Nate shows up, coaxes the door open, walks in the door and Baltimore promptly punches

00:28:35 ►

him in the nuts. And he walks out the fucking door completely just like, fuck this, I’m

00:28:42 ►

out of here. And it was like, walk inin character, walk-out character, you know?

00:28:46 ►

Done.

00:28:47 ►

But the door was open, and I find Baltimore weeping in a pile of Bibles.

00:28:51 ►

Because I had been collecting these Bibles from the fucking phone booth.

00:28:56 ►

Remember phone booths?

00:28:57 ►

Yeah, they used to put the Bibles in there.

00:29:00 ►

And I had a whole stack of them, and he was just covered in them, just sobbing.

00:29:04 ►

And I was like, Baltimore, I’m sorry.

00:29:06 ►

I’m sorry for everything, but I need you to leave.

00:29:11 ►

Look, I’m telling the truth, okay?

00:29:13 ►

I’m just telling the truth.

00:29:15 ►

I was 15. Give me a break.

00:29:18 ►

So I sort of shoved him out the door

00:29:22 ►

and then for the first moment,

00:29:25 ►

I have a little bit of calm.

00:29:28 ►

My folks come home.

00:29:30 ►

And we go to dinner at 6 o’clock.

00:29:34 ►

6 o’clock into an LSD trip is not that long.

00:29:39 ►

So I’m still solidly going.

00:29:42 ►

And we’re at Fuddruckers.

00:29:47 ►

Yes.

00:29:48 ►

And there’s some awful hamburger in front of me

00:29:51 ►

that I don’t want to eat.

00:29:53 ►

And so I get serious with my folks, though.

00:29:56 ►

I get real serious.

00:29:58 ►

And I say,

00:29:59 ►

I am not happy in public high school.

00:30:03 ►

I’m getting fights all the time.

00:30:06 ►

I’m not my older brother.

00:30:08 ►

And I really want out.

00:30:11 ►

What?

00:30:12 ►

Because it was high school.

00:30:14 ►

But the point is, I was able to express myself

00:30:17 ►

in a really cogent way, I’ve got to say.

00:30:22 ►

Okay, it doesn’t matter where I was, I was unhappy.

00:30:26 ►

From the public,

00:30:27 ►

I needed to get the fuck out

00:30:30 ►

of my situation. Anyhow,

00:30:32 ►

I was able to communicate

00:30:33 ►

my experience

00:30:35 ►

of wanting to learn

00:30:38 ►

but not being in a good spot

00:30:40 ►

to my parents

00:30:41 ►

at that moment.

00:30:44 ►

And I negotiated a life-changing experience.

00:30:48 ►

They said, okay, you can drop out.

00:30:52 ►

When you’re 16, you’re legally able

00:30:56 ►

to drop out of high school.

00:30:59 ►

And that’s exactly what I did.

00:31:01 ►

I dropped out of high school.

00:31:03 ►

I went to community college. I got a two-year

00:31:06 ►

degree, and it changed the entire course of my life, and it was messy, all right? It was really messy,

00:31:15 ►

and, you know, there was, I could have used some guidance, I’ll say. I really, really could have

00:31:22 ►

used some guidance through those confusing moments

00:31:25 ►

but it was life changing from the get-go

00:31:28 ►

and it’s always been my barometer

00:31:33 ►

these substances have treated me well

00:31:37 ►

from the beginning

00:31:38 ►

but they ask something of you

00:31:40 ►

and so I say to you

00:31:43 ►

wherever you all are out there on the web and those of you who And so I say to you, wherever you all are,

00:31:45 ►

out there in the web and those of you who are here,

00:31:48 ►

be careful and enter with a pure heart.

00:31:53 ►

Thank you for listening.

00:31:55 ►

Thank you.

00:32:11 ►

I used to be really, really scared of drugs.

00:32:13 ►

They were illegal.

00:32:15 ►

They were this big deal.

00:32:16 ►

Alcohol was great.

00:32:18 ►

Why would I even want to try other drugs?

00:32:21 ►

I started with pot.

00:32:23 ►

I went to OU as well.

00:32:25 ►

Partied a lot.

00:32:26 ►

A lot of alcohol.

00:32:28 ►

Tried some weed.

00:32:31 ►

Fainted several times while smoking marijuana.

00:32:37 ►

And so I thought, why would I ever want to do another drug if I can’t even handle weed?

00:32:40 ►

So got a little older.

00:32:44 ►

Met some friends who were definitely into psychedelics.

00:32:45 ►

Started trying a little bit, but more of a microdose level, because I was still really scared of them.

00:32:52 ►

So I never really felt the full effects of tripping until, I would say, this past year.

00:33:00 ►

And I had my first DMT experience. I had my partner pass away,

00:33:07 ►

and it took away my fear of all drugs.

00:33:10 ►

Nothing mattered anymore.

00:33:11 ►

I was ready to experience whatever the drugs had to give me.

00:33:17 ►

So I went into a very beautiful ceremony that my friends did for me.

00:33:21 ►

There were four of us total.

00:33:26 ►

Watched somebody do it before me.

00:33:30 ►

And then when it came time for my turn,

00:33:32 ►

I was really nervous,

00:33:33 ►

but at the same time,

00:33:35 ►

completely ready to completely let go.

00:33:38 ►

And when it happened,

00:33:40 ►

I smoked twice in the one night.

00:33:42 ►

And the first time I smoked twice in the one night, and the first time I smoked, I saw immediately

00:33:48 ►

a rainbow heart radiating out, and I knew it was my being, and it was just so familiar,

00:33:57 ►

and I couldn’t believe that I didn’t recognize earlier in my life that that was me. And so it was beautiful, and there was music along with it.

00:34:07 ►

Second time.

00:34:09 ►

So I experienced that, and I was happy with that.

00:34:11 ►

But then they were like, you should go a second time.

00:34:14 ►

And I, of course, was hoping to have some sort of interaction with my partner.

00:34:19 ►

And that didn’t happen.

00:34:21 ►

So it was disappointing.

00:34:20 ►

And that didn’t happen.

00:34:22 ►

So it was disappointing.

00:34:35 ►

But the second time I went, I immediately saw things that I can only describe as the things that you see in psychedelic artwork, which I never understood before.

00:34:37 ►

I completely get now.

00:34:40 ►

And it was the fucking universe. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is the universe.

00:34:43 ►

I’ve been here before.

00:34:44 ►

I already knew that. it everything made sense um so I’m really thankful that I had those experiences

00:34:54 ►

and that is really just the beginning for me so I am just starting out but seeing the people in

00:35:02 ►

this film discussing how it allows them even people associated with Christianity and what not

00:35:08 ►

makes me really excited for where I’m going to get

00:35:11 ►

and explore in the universe in my mind

00:35:15 ►

that’s it

00:35:16 ►

applause My story is not so much about an actual psychedelic experience,

00:35:34 ►

but rather about the people who led me there,

00:35:39 ►

specifically one individual.

00:35:41 ►

So I had my first psychedelic experience several years ago, but it was

00:35:45 ►

a number of years leading up to this that this individual who unfortunately

00:35:51 ►

much too many broken hearts has passed away. And so I won’t get to share another psychedelic

00:36:01 ►

experience with him. But from the very beginning of our friendship,

00:36:08 ►

he kind of asked if I would take psychedelics with him and encouraged me in this. And anyone

00:36:16 ►

who knows me, if you suggest something to me, it’s going to make it 10 times more likely that I’m not

00:36:22 ►

going to do it. So that didn’t work. And part of me just

00:36:26 ►

said no because I knew it bugged him. And we kind of operated very well in that wavelength.

00:36:36 ►

But after I had finished my graduate degree and kind of felt a little bit more open to other’s suggestions and other people’s ways in which they might direct me,

00:36:47 ►

I agreed and am so, so thankful, so, so enormously thankful.

00:36:54 ►

And so I think this story is really just one of immense gratitude

00:36:57 ►

in that I have a number of people in my life

00:37:02 ►

who have experienced drugs in a really negative way,

00:37:04 ►

and I work in a world in which drugs are a very negative force.

00:37:09 ►

But luckily for me, that’s never been the case.

00:37:12 ►

And it’s just been a really beautiful world that keeps building into a more beautiful one.

00:37:18 ►

And so I think I just wanted to take a moment to express gratitude

00:37:21 ►

because if we don’t have that, then what do we have?

00:37:26 ►

And really to highlight, I know drugs can be very individual

00:37:31 ►

and have a great importance for one as an individual,

00:37:36 ►

but maybe to highlight the community that can be built around them

00:37:39 ►

and around our shared experiences and experiences learning from one another.

00:37:43 ►

And I just am thankful for that gift

00:37:45 ►

as well psychedelics are my medicine and that’s the way I approach them they’re like a medicine they’re

00:38:09 ►

like a sacrament and they have helped me I struggle with depression and I’ve had highs

00:38:23 ►

from psychedelics and I’ve also had lows.

00:38:26 ►

And I feel like I want to share that, you know, people are like,

00:38:29 ►

I don’t want to ever do that because I feel like you might go into this crazy place

00:38:35 ►

and you might never come out.

00:38:37 ►

And I’m like, that would never happen to you.

00:38:39 ►

I mean, really, it wouldn’t.

00:38:52 ►

really it wouldn’t but actually I had an experience in 2012 on psilocybin that was really dark and I cried for probably 48 hours on and off and it was because I saw myself in high relief detail and I saw a lot of things that I really didn’t like about myself

00:39:08 ►

and it was the truth it wasn’t like a hallucination it was like looking in the mirror for the first

00:39:15 ►

time and really really looking and it was ugly and I didn’t like it um and it was very very hard

00:39:24 ►

I felt like I had been like carved out

00:39:26 ►

like a pumpkin and it was really really raw for a long time after that but

00:39:32 ►

looking back on it now if I hadn’t have gone to that place I wouldn’t be with my

00:39:37 ►

partner now because I was needing to look at myself that way. But the reason why I’m telling you about this kind of crappy thing

00:39:47 ►

is because, one, I needed it.

00:39:52 ►

I think I would have went through that stuff anyway

00:39:54 ►

if I hadn’t have done that.

00:39:57 ►

It just would have probably been longer and more drawn out.

00:40:00 ►

And, you know, you can’t get around it.

00:40:04 ►

You have to go through it.

00:40:07 ►

Two, looking back on it from here,

00:40:09 ►

I think that it actually did put me into a place of depression,

00:40:13 ►

and looking back on it,

00:40:14 ►

I think that if you are going to tackle something like that

00:40:18 ►

and maybe see something like that,

00:40:22 ►

you have to be able to look out for tools to work with. But

00:40:27 ►

on the long view where I am now, in 2014, the way I got out of that experience was also a

00:40:35 ►

psychedelic experience. I had what I like to call my third eye birthday in May of 2014.

00:40:44 ►

And I think it was a crown chakra opening um I didn’t know what

00:40:48 ►

that was back then but I’m wearing the smaller crown my neck because I’m studying to be a yoga

00:40:54 ►

teacher now partly because of that um but in May of 2014 I was on a high dose of antidepressants and I had gained 65 pounds and I was really

00:41:07 ►

fucking sad and I was crappy to be around and I was trying all kinds of stuff to like get better

00:41:15 ►

I was like eating a whole bunch of sugar

00:41:19 ►

and hating myself a lot and I don’t, I was really having a hard time.

00:41:27 ►

And one of the things about my identity is I’ve always been an athlete,

00:41:32 ►

and I used to lift weights, and I was the captain of the softball team,

00:41:34 ►

and I was a pedicab driver, and I was really strong.

00:41:37 ►

Well, I felt fat, I felt lazy, I felt impotent, I felt fucking shitty.

00:41:42 ►

And I had taken some acid, and I took some MDMA, a very light

00:41:48 ►

dose of that. And I was in my tent and I was putting on some socks and I put on these socks

00:41:55 ►

and when I put on my socks, I wasn’t feeling anything by the way. I was like, this shit

00:41:59 ►

sucks. I’m having a bad time. Everybody’s having a fucking good time except for me.

00:42:03 ►

Fuck this shit. Fucking fuck. And my socks are wet.

00:42:05 ►

And I was like, fuck.

00:42:14 ►

So I’m putting on the socks.

00:42:16 ►

And I’d been meditating. This was when I first started meditating.

00:42:20 ►

And I’m putting on the socks and I’m coming up my leg

00:42:23 ►

and I was like, ooh oh my calves are still pretty

00:42:26 ►

beastie they’re like really strong actually and so I started like feeling my own muscles you know

00:42:33 ►

I was like feeling myself as they say and I was like oh and I start going up my leg and feeling

00:42:39 ►

all my muscles and then I just started flexing my muscles and like getting real with the fact that I wasn’t actually like a fat, disgusting slob that I was telling myself every single day.

00:42:50 ►

And I came, I was sitting like cross-legged and I went, flex my arms like this, like bodybuilder stance.

00:43:01 ►

And then I could feel like stuff was moving around in my body.

00:43:04 ►

And then I could feel like stuff was moving around in my body.

00:43:10 ►

And suddenly I looked down and there was this red orb that had appeared.

00:43:11 ►

And it was right here.

00:43:13 ►

And it was just glowing.

00:43:15 ►

And I was like, what the fuck is that?

00:43:20 ►

I never, that wasn’t there before.

00:43:31 ►

And then I was like, wait, did I do that? Maybe I am tripping. And then I was like,

00:43:38 ►

wow, I’ve been feeling really shitty. Maybe I’m doing this like, like that, you know? So I kept squeezing my muscles and I’m thinking maybe, and it starts to to react to me squeezing my muscles.

00:43:49 ►

And it’s turning brighter and it’s turning orange as I’m squeezing.

00:43:53 ►

And I’m thinking, maybe I’m powering up like Zelda. I was thinking.

00:43:57 ►

Like the heart, you know?

00:43:59 ►

And I was like, ooh!

00:44:01 ►

And so as I was squeezing it, I was actually feeling like I was powering up like there was a mind-body

00:44:07 ►

connection happening here and so I kept squeezing it and as I squeezed it it went from red to yellow

00:44:13 ►

to white and when it turned white there was really intense energy happening in my body

00:44:20 ►

and when it turned white it went and I shot out of my body and I flew into this

00:44:29 ►

white light space and I used to describe it well I described it after it when I

00:44:36 ►

came out of it jibbering I thought I was like every I thought I was flying all

00:44:42 ►

over the world but like I actually think better to explain it like I was like every I thought I was flying all over the world but like actually think better to explain it like I was everywhere all at once and it was pure white I wasn’t me and I felt

00:44:53 ►

I felt like no thought and it was really good

00:44:59 ►

and I it was like upward energy and I I can’t really remember it anymore to be honest I I

00:45:09 ►

remember my memory of it but that lasted for who knows how long and it was really really good and

00:45:15 ►

I felt like I knew things you know and then immediately following that I had this up and

00:45:22 ►

then it turned down and it turned to I saw this like bowl beneath me.

00:45:28 ►

And it was, or it was like a round shape and it was gray and brown.

00:45:32 ►

And there was millions of people in there and they were just desperately sad.

00:45:37 ►

And they were all crying.

00:45:38 ►

And I was, I was immediately wracked with sadness.

00:45:42 ►

And I just, I cried like the most I’ve ever cried in my entire life.

00:45:48 ►

And I had this like thought, I was like, why am I crying like this?

00:45:54 ►

Why am I so fucking sad?

00:45:57 ►

And I got a response from something.

00:45:59 ►

It wasn’t like a talking.

00:46:01 ►

It was like a thought to me.

00:46:03 ►

It was responding back.

00:46:01 ►

It wasn’t like a talking.

00:46:03 ►

It was like a thought to me.

00:46:04 ►

It was a responding back.

00:46:11 ►

And it somehow told me that this is like the universal sadness I’m feeling.

00:46:15 ►

And when I got the response, I released.

00:46:17 ►

Because I’d been holding back.

00:46:19 ►

Like, why am I so fucking sad? And when I knew that it was just like the state of being that we must suffer,

00:46:27 ►

I released. And I actually fucking cried so hard. It was like having an orgasm actually. Kind of. A sad

00:46:39 ►

orgasm. If that makes any fucking sense

00:46:45 ►

it was just catharsis

00:46:48 ►

but you know release

00:46:49 ►

sorry I like talking about orgasm

00:46:52 ►

they’re really cool

00:46:58 ►

so

00:47:01 ►

anyway

00:47:03 ►

it was really good I cried a lot and then and actually one of our friends heard me crying

00:47:10 ►

and she thought I was laughing so it does it’s kind of weird so um that ended rather abruptly

00:47:18 ►

and I woke up with face down on the bottom of my tent and I heard the trail end of my own crying and I was in a puddle of my own spit

00:47:26 ►

and yeah it was pretty weird and I came out of it like whoa and I flipped over and the first

00:47:33 ►

thing I said was what the fuck was that and I came out of it like oh my god I couldn’t sleep for 48 hours. But I wasn’t a spiritual person before that.

00:47:48 ►

And it was one of those moments.

00:47:51 ►

And I came running out holding my shoes.

00:47:53 ►

And I went and found Brian, my partner.

00:47:57 ►

And it’s changed my life.

00:48:00 ►

I cut my antidepressants cold turkey,

00:48:04 ►

which is a very bad idea.

00:48:08 ►

I was fine, but don’t do that.

00:48:14 ►

Really bad idea.

00:48:16 ►

I was kind of sick.

00:48:18 ►

But I didn’t have any problems with eating and stuff like that.

00:48:24 ►

So anyway, it’s changed my life, and I really, this is medicine.

00:48:29 ►

That’s all.

00:48:29 ►

Thank you.

00:48:43 ►

There’s been a…

00:48:45 ►

We’ve heard tonight countless stories of light,

00:48:47 ►

of love, of healing, of medicine,

00:48:49 ►

and it fills the soul, and it’s beautiful.

00:48:53 ►

And I want to start by thanking each and every one of you

00:48:56 ►

who have spoken, each and every one of you who will speak

00:48:58 ►

for bringing your souls out in front of others like this.

00:49:02 ►

So a round of applause for yourselves.

00:49:05 ►

Thank you very much for everything you’ve done.

00:49:09 ►

This is not one of those stories.

00:49:14 ►

So I hope someone speaks after me,

00:49:16 ►

because this is a story about my last suicide.

00:49:21 ►

And this is the other side of that coin.

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So as many of you out there

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probably have experience with depression

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as some speakers have said tonight,

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those of you who do or have known

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those who have struggled with depression in the past,

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there is a lot of different ways that people describe it, physical sensations, mental sensations. Um, here you hear things. Um, for me, it was always

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very clear. I always knew where it was because it starts right between the shoulder blades and

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like someone had approached from behind you

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and taken a shawl, it wraps around your shoulders,

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and it drapes down your back,

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and it creeps up the back of your neck

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and over the front of your face,

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and it closes around your neck like a clasp.

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And suddenly when it’s all around you,

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it sort of takes you under the sea.

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And for me it was like being wrapped in a thick wool blanket

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lying in my back under the ocean looking up at the waves.

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And it’s warm and it’s solid

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and the world turns gray and slightly shimmering.

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But it’s far away.

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But I always knew where it was.

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This past year was a turning point

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because it was probably my darkest.

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And during the depths of this time,

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I decided that there came a point where I decided,

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well, I’ve got to face, this thing is behind my back.

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It’s between my shoulder blades. It’s over my head.

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It’s time to look this in the eye.

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So since I was a little five years old, I’ve been in martial arts.

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I’ve grown up my entire life with a martial mentality.

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I see the world through a war-like lens.

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So I was like, well, this is, I’m going to hunt.

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I’m going to battle.

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So I prepared myself.

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I can’t remember the exact dose.

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It was either half of a hit of LSD or less.

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And I walked to my room, and I took out my bow, my wooden, old, traditional bow,

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and I sat on the covers, and I strung up my bow, and I knocked an arrow, and I sat there,

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and I took my sacrament, and I went on my hunt, and I waited, and I stalked this thing

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until I felt it start between my shoulder blades and creep up through my shoulders

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and start to come around my neck, and I felt that ocean under my feet.

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And as I went below the waves this time, I held my bow, and I held my arrow, and I turned around.

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I held my bow and I held my arrow and I turned around

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and I didn’t expect to see anything

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but there it was

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there was depression

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there was the darkness in my heart

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a skull over my shoulder

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draped in that same cloak

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directly in my face and there was no doubt about it what I was looking at.

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It had been under me, under the water this whole time.

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And I had my bow in my lap and my arrow knocked,

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and all I could hear was this skull whispering over and over again,

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you know, die, die, die, die, just over, over echoing like I was

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under the water. And I felt my skin go sort of fuzzy and my grasp on the arrow loosened.

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And I don’t know how long I was there just staring that figure in the face, die, die.

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figure in the face to hide. So I, I, I, I knew what I had to do. I held the bow. I held my arrow.

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I got up and walked to my dresser and, uh, took out my pistol. I went back to my bed and I sat down and I laid down. I held the bow and one arm over my chest, my arrow, and I took that pistol

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and I turned off the safety

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and put it up to my head

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and closed my eyes there for a minute

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and died, died, died, died.

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The skull was over on the side

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and pulled the trigger and there was a click.

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And in the moment, I did not remember that during my saner times earlier that year.

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I had rid my house of every bullet, so the gun was empty.

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But what came out of the barrel might as well have been a bullet.

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I felt, was it truth or was it acceptance?

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Was it surrender?

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Was it something?

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I felt it in my head.

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I felt it tear through my brain.

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I felt it blow a hole out the other side, and this figure in front of me is howling in glee and laughter, and it’s loud.

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And I just started shaking, and I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t.

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And the gun dropped out of my hands, and I scrambled to pick it back up

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and pulled the trigger, click, click, click, click, and this thing is laughing.

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And I just feel these, just the acceptance of what I’m doing

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just out the other side.

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And I started laughing too.

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And as I started laughing, I thought,

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I thought that this skull, that this depression,

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that this horseman over my shoulder was laughing because I was weak.

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Because I had given up, because I had pulled the trigger, even if there was no bullet in the chamber, that I had accepted that I could kill myself and be done with it.

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But it seemed as I started laughing that he was happy and that for me

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and I was happy for him

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that I had faced

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this thing

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that I had acknowledged this

00:55:53 ►

darkness in my heart

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and

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I spent the next

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day clutching that

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bow and arrow clutching that bow and arrow, clutching my weapon,

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and intermittently sobbing and falling into a nap, but that skull never left.

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And what I learned from it was this, from that day forward,

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and I’ve carried this with me, and I will always carry this with me,

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is that behind each and every one of us, there is a darkness in our heart,

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that there is a horseman behind our shoulder,

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that there is a boogeyman in the corner of our eye,

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and that during our worst times, we can’t ignore this fundamental part of ourselves.

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We have to do whatever we can to do to face it,

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and it’s not something that can be killed, but it is something that can be killed but it is something that can be hunted

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it’s something that can be acknowledged and when you accept that part of yourself

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and you gain the strength to feed your demon every day that if you were in the darkest place

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where i was that you will never have to complete that final action.

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I feel I never will have to kill myself because in that moment I did.

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So hunt, be strong, and don’t forget to acknowledge all parts of you, the joy, the love, the light, the rainbow hearts projecting from you,

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the strength of your body, the strength of your mind, the acceptance and the beauty of your fellow man.

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But also use these opportunities to address the parts of ourselves that are dark,

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the parts of ourselves that are terrifying, and the parts of yourselves that are, in their own way, equally beautiful.

00:57:42 ►

Thank you. Thank you. I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a-I’m a- Thank you.

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