One day, Sophia and I are planting on the same crew. I have a runny nose and, while bouncing out the back of the block together, I find myself sniffling at the most inopportune times.
“I love snorting spruce needles,” I grunt sarcastically, scrunching my nose and trying to squeeze out the spruce needles, “It’s my favourite thing to do.”
“No, don’t snort spruce needles – no snorting anything this year!” Sophia responds cheerily without looking up, “Fentanyl overdoses galore this year – no snorting! No cocaine, no MDMA, nothing.”
“Who snorts MDMA?” I ask as we approach each other before bouncing back on our lines.
“I think you can snort anything really,” she answers, “I had a friend once who put everything up his nose – was convinced it was the most effective way to do it. He was lactose intolerant and, before eating, he would always open one capsule of lactate and snort it.”
“How does that make sense?” I inquire doubtfully.
“I don’t think it does,” Sophia shrugs, “but it made sense to him and he was one of the smartest, most interesting people I’ve ever met.”
Several days later, while sitting in the mess tent, I ask Sophia more about this lactate-snorting friend of hers.
“I’ll tell you everything except his name, but we can call him ‘The Shaman’,” she laughs, “since he self-identified himself as a shaman.”
The Short Story of Sophia and the Lactate-Snorting Shaman
Several years ago, Sophia met The Shaman while at the Shambhala music festival (naturally) with a friend. She and her friend were about to go on their first ever mushroom trip when The Shaman overheard them.
‘Oh, you’re doing mushrooms for the first time?!’ he asked energetically, ‘Can I join you? I love watching people on their first time taking mushrooms.’ The three of them then met up a few days after Shambhala and all tripped out on mushrooms. It was a wonderful experience, but this was not the highlight of Sophia’s interactions with The Shaman.
After the festival, The Shaman was house-sitting his sister’s cottage on Vancouver Island and invited Sophia and her friend to join him there. They agreed and the plan actually followed through, which is highly unusually of spur-the-moment friendships at Shambhala or any other music festival really. Sophia volunteered to supply food and drinks for the weekend, The Shaman provided the location and the drugs, and Sophia’s friend provided herself (“Which was really all she could be relied upon to bring,” Sophia chuckles happily). So, as it happened, Sophia kept the three of them fed all weekend while The Shaman kept them high all weekend.
During their weekend together, The Shaman made fascinating concoctions of various drugs, asking the girls’ experience with each of the drugs before doling out specific measurements. Generally, Sophia and her friend were given much smaller portions since they’d had less experience with each of them.
“After snorting one of the lines, it felt like my whole mind exploded into a sort of sensory overdrive,” reminisces Sophia, “it was amazing, really. I could see Octarine: the colour of magic.”
At one point during the weekend, the three of them were all standing naked together (as sometimes happens when high). They all just admired the beauty of each other’s bodies with no pressure of sex and no fear or vulnerability at all. The three of them just sat in each other’s presence, so open and comfortable.
“It was a really amazing experience, to feel so safe and comfortable in another’s presence,” Sophia continued.
As the weekend came to an end, Sophia went up to The Shaman to see if she should square up the drugs she and her friend had taken.
“He wouldn’t take anything,” she said, “Any drug is expensive and we were taking what felt like every drug. But he just said ‘I had a wonderful time and I hope you did too.’ And that was that.”
Several years after this experience, Sophia was driving through an area of Alberta where he was and went to visit him for a few days. He is now an engineer living with his girlfriend who isn’t strongly into drugs so he’s essentially stopped taking them.
“He’s just one of those people who are extremely skilled at everything,” Sophia continued, “One year, he and a small team of others were going to the Burning Man festival and they constructed a giant heart that actually beats. That was their contribution to Burning Man – a giant beating heart.”
The Shaman and his girlfriend live with a small group of other people who all just live in total harmony and commitment to one another. At one point, a child was born into their community and they are all deeply committed to her. According to the child’s mother, a tiny angel appeared to her as the daughter was being conceived and said ‘My name is Indica. You’ve just conceived me – I’m looking forward to meeting you in nine months’. Sure enough, she was pregnant and, nine months later, their small community had a child. They named the girl “Indica” of course, because that’s what the angel said her name was. Their daughter Indica is surrounded by love, support, and commitment from the whole community.
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“It’s a really remarkable and refreshing reminder of the different ways that people can live their lives,” says Sophia, “and they work. They are happy and healthy.”
So what is the point of this story, aside from that lovely last line? If you think it's just for the sake of sharing some drug story, you are partially correct. To borrow a line from Thomas King (or probably Gabor Mate as well), : "There are banned addictive drugs even though they (can) have much the same effects as alcohol and tobacco. Sanctioned Addictive Drugs and Banned Addictive drugs. And the only real difference between them are the stories we tell."
Here's to changing the stories we tell.
