Join me as I take you along on my journey to healing so much more than I ever even knew I needed to address.
This is a constant journey, as healing is not linear, so there will be multiple blog entries. My purpose to sharing is so that I hope others can find their way out of the darkness as well.
What is plant medicine?
For tens of thousands of years, human cultures around the globe had all of their needs met by plants, animals, and natural resources that surrounded them. For medicine, they could find a finely stocked pharmacy in the roots, herbs, fungi, and trees all around them. Some of these early peoples discovered that some plant medicines did not just heal toothaches and other physical ailments but expanded the mind in incredible ways as well. They placed these sacred plants at the heart of their spiritual traditions.
Plant medicine healing was both a reproducible science and a delicate magic. The potent psychedelic plant medicines were seen as capable of healing the mind, the body, and the soul. When people talk about plant medicines in a psychedelic context, they are referring to plants like cannabis, Psilocybin cubensis (magic mushrooms), and B. cappi and chacruna (common constituent plants of the Amazonian brew ayahuasca). When smoked or ingested, these plants have psychedelic properties that take their imbibers on transformational inner journeys of self-reflection and profound consciousness expansion that can change their lives in highly positive ways.
For many years I was under the thought of these plant medicines being used as "pathways" to harsher drugs, or the stereotypical thought of well the ones who do that stuff are just stoners who don't go anywhere. So I turned off any real idea of working with them. I followed the main stream thinking and just tossed that whole concept aside as being "bad"
Then 2012 happened.
January 2012 my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 Lymphoma and Leukemia cancers. The first thought in my head was just wrapped around this not being possible. Surely the doctors were WRONG.
Test after test lead us back to the same answers- she was untouchable. Basically they dismissed her to die. One doctor told us 3 weeks, another shrugged and said "get her affairs in order"
When did we stop trying to heal?? When did we just become a number to the next doctor? And if there wasn't an expensive over the top treatment to offer- when did we DUMP these people to the wayside?
Those were all thoughts that I wanted to scream out loud at these doctors. But they made me feel stupid. I obviously wasn't educated enough or comfortable enough to challenge them.
My first exploration into plant medicine was right after she was discharged. My first exposure to the possibility of plants healing was my introduction to Gerson's Therapy. The possibility of green juices, coffee enemas, and proper supplements healing the body from migraines, chronic disease, and even cancer enamored me. Why wasn't this even suggested? A simple change of diet? Could that REALLY be all that's needed?
Unfortunately, my mom was not open to this idea of exploring the possibility. She had given up, and we went thru a long hard 5 months of watching her suffer. It got to a point where I just prayed she would pass away in her sleep verses being in pain anymore.
After this in all honesty, I shrunk back away from any ideas of healing or natural medicine. I drifted off into a path of extreme self destruction, trying to fill the void in my heart of loosing my mom.
I spent a good year of going out and drinking pretty excessively. I had no real purpose- just to wake up, get thru work, make sure the kids were always taken care of, and then escape however possible after they went to sleep.
I did end up straightening out quite a bit and got my head back on for the most part. I did always feel extremely lost as I ventured thru everyday and much of my time was spent wondering why we are here just to suffer and die. I felt little to almost no connection with God, Universe, or whatever exterior force it was/may be/ is....
(Continued next week)