I grew up in the Catholic Church.  Went to Catholic school from 1-3rd grade, received my First Communion, Confirmation, and then attended  Catechism classes until I was old enough to get my driver’s license, and drive myself, and then I would go and listen to the rock opera: Jesus Christ Superstar, instead. 

It almost became a ritual.

God had me on a spiritual journey, but my flesh kinda got in the way.

After being homeless for a while in 1974 and early 1975, I moved in with a friend of mine from high school. My drug use was growing, cannabis, and LSD. During this time I began to read a series of books by Carlos Castaneda about Yaqui Indian folklore and spiritualism, from northern Mexico.

I had attempted some of the practices, but to no avail, the psychedelic drugs required were not then available.

One afternoon I got a call from one of my old band teacher’s son. I had gotten cannabis from him a few times, while he was living in a little town south of Castaic, California called Val Verde.  He had access to peyote buttons!  I had of course heard of them, they were prominent in the books I was reading, and my connection by the airport actually had one growing in a little pot on his windowsill. 

So I set up a deal, and was able to pick up 450 peyote buttons from him, all at one time; unheard of in the circles in which I associated.  I set them out to dry in my closet, lined with aluminium foil, with an incandescent light. 

I let only a couple of friends know that I had them, I thought I was going to keep most of them for myself. Early one Saturday morning Brent came by, as arranged, and we set out to eat as many as we could.

Peyote is probably one of the bitterest things God ever created, so we made sure we had plenty of honey in which to soak the buttons, which we chopped up, before we attempted to ingest them. They have cotton like hair in the centre, so we trimmed all of that out, chopped, soaked, and proceeded to eat spoonful after spoonful.  We ate 14 buttons each that morning!

It was so terrible eating them, I was gagging at the end as I got the spoon even close to my mouth.

Disgusting. (What was I thinking?)

It generally takes 40 to 60 minutes to begin to feel the effects of hallucinogens, so we went for a walk, up into the desert brush at the end of my road on Church Street, to some really tall Eucalyptus trees.  By the time we almost got to them, we were both feeling sick, about 45 minutes had passed, and almost at the same time, we both threw up.  YUCK!

As I gazed down at what had come out of me, it began to sparkle and twinkle. Shortly I totally forgot about not feeling well, and we both began to laugh, and smoked a joint of cannabis. We slowly made our way back to my little house, when we got there we drank plenty of water, and put a record on the turntable.

What I went on to discover, was not some grand spiritual insight, but that this was just another reason, and way, to party.

Back then, I always loved hallucinogens. 

I created the time, the space, and the people I was with, I even pre-chose the musical playlist.

But looking back on it, the ethereal affects were just an attempt to not deal with the loneliness, the lack of direction, motivation, and worst of all, the desire for some kind of spiritual connection.