Suggested Reading
 By Lonny Shavelson
Five Addicts Challenge our Misguided Drug Rehab System.
Synopsis
Hooked explores the links between drug addiction, mental illness, and
trauma, including child abuse, and argues for an integrated approach that
treats the roots of drug abuse, not just the behavior itself.
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Tasting the Vine of Souls continued
To me, the brew tasted like fermented, organic prune juice or, depending on who I asked, spirulina-laced molasses or chocolate licorice. The aftertaste was foul. I struggled to finish even half a dose although a few participants knocked it back like a thick whiskey chaser.
Days before the ritual, we were told to follow a strict dietary regimen of no salt, sugar, oil, fat, sex or alcohol, which could heavily color the experience by triggering intense nausea, headaches, or worse, hellish visions. Retching, though, seemed to be intertwined with the experience. My neighbor repeatedly threw up and burped, emptying his stomach into the white plastic trashcan sandwiched between his feet.
"Vomit was generally a good thing," Conrad, the dotcom researcher next to me, told me later. "There was that purging feeling that went beyond physical and mental. It felt spiritually cleansing somehow."
I was lucky and avoided vomiting, but did experience a first wave of nausea that lingered with the tea's aftertaste. The effects crept up silently. I felt that IT (for it felt more like an entity than a substance) sensed what I had been thinking, trying to incorporate itself into my mindset. I expected the elation associated with hallucinogens, but instead felt an intense calm stir under my skin as awareness began registering in my gray matter. Nothing really kicked in until I drank the second glass.
For hours I hovered between absolute contentment and discomfort. There was no conversation, just the steady stream of tribal, shamanic music vibrating across the wooden floors. The room was alive with noise. Just as Bill began to quiet down to a whimper, a woman to his left began wailing like a wounded animal with its foot trapped in an iron grate. A woman closer to me moaned lowly as if building toward a tremendous orgasm; another shrieked in delight. It was like a human zoo, a cacophony of sounds, gargles, yaps and groans, where one cry would solicit the next.
I grew highly...»»
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