Confessions of a Drug-Crazed Maenad

Opening the Doors of Perception

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Youth of Bacchus (1884)

Oh, those maenads, devotees of Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and madness - brilliant pharmakia of the ancient world. Pharmakia, by the way, started out meaning expert at mixing drugs (it’s the root of our word pharmacy) and ended up meaning terrifying witch who should be burned at the stake.

Some scholars argue that Dionysus is the primordial savior god, and that Orpheus, Mithra, and later Jesus evolved directly from Dionysus and his liturgy. What do all the saviors save us from? The fear of death. How is that done? Through direct experience of the god’s immortality, which becomes the initiate’s experience of their own immortality. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

I hope you see that I’m not referring to the historical Jesus (scholars are pretty sure there was one). I refer to the Jesus mythologized in the centuries following his death, a process of merging beliefs scholars call syncretization. People don’t give up their old beliefs. They pour the new on top. They merge the new with what they already have.

For an example of the process, let’s look at Trump, who, like Jesus, has been mythologized. Why can’t we show the MAGA right how illogical their belief system about him is? Because it’s mythological. The historical Jesus probably does not resemble the mythologized Jesus any more than the actual Trump resembles the figure his followers venerate. They are in the grip of a deep and dark American shadow. One, unfortunately, we deserve.

The Greek key surrounds this maenad and randy god, a frequent geometric visual seen when under the influence of psychoactive drugs.

The ancients were wise enough to know that every one of us, including the numinous archetypes we call gods, has a light side and a shadow side. Dionysus is the god of religious ecstasy, and his equally potent shadow? Madness, of course. Ever experienced addiction? Pure madness.

Dionysus is the god of all things mind-altering, not just wine, as in the goofy Disney version. That includes sex (the union of opposites) and theater, which includes ritual. If you’ve ever been in the audience of a theatrical performance so transporting that your mind was altered, you know why he is the god of theater. And ritual? Mind-altering is the point. The Maenad’s phallic thrysus, which they carried to the party, was a cone-shaped and hollow magic wand (in case you missed the reference to orgies), containing the psychoactive plants and fungi that, diluted in wine, became the body and blood of the god. His attributes are not some random basket of goodies.

The maenads were the expert mixers of magical potions. They consumed the god, and in return, he consumed them. After that, the god never left them. They belonged to him. Through an experience of a psychoactive Eucharist, initiates could “die before they died so that when they died, they wouldn’t have to die.” What is the best substance to dissolve these drugs into? Wine.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Cauldrons are an ancient symbol of the Great Mother’s womb. Speaking of Macbeth’s witches, archeologists have found the bones of reptiles among the remains of many potent teacher plants in the bottom of ancient cauldrons. And there are some psychoactive reptiles and amphibians… Eye of newt, anyone?

The first time I read that wine in the ancient world was not like the wine we know today, I glossed over it just as the authors did. But that lack of curiosity was a mistake. See, the chemical process of wine fermentation doesn’t change. It’s still true that once you get to an alcohol content of about 16%, the yeast dies—no more fermentation. So what made these wines require an expert to mix them so the drinker wouldn’t die? Mountain herbs and fungi. Teacher plants. Drugs. You definitely wanted an expert, and those experts were women.

These wild women (maenad means raving woman) were high priestesses of the greatest mystery religion of all time. In fact, a pale version persists to this day, influencing approximately 30% of the world’s population. Most Christians still consume the body and blood, only now women are banned from administering the sacraments they likely invented, and governments have outlawed… plants. The psychoactive Eucharist, which once transported initiates to an unmediated experience of the divine, is now a flat placebo, recognized as only symbolic by some protestants, but is still revered as mystical by most Catholics. We have lost so much. Cue Tom Lehrer singing The Vatican Rag. “Two, four, six, eight. Time to transubstantiate!”

Of course, there are other doorways to the divine that don’t require drugs.

Silence is as potent as any drug. No reading, no writing, no TV, no music. You don’t even need any fancy meditation techniques, though those can give the ego something to do. Silence brings about the death of the ego and the birth of Presence. Turns out that presence is love, and all you need to do to access it is die to your ego’s nattering. And that’s as simple as it sounds. Mercifully, once the process starts, it completes. The only hard part is the original willingness. The ego (personal and cultural) will tell you many stories about why you can’t do this, all carrying just enough truth to turn you away. Don’t be fooled.

The most common story is: I will go crazy. Like I said, the story contains a grain of truth. You do go crazy, and then you go sane. Egoic death throes can be full of venom and spite. Mine always are. Then the angels sing: Wahhhaaaa! Presence. Love comes pouring through your whole being. There is no reason for the love, no story about the love. It just is. You are in the god, and the god is in you. Awakening.

Nature is also a doorway to the divine. Even when I was a kid in horrible circumstances, if I was 40 miles out to sea, bang, it happened. Singing can also stop your mind. When I was healing the deep trauma of my alcohol-fueled, domestic-violence childhood, I walked out into the middle of the forest and sang my heart whole almost every day for six months. Now, I sing in a Threshold Choir for people who are actively dying. The presence of pure, tenderhearted yet unsentimental love overwhelms my petty concerns and flows through me - as me. And as the song.

Ultimately, whether you believe in reincarnation or not, the ego is reborn, but its story is less believable than it was. It can take years, but if you continue on this path, some Buddhists say you will inhabit a rainbow body, and that is every bit as beautiful as it sounds. It can take a whole lifetime, but what else are you going to do here? Pursue wealth, domination, and immortality like a Disney villain? Don’t laugh. People do. Look at the cadre of billionaires running the U.S. right now. And as Billy Eilish said recently, “If you are a billionaire… Why?”

Another non-druggy way that works is darkness. Remember those tanks? I used to float in body temperature water so salty it held me up. Total darkness. Silence. A complete return to the Mother’s womb. Bliss. I’m on a waitlist for a five-day total darkness retreat in a cave. I’m both terrified of this and can’t wait. This method carries the same risks of reincarnation as silent retreats. But every time I reincarnate, I’m less gullible for egoic stories, and even less willing to give up ecstasy in favor of madness. Why do it? What has madness ever given me that I wanted?

Because I am essentially a maenad, let’s talk about shortcuts, Nature’s pharmacy, pharmakaia, drugs. Almost every climate in the world has some kind of teacher plants or fungi. Nearly all of them are Schedule 1 NO-NOs, which the government says means a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. That’s kind of a joke because people have been using them for 50k years. You’d think some political or religio-beaucratic someones were afraid of losing control. If the 99% had access to a true awakening, we might refuse to sacrifice our lives on the altar of making someone else wealthy. Could happen. You never know.

Maenad in the throes

The first time I took ayahuasca, I was in a small circle working with a shaman who had trained in vegetalisimo for decades. When I sat before him, he looked directly into my soul and said, “The first time, you may not have an experience of god.” How did he know? Was I that obvious?

The descent was arduous to say the least. There was so much puking and diarrhea. It felt like my soul was being roto-rootered. Glowing geometric shapes hurtled at my face like a 3-D old-time screen saver. When I reached the great wall of my fear of death, it was terrible indeed. An imaginary membrane stretched across my face like latex, blocking my entrance to the Otherworld and my breathing. I panicked. I had ingested poison. Now, no one could save me. I was sure I would die.

Then I popped through and was free to explore. I mean, really free. I wasn’t my body; I didn’t even have a body.

I relived a Big Vivid Dream I had when I was seven and again when I was in middle school, the kind that lays down the primary archetype for your life. Mine? Maenad.

In the childhood dream, it was very cold, as it is when one uses psychoactive drugs. Your internal temperature drops, and there’s not much you can do about it but bundle up. But the cold isn’t outside, it’s in your blood. The cold is kind of great because I’m in my beloved bed under a weight of many comfy blankets. I’m toasty. I fly my bed to school and attend class - still in bed. I fly over a frozen landscape, between the worlds, and in deep space. It’s very cold in deep space, but I’m happy and warm. Now, 60 or so years later, I’d say my dream was a predictor of my shamanic travels, where I’ve gone to learn. Some part of me knew I was descended from maenads even as a child.

Oh, and the comfort got bigger and bigger. It was a theme. I was soooo comfortable that I realized being in my body was uncomfortable 100% of the time. Terribly uncomfortable. Then I realized why I had never been comfortable in my body. Ever. I could actually see how my body reacted to being prey, which, as a young girl, then a young woman, then a middle-aged woman in this Western misogynistic culture, I very much was. Now, as an old woman, I have a cloak of invisibility which I adore. How amazing it was when that armoring fell away. How freeing. Then I situated back in my body. How profoundly comfortable I was in my own skin! A miracle indeed. For three days after.

Warning: Because visions only show you what is possible, I had to spend the next five or so years making that a physical reality. It was difficult work. But I would never have even known it was even possible without Mother Aya. And that was just one part of the first time I visioned with her.

Little Brown Mushrooms (LBMs) in the wild

I did…do psilocybin every few years or so with a therapist. It’s milder on the body. That’s not to say I wouldn’t visit Mother Aya again if she called to me. I would.

The therapist and I have three sessions before I journey. They spend six hours with me during the trip, and we have three sessions after. The last time, when the geometric lights were ricocheting around my frontal lobes, I was aware that the medicine was rewiring my brain, connecting parts of me that had been severed by trauma. I sobbed for hours as the stories I’d made about myself and the world as a result of that trauma released through my eyes, nose, and throat. I became aware that none of the stories I’d told for years were actually true. My pillow and even my shirt were soaked. I was dehydrated from hours of sobbing.

Two months before, I’d lost a beloved puppy who was stung by a bee. In the 21st century, we can’t save a puppy from an allergic reaction to a bee sting? He was 21 weeks old, and I loved him beyond reason. I rushed him to the ER, and they worked on him for 6 hours, including a total blood transfusion. While the vet team worked, I spent the day in prayer, begging for Grace, begging for his life, using my most powerful maenad magic to ask the powers of the universe to save my baby.

Puck

I don’t think I can adequately describe how his death shattered my illusions. You’re going to have to imagine that one. I will tell you, though, it was the reason I ate the magic mushrooms. I just couldn’t get over it. If my idiosyncratic woo-woo worldview, cobbled together over 50 years of deep realization, wasn’t true… then what was?

In that psilocybin session, it became clear that this wasn’t just about the puppy. I was the one I was grieving for. Duh, you might say, but in the thick of grief, I never questioned that it was about Puck and the prayers that weren’t answered. Yes, that was his name, that little trickster.

And then, I died too. I was no longer there. I could not find myself. Where is this fiction called Susan? I heard a voice say. Where indeed. But more importantly, who is looking for her? I didn’t know. If Susan is dead, how will I ever write again? I didn’t know. That ambitious one, the one who wanted to do all that stuff, had died. Would I drive home to my family? I didn’t know. Did I love them? I didn’t know. Where was I? Dead. Flatline. Nothing. And the next morning? Still dead. And the next day and the next? Dead as a doornail. It’s not easy being a maenad sometimes.

That old Susan was toast. She’d never do anything again. I wrote in my journal how ironic it was that the old Susan had to die so the new Susan could live. Some new, different person would have to fulfill all those dreams. Or not. Maybe this body would just sit in the back garden and vibe - until the body died. There are worse outcomes.

It’s been two years since my last confession, I mean ritual with my inner maenad, and I’m doing all kinds of things now that the old Susan only dreamed of. So, thank the Lord Dionysus, but not the church, for their Eucharist is an inert placebo. If their Eucharist were potent, their priests couldn’t have done those horrible things to all those children. The god within would have made them face themselves and neutered their appetites… I mean, healed them. And certainly don’t thank the state, because my Eucharist has been illegal for centuries now, though it doesn’t hurt anyone as much as closing down medical insurance subsidies, ending SNAP benefits for the working poor, and using our own tax-funded military to invade our cities while rolling out a coup so they can milk us without any government regulations. They keep the general population terrified of death, so we think we need strong daddies to save us.

And, like I said, if you want to meet divinity within your own being, you don’t need to be a maenad. You need willingness. Maenads only offer a shortcut, but it’s arduous either way. And after all of that, it doesn’t give you any power in the world to keep your loved ones alive, avert disaster, or give you any special access to the divine that everyone else doesn’t have. But it does give you Presence. Love. Peace. And Joy. For me, the loudest attribute of presence is joy. And if you pursue this path long enough, it opens Compassion, that much-maligned disease of Western civilization. But it won’t give you power or even dominion. Your ego can’t use prayer as though the Lord of Hosts were Santa.

You can only surrender to a deliciousness that is so alive and aware that you would not go back to the flat, two-dimensional pretend-you if you could.

If you read to the end, please leave your heart, so my heart will find it. It lets me know you were walking beside me. If you were moved at all, please support me by restacking.

If you had a Scooby Doo moment - Rut Ro! Please leave a question. If you have an experience of your own, please comment. There is so much more to this world than my little philosophy. You are all my teachers.

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