At the Monastery: Peyote Memories in Sierra Madre

How Drew and I Bonded, and


How A Night With Teresa brought back this Memory



[an unpublished section of a book that Nyerges has been working on about his childhood]

In 2008, I was sitting on the wide open field of the Passionist Monastery in the foothills of Sierra Madre.  My friend Teresa and I were sitting there in the darkness of the new moon, considering some key decisions before us.  We sat there on a large blanket which we had to move and arrange until we found a spot free of the ubiquitous gopher holes. It was dark and quiet, and we spoke little, but looked southward at the vast expanse of lights that made up the Los Angeles County sprawling urban expanse.

I didn’t perceive that I was in a state of crisis, though by the true definition of the word – a fork in the road where a decision must be made – my current state was indeed a crisis.

A decision needed to be made.  But why Teresa and I were there that night, and the decision I needed to make, is not what this story about.

Being there on the broad open field of the monastery brought back a flood of memories from approximately 1974, when I found myself facing another personal crisis of sorts.

Back then, my friend Drew Devereux told me how he researched where he was likely to find peyote in the wild.  He then hitchhiked down to Texas, along the Rio Grande, nearly to the Gulf of Mexico.  He carried just a little canvas pack. I admired Drew’s apparent lack of fear, and his ability to go where no man has gone before – well, at least to go where he hadn’t gone before, and certainly where I had never gone before.

He told me that in a little U.S. rural town which seemed far more Mexican than U.S., he got dropped off  by his ride and then he hiked into the nearby fields.  Drew described the type of trees that were out there, and how they grew in gullies in the slightly undulating landscape.  In some cases, lichens hung from the lower branches of the trees, indicating that the area is often in the shade, or that it was sometimes underwater. 

Drew wrote to me, “I remember the trip to Texas, of course.  But I almost gave up because I didn't find any cactus. But I met some people who told me that it grew everywhere, and they actually took me up a hillside and showed me where they grew.”

So Drew made his camp there for the night, comfortably out of view of what made up the small town.  At dusk, he ate some of the raw peyote cactus. 

He wrote extensively about his experience, and I was full of awe at what seemed a magical plant.

“Once I set up camp, I ate one or two and then the buttons took on a bluish glow in the growing dusk, making them really easy to see,” wrote Drew.  He explained that he noticed multiple blue lights glowing in the field in front of where he camped. The lights didn’t appear to be hallucinations, so Drew walked to one of them, and the light was emanating from a peyote plant.  He walked to another blue light, and it was also coming from a peyote plant.  Each blue light in the field was from a peyote plant which led Drew to conclude that there was something special about the plant that could not be explained by botany or biology alone.  He felt that there was an actual entity or presence that resided within or through each small little cactus button of peyote. 

As Drew was leaving on his hitchhike trip to go back home, he said that some cops kicked him out of town.  “As they were questioning me, one of them kicked my backpack and said I probably had drugs in there. I said ‘of course I don’t -- go ahead and look.’ Thanks goodness they didn't or I would probably still be there in prison.”

Months later, I’d driven all the way to Texas to find Drew’s patch.  I didn’t find his, but found another patch nearby, and brought a bag home.  Some time after that, Drew and I got together at my friend Larry’s cabin in Sierra Madre to eat peyote.  I was living with my parents at the time, and probably told them I was going to be camping out.

We sat and began to eat the nauseating cacti, and I eventually found myself staring at things.  I think it affected me more than Drew, but there’s no way to know such a thing.  I became very introvert about my life and the things I was doing or not-doing, and I didn’t talk much.

Drew asked me, with what I perceived to be a tinge of irritation, “Why are you staring at me?” to which I had no answer.  But in fact, when I stared, things were revealed to me, and each thing I looked at, including Drew, became a dynamic scene in motion which told me its past history and a complete story.  Drew’s face changed from one persona to another, to a monster, to a god, back to Drew.   It was best that I didn’t stare.

Later, past midnight, we walked a block away to the old Pinney house, which locals called a haunted house.  At the time, it was divided into numerous apartment rentals, and Rolf, a friend of mine from Pasadena City College, lived in one of the apartments.  Drew and I went in, walked up the stairs to his door, and let ourselves in.  He didn’t lock his door.  I went over to him where he was sleeping and touched his shoulder to wake him up.  He didn’t move. I pushed him a bit and all of a sudden he began to violently shake and shake and mumble, and he finally sat up, saying that we’d scared the hell out of him.  I said I was sorry. He said he wasn’t mad, but it took him a few minutes to compose himself and to calm down to where he could talk with us.

I told him we’d eaten peyote and we just sat there on his carpet for awhile, talking in the dark, and after awhile, Rolf lit a candle and made tea for all of us.  We talked about our experience, and what was on our minds for two hours or so.

Later, Drew told me “Being in your friend’s apartment, things became very supernatural for me. His cat assumed huge proportions. Then I felt that I was traveling outside my body through his window and looking at the street below. This view was physically impossible as I was laying on his carpet. So I got a bit scared for the first time and was then back in my body.”

Eventually, Drew and I could see that Rolf was tired, so we left and walked back to Larry’s place on the empty and dead-quiet streets of Sierra Madre.

           

Larry was asleep when we got there, and since Drew and I could barely sleep, we each found a place in Larry’s spacious yard and sat or laid down to rest and think.

I barely slept.  Too much was going on in my mind, and gradually I began to somewhat automatically review the current status of my life’s activities:  my school work with no concrete goals, my part-time teaching through other organizations with no clear agreements, my living with my parents but wanting something more for my life, my feeling of panic that time is racing by, my desire to learn more about many subjects coupled with an uncertainty if  I’d stick to it, and questions of how I’d finance those studies. My mind drifted over my desire for travel, my seeming unorganized life, my desire for spiritual awareness, my interest in writing as a profession but with no degree, my seeming habit of starting many things but not always finishing them, despite the fact that “finishing” is not always clear-cut. 

I lay on the cement sidewalk, my mind twisting and turning with what seemed like a forced life-review.  If there was an entity in the cactus I ate, it was relentless and wanted me to review and examine everything.   Should I buy a car?  What sort of job should I get to pay for that car?  Can I get such a job?  Is that what my life should really be all about?  Should I move back to a farm?  Why don’t I have a girl friend?  Should I have a companion?  Should I go back to college full-time?  Should I find and follow a guru? Have I already found my guru and am too resistant to admit it?  Should I return to Buddhism?  Or Catholicism?  And on and on and on it went, until dawn.

At first, there was an overcast grey-streaked sky, and eventually a mildly foggy morning.  I must have slept at least a little, and I woke suddenly in a frantic panic, asking too many questions, and too uneasy to answer any.  In the cool of the quiet morning, I picked a tiny scab on my arm and it bled.  I felt a psychotic panic and imagined the pain that would come if I were slashed to death by cutting.  I went into a literal cold sweat as I was experiencing both panic and incoherence.  It was very irrational.

I jumped up and splashed cold water on my face from Larry’s hose.  I walked back towards the cabin and Drew was sitting there, awake.

“I was just waiting for you to get up,” said Drew.  I thought I was waiting for him.  So we both used the bathroom, and then we went for a walk.

“Let’s go up to the monastery,” I suggested, and we walked up the streets in silence, hearing only distant cars and the sounds of our own shoes on the street.  We walked through Bailey Park and onto the grounds of the monastery’s expansive “south lawn.” 

It was dry with lots of dry grasses. Just a few plants were green, such as mustard and turkey mullein.  It was an other-worldly spiritual experience to silently walk there, on what seemed at the time very much sacred ground.  Drew got down on all fours and began to examine a turkey mullein plant.  He explained to me the floral parts of the plant, how the male flower is situated in such a way so that the pollen easily drops into the female flower.  He pulled out his botanist’s magnifying glass and had me look more closely.  With the 10-times magnification, it was as if I had entered into a private, rarely-seen world.  Drew had been to this world already and he guided me. 

Then we walked on.

I shared some of my night’s experience with Drew, who didn’t say much.  I told him about my many personal doubts. He was silent, and then he reminded me about the time he’d invited me to go on a trip with him.

“When you say yes, that means maybe, and when you say maybe, that means no,” Drew told me.  “And if you write it down it does no good, because you just lose the note” he explained in a matter-of-fact voice.

I was silent. He was right.  His words were like silent arrows into my heart.  We left the field and went back for a short walk down Carter, and Lima, over to Larry’s.  We talked sparingly, mostly about the night.  But we were both tired and even talking was tedious.  We passed an early Saturday morning yard sale and I began to examine some used archery bows for sale.  I’d long wanted to get involved in archery but hadn’t done so yet.  They had several Bear bows (and others) for sale.  Some were reasonably priced, and others seemed high for a yard sale. I held one of the bows  for the longest time looking at it, thinking about it.  Can I afford this?  Would I use it?  Where would I use it? Can I get something similar at a better price?  What about arrows?  Was there anything else that I’d need to buy?  Would I actually use this, or would it just sit around?  Is there something more important that I should use my money for? All these mental questions filled my mind.   I liked bows and archery, I told myself, or did I just like the idea of bows and archery?

“Well, are you going to buy it?” asked Drew.

I held it a bit and then began to repeat to Drew some of my inner thoughts.  I sensed he was a bit impatient.

“Do you have trouble making up your mind?” he asked.  It was a question whose answer was painfully obvious.  Was it me or was it the drug?  Or a combination?  I put the bow back on the rack and said nothing more about it as we walked back.

We went to Larry’s and eventually we each got rides home.  I was very tired that day and barely managed to do the bare essentials that were required of me.

Some time later, Drew and I talked about our experience that night. Drew wrote,

“Our trip itself was the most amazing ever as I didn't know what to expect. That we did it together was important, and made it more powerful. I felt you were leading us around to witness amazing things, and I would be lost otherwise, and I was very grateful to you.  I was at no time irritated or impatient.  My sense of time and direction had practically evaporated. Everything was new and very beautiful.

“The rest of the night I just enjoyed the wandering-about that we did, and how everything was so beautiful in the moment.  It caused me to pause and realize that my life is quite amazing if I can stop and just simply take the time to notice.

“I ate peyote a few times after, but a kind of wall had been erected because of my fear of losing my body in some kind of out-of-body experience. And because I was looking for and comparing, things did not have the same power or newness that they did on the trip that you and I  took. Later I went to Florida and got spores for Psilocbye cubensis and grew many flats of those and ate them perhaps 10 times.  I had some interesting trips, but none quite compare. Finally, I just gave it all up, but am very glad for doing it. As Alan Watts put it, when you get the message, you can just hang up the phone. I could have simply hung up the phone after our trip since I got the message. But making the call is something some people may need to do, and for that reason I feel it is not helpful to simply advise someone to don't do drugs. We have to find out things for ourselves sometimes.

“I was loving every second of our experience that night in Sierra Madre, and every second was like an eternity,” wrote Drew.

Later that night, and into the next day, I wrote down lists of my “to dos”, all the unfinished and unresolved things that plagued me.  I wrote out some action for most, regardless how simple.

The peyote cactus experience made me deeply introspective, and it was not at all “pleasurable.”  I saw my life as a near-meaningless series of chaotic and unplanned activities, leading nowhere, fulfilling no purpose either for the furtherance of my life’s goals, nor did it seem to fulfill anything in the grand scheme of the universe. 

In the next few days, I not only made the lists, but I finished some tasks, settled agreements and contracts, paid old debts, talked to people I’d always wanted or needed to talk to, sent out Thank You notes, and generally tried to tie up the loose ends of my life. I wanted to feel calm, at peace, and in a position to move forward with whatever my life was about, or going to be about.

In that sense, Father Peyote was a harsh task master who got me off my butt and into action. 

I believe I ate peyote one more time after that.  Was I in need of more punishment?  It was not a pleasant experience, with some very violent vomiting and I couldn’t wait for the effects to wear off.  I never tried it again, though I always felt that I’d seriously consider doing it in the context of a Native American Church tipi ceremony.  Years later, I was invited to such a ceremony but it was not an evening when I wanted to be awake all night examining my life in slow-motion fine detail, in the rain, in the mountains, so I declined.  In fact, during that time in 2002, I didn’t need the help of the Teacher Plant to get into my inner mind and higher Self, to seek the answers to the diverse challenges then facing me.  I needed acute clarity.

Anyway, I say: don’t do drugs!  I know I must sound like a hypocrite.  Still, there are other ways to learn the needed lessons of life, ways that do not endanger your mind or your body or your atmospheres.  Did any of my drug use damage my mind and body?  Though I’ve heard regular marijuana users say that there is no damage whatsoever from their drug use, my honest reply is “How would I know?”  I’m not specifically aware of “damage,” though brave friends have occasionally pointed out my “quirks” and tendencies, and my mostly life-long tendency to be late, and often forgetful.  Did those result from drug use?  Who can say?  I can’t say, since how can a potentially-damaged apparatus objectively analyze itself?  It cannot.

So this old memory flowed though my mind as Teresa and I sat talking about future intentions.  Memory and Intention, past and future, both occupying the same part of the brain, and both intermingling as we sat on the monastery’s vast field.

We sat in the dark for awhile, both of us quiet, thinking, with no need to talk.

While we were sitting there in the dark, we noticed a rapidly moving form passing in front of us, and then doubling back. At first I thought it was a bobcat, but then perceived it to be a coyote, probably examining a possible prey.  An hour later, there were two darting by, growling, and then one doubled back, as if to surround us.  Then a third arrived, so I knew I should make them unwelcome. I stood, and though two had instantly disappeared into the darkness, one remained. 

I said to Teresa, “Watch” and I boldly ran directly at it and it too disappeared. I was thankful that they considered us too big for dinner.  Quickly thereafter, we folded up the blanket and departed. Though I thought we had a good relationship, it did not last, and the reason for it not lasting is an entirely different story.