The ELDEREVOLUTION Continues
Let Poppy Explain...
I ran through many titles for my book before ELDEREVOLUTION wafted into my consciousness during a morning meditation. I loved it because it said it all – evolution, revolution. After all, we boomers lived through one cultural revolution. And the way I see it, we are now evolving into a new form of elders - with a little help from psychedelics.
Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t appreciate the elegance of my portmanteau creation. After several rounds of back-and-forth, the title went from ELDEREVOLUTION - Psychedelics and the New Counterculture of Aging, to this:
In the meantime, I’m keeping the spirit of ELDEREVOLUTION alive in my newsletter.
That spirit is so expansive, surprising and uplifting that I decided to share an excerpt from my book that encapsulates it so well. From the chapter on how psychedelics are helping older adults connect to their authentic selves comes this piece written by “Poppy” an enthusiastic and curious psychonaut now in her early 80s, about a psilocybin journey.
The Queen of Enoughness
My new friend Nancy has just published her memoir “Instigator of Joy”. While reading it, I thought, how ballsy, how brave, to claim that mantle. Instigator of Joy. I want to write about myself as an instigator of curiosity and contentment and a dispeller of negativity, complaint, envy and fear of missing out, hereinafter referred to as FOMO.
Of course, before becoming a dispeller of negativity, one must first come to terms with being a carrier of these viral qualities. And plant medicine has been a vehicle for me. Let me tell you about my recent journey.
My dear friend Laura lay on a mattress a few feet away. She started moaning and sobbing very quickly and I found myself comparing my experience to hers, and being critical of what was happening to me. Suddenly the self-critic dropped away, and I said to myself “I’m having what I’m having, and she’s having what she’s having.”
And what I was having was a vision of Jesus, jumping down off the cross and dancing with all of us, with wild abandon. The music changed to a slow piece, and I was floating on my back with Jesus holding me in his arms very lightly and whispering to me “just relax, just relax”.
And then, I started intoning “I can just be- I don’t need to be becoming, belittling, befriending, begrudging- all the B words. I can just be.”
For me, the ultimate FOMO is death, and missing out on whatever will happen to the living- to my great grandchildren, my friends. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to miss all that. Suddenly I thought “I’m lying here underground. I’m actually dead.” I could hear people moving about upstairs above ground, and I thought “they are going about their lives. It’s fine. I don’t need to know what’s happening to them. I am content.”
I would like to see a live Bruce Springsteen concert before I die, and spend a month on a Greek island, but I’ve let go of hiking the Camino, or climbing Machu Picchu. And I think I’ll be fine without seeing Bruce or Naxos.
At some point in my journey, I asked for ice cream. The guide brought me a small bowl. It was the most delicious ice cream I’d ever had. When I had eaten around 3/4 of it, I handed it back to him and said words that I have seldom if ever uttered. “Thank you, that was enough.” And that simple word, enough, seemed to penetrate every cell in my body, which by this time in my journey was in a hexagonal shape in a honeycomb. I had become the Queen Bee, the Queen of Enoughness, the nectar of enoughness dripping from me, instigating contentment in all those around me.
What time is it, I wondered and it struck me that what I really was asking was how much longer will this last? How much longer do I still have?
Listen to a podcast interview with me on boomers and psychedelics
My very enjoyable interview on the Embodied podcast, recorded last January, has been rebroadcast.
“It’s been half a century since the psychedelic era, but some baby boomers are returning to the drugs of their youth — not for rock and roll, but to confront aging. Writer Abbie Rosner re-experienced mushrooms in her 60s, and she tells Anita about her subsequent investigation into why other boomers are taking psychedelics to grapple with aging.”
Listen to it on Spotify, Apple, or iHeart.
Embodied is produced by North Carolina Public Radio.
Love this. Thank-
you!