California Sober

Once upon a time, a time that feels like a different-person-ago, I lived in Italy for 18 months. Florence and that gorgeous city's environs to be exact. I did a semester abroad during my junior year of college and then spent a full year living in Italy after graduation. The best part of the experience was living with non-English speaking Italians during my time there and learning to speak the Italian language. 

One Italian word that I especially love is Buffo. Like many foreign words there is no one word in English that translates exactly, but it means funny…in a sweet and odd way. One Sunday during the afternoon “passeggiata” (where Italians of all ages get dolled up and promenade through the park like so many very well-dressed peacocks on parade) I saw a toddler squealing with glee while his “babbo” (daddy) pushed him on the swing. While standing in front of his child this father made funny faces every time the swing came toward him. “Babbo! Buffo! Babbo! Buffo! Babbo! Buffo!” The child chirped with such joy that it was contagious. “Babbo buffo babbo buffo babbo buffo” I sang to myself as I walked home to my appartamento in the soft, spring, Tuscan light. 

I hadn’t heard the word for ages…until about a year ago when Timothy, a hairdresser who I have been working with forever, floated into my studio one Monday all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He drifted up to me and asked, while apparently trying to bore a hole into my soul with a new messianic gaze, “have you ever tried bufo?”

“Buffo?” I asked. “That’s one of my favorite words in Italian. It means funny.” 

“No, not that buffo. The frog bufo. The frog venom that you smoke. Or is it toad venom? Hmmmm. I can’t remember…what's the difference anyway?” he trailed off. 

“Well…” I began, “frogs have longer legs and like to hop. Toads on the other hand like to crawl and…”

“What? Whatever! Who cares?” Timothy snapped at me, forgetting that he had asked the original frog/toad question in the first place. “I’m talking about the ceremonial bufo.  The transcendental bufo. That bufo. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Do tell,” I said, very curious about where this new crazy-eyed look he was sporting came from. Timothy, almost whispering in a low and reverential tone, then told me all about his Brooklyn-based shaman “Peter Little Feather” who had been as far afield as Tampa, but never to Mexico or Texas where the ritualistic smoking of bufo apparently started eons ago with the native tribes who smoked it as a vehicle to enter their spirit world. 

“It was amazing,” he said. “I smoked it over the weekend and now all my past trauma is gone. Everything…just gone. I feel lighter, freer, at peace. You should really try it….I'll give you my shaman's number. Smoking bufo will change your perspective on everything. And you don’t have to take it all at once,” he assured me. “You can micro-dose it!”

I paused, and then burst out laughing. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a micro-dose sort of person." I told him. "I am a triple macro-dose or nothing type of gal. And even then, even after a macro-dose, I will want more. So no bufo for me.” 

“Your loss,” he said, and he drifted away to space out in the corner, staring blank-eyed into the air like one in a trance, slowly sipping his green tea.

But of course I could not stop thinking about that damn bufo. It seems like every day there are more “fix-it” drugs and rituals on offer to help cure our mental health issues. I have received emails, unprompted by me or any search I may have done, urging me to take all sorts of remedies to cure my modern day American angst, or even, if the ads are to be believed, my alcoholism. "Mushrooms! The new Chardonnay!" one missive optimistically alerted me. And just the other day I received an email offering me “ketamine cough drops” which will come straight to my mailbox and which will, according to the ad, “clear away all of my trauma and mental blockages…forever”.

For the uninitiated, ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects. It distorts perceptions of sight and sound and makes the user feel a sense of disconnection and loss of control. It is an injectable or oral (or snortable for addicts like me who want immediate results) short-acting anesthetic for use in humans and animals. It is referred to as a “dissociative anesthetic” because it makes patients feel detached from their pain…and their environment.

Ketamine can induce a state of sedation, numbness, immobility, relief from pain, and amnesia (no memory of events while under the influence of the drug). It is abused for its ability to produce dissociative sensations and hallucinations. Ketamine has also been used to facilitate sexual assault.

I mean…how good does that sound? Numbness? A dissassociative state? Hallucinations? Except for the facilitating sexual assault part, of course, ketamine sounds like a blast.  As an addict, the idea of those ketamine cough drops coming straight to my mailbox (without a soul knowing mind you) gives me a thrill. But I will refrain.

I work with people who have tried them all: ketamine, LSD, DMT (foxy), MDMA (molly), PCP, peyote, bufo, mushrooms, ayahuasca and ibogaine. Some of my colleagues take these drugs recreationally and some, like Timothy, "ceremonially". The only one of those that I ever tried was MDMA, and during those molly-fueled hours I had never been happier or higher. I was on ecstasy and in ecstasy and even then it was not enough. I wanted more more more of that exuberant bliss. 

The list of expected side effects from almost all of these drugs should be enough to put most people off, but as made obvious by the hordes trying these "treatments" it does not. The expected and normal side effects of ayahuasca (and several of the other new quick fix drugs) are nausea, intense vomiting, abdominal pain, visual and auditory hallucinations, anxiety, increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature, dehydration, chest pains and muscle aches. Less frequent but still common are fainting, seizures, difficulty breathing (aka tachypnea), drug induced psychosis, and last but not least....euphoria.

And that is what us humans really crave, and will go to any lengths, even death, to achieve. Euphoria.

I have heard both normies and addicts talking about these treatments with awe. As if this will be the magic bullet to end all of their problems. But I’m not one to do something once, meld with the universe in a state of euphoric rapture, and not want to do it again and again and again.

In recovery circles today there is a term laughingly called California Sober, which, on the east coast anyway, tends to raise eyebrows…and tempers. 

California Sober is a term typically used to describe people who decide to quit consuming drugs and alcohol—with a few exceptions. While everyone interprets this lifestyle choice differently, marijuana is the most commonly cited "acceptable" substance for people who considers themselves California Sober.

Some people expand the definition to include psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin (aka "magic mushrooms''), LSD, ibogaine, DMT, bufo and ayahuasca. 

I want a quick fix. I always have. That's why drugs and alcohol were so magical for me. I got an immediate perspective shift on the universe. Sadly, once the drinks and drugs wore off, I was the same fearful, anxious, chronicly-overthinking-everything me, but now with a hangover of shame and regret on top of the initial “problems” I was running from in the first place.

I’m glad I live on the east coast. I could never be California Sober, although there are people in the rooms of recovery everywhere that will use this loophole to continue using. But I can’t do that. Because I know that it would start small, as in one harmless little ketamine cough drop on a slow day, but it would morph, as it always does, into a monster of craving that would ultimately destroy me.

I worked with Timothy again about 6 months after his initial bufo experience. I asked him how he was feeling and he said “fine”. He told me that he was still working with his shaman, “Peter Little Feather”, and that since we had last seen each other he had experienced other cleansing ceremonies with this shaman. After his “life-changing” experience with the bufo, he tried ayahuasca and ibogaine and although he enjoyed those ceremonies (aside from the fact that he shit in his pants almost immediately after drinking the ayahuasca brew) he still wanted to go back and do his favorite, bufo, again. And again….and again. 

“I thought you were only supposed to do bufo once,” I said. “Didn't you tell me after you did it that you were so “enlightened” that you would never have to ingest another intoxicant or hallucinogen ever again?”

“Yes,” Timothy said softly, “but Peter assures me that there is more work to be done, so we will continue with our ceremonies until ALL my blockages are cleared.”

I think I’d rather clear my “blockages” with meditation, prayer, yoga, and the spiritual program of A.A. That course may not be as fast-acting or immediate as any of these new quick fixes on offer today, but I know who I am and I know that California Sober will never be an option for me. 

So I’ll continue to stick close to my A.A. tribe, close to my Higher Power, and far away from those poor little innocent bufo frogs. Knowing, as they say in Italian, chi sono e chi sarò per sempre: who I am and who I will always be.

An addict.