with a second prospective guide, a brilliant psychologist in his eighties
who had been a student of Timothy Leary’s at Harvard. His knowledge of
psychedelics was deep; his credentials impressive; he had been highly
recommended by people I respected. Yet when over lunch at a Tibetan
restaurant near his office he removed his bolo tie and suspended it over
the menu, I began to lose confidence that this was my man. He explained
that he relied on the energies released by the pendulum swing of the
silver clasp to choose the entrée most likely to agree with his
temperamental digestion. I forget what his tie ordered for lunch, but even
before he began dilating on the evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, I
knew my search for a guide was not over quite yet.
• • •
ONE NOTABLE DIFFERENCE about doing psychedelics at sixty, as opposed to
when you’re eighteen or twenty, is that at sixty you’re more likely to have
a cardiologist you might want to consult in advance of your trip. That was
me. A year before I had decided to embark on this adventure, my heart,
the reliable operations of which I had taken completely for granted to that
point, had suddenly made its presence felt and, for the first time in my
life, demanded my attention. While sitting at my computer one
afternoon, I was suddenly made aware of a pronounced and crazily
syncopated new rhythm in my chest.
“Atrial fibrillation” was the name the doctor gave the abnormal
squiggles that appeared on my EKG. The danger of AFib is not a heart
attack, he said to my (short-lived) relief, but a heightened risk of stroke.
“My cardiologist”—the unfortunate phrase had suddenly joined my
vocabulary, probably for the duration—put me on a couple of meds to
calm the heart rhythms and lower the blood pressure, plus a daily baby
aspirin to thin my blood. And then he told me not to worry about it.
I followed all of his advice except the last bit. Now I couldn’t help but
think about my heart constantly. All of its operations that had previously
taken place completely outside my conscious awareness suddenly became
salient: something I could hear and feel whenever I thought to check in,
which now was incessantly. Months later, the AFib had not recurred, but
my surveillance of my poor heart had gotten out of control. I checked my