by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

My first visit to California (as an adult) was made 50 years ago, during the bicentennial of the United States, in 1976, when I was all of 19 years old. That journey began in New England with a pair of women, one of whom was an acquaintance from the University of Connecticut, who had contracted to drive someone's pickup truck out to Palo Alto. Inadvertently, unbeknownst to me (I only found out months later) I got in the way of what might have been their budding romance (we all slept in the camper-enclosed bed of the pickup) and was put out on the side of Interstate 80 at Salt Lake City.

There, with the ferocity of the summer sun reflecting off glaring white salt flats, I quickly hitched a ride with a sailor, probably only two or three years older than me, who was returning to his base in San Diego from leave in Illinois. In his convertible muscle-car with the top down, he drove me through Nevada (where we camped out overnight) and then over the Sierra Madres, through San Francisco and down the Coastal Highway to my friends' house in San Luis Obispo.

I remember him careening around Route 1's hairpin curves (turns actually), separated as we were by only a few feet from the sheer cliffs and the Pacific Ocean sparkling far below, shouting out, "I got radials!" proudly referencing the high quality of his car's tires. I remember shouting back, "I don't care what you've got. Slow down!" both of us laughing, still convinced, at our tender age, of our personal invulnerability.

I stayed in San Luis for ten days, then in Berkeley (someone in Connecticut had given me an address on Pardee St.) for ten more. Then, rather late on the afternoon of July 3, hitchhiking again, I got picked up by another young man, driving a 1960 Chevy pickup truck with a dog sitting beside him. As I got in and he asked me where I was going, I won his heart right there and then by answering, "I just want to sleep in the redwoods tonight."

He was Andy Myers, the great-great-grandson of the man who founded Myers' Flat, the northernmost county in California. For the next few hours he regaled me with stories of the deep woods: coastal communities only reachable by boat, coming upon the woman who would become his girlfriend while she slept beneath the redwoods miles and miles from any road, houses built inside of trees in the hollows left by fires, his grandfather taking him to watch where the deer mate...

Somewhere along the way he told me that he was just returning from driving a load of drugs down to San Diego, that had been packed into every hollow space of the pickup (a 1960 Chevy has a lot of those) and its camper-top; that on previous runs he had twice been pulled over, discovered and arrested; that both times he had been released after calling, with his one telephone call from the police station, the man he was driving for; that this time he had driven for himself.

Night had already fallen when we left the highway and navigated a series of dirt roads through a pitch black forest. At one point we stopped, he let me out and I set up a very basic camp by the glow of his headlights. He promised to come back for me the next day. I lay down and went to sleep.

I woke up the next day, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the nation, in a fairyland setting beneath monstrously large trees, and I swallowed a large capsule I had picked up in San Luis, of what I had been told was organic mescaline, but later understood was ground peyote cactus. Late that afternoon, after my psychedelic trip, Andy came back with a cousin of his and brought me to a river within walking distance to the highway, where I went for a swim, cooked dinner and spent the night.

I don't remember how it came to me, but in the heart of the next winter, in the frozen, snow-blanketed rural northeast of Connecticut, where I attended college, that is to say, very, very far from its native warm Mexico, I was gifted a bag of peyote buttons. There were a lot of those dried buttons, many doses, half-filling an almost medium-sized army-issue canvas bag. I remember chewing them with friends and clearing our palates every so often, washing the vile tasting result down our throats with very strong licorice-ginger tea.

Some five or seven years later, when I was already a practicing doctor in Connecticut, someone who remembered and partook of that bag of peyote, called me and said, "I have something that may be of interest to you." He came over with 20 small capsules of something he identified as organic mescaline, the principal psychoactive alkaloid of peyote. I bought all 20 of them and then, on a later visit, another 15 he produced.

Again, the exact whos and wheres are vague to me now, but I telephoned the peyote people about my purchase, explaining that the contents of the capsules were pure white. "Is it powder?" they enquired. "No, it's flakes," I replied. "Oooo," they cooed approvingly. Those 35 capsules, even shared with special friends, lasted me decades, especially as I almost always confined myself to microdoses.

Fifteen years ago when I moved to San Miguel, I was invited to the desert up by Real de Catorce, where the peyote cactus grows abundantly. That visit made me a grateful friend who kept gifting me ground, powdered peyote, a beige dust that is easy to mix with yogurt and almost tastelessly swallow.

I stopped regularly smoking marijuana, my drug of choice, over two years ago. Even when I was actively smoking my "regular" was almost always only on late Friday afternoons, in honor of and in preparation for the Jewish Sabbath. Over these last two-plus (or is it three-plus?) years I have not smoked pot even once a month. And I haven't taken peyote, not even in a microdose, in more than half a decade. But lately the cactus has been occuring to me.

I first heard of peyote in Carlos Castañeda's first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, which was assigned reading in a class I took in prep school back in the early 70s. Those books made a profound impression on me and others in that generation of seekers, and, whether they read them or not, on those in subsequent generations.

The veracity of Castañeda's accounts of his psychedelic adventures with Mexican medicine men has been seriously called into question. I remember Castañeda's response when confronted by the inconsistency of his own statements as to where he went to graduate school, his having provided two different, contradictory accounts: "I reserve the right to change my personal history."

Last week, I found myself listening to a documentary on Castañeda, consisting of the remembrances of those who followed him then (he died young), and some who still teach his mind/body exercises. While his former and current adherents conceded the difficulty of knowing whether or not the episodes written about by Carlos actually occurred, they all insisted on the transformative power of those books and the man who wrote them.

I don't think these things are hard and fast. I believe that mystical reality, the true essence of things, is about as different from our day-to-day waking reality as our waking reality is different from our dreams.

I hate to write about my neighbor across the street, F., because every time I say that he is behaving better, he stops behaving better. He is an intelligent lonely alcoholic who sometimes plays his music too loud. He has done so for years, frequently, but has started toning it down, turning it down, or not playing it at all since I threatened to move out: "I can't stand it. You lived here first, so, I'll just go live somewhere else."

Last Thursday evening, right after listening to the Castañeda documentary, imbued with the power of his "Separate Reality," I went across the street to speak with F., who although he was already quite drunk, always holds his alcohol well. I told him that I wanted to give him microdoses of peyote. In his always affable way, he was quite interested in the idea, asking in his near perfect English, "You have peyote?" I suggested that it would help him get over his drinking and cigarette smoking, both of which he recognizes as serious problems.

In the course of our discussion, which went on for a while ("It will not be crazy. You won't even know that you are high... Everything will just be illuminated... You know that I am a doctor?"), I softly insisted, with him standing on the inside of his fence and me standing outside it, that behind his brazenness, boisterousness and general disregard of the peace of the neighborhood (people have called the city about his noise many times) are spiritual issues which the medicine of peyote would help resolve.

The next afternoon, Friday, when I went over to offer a microdose before he started drinking (except for his breakfast beer) he respectfully refused. Saturday afternoon we spoke again, but I didn't repeat my offer. And Sunday was the same.

The wonderful thing is that, as I write this, it is already late Monday night and since our Thursday discussion, F. has not turned on his music loud enough to bother me. In fact, except for his pickup truck's stereo for a half an hour while he was unloading it, he has not turned it on at all. (Gracias a Dios!) Just the mention of peyote, and the manner of my presenting him with the possibility, seems to have begun a curative effect.

After a draconian ban (thanks largely to Timothy Leary) that lasted for nearly half a century, psychedelic substances have recently been shown to have marvelous healing powers in treating addiction, depression and a host of other psychological maladies. Also, although technically illegal (except for the religious use by the Huichol Indians) peyote is available throughout Mexico as the main ingredient in a host of potions and nostrums for physical ailments, including at the Tuesday market in a salve to treat arthritis.

Last night I came up with the idea of writing this, my weekly article, about peyote. Early this morning, when I might have started writing I was called away by some decisions that needed to be made about the construction going on upstairs. Early this afternoon, while taking a break and indulging in some stand-up comedy via YouTube shorts, Steven Wright, who delivers one-liners, made a joke about peyote, "I was doing peyote when I took my SATs. I got an 1800" (1600 being the highest, perfect score). You have to believe in synchronicity.

Two days later: Yesterday was my birthday. It was happy, thank you. Just before I ate breakfast I took a microdose of peyote (because it comes on much faster on an empty stomach). As I told my neighbor across the street, I didn't notice much of anything. The mental change was about the magnitude of what you would get from a glass or two of wine, but in a different direction, not at all like alcohol. Alcohol dulls the senses, but I felt more awake, more ready. That, the primary effect, lasted as long as the effect of a couple glasses of wine might, 90 minutes. But the afterglow lingered, and still does.

I remember first noting the healing effects of peyote with those buttons in that canvas army bag 50 years ago. I remember saying that unlike other drugs, there is no down after the high, no "hangover." The brain's neurotransmitters are not depleted by the brightness of the high. In fact you feel healthier after using peyote. And I do. My 70th trip around the sun has been great so far.

I believe that my long association with peyote, along with my medical education and spiritual studies, have given me the authority to recommend the medicine to those who are looking for healing. If you are looking for renewal, physical or psycho-spiritual, you might explore a very Mexican Way of Knowledge.