April 1st was my anniversary. Forty-five years off the sauce, with Cannabis my partner in recovery every step of the way.
First, you crawl.
Wise words from an old friend who was on the same rocky path at the time. And crawl, I did. All the way down Bryant Street to the Haight Ashbury Alcohol Abuse Treatment Center, under the freeway, next to the jail. Not a pretty place. A med student I’d met in a San Francisco bar (where else?) told me they could help me.
So I went. And they did. It wasn’t easy, but here I am, 77 years old, still green and sober, sitting here at the Sports Desk talking to you. Pretty fucking cool. Thank you Mary Jane. Thank you San Francisco. Thank you Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. Thank you med student whose name might be Newman. Dr. Newman, I presume.
Of course, it doesn’t end there. Not for me, not for the free clinic, not for the Haight. Going into our third year of pandemic-induced isolation, many of us are becoming more aware of the broken pieces inside us and have begun to seek further healing through psychedelics.
Over the years, I’ve sought various forms of altered-state therapy – shamanism, trance dance, past life regressions, even Rolfing. I’ve used psychedelics recreationally. But using them to delve into the inner recesses of my psyche scares the shit out of me. I don’t know what the hell is in there…. I don’t know if I’ll wind up seeing unicorns and rainbows or my grandmother crawling up my leg with a dagger in her teeth, to quote the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
I do know it’s the next step for me. However it unfolds, it begins here with the Haight Street Voice and the beautiful people featured in these pages. People like David E. Smith, MD, founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. “Dr. Dave” is a true medical pioneer, currently exploring the potential of psychedelic medicine with the 2022 opening of the Haight Ashbury Psychedelic Center. This time I won’t have to crawl to get there.
