The Power of Plant Medicine Retreats

In the summer of 2017, I got lost in deep playa at Burning Man for 12 hours in the middle of the night. A darkwad wandering the desert in sparkly spandex and platform boots with no lights and no water. Drunk and high, surrounded by thousands of people, but completely alone. It was quite literally my dark night of the soul.

I started going to Burning Man because I loved music and dancing and festivals. But inside, I was on a deeper quest for meaning and belonging. The party lured me there, and I had no idea what radical spiritual transformation would happen to me in the three years I was a Burner. My decades of running and drinking and drugging had left me at the bottom of a well, where I was pretending I was fine. And when you are really good at acting, no one really knows how badly you are suffering, so they don’t know how to help.

My addiction tricked me into thinking I had true closeness with people, but had perfected recreated the wounds I grew up with as the daughter of an alcoholic and a codependent. I had brief, fiery relationships with friends and lovers that ended in despair when the fuel burned out after a few months. When the reality of my darkness would inevitably come out and I became clingy and anxious. I always wanted more closeness and authenticity. But I didn’t know how to live that way, and I certainly wasn’t being real with myself.

So in 2017, I made my second trip from Texas to the Nevada desert all by myself. I camped with people I barely knew, and I performed “cool party girl” and drank to cover up my crippling anxiety about not being accepted. But instead, my ability to keep pretending that intoxication was friendship collapsed. My world imploded.

It’s no accident this event is held in an ancient lake bed turned desert, lovingly known as “the playa.” The playa is a mirror. And whatever arrives with you to the ancestral lands of the Numa (Paiute) people of Black Rock Desert will force you into a reckoning. And so my crossroads appeared: “Keep going like this and die, or change.”

When I finally found my camp at sunrise after a night of desolate wandering, I knew that there must be angels walking with me. I asked for help and decided I deserved to receive it. My campmate Freddie took me to Run Free, a sober camp. That day I sat in a half dozen 12-step meetings full of gorgeous sober people telling miraculous stories of their own version of being lost and getting found. I sat there, humiliated, in my disco outfit, makeup streaming down my face, feeling lower than low. And I was treated with respect and dignity. I was loved unconditionally. I was seen, accepted, and believed in. I was fed and watered and listened to. Because they had been there too.

It was the first time I felt there might be a way out.

Witnessing this community of sober people enjoying and being themselves without substances blew my mind. Because it was a reality I didn’t know was possible. For the next three days, I detoxed in the middle of the biggest party in the world. I laid in my tent in 115 degree heat and sweated out my demons while sounds of elation raged outside. It was my vision quest in the desert. And it saved my life.

I have not had a drink since September 1, 2017.

It was in the desert that I found a version of myself that felt safe to take off the mask. To be seen. To be free from the addiction that was killing me and the pretending and playing a role that was fake and hollow. It was like growing up in captivity and being released into the wild. And finding a pack of other wolves to run with.

It’s where I first witnessed my people pleasing, fawning, needing to be liked, and outsourcing of my self-worth reflected back to me. It was where someone lovingly looked at me and said “Babe, you’re enough. You’re worthy. You don’t need to try so hard.” Where I realized I had no idea who I was without alcohol and drugs to protect me. But that maybe I wanted to find out. Where I finally saw that I had spent so much time trying to be chosen that I had fully abandoned myself. It was where I broke out of my reality and stepped into a new one.