AN: Unlike Ayahuasca, Huachuma cactus tea aka San Pedro is often consumed in the morning, allowing participants to walk in nature and interact with the environment. It is known to induce profound emotional healing, heart-opening, and deep introspection, often bringing up past emotional wounds for resolution.
Triggers: Mentions of past suicide attempts.
Summary: Ray sends you to Marc Lee in an attempt to heal old wounds.
Venezuela was not part of the plan.
Neither was Marc Lee, or his bizarre wellness retreat in the middle of nowhere.
The only reason you’re even here right now is because of Ray, because he’d seen that the usual treatments that helped with PTSD weren’t working for you. He’d been the one to cut you down after you tried to hang yourself from the beam in the living room, the one who helped confirm the diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury on top of all the other shit you were dealing with.
It was Ray who told you about what Marc Lee had done for Jason, who booked you a flight and gave you a map where X marks the spot.
“I don’t even know why I’m here.” You tell Marc, sitting in one of his wicker chairs, taking in your surroundings.
It looks more like a shaman’s hut than the retreat Ray described. From the cast iron pot bubbling on the side, to the burning incense, and mismatched rugs that decorate the floor. There’s no overhead lighting just the warm glow of the odd hand carved wooden lamps that are dotted at various intervals throughout the room that opens up to a veranda covered with a plethora of cacti and greenery.
“Yes, you do.” Marc says, gesturing to the scarf arranged carefully under your chin. “You’re here for the same reason I was.” He turns his hands over, showing you his wrists and the dusky gnarled flesh nestled against tendons from where he tried to kill himself almost seven years ago. “This is your last resort.”
“It really helped you?” You ask tiredly as you unwind the scarf from around your throat, revealing your own war wound. He doesn’t flinch when he sees the scar, he simply reviews it with an empathy you’ve not felt in an age.
“I’m still standing.” He points out in that calm, no bullshit way of his. “San Pedro showed me a different path, one that allowed me to forgive myself, to seek redemption, isn’t that what you want too?”
It is…
So you drink the cactus tea and spend the next hour meandering around the veranda until it takes effect.
Fourteen hours is all it takes to change your life.
Fourteen hours and the most bitter fucking thing you’ve ever tasted sliding down your throat as you allow yourself to surrender to a higher power.
You see things as you fall into the abyss. Places you’ve never been, past events from a different perspective. But more importantly you see the people you’ve lost. The ones that were killed when that IED claimed your convoy. You sit around a poker table sipping beer, as the man you loved tells you it isn’t your fault that he ended up with his insides torn out on that road to Kabul, that you did everything you could to save him.
“You can stop hating yourself, sweetheart.” He tells you as he places his cards down on the table in front of you and a cheer goes up from the others situated around it. “Because no one blames you for what happened. I didn’t even see the soda can on the road, you did, and you tried to warn me.”
IEDs, they’re made of all sorts of innocuous objects; this time it was a can of Coke. The brand purposefully selected as a fuck you to the Americans about to run it over.
You come back to yourself in the darkness, the cool night air chilling your skin as the moonlight bathes you through the huge slats of the veranda. Plush, tall plants caress your bare arms, the leaves like light fingertips stroking your flesh. It’s a pleasant sensation, gentle, kind.
Already it seems like your perception is altered. There’s a lightness inside you, you haven’t felt since before you’d been medically discharged from Rangers with Complex PTSD.
A blanket is draped over your shoulders, a warm arm encircling your waist as you lean against a firm body.
Marc.
You’d know him anywhere at this point, that’s how attuned to the universe you are right now.
The woody, citrus scent of incense clings to his skin as he gently guides to the wicker chairs you initially started off in before you decided to roam during the first hour of your spirit journey.
“Haven’t had one go as long as that for a while.” Marc says as he snaps the cap off a plastic bottle, handing it to you. You drink as if it’s the first time you’ve tasted water, your senses refreshing themselves with every sip. “My own usually last about ten hours.”
“Maybe I had a lot more shit to figure out.” You say, setting the bottle down on the small table that resides between the two of you.
“Some journeys take longer than others.” He agrees as he sits down in his own chair. His hand lingers over the armrest, and you take it in your own, your thumb tracing over the freckles, drawing patterns like constellations on his skin.
“It feels like you’re made of stars.” You tell him and he barks out a laugh as you continue to follow the trail across the back of his hand and up along his arm. “I mean it, you light up the darkness, helping to guide people on their way until the sun comes up.”
This is the afterglow, he told you about. The odd synchronicity you feel with the world in the aftermath of San Pedro. You see things underneath the influence, things you shouldn’t be able to see.
“Does it feel like the sun is coming up for you?” Marc asks you, taking your hand in his and clasping it between his own calloused palms. There’s so much warmth in that gesture, such promise, such care.
You already know in that moment the path the universe is showing you, it’s as clear as the full moon that shines in the sky above.
“Yes.” You say softly, your gaze flickering up meet his. “For the first time in a forever, it feels like it’s starting to rise.”
