Sitters vs. guides for young people

At some point it dawned on me – this wasn’t a movie called “Message from Space”. This WAS a real message from space. It was something that beings “out there” have been trying to tell us humans all along, and I was only now getting it. It was a profound essay on creation, birth, and death that I could barely grasp.

The sad news, along with their statement, was that it was time for all of us earthlings to die.

Mayhem followed, including a whole mess of delusional behavior, and I remarked at the time:

This experience report makes clear the value of having an experienced sitter on hand; if just three hits of LSD can cause such psychological turbulence, it's worth having someone on hand who can remind you that, no, it really was just a crappy Japanese sci fi movie.

One of our readers, Legitimo, responded to that post with the following comment:

An experienced sitter? I think an experienced *guide* would be much better. It seems to me taking LSD just to watch crappy sci-fi movies is like making fire with books, it works, but that just isn't the best use for a book....

I mean if you are going to be in a highly suggestible state wouldn't it make sense to be VERY careful with what stimuli you choose for the experience? Anyone who has been in a legitimate session with a real traditional professional and has been "suggested" into deep stuff knows there is just no comparison. After that you can't really go back to party, laughs and giggles, it just seems... I don't know, kids stuff?

Legitimo posted a link in that comment to a YouTube video, part of the phenomenon of kids videotaping themselves getting high and posting it on the net. In this case, the kids are apparently ingesting ayahuasca. The effects have yet to come on, and at some point, they wind up discussing methods to distract themselves from the onset of nausea; one person suggests watching The Simpsons.

This prompted a video response from Legitimo, an adroit video editor who clearly has a passion for this topic. Just as in his comment to my post, his video response makes it clear that he believes the kids are essentially degrading the experience by not paying it proper respect. His response includes excerpts of a documentary on ayahuasca ceremonies. It's absolutely worth a look:

I posted all that because I'm interested in the original question that Legitimo poses: wouldn't a "guide" have been better for that acidhead than a "sitter"? Legitimo has thought about this a lot and comes from a position of obvious integrity.

But even Legitimo points out in his response video that as a youth he went through a more recreational stage with his drug use. Moreover, what youth growing up today, learning the ropes about drugs in whatever fashion they can, will reliably have access to anyone who might qualify as a "guide"? Especially given his description of "a legitimate session with a real traditional professional" - this just isn't something young people can afford to have access to. And there aren't any parallels in their peer groups.

Let's face it - while the war on drugs is raging, young people are constantly going to have a hard time connecting with elders who might have been around the block and might be willing to lend some wisdom. I'm not suggesting they're impossible to find, just that the risks of being an elder in that position are high and often not worth it. Are we then to suggest that, assuming young people are basically on their own in many cases, they should simply avoid strong psychedelics altogether?

Obviously you can make a clear case for that; many adults should stay the fuck away from strong psychedelics. But the reality is that a certain percentage of young people are going to want to try these things - and a certain percentage of those people are, in fact, somehow, miraculously, going to learn from those experiences and grow into better people, or at least, different people who don't mind having had the experience. If you want to communicate grass roots knowledge to those young people about the absolute basics of using strong psychedelics - set, setting, dosage - isn't it more helpful to suggest "have a sitter on hand" than "have an ayahuascero on hand" to those people?

That last rhetorical question might be exaggerating Legitimo's position just a little - but it might not be, given that his response video makes it clear that he believes a specific spiritual approach to these substances is essentially the only worthwhile approach. To his credit, he does make an eloquent case as to why a spiritual approach is worthwhile, but whenever that position is presented, you will always find cynics and skeptics who are getting along just fine in their psychedelic lives without the need to layer in either a generic spirituality or a more specific belief system.

So what's an enterprising, ayahuasca-drinking college kid to do? I maintain that conditioning these young people to rotate through the role of "sitter" is a useful approach. A sitter is just somebody who is there to tell you that you are not on fire, you should not run naked out into the street, you should probably stop pissing on yourself, etc. The basics. A sitter is the designated representative of consensus reality, who is there to help remind you that eventually, whether you believe it now or not, you will in fact be returning to consensus reality to face your mess. A good sitter, a close friend, may wind up chatting you up while you're high, humoring you about your grandiose theories, but ultimately, they're not your coach; they're not a guide, telling you what to do, or, as Legitimo puts it, "suggesting you into deep stuff."

Someday, though, if the evidence of your experience leads you to believe there's more to it than what you've been able to parse on your own, then naturally you might find yourself on the lookout for a guide. The difference in my mind is that allowing a guide to help shape your experience should be volitional; it shouldn't be anyone's default. It should be something you sort of grok before you go down a path, even if not to the fullest extent, at least to the extent of some general shared vocabulary. Meanwhile, a sitter in most cases could be considered not particularly mandatory, but just really, really basic and obvious, like a crossing guard outside an elementary school. Especially if you're talking about a group of young people who have the wherewithal to learn enough about ayahuasca to wind up brewing it in their own apartments - it just makes sense to plop a sitter down in that environment. It's not clear that they'll inherently get anything useful out of a guide at that point in their journey.

All of this is heavily tempered by the raw fact of the drug war. Sure, in an ideal society, we might be able to safely and honestly pass on drug wisdom from generation to generation, but we surely the hell are not living in that world. And we're not locking that psychedelic genie up again any time soon, either; we're never really going to stop youthful experimentation. Better to get these kids thinking in practical terms that they might actually identify with and use than try to add unnecessary layers of expectation.

Of course, the flip side here is that for some people, a sitter isn't going to help them avoid destructive tendencies. A sitter is not a panacea - any more than a guide is, really. Ultimately what happens inside your head during these experiences is your own responsibility, plain and simple. But that doesn't mean you're required to face down a strong psychedelic experience all on your own. Having a sitter with you is undoubtedly one of the more useful options.