Addiction and Recovery through Burning Man!

1. I am 24 and at Burning Man for the first time. I have no idea what I am doing. I am in awe. My costumes and our shade structure are equally inadequate but what’s not inadequate are the free drugs offered by our neighbors. I try mushrooms for the first time and laugh myself into a puddle while trying to eat a “spaghetti taco” as they kick in. On Burn Night, we’re on acid (my first time), having a spiritual experience. We’re too scared to get close to the actual burn but I can watch it from our camp and watch the magicallly-lustrous, neon stars and planets zooming through the sky, feeling at one with something big and real. The divine experience is ruined the next day when we realize the ecstasy we took after the acid was meth or something. I have my first horrible “comedown” and can’t sleep for a week.

2. I am 27 at Burning Man. FOMO leads me to drink myself stupid every day and black out and blackout pass out too much. Despite my FOMO, I miss out on a lot of things. I don’t make it to yoga once, despite my best intentions. I forget how many drugs and which ones I do. I leave feeling like the whole week was just spent in a dusty dive bar drowning in stale PBR.

3. I am 3 weeks sober. I am too new and raw and broken open to enjoy the chaos, and also too busy working at the job I almost lost to go to Burning Man. I sell my ticket to my husband’s friend and they go party their asses off. He doesn’t call. I cry myself to sleep and go to meetings and go to work and stay sober.

4. I am 30 at Burning Man. I am one year sober. I camp with my husband and five friends but in many ways I am alone. I go to on-playa AA meetings alone, I make it to yoga alone, I make it to breath work alone the first time, and the second time I drag my friends who don’t end up liking it. I thoughtfully carry a Sharpie to the temple and write on a beam, “‘We shall not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.’ Goodbye to my old self.”
   My husband still rages and I sleep alone in a big dusty tent most nights. My husband and my friends stay up all night on acid then go to Tycho’s sunrise set at the trash fence. I let myself sleep in and be alone and be resentful. My husband stays out all night and misses our 6am date to go to the airport to try to get on a flight over the city. I stew in my aloneness and self care. As I’m falling asleep alone the thought comes to me as if from the universe, “One more year. Wait for him two years then leave.” That burn night a man runs into the fire and dies. The darkness of the party is so real.

5. I am 31 at Burning Man. I am 2 years sober. My husband is 2 months sober and everything is new to him. “I’ve never felt dusty before,” he says to me, and I laugh, remembering how many daytime dust storms he slept through the year before. We camp with a sober camp full of “our people.” We go to bed at 8pm and wake up before sunrise to see Tycho at the Trash Fence. I dance and watch the sun rise and later that day we each teach a class on something we are passionate about in our camp’s yoga tent. We talk about giving more next time. We lie in our tent at night and talk about our movement and all we want to learn and teach and share to make the world a bigger, more loving place for people like us. We bike and dance and play and cook food for everyone and actually get enough sleep.

It’s amazing what can change in one year, or two, or seven. I remember when I didn’t know who I was or what I liked to do at all. Now I feel more free and more myself than I have ever been.