Preparing for the Journey

It was my first time going to Burning Man this year. Right around the middle of the summer and fresh off a recent break up, I was needing an adventure to look forward to, so I bought my Burning Man ticket.

At the time, I thought I could just pull up, live out of my car with a light camping set up, vibe out at the burn and call it a day. How wrong I was. To top things off, prior to the burn I had created a 72 day no sex and none of my favorite substances container.

I think that periodic substance breaks are important for creating space and clarity. This allows one to approach substances from an increasingly refined place of self control and conscious consumption.

Wouldn’t you know, Burning Man was set to end just two days before my self imposed container was to end. The serendipity of this challenge was not lost on me. Having temporarily banned the consumption of a laundry list of substances in my toolkit, including but not limited to caffeine, nicotine, THC, CBD, LSD, 2CB, Ketamine, kratom, kava, mushrooms, ibogaine, phenibut, refined sugar… I could go on.

The idea was to deprive myself of anything I would typically (or atypically) reach for when desiring a slight pick me up or change in consciousness—and just rely on my most basic tools of sleep, breath, food, exercise, community and conscious effort.

At the time of starting the container, I was not physically dependent on any substance, since I rotate my tools in a way that I never ride any set of receptors in a way that would create withdrawal. Caffeine once or twice a week, nicotine gum once or twice a week, an acid microdose every other week, 2C-B at a day party… you get the idea.

My preparation for Burning Man began about two months prior to the actual burn—upon doing more research about what exactly it would take to survive in the desert for a week, I discovered that my original plan was laughable.

And so, piece by piece, the puzzle of what infrastructure to bring and how to bring it began to assemble. I would need EMT (electrical metal tubing) to build my shade structure, a roof rack to transport everything, solar panels, a rechargeable power station, a trailer hitch and a bike rack, a new bike, a tent, a bigger cooler and countless other small odds and ends to tie everything together.

Having already decided that I would be returning to Burning Man for the next few years, which made the financials sting a little less on account of being viewed as an investment—I dove in head first and prepared for the journey.

Psychologically I wasn’t just going for the burn, I wanted to prove to myself I could survive off grid—and that if it was only me out there in the desert, without another soul around, that I could hack it for the week.

One thing I see online is people laughing at those who go to Burning Man… "why would you go… it’s so much work!!" That is a huge part of the fuckin point if you ask me. The planning, the preparation, the physical exertion required- sure Burning Man is fun, but it’s also a lot more than that.

Two weeks prior to the burn, I also realized that I was just not physically in the shape I needed to be to enjoy myself out in the desert. Typically I would have just powered through long nights exploring on a combination of caffeine, nicotine, LSD microdoses and ketamine bumps, but I was not to be afforded this luxury.

So I gave my roommate $500 dollars and told him my plan was to hit the gym 5 days that week, and if I didn’t, he got to keep the money. You can bet I hit the gym all 5 days. And then when the next week rolled around, I had momentum, so I hit the gym 5 more days in a row.

That is a little psychological motivation technique I picked up from Tony Robbins—we are more motivated to avoid pain than to seek pleasure, so if one engineers a situation where failure results in pain, one will typically do what is necessary to avoid the pain.

The thing was, I really enjoyed getting back in the gym, and yes, having the threat of loss at my back also helped make sure I didn’t let myself off the hook.

Although two weeks isn’t all that much time, it’s also still enough time to cause some notable changes in one’s resiliency and physical fitness, so by the time it was time to depart for the burn, I was definitely feeling tuned up.

As for the abstinence container I had designed—Burning Man was certainly the final test. The whole amount of time prior, I hadn’t suffered or craved anything that I had temporarily banned. In fact, I had found a new gear of focus and work ethic—particularly with the absence of caffeine.

I know that might sound odd, but with no slight up and down over the course of a day from chemical assistance, I found myself able to lock in for much longer periods of focus. Was that focus as fun and inspired and vivid? Certainly not. But there was a boring consistency that was quite useful for catching up on a variety of projects I had on the back burner—projects that didn’t need lightning bolt inspiration, they just needed consistent action. Like finishing the Temple of Apotheosis website, getting my ducks in order for applying to perform at festivals in the coming year, and planning for the Burn.

Friends around me would say “oh it’s the Burn, just change the container so you can have fun there”. But that goes against the whole point of creating a container. This all boils down to self control and self-programming. That little voice that says “ohh you can do this or that”. That is the voice of an untrained subconscious. The subconscious can be thought of by many analogies, the divine feminine receptive aspect to the conscious mind, a lover, a wild animal.

The main thing is that when folks lose control of their ability to consciously use substances, it is because the subconscious has been given too much control of the show. Have you ever thought “I’m not going to do X, Y or Z” and then find yourself doing that exact thing a short amount of time later? That is because the subconscious knows you didn’t mean what you said. It sees all.

So to re-train it, containers are important, because each container that is respected teaches the subconscious that the self conscious—aka your “I” consciousness—actually means business. That is actually the whole point of studying the Major Arcana of tarot as a psycho-spiritual internal process of self development, but I digress.

So what does the creation of a container actually look like, practically speaking? For me, it is quite simple. Write down the rules, and then sign my name. As simple as “this week, I have a ketamine session on Wednesday evening, and that is the only day that I may do so.” And signing my name. Every time the container is respected and honored, the ability to trust one’s self increases, and one also becomes more strategic with when and where to deploy substances as tools for conscious action, fun and connection.

Before going to Burning Man, I reviewed my contract. Turns out, there were a couple of things I hadn’t bothered to “ban” because at the time of starting my container, they were so far away from mind that I hadn’t thought to include them. Mainly alcohol and MDMA, two substances I had not taken in over a year at the time of Burning Man.

It wasn’t that I had decided I would never take either of them again—just as part of my practice of taking extended breaks from certain frequencies, so as to approach them in a more refined way once reintegrating them, I had been on an extended break from both. (The year prior I took a one year break from Ketamine as well, which was critical for rebalancing my relationship to such a magical and seductive substance).

I also had not banned fluffy (the ketamine analog I carry) and mescaline, so although I had been rocking it out completely sober for roughly two months prior to Burning Man, it was nice to discover I did in fact have a little wiggle room at the burn, if I so desired.

The Burn

I arrived under the cover of darkness, deciding to leave a friend’s place in Reno around two am. A few hours later, I was into the festival. It took me about 5 hours to set up camp, having to assemble my entire shade structure, fix tarps and ratchet strap everything down to the playa so if brutal winds blew through, I wouldn’t lose my entire set up.

Burning Man seems to divide into two distinct approaches—camping and RVs. I gotta say, an RV would be pretty damn nice. Solo camping brought a variety of challenges. The biggest (for me) being the fuckin dust.

Before a festival or trip, I will typically project out a few intentions into the ether—intentions for safe travels, dope human connections, finding amazing music to dance to—simple stuff like that. Intentions are great, expectations are dangerous. I must admit, that if I did carry one expectation into Burning Man, it was that I could have some sort of clean bubble of personal space to myself, a safe zone away from the nature outside.

Oh how wrong I was. With one year now under my belt, I know exactly what to do to improve the dust situation next time—but this time, everything being covered in dust inside my tent was my lot in life. The playa dust is so fine, it gets into EVERYTHING. It blows through zippers with ease. The tent I had bought was supposed to be great for Burning Man, it’s called the Siesta 4, it has a shiny external layer for reflecting the sun and then an enclosed internal layer with vents for fans and letting heat escape.

It also has a fuckton of zippers for ventilation and cooling, which would be great if you are baking in a field out at Coachella or Lightning in a Bottle or Bonnaroo—but not so great when 8 hour dust storms are blowing through your camp for 2 days straight.

This was an opportunity to practice a bit of stoic philosophy, which basically boils down to realizing what you can control and what you can’t, and then making peace with that, and controlling what you can—your internal state. So I still enjoyed myself, especially once I embraced the situation at hand.

For the first day, I had made plans to meet a friend out at the Man in the center of it all. Having set up camp, I put on my goggles and face mask, and headed out into the city for the first time. It felt like I was on some combination of Mars and Arrakis (from Dune). The dust was so thick that I couldn’t see but 10 feet in front of me. As I pedaled out into the playa, giant art structures would materialize out of the dust, and slow moving art cars would lumber past me before being obscured once more by swirling curtains of dust.

It was honestly epic as fuck. I made it to the Man, but my friend was nowhere to be found. What I did find was a cheerful bunch of gays offering a wheel for folks to spin. I spun it and it landed on “show your hole”. I declined. They let me spin again and I won an ice cream. Yes, they had a cart full of ice cream out in the middle of a dust storm. Cheerful as could be—nobody was complaining, they were having a grand old time. I declined the ice cream, on account of the refined sugar, but it was a great moment all the same.

I then remembered I had not yet produced music for the day, and having not missed a single day of music production this entire year, I wasn’t about to break my streak on the first day of Burning Man, so I headed back to camp, did the damn thing and headed into the festival for my first night.

The next two days were a mixture of sleeping, exploring and dancing. I partook of a bit of Fluffy (the ketamine analog I carry, which was not prohibited inside my container) and ripped around on my ebike with a fellow LA friend I ran into. We ended up staying out until sunrise. Thus far I had been completely within the boundaries of my self imposed container.

Temptation and Recommitment

The next morning is when I must admit, dear reader, I allowed my own rationalizations to win me over and I violated my own commitment to myself. With only a few days to go, I figured what is the harm in doing a little ketamine?

As you can imagine, that did not feel great. It felt really shitty. Here I was, bitching out, right at the finish line. So I just sat with my own transgression and observed myself. It rained that night, and I stayed inside my tent and did a little recommitment ritual.

Despite my lapse, I would not let it derail my entire magical operation. I recommitted to complete sobriety for the remainder of the burn, and as a consequence for my transgression, any substances that had been excluded from the container were now included inside the container. So no Fluffy, alcohol, MDMA—no wiggle room. I signed my contract in blood from the prick of my thumb with one of my peptide syringes and locked it the fuck down.

Typically, a mere signature (typed or hand written) is enough to signify the boundary. In this case I threw in a little dramatic flair with the addition of some blood—just because Burning Man is such an intensely tempting environment, I needed a little extra symbolic support to finish my container properly.

Sober Sunrises

Thus began the remainder of my Burning Man journey. Being stone cold sober inside the temporary city required a different approach. I ended up going to bed at 10pm, waking up fresh at 4am, and then ripping it out to deep playa for sunrise sets. Then I would dance for about 4 hours straight, come home, eat food and go back to sleep until the mid afternoon.

Sunrise on the playa is a magical moment. Everyone is on the other side of their journeys for the night—pure afterglow vibes. As the pre-dawn light creeps across the sky and the sun begins to appear, the liminal space between the night before and the day to come carries a magical charge that is impossible not to feel, sober or otherwise.

One morning I spit some game and swooped a sexy lil babe from Mexico City for sunrise dancing. The DJ played Rufus Du Sol just as the sun was rising “If you want meeee… if you need meee.” I’m not sure it gets more Burning Man than that.

On Saturday night, the Man burned. On Sunday, the vibe switched up hard. Everything was getting broken down. It was honestly pretty sad. My plan had been to stay through Tuesday, but I got stir crazy and was overcome with an intense desire to get back to civilization. So I packed it up and headed back to my friend’s place in Reno.

Two days later, my container officially ended. It synched up perfectly with a Burning Man decompression party in Reno, so that was a fun night for sure. Not wildly unhinged, just fun.

Closing Thoughts and Observations

In terms of the burn itself, I overwhelmingly ran into kind, fun, open and inclusive people. There was one night I went to an alchemy party and found the crowd to be kind of cold, lame and try hard—but it was also on the day I had the temporary lapse in my container, so I might have just been projecting my own feelings outward.

A few observations: an e-bike is AWESOME and it’s a double edged sword. Next year I am going to make a point to get out on foot more. It’s the only way to really slow down and get into the details of things. And there are so many details to discover. I do think that by mainly focusing on dancing and the music, I ended up missing a lot of the more subtle elements the city has to offer—but hey, that is what next time is for.

Was it hard? Yes. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. Was it transformative? Yes. The decision to go on the journey called me forward into a higher gear than I had previously been operating in, a gear I am not inclined to let slip backwards now that I am back in the default world.

You can bet your ass I’m giving my roommate $500 bucks next week to ensure I follow through on re-establishing the gym momentum I built leading into the burn.

At the time of writing this, I’m sitting by a fire in my backyard, surrounded by Burning Man gear that I have been cleaning and cataloging. Besides filming a little timelapse of setting up my camp, I left my phone in my tent the entire time at burning man. So I have no pictures of being inside the city. It’s been ages since I’ve been this unplugged, and it’s nice. On Monday, I’ll drop back into things as normal.

I’m taking my time organizing my travel gear, the act of ordering one’s physical space is simultaneously the act of ordering one’s internal psyche, so I’m not rushing the process of cleaning and organizing for next time.

So there you have it. If you’ve read this far, I appreciate you sticking around. Bless.