In the pursuit of happiness, my friend John and I recently drove into the desert and found a man selling fruit on the side of the road.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said to the evidently Native American man. “Do you, by any chance, know where I can find some peyote?”
He didn’t answer at first, staring past me — through me — with eyes chewed through a worn leather-looking bag of a face.
Behind and around us was the vast Texas desert pyramiding toward the horizon. Somewhere in it, like a long forgotten knick-knack in a child’s sandbox, was the Native American’s roadside fruit stand.
John and I didn’t want fruit, though. We didn’t want fungi, either. We were after the Big Chief — buttons, mesc, mescalito.
Peyote.
Lophophora williamsii, better known to miscreants, deadheads and reefqueefs as peyote, is a diminutive spineless cactus that contains psychoactive alkaloids, especially mescaline. It’s used primarily as a shamanic entheogen and has a long history of ritualistic and medicinal use by indigenous Americans, as well as licentious American stoners.
“You don’t find peyote,” the Indian finally drawled. “Peyote finds sacred.”
“Look, Chief Tripping Balls, could you at least tell us where we could position ourselves so that we could be found by some peyote?” John inquired.
“Go now, and walk in the direction of your shadow, my young friend. If the spirits wish to speak to you, they