I hate it when people say there’s no such thing as a bad trip but I have to admit the worst LSD trip I had was in hindsight one of the best. during my nomad years, I was invited to help run a hackathon in the forest in middle of nowhere Sweden. brilliant event, 50% nerds and 50% hot people. on the last day someone proposed we trip together to cap it off. I thought YOLO, why not. but then the next suggestion was that we go hiking off into the mountains... to a rock formation called the Troll Church... where the Vikings used to make human sacrifices... I had my misgivings but not wanting to be a spoilsport I went along with the herd. now as you can guess, the LSD was a much bigger dose than I anticipated, I was extremely super high, and finding myself in a historic location charged with weird pagan energies was rather overwhelming. I felt like that scene in Inception when the horizon suddenly lifts up overhead and I am being rolled under the bedrock like being tumbled by big surf, I am smeared out, crushed by geological time and glaciers and ice ages, pulverised until there was nothing left of me not even lichen or moss and the old trolly spirits of the mountain had their way with me. in brief: anguish and terror. now by this stage I had been on the road for a few years, travelling from place to place with my dear wife, and the old gods told me my karmic balance was waaaaaay out of whack, because everywhere I go, from a friend’s couch to a hotel or airbnb, I’m always a guest, and the ancient right of hospitality is not just a privilege it’s also a responsibility, you have to give more than you take. I felt confronted with the spiritual debt I had been racking up these past few years. anyway I admitted to my friends that I am in no shape to move, I am incapacitated, I have become a liability to the hiking party, and I will need physical assistance to make it back to the cabin. thankfully two giant Scandinavian men, one icelander and one dane, picked me up bodily, hugged the warmth back into me, and took turns to lift me like a sack of potatoes back home. over the next few hours as I sobered up I made sense of the whole distressing enterprise and concluded that starting immediately, I needed to stop being a guest and start being a host. I need to balance the ledger. from that day I decided I would only live in a house with a guest room. that was nearly a decade ago. now I live in a 6000 sqft house with 10 guest rooms and hospitality is my only spiritual practice and indeed in this house we cast magic spells of healing and protection on a regular basis. in retrospect what a surprising way to discover your mission in life. and incidentally what a lovely way to discover true intimacy with men. in conclusion, acid sucks, everyone should do it.