Traeger Method Podcast Interview

Photo by Heidi Rayher

The photo’s blurry, but so was I: Age eighteen, deep into punk and getting high and not going to school.

I had moved out of my parents’ house the year before and I was in free fall. But if you fall long enough, a strange thing happens. You lose perspective: Are you hurtling downwards or soaring upwards? Lost as I was, I was also homing towards something bigger than myself: My chosen family, the D.C. punk scene.

I’d spent most of my life feeling like nothing made sense. And it didn’t: Not the howling injustice of the Reagan era, not the stressed and segregated city in which I lived, not the dysfunction and unhappiness of my household, where it was clear I could never live up to my parents’ middle-class ideals.

When I fell into the world of artists, hustlers, and straight-up freaks at d.c. space—and later Food For Thought and Second Story—something clicked into place. I didn’t magically become more confident or self-knowing. But now I knew that I could belong somewhere, that it was possible. It changed everything.

I talk about the D.C. punk scene, psychedelic therapy, ayahuasca, and a bunch of other stuff in the latest Traeger Method podcast.

Jason Traeger’s a brilliant sweetheart, and we cracked into psychedelics, our time in the punk scene, and other assorted randomness. You can find the podcast episode here.

And spare a thought for the clueless dork in the photo. He’d figure it out, eventually.