"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.
“And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.”
Why don’t they take the child to the in-laws? Waiting for an emergency is too late.
Children require and deserve a safe and predictable environment populated by responsible adults who can attend to their needs and adequately respond in an emergency.
Quote from the Article:
Theres still a sober person in the house.
It’s still not a great situation. The sober person ends up looking after the intoxicated person. In an emergency, the sober person has to end up trying to deal with both the intoxicated person and the kids.
And it’s not good for kids to see their parents being intoxicated (which can happen if the kids wake up). Kids need to feel that their caretakers are capable of looking after them.
I really don’t see why she couldn’t send her kids to the in-laws once a month.
(I also don’t see why she couldn’t just decide to stay sober. I guess her life is just so miserable?)
First of all, there are still the in laws if something really bad happens. Second, someone experienced with shrooms knows how to handle most stuff.
Ask yourself, do you like doing stuff you enjoy? You like to read a good book? Watch a film or play some video games. Or go out and party. Its literally the same. If done responsibly there isn’t really that much that can go wrong. Why not let people to things they enjoy.
And being an experienced tripper myself, I’m sure they’re still capable of adequately responding to their children’s needs. A basic recreational dose of MDMA or LSD would enhance my evening and I wouldn’t be fit to drive a car, but compared to having several drinks, not really impaired. If there was a genuine emergency emergency, I’d still be able to function. Like I could drive a car, but like with when being drunk, I wouldn’t unless it was the only option. Which in this case, it wouldn’t be, seeing as if they needed to drive, the in-laws are there ready for that.
What sort of an emergency do you expect they would be too impaired to handle?
Eh, I’ve done enough of both of them to say that it’s sometimes hard to look at your phone screen. I have two kids. I still get together with friends one time every year to “trip balls,” it’s become a bit of a ritual weekend for six adults with children of various ages. Step one is we all get rid of the kids. That is probably the only gripe I have here with Rachel, but she also does have a sober adult in the house.
I just couldn’t and wouldn’t do any of it with my kids anywhere around me. Imagine you’re peaking and little Susie fucking vomits all over her bed and needs mommy, because kids fet that way. Do you want to be on mushrooms/MDMA?
I generally agree with you though. I doubt Rachel is taking three or four tabs of acid and disappearing, or a .3 of MDMA. There are most definitely doses that are manageable yet mind-altering. I guess the kid thing comes down to risk tolerance and personal preference. I don’t think the kid is somehow unsafe.
Well, yeah. Depends on the dosage, obviously.
If you’re at home, just chilling, you’re probably doing a rather mild dose.
I know I definitely have a “watching Harry Potter and chilling” dose of LSD and a “we’re tripping with friends on a night out” dose, and whilst I have no children, I suspect I would gravitate more towards the former dosage than the latter.
Well, a lot of the events I’ve been at where I took MDMA, it has actually felt like that, as I’ve once or twice had to shepherd a friend or two, some of whom may have been in a very childlike state and vomiting. (I know it’s very different with children, this is just a joke.) It does take the trip down a notch, but it’s really nothing that affects me too much. So Rachel could probably handle it. Hopefully at least. It’d be irresponsible otherwise. And she doesn’t seem irresponsible, going by the article.
Why keep the child out of eyesight at all in that case? Why stay in a house and not just camp in front of emergency department if one is so afraid of life happening?