Carlos Castaneda vs. Lithium as Medicine

As a college student in the early 2000’s, I liked to pretend it was the 1970’s by doing lots of mushrooms, listening to “album oriented rock”, and reading the books of Carlos Castaneda. Carlitos, as we will sometimes call him in this essay, became an anthropological superstar after allegedly traveling to the Sonora desert, meeting an old Mexican sorcerer named Don Juan, and transforming into a crow after smoking the “ally”. The ally is one of the greatest concepts of Castaneda’s philosophy, playing the same role afforded to angels/demons or perhaps even the demiurge itself.

I don’t remember ever really believing the stories were real, living a generation after the controversy generated by Castaneda’s books. The first book I read was one of his last, The Eagle’s Gift, at which point the narratives were openly supernatural. But Castaneda had been awarded his master’s thesis by UCLA in 1968 for The Teachings of Don Juan. Smoking mushrooms (which is a horrible idea since heat destroys psilocybin) was not the only way of meeting an ally espoused by Don Juan; he also plied Carlitos with the extremely dangerous Jimson weed (datura) and the conversely benevolent peyote. The latter plant was said to conjur something altogether different than an ally: a higher being or demi god named Mescalito.

Perhaps my favorite of all these books is his third, Journey to Ixtlan. One point Castaneda makes in this book is that psychoactive drugs are only a shortcut to meeting extrasensory entities from inner space. He later developed the idea of the human being as a “luminous egg” made of millions of electromagnetic fibers that also connect to the universe as a whole. Within this luminous egg floats our “assemblage point”, or point of observation, which determines how and what we perceive of the world. The sorcerer’s magic is to move the assemblage point, and so travel between the parallel potentials of the real. To take mushrooms is to apply an external force to the assemblage point. But the sorcerer learns to move it at will.

I read two books about Castaneda that were rudely enlightening. One was Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Amy Wallace, a cult acolyte who joined Carlitos later in his career when he was incubating a sort of twitchy yoga empire in Los Angeles. Castaneda forbade his followers from having sex or any drugs including coffee; meanwhile he himself abused double espressos and banged all the star struck flower children who flocked to his guidance. The other book is The Don Juan Papers by Richard De Mille which convincingly shows that Castaneda was busy in the UCLA library paraphrasing much of Western philosophy at the exact times he claimed to be in the field in Mexico.

But that’s the great thing about stories: it doesn’t matter if they’re not true, as long as you know they’re not true. The whole point of a story is that is is better than the simple truth, it seems to make more sense, it is more memorable and thus more powerful, more important, more fit to endure. This is why I have a high tolerance for Christianity, because the story is obviously fake. You look at the twin foundations of Christianity—Paul and Mark—and on one hand you see a Jew eager to talk about a vision he had in exchange for your money, and on the other you see a series of parables set to melodrama. I don’t really like Paul, but Mark is really quite lovely.

My assemblage point has been stuck in a weird place lately. I was 5150’d twice in the last year, and both experiences were unlike anything I had ever known before. The first time, I felt the presence of a demon, and felt imprisoned by reality itself, and I lashed out in an attempt to escape the prison. This was followed by three days in the hospital surrounded by young clones of all my high school friends, plus Naomi Klein and David Lee Roth, who advised me that it was high time to get myself a grift. I also became betrothed to a tiny ginger princess with an incredibly hooked nose.

All I know is that it has to do with some kind of locked box in the middle east, possibly within the cap of a pyramid: some kind of mechanical time capsule that’s been counting down for centuries but nobody knows what’s inside or when it will open. I think I actually saw at this time that it did open, I was remote viewing and warned via substack notes not to make eye contact with what was inside, but somebody’s daughter didn’t look away in time, she was so sure her prize was waiting, her crowning glory; she never expected to be so furiously consumed.

Let me put it this way: every little spider is God’s eyes watching you. I recently made peace with a black widow and I also witnessed the only impossible thing I have ever seen with my own two eyes. I was on my laptop lying in bed late one light and a tiny spider climbed down into view upon the air. For a minute or two I watched it dance in front of the bright rectangle of the screen, and I saw no web, and it moved like there was no gravity, tapdancing on the ether in front of my face. Finally it moved on, so tiny like a grain of sand, so fragile and effortless, I hope I didn’t squish it later.

I’m not sure how to explain it but we’re all space travelers here, and we all have jobs that we don’t get paid for. My name is William and I am a master technician. I don’t recommend ever going to a mental hospital because you will be treated like an animal first and a child second. A few months ago I was enthusiastic about being prescribed lithium because it made me feel amazing, even superhuman, strong and happy. But I started to experience physical side effects. When they give you lithium for bipolar disorder, they pump you full of it as much as possible without actually poisoning you.

I stopped taking the prescription but I have since started taking 5 mg lithium orotate as a supplement and it does still seem to have a psychoactive effect at a much lower dose. However I am concerned it may stifle my creativity. I guess that’s kind of the point! I was originally sold on the lithium when the Semitic doctor told me it made people’s brains heavier and helped prevent Alzheimer’s. I asked DeepSeek to write a sonnet about lithium as medicine and here’s how it did:

**"The Elemental Balm"**

In silent storms where chaos rules the mind,
A humble element can bring respite—
Not gold, nor lead, but lithium, refined,
To steady moods that rage through endless night.

Its ions dance where neurons plead for grace,
Repairing paths where thought and feeling fray,
A neuroplastic shield, it holds its place,
Yet guards the heart from sorrow’s reckless sway.

But tread with care, for balance is the key:
Thyroid’s whisper, kidney’s toll, the price it claims.
A double-edged embrace, this alchemy—
Both healer’s boon and poison’s subtle flames.

Yet in this fragile dance, a truth we find:
The smallest dose may mend the fractured mind.

Could a human do better? Maybe with the help of the right ally. Don Juan taught that a sorcerer has four enemies he must overcome: fear, clarity, power, and old age. I am still not sure how far along I’ve come on that path.