The Ordination

A powerful peyote trip catapulted Gordon Todd Skinner into a life of psychedelics

Lying facedown, his shirt mashed into the oil stain on the driveway, Gordon Todd Skinner argued with God. A paragon of American privilege, the 21-year-old possessed geometric smarts, a bespoke education, herculean strength, and a family-grown fortune. He was certain he would die of an overdose. A soup of psychoactive alkaloids coursed through his body, yet he sensed no elation—just an aching misery emanating from his gut. If God would deliver him through this steamy, ill-conceived night, he would never take another psychedelic drug, nor would he test them on his friends again, either.

Hours earlier, Skinner and his friends had embarked on a peyote ceremony at a small rental house bordering the University of Tulsa. An Osage roadman was asked to facilitate the ritual but failed to show. The omen passed unheeded. The group set out a makeshift altar-to-godknowswhat of eagle feathers, pipes, bones, and smudge sticks. They then brewed a tea made from peyote debris, leaving some dried buttons out for eating. An odor resembling potato water and sage permeated the house as the guests guzzled the brew and chewed the bitter cactus meat.

“We had no clue what we were doing,” Skinner confesses. “We read a lot, but it didn’t mean anything, it was just book knowledge.”

One of the backrooms served as a storage for the peyote surplus—about 2,000 silently waiting buttons in total, ranging in size from popcorn to baseballs. Most in attendance ate ten or fewer buttons, but Skinner sought progression. He had been fasting for two weeks in preparation and consumed 52 buttons in addition to the tea (5-7 buttons are considered a strong dose).

Buckets and Foam

Disrespected, peyote can turn disagreeable. The alkaline mixture fizzed angrily in the guts of the revelers, and within an hour, the chatter and party talk halted. Revelers hunched over, making bubbly, thick, stagnant sounds that you could smell through the sage. Faces paled, abdomens moved up and down.

“I didn’t just puke—a fountain of green foam shot out of my mouth with a force that could’ve put down a crowd of South Korean demonstrators,” recalled a cheeky high school friend of Skinner’s who was there to 'bend brain cells.'

Vomit splattered into plastic buckets arranged throughout the house and backyard. In short order, the toilet was overwhelmed. Confronted with the hair-curling miasma, some decided to simply puke or piss in the direction of the bowl. One attendee grew so paranoid that a friend zipped him up in a sleeping bag and carried him away.

Skinner laughed while watching others struggle through the trial by cacti. That was before the plant made a point of him. Feverish, sweating, and head pounding, Skinner sank to his knees and dragged himself outside on all fours, the retching and wailing receded into muffled noises. He collapsed face down, faint, drooling, miserable. Ants marched across the concrete near his face. He couldn't believe he'd put himself in this position. It must mean the end.

Summoning what strength he had left, Skinner heaved himself over.

“I looked up at the stars, and the trip just exploded,” he says. “I had never had a metanoia, a conversion—a change—that was so instant, from hell to heaven.”

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