Whispering Wyrd

The Healing Web

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  • When A Stranger Says “Me Too”

    I use CBD to help manage withdrawal symptoms. Today I stopped by a new shop to restock, since the store I used to go to closed its location here in town. Because this shop carries different brands and products, I explained what I was looking for, and why.

    When I mentioned that I was using CBD to help with benzodiazepine withdrawal, the man behind the counter paused. His eyes lit up, he smiled slightly, and said:

    “Me too.”

    That simple response opened a conversation I didn’t expect.

    I’ll admit, at first I was a little skeptical. I don’t know why, maybe because benzodiazepine withdrawal is still something most people don’t understand unless they’ve lived it. But as he began talking about what he’d gone through, mentioning details specific to benzo withdrawal that you don’t just pick up secondhand, I knew immediately he was telling the truth.

    It was surprisingly comforting to meet another person, face-to-face, who has been through that particular kind of hell. Outside of support groups, I never really expected that to happen.

    There’s something strange, and strangely human, about how two complete strangers can instantly recognize one another through shared suffering. No long explanations needed. No convincing. Just understanding.

    After I told him what I had been taking and how I use CBD, he shared his own routine, which turned out to be very similar to mine. He set up what I needed on the counter, we talked a bit more, and I left feeling lighter than when I’d walked in.

    Without CBD, withdrawal, especially during the acute phase, would have been even harder for me than it already was. No one will ever convince me that CBD doesn’t work. I know it does, because I’ve lived it, and because many others have too… for both benzodiazepine and alcohol withdrawal.

    It’s not a magic cure. It doesn’t erase the process. But it does take some of the edge off, and for me, it helps with inflammation and overall nervous system calm. I’ve learned that quality matters a great deal, just like with anything else.

    I take CBD three times a day, usually with meals. On particularly rough days, or if something triggers a spike in symptoms, I’ll use a fast-acting tincture. Otherwise, I stick with edibles. One of the things I appreciate most about CBD is that it doesn’t get you high. There’s a calming effect, yes, but no intoxication. And the last thing I want, especially during withdrawal, is to feel altered in that way.

    Sometimes healing shows up in unexpected places, like a short conversation in a shop, a shared nod of recognition, or a simple “me too.”

    If you’ve been through withdrawal of any kind, or are going through it now, what has helped you?

    May you be met with understanding where you least expect it.
    May your nervous system find moments of ease, even in the midst of healing.
    And may you remember that when someone says “me too,”
    you are no longer walking this path alone.

    ~Buck

  • I Love Christmas Time!

    I want to begin by saying something clearly and respectfully… one doesn’t have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas. I realize that may already be obvious to many people, but I’ve had thoughtful questions from Christian friends about what Christmas means to me personally, as a Buddhist who also sees the world through an animist lens.

    For me, Christmas isn’t about rejecting anyone’s beliefs. It’s simply about how I relate to this time of year.

    The word Christmas is, of course, a Christian name for the holiday as it exists today. But the season itself, the midwinter celebration, the honoring of light returning during the darkest part of the year, has much older roots. Long before it was called Christmas, many cultures marked this time of year as sacred.

    Among Germanic and Norse peoples, it was celebrated as a midwinter festival. Evergreens symbolized life continuing through winter, and the solstice marked the slow return of longer days, a true “return of the light.” When Christianity spread through those regions, December 25th became associated with the birth of Jesus, in part by aligning existing celebrations with new meaning.

    None of this diminishes what Christmas means to Christians today. Traditions evolve. Meanings layer upon meanings. And this season has remained special across centuries because it speaks to something deeply human.

    What Christmas Means to Me

    For me personally, Christmas is special for very simple reasons.

    I love the lights. I love the decorations. I love the way the world seems to soften just a little during this time of year. But most of all, I love being with family, especially those I don’t get to see often because of geographical distance.

    When I was a child, like most children, I loved Christmas for the gifts. Now I love it for something much deeper, love itself. Time together. Shared meals. Stories told and retold. Laughter that fills the room.

    Christmas has a way of bringing people together, sometimes even people who don’t usually spend time together. In our family, it’s a time to share food, presence, and attention. And that matters more to me now than any wrapped package ever could.

    As Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.” Our time, our attention, and our full presence are worth far more than anything money can buy.

    A Wish for This Season

    However you celebrate, or even if you don’t celebrate at all, I hope this season brings you moments of warmth, connection, and peace.

    Enjoy your family this Christmas.
     Be present with one another.
     And may the returning light, in whatever way you understand it, find its way gently into your life.

    ~Buck

  • What I’ve Learned Recently

    Daily writing prompt
    What skills or lessons have you learned recently?
    View all responses

    I’ll be sixty years old in a few short months, and I can say without hesitation that I’ve learned more about myself in the past year and a half than at any other point in my life.

    I’ve learned how to face fear.
    How to endure intense physical pain.
    How to survive withdrawal, not just medically, but emotionally and spiritually.

    I was taking high doses of benzodiazepines daily for over twenty years, and before that, I relied on alcohol. In truth, I spent most of my life in active addiction, beginning as far back as seventh grade. Now, for the first time since childhood, I am free.

    But this freedom came at a heavy cost.

    Next month will mark one full year free of all substances. This last year has been a strange mixture of pure hell and moments of profound beauty and peace. Getting off alcohol was brutally hard. Getting off benzodiazepines was something else entirely. Worse.

    Benzo withdrawal hurt me in ways I never could have imagined. I’m grateful I didn’t know how bad it would be when I started tapering, because if I had, I might never have begun. I didn’t know it would trigger a heart arrhythmia, multifocal PVCs, sometimes in frightening clusters. I didn’t know it would throw my nervous system so far into overdrive that my body became rigid, making it painful and difficult just to walk. I didn’t know it would worsen my type 2 diabetes and make it far harder to control.

    There’s a lot I didn’t know.

    But there is also a lot I learned.

    I learned patience, something I previously had almost none of. I learned how to cherish moments of beauty when they appear, and how to hold them close during the darkest stretches. I learned how to ask for help, something my pride once refused to allow.

    I learned that while I was numbed by benzos, I wasn’t truly seeing my own life. I wasn’t able to process my experiences, my beliefs, or even myself. I simply existed. And existing is not the same as living.

    Coming out of that chemically induced fog introduced me to myself.

    I came to terms with the fact that I never truly believed many of the things I was taught to believe in my youth. I see the world now through an animist and Buddhist lens, and I learned that this is not something to be ashamed of. It’s honesty. I am no longer lying to myself in an effort to fit into a belief system or culture that never truly felt like home.

    I learned to cherish my family in a way I always should have, but couldn’t, not fully, while numbed by drugs and alcohol. I learned that life is precious, fragile, and never to be taken for granted. I learned to care for my health with the seriousness it deserves, because it is far too easy to take your good health for granted until it’s gone.

    Seven years ago, when I was diagnosed with diabetes, it got my attention, but not deeply enough. I was still buffered by drugs, still insulated from reality. Now, without any chemical “safety net,” I’ve learned how to confront painful memories and difficult truths without drowning them in alcohol or blasting them away with pills.

    I’ve learned how to be present, really present, with the people I love.
     I’ve learned how to listen.

    And in the simplest, most meaningful sense of the word, I’ve learned how to live.

    May we learn, even late in life, that it is never too late to live honestly, to love deeply,
    and to meet each day awake, present, and unafraid to feel.

    ~Buck

  • The Universe Isn’t Empty

    I grew up being taught that meaning, comfort, and salvation came from believing the right things about a (to me) distant God. Defined in ancient books, filtered through doctrine, and guarded by rules. I tried, for many years, to hold those beliefs. But they never “took” in me. Instead, they made me feel boxed in, anxious, and completely dishonest with myself.

    What has always felt true to me, deeply, feel-it-in-my-bones true, is something very different.

    I feel connected to the Earth. To mountains and forests. To animals. To wind, sound, and silence. And that connection brings me a kind of comfort I never found in dogma.

    Awareness Without Belief

    What I’m drawn to isn’t a belief system. It’s lived experience. I don’t need to believe that the forest is alive to feel something real when I walk among trees. I don’t need doctrine to sense presence when a raven passes overhead, or when the mountains hold the horizon in their timeless, patient way.

    This way of seeing doesn’t ask for faith in propositions. It only asks for attention. That matters to me more than I could express.

    Animals and Other Ways of Knowing

    Modern science is slowly catching up to something older cultures always knew and never forgot… that humans are not the sole possessors of mind.

    Animals feel, remember, plan, grieve, and relate. Their awareness may not look like ours, there are no abstract theologies or inner monologues that we know of, but their awareness isn’t less because of that. In some ways, it is more grounded.

    Human consciousness is very narrative heavy. We live in stories, worries, and imagined futures. Animal awareness tends to be more embodied and present I think. Not lesser, just different.

    Sometimes I wonder if we didn’t so much gain consciousness as we traded one form of it for another.

    Landscapes as Presence

    And then there are places themselves. A forest isn’t inert. It communicates, adapts, and responds. A mountain shapes weather and water flow direction. They aren’t objects in the way a chair is an object, they are processes that unfold over centuries and millennia.

    Do mountains “think”? Probably not in any human sense. But asking that question probably misses the point entirely. A better question might be something like, “What kind of awareness belongs to something that moves at the pace of geology rather than heartbeat?”

    When I’m anxious, unsettled, or afraid, being in the mountains calms me. Not because I believe something about them, but because they aren’t in a hurry and that gives me peace. Their timescale is larger than my fear, worry, or anxiety.

    A Buddhist Thread (Without The Metaphysics)

    What I find reassuring is how well this way of experiencing the world aligns with certain strands of Buddhism, especially Chan/Zen Buddhism.

    There’s no insistence on believing specific cosmological claims. No demand to define God, soul, or ultimate reality. Instead, there is a gentle invitation to look directly. Walk. Breathe. Listen.

    Awareness isn’t owned by the individual, it arises through conditions. It appears wherever it can. Humans are just one expression of it, not its origin or its goal.

    Nothing special needs to be believed for this to be true. It only needs to be noticed.

    Why This Brings Me Comfort

    A distant, abstract God always felt unreachable and unavailable to me. Something I had to convince myself was real. But the Earth doesn’t require belief. Animals don’t demand allegiance. The mountains don’t judge. They simply include me.

    That inclusion, felt instead of argued, has been profoundly healing for me. Especially during times when my nervous system is fragile and my mind prone to fear because of PTSD and withdrawal symptoms.

    Not Alone

    Whether or not there is life “out there” in the universe, I don’t experience existence as empty or abandoned. Awareness seems woven through reality (scientific version of panpsychism), appearing wherever conditions allow, in countless forms, at countless scales.

    Maybe we aren’t alone, not because someone is watching us from the stars, but because consciousness itself is everywhere, patiently learning how to “look”. And for me that is enough to calm my damaged-from-drug-withdrawals nervous system.

    Thank you for reading! If this resonates, you’re not required to believe anything only to notice what feels real in your own experience.

    ~Buck

  • Ancient Spiritual Technologies That Still Calm Us Today

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how sound has helped me heal. At almost a year off benzos now, my nervous system is still relearning how to be at peace. And what surprises me, maybe more than anything else, is that one of the most powerful tools I’ve found for recovery isn’t modern or medical. And it certainly isn’t pharmaceutical.

    It’s sound. Simple, human sound. Breath shaped into rhythm. A chant, a whisper, and/or a repeated phrase.

    And the more I study early cultures like Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Norse, (because those are my ancestors) the more I realize this wasn’t an accident. Sound was one of their oldest forms of healing. It wasn’t called “therapy” or “mindfulness,” but it was something very close. I’ve started thinking of these practices as spiritual technology, the kind our ancestors built long before pills and prescriptions existed.

    What I Mean by “Spiritual Technology”

    When ancient cultures needed calm, grounding, safety, or clarity, they turned to practices built on;

    • vibration
    • breath
    • rhythm
    • intention
    • spoken word
    • connection to something larger

    These weren’t superstitions. They were finely tuned tools for emotional regulation, discovered, refined, and passed down over generations.

    The Anglo-Saxons used galdor (galdr), rhythmic chants and spoken invocations that steadied the breath and brought the mind back from fear. The Norse would “call the hugr home,” gathering scattered thoughts by using repeated sound. And in Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, which I also practice, nianfo (“Namo Amituofo”) works in the same way. It brings my attention out of the panic spiral and into something bigger, steadier, and kinder. Of course, galdor or galdr was also used for magical purposes whereas nianfo was/is not, they both can soothe the spirit and bring calm.

    Different cultures, same wisdom.

    Why Sound Works

    You don’t have to believe anything mystical for this to work or make sense. The human nervous system responds directly to slow exhalation and chest vibration. It also responds to predictable rhythms, repetitive sound, and a soothing cadence.

    Chanting sends a message to the body that words alone can’t deliver. It tells your nervous system that you’re safe now, you don’t have to be ready to fight right now. This is extremely important because it helps break the self-feeding loop of fear/dread/fight-or-flight.

    Sound bypasses the overthinking part of the brain and goes straight to the places where fear lives.

    A Personal Reflection

    I was on a very high dose of benzos for more than twenty years. Eight pills a day. It numbed everything. It stopped the nightmares from PTSD, yes, but also numbed joy, clarity, connection, and even life itself. No one taught me healthier ways to cope. No one gave me tools. They just gave me pills.

    Now, almost a year off benzos, I’m slowly rebuilding my nervous system using practices that humans used for thousands of years before modern medicine existed.

    It turns out those “primitive” tools like breath, chant, and spoken rhythm are some of the most powerful technologies we’ve ever created.

    May the old wisdom steady your breath, and may every sound that leaves your lips lead you gently back toward peace.

    ~Buck

  • The Night A Rune Found Me

    A Moment That Changed Everything

    Back in 2011 something happened that altered the course of my life and quietly anchored the animist way I now understand the world.

    I have sleep apnea, and at that time I didn’t yet have a CPAP machine. Falling asleep on my back has always been dangerous because it worsens the collapse of my airway. Normally I would jolt awake gasping, my throat opening enough to save me. But that night didn’t go the way nights normally went.

    I woke because my throat had sealed completely shut. I tried to inhale but I couldn’t. My lungs were burning, my heart was pounding and racing and my head throbbed. My vision narrowed into a tunnel of darkness. I knew I was passing out and I knew I was in trouble. I was panicking.

    I fell back onto my back as the world turned black, and my vision now shrinking to a single pinpoint. Time felt like it folded in on itself, a few seconds stretching out into what felt like an eternity.

    And then something seemingly impossible happened.

    The Golden Symbol in the Darkness

    Out of that blackness, something came flying toward me so fast it was frightening. A flaming, golden symbol I had never seen before. It grew rapidly larger, flying straight at me. Just as it slammed into my body, my airway opened and air flooded in. I was sucking air like I never had before.

    Maybe I lost consciousness, maybe I hung on by a thread, I don’t know. I can’t say for sure. But I bolted upright gasping, drinking in air like I had just been saved from drowning.

    The next morning, that symbol was still definitely in my thoughts. I had to find out what it was, if anything. This was around the time Google had released its new “search by image” feature, so I opened GIMP, drew the symbol I had seen, and uploaded it. The result amazed me when I read what it meant.

    It was the Ansuz rune. The rune of divine breath. The rune of divine communication. A rune closely associated with Odin.

    I didn’t even know what runes were in 2011. This was before the series Vikings was on TV, before runes were all the rage and pop-culture décor. But this rune, the rune tied to breath and spirit, is the one that appeared in the very moment I could not breathe and was rapidly fading. I don’t try to find an explanation anymore. It happened and I’m alive because it did.

    A Pathway Opens

    That experience sent me exploring the cultures who used these runes. The Scandinavians, the continental Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, and the ancient Dutch. I learned their myths and stories and about their gods like Odin/Woden, Thor/Thunar, and many others.

    But I never came to see those gods as distant, abstract beings, not the way the Christian god of my childhood was presented. Instead, I saw them through my already-rooted animist lens. Thor/Thunar isn’t only a god of storms, he is the storm, or its raw power. Odin/Woden isn’t merely a god of inspiration, he is the current of inspiration itself.

    The runes, too, are more than symbols to me. They aren’t just representations, they embody the things they represent.

    So when Ansuz slammed into me that night and my breath returned, I took it as an actual encounter, woven into the fabric of my own consciousness and lived experience.

    Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Living World

    Almost my entire life I’ve believed that there is more to this universe than what can be seen or measured. I don’t think consciousness is just a side effect of brain tissue. To me, consciousness is as fundamental as gravity or electromagnetism, a basic property of reality itself.

    Some scientists call this view panpsychism or scientific panpsychism. The idea that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the cosmos, not an accident or some “afterthought”.

    So when I sit in the mountains and a deer watches me, or a raven tilts its head toward me, I feel consciousness meeting consciousness. I feel agency looking back. Spirit looking back.

    They aren’t just “biological machines,” not to me. And that gives me great comfort.

    May breath return gently to your body whenever the world grows dark.
     May symbols rise to meet you in the moments you most need them.
     May the living cosmos speak to you in its quiet language,
     and may you always recognize yourself in its voice.

    ~ Buck

  • Finding My Lyfjaberg

    It’s far too easy to become distracted by everything that’s wrong in the world. So easy, in fact, that it can blot out everything that’s still good. With so many news companies competing for our attention, we’re inundated with headlines from the moment we wake up, unless we take steps to protect ourselves.

    For me, it became overwhelming. Not the stories themselves, but simply seeing the headlines over and over. I finally set my browser homepage to a site that shows no news at all. I spend a lot of time at my computer writing, for my blogs, for others, and for my own healing, and I don’t want to be bombarded with news everywhere I go online. Creating that boundary has helped my well-being more than I expected, especially during withdrawal.

    What anchors me most, though, is spending as much time as I can outdoors in the sacred landscape that surrounds my home. These mountains keep me sane in a world that can feel utterly insane. They are ancient, steady, and unmoved by the chaos of our brief and anxious lives. They’ve watched countless generations come and go, and still they stand… calm, quiet, and patient.

    There is one particular range here that I return to again and again. A single spot on that ridge has become my refuge whenever a wave hits, those sudden, brutal returns of withdrawal symptoms. It is so profoundly healing that I call it my Lyfjaberg: Healing Mountain.

    When I’m there, tension leaves my body almost immediately. My mind settles. My heart stops its chaotic stutter, the multifocal PVCs that benzo withdrawal carved into me, and falls into a slow, steady and healthy rhythm again.

    I watch the ravens circling overhead, calling out as if welcoming me back. I watch deer move through the trees with the silence of ghosts. I breathe the crisp, clean air and feel it soothe my spirit in a way nothing else can.

    That place has never failed me, even during the very worst of withdrawal.

    I’ve written before about how difficult getting off benzos was after more than twenty years of heavy use, but there are no words in any language that can fully convey what it does to a person. I thought getting off alcohol was hard. And it was. But benzos were harder. I had two seizures. I developed PVCs that came in frightening runs, sometimes fifteen minutes, and once, three hours. Withdrawal sent me to the ER twice. It was hell.

    But the mountains kept healing me.
     And without my wife, my sons, and those sacred peaks, I know I wouldn’t have made it through.

    Now, at almost sixty years old, I am free of alcohol and drugs. The journey was brutal, but I’m still here, still healing, still walking toward peace, one breath and one step at a time.

    Whatever you’re going through, I wish you peace, good health, and happiness. I hope you have, or someday find, your own personal Lyfjaberg, even if it isn’t an actual mountain.

    May the quiet breath of the mountains steady your own.
    May every step you take bring your spirit a little more ease.
    May your heart beat in its true rhythm—slow, strong, and unafraid.
    And may whatever burdens you carry grow lighter with each new dawn.
    May you walk in peace, and may peace walk with you.

    ~Buck

  • Back Home in the Mountains

    I’m back home in Santa Fe after spending a week in Texas visiting family. Seeing everyone again after so long was genuinely wonderful. Family almost always is. But Texas itself, at least the part we were in, hasn’t changed except to get worse. Internet speeds still crawl just barely above dial-up (not a joke), the population has exploded while the infrastructure hasn’t even tried to keep up, and everything looks old, tired, and worn down.

    But now I am home again. And the moment we crossed into New Mexico, I felt the land exhale and I exhaled with it. As soon as we crossed into New Mexico the skies actually cleared. It had been cloudy and dreary the rest of the trip. That seemed very fitting.

    The mountains are crowned with fresh snow, the air is clean and sharp, and this sacred landscape embraced me the way it always does. I feel like I’ve stepped back into both civilization and sacredness. I’m sore and exhausted from driving nearly 600 miles each way, but the heaviness of Texas has already lifted off my shoulders.

    The truth is, the things my wife and I had once romanticized about that little (now not-so-little) Texas town simply aren’t there anymore. People feel ruder. The “slower pace of life” is gone. Many of the places we loved are falling into disrepair or have disappeared completely. Whatever charm it once had has faded into memory.

    The only thing that place still has going for it is the relatively low violent-crime rate. I won’t pretend New Mexico is perfect, it has real issues with drugs and violence. Even the nearest Texas city to where we stayed has a far lower rate than comparable cities here. But even knowing that I would not trade this place. Not for a moment. These mountains, these skies, they heal me in ways I still struggle to put into words.

    And speaking of healing, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. This last “wave” of benzo withdrawal hit me harder than any before it, and it leveled me for a while. Then came the Texas trip. But I’m home again now, in the place where my spirit steadies itself, and I’m hoping to dive back into all the ideas I had before the wave rolled in.

    Thank you for being here with me through the quiet spells and the storms.

    ~Buck

  • My Grandmother Knew the Moon

    My grandmother had little in the way of formal education by today’s standards. She didn’t get a 4-year college degree. She never owned a car. My grandparents had an outhouse until my father and his brothers finally built them an indoor bathroom. She didn’t get a telephone until I was already a teenager.

    And yet my grandmother knew the moon.

    She knew which days were best for planting and which ones weren’t. She knew when the weather was about to turn, even when the sky still looked calm to everyone else. She could step outside, feel the air against her skin, and seem to read something written there , something invisible to most of us.

    She never called it wisdom. She never tried to teach it in any formal way. She simply lived it.

    When my mother was pregnant with me, my grandmother told her the exact day I would be born, not based on a doctor’s prediction or a calendar, but on the phase of the moon. And she was right! To this day, I still think about that, half in disbelief and half in reverence.

    I was born during the new moon, in the quiet darkness just before the light begins again, the time of endings and beginnings living on the same breath.

    I don’t believe that the moon determines a person’s entire life. I don’t think our paths are written in stone by the sky. But I do believe the moon holds memory. I believe it carries rhythm. And I believe that some people, like my grandmother, learned to listen and gained much wisdom.

    She didn’t read books about weather patterns or lunar cycles. She watched. She paid attention. She lived close enough to the land that the land spoke back to her.

    She watched the animals, the clouds, the soil, and the way the wind moved through the trees. Over a lifetime, that observation became ways of knowing.

    There is a kind of intelligence that doesn’t come from schools. It comes from relationships. It comes from being in conversation with the living world.

    I didn’t realize the depth of her knowledge while she was alive. Like so many things in my youth, I took it for granted. I didn’t think to ask her how she knew. I didn’t sit beside her and say, “Teach me your ways”. I simply assumed she would always be there, as steady as the moon itself.

    Now she is gone, but I find myself thinking of her more and more as I walk beneath the night sky. Especially when the moon is new. Especially when the world is quiet.

    I like to imagine she is still teaching me, in her own way, through the passing of time, through the turning of the sky, and through the memory that lives on in my heart and in my bones.

    I see now that her wisdom was never meant to be written down. It was meant to be lived.

    And maybe, in some mysterious way, it still is.

    ~Buck

    Photo Credit: My son, Ty Britt

  • The Storm

    The storm rolls in, dark,
                knocking me back again.

    Wind thrashes at my defenses,
          testing every fragile fortress.

    Still, I feel hope,
               as long as she is with me.

    ~Buck