Illustrations by Joel Benjamin
I've been addicted to everything except positive thinking. Currently, the obsessive focus of my tyrannical mind is crystals. Not crystal meth, just crystals. I've only been in the crystal game less than a year and already my thoughts and well-being have become so controlled by quartzes, amethysts, tourmalines, and calcites that I've had to set boundaries to rein in my obsession, including: no seeking out crystal stores, only purchasing crystals if I feel the "universe" has put them in my path, no moving the crystals around the house more than three times a day, no talking about crystals, no healing crystal YouTube videos, no planning trips to Arizona gem shows or Arkansas rock mines.
I was hesitant to get involved with the crystal world. I spent my early 20s going to psychics drunk, shopping at new age stores on opiates, and reading self-help books so fucked up on over-the-counter speed that I highlighted every word. What began as a weed and psychedelic-fueled journey to connect with something greater than myself (and perhaps unearth some cosmic truths about existence) had descended into a desperate grab at just trying to be OK.
Eventually, I got sober, and in doing so, I had to find something to rely on that was not my ego, drugs, or alcohol. I tried on various philosophies and gods: some found in the new age stores, others in the forms of sex, food, the internet, and anything else remotely pleasurable. Ultimately, through trial and error, I came to discover that if there is an answer, a thing that will "fix" me, it probably isn't in some glittery thing outside myself. This was an annoying realization. It sucks that the answer has to come from within.
For the past decade I've been learning to live as though the answer isn't outside me. I try to spend a little time in the beginning of the day, about ten minutes, in stillness. I've intentionally left my meditation practice open, not tethered to one religion or tradition, so as to avoid turning any one object, book, or guru into the answer. When you're as easily seduced by the promises of spiritual materialism as I am, it's easy to mistake what the hand is pointing to for the hand itself.
Having lived in Venice Beach for almost three years, this means resisting the siren songs of countless psychics, juice cleanses, mystical healing journeys, and, yes, crystals. But last year, I found myself talking to a beautiful bohemian woman in a parking lot about her spread of quartzes and apophyllites. She was so fun and light, so free, that I thought, It can't hurt to just buy one. This will be purely beautiful and decorative. It will just be for fun. But I am so not a person who can keep things fun. If I had a past life, I spent it at Jonestown.
Upon returning home with my new quartz, I put it on the windowsill for "protection." Then I wondered about the other windowsills. So I purchased a few more quartzes. And a few more. Shortly thereafter I was told that clear quartzes "do nothing" unless they are paired with another stone. So I got an onyx. Then I needed an amethyst to help me sleep. I got a blue calcite to put in my bra for anxiety (it didn't work). I bought a little rose quartz stone to celebrate a moment of self-love (or more specifically, a refusal to sext a bro with whom I used to sext). I was given a smoky quartz and a piece of pyrite that were said to be grounding and protect from negative energy. Then the lady at a new crystal store I began frequenting said my pyrite was of poor quality and that I should invest in a shinier one. So I did. Suddenly, all of my prior crystals seemed shabby, too. I began hiding the old crystals and replacing them with newer ones. In the middle of the night I would move my lithium quartz from my nightstand to the kitchen and back again, panicking that something wasn't right. During meditation I worried that I'd chosen the wrong crystal for the day. I began getting really fucked up about the crystals. I couldn't afford to buy any big ones, so I just kept accruing little, tiny crystals—small bumps of my drug. They covered my house. They were everywhere. Apparently, the first quartz in that parking lot had been the gateway crystal.
One day, after nearly causing an accident while sifting through my crystal pouch for the right stone (it's like texting and driving but woo-woo), I decided I'd had enough. Weren't these crystals supposed to be helping me? Now I needed a crystal for every fucking thing. But I wanted the power, the juju, to come from inside me, not some bullshit outside. Deep down, I'd already learned the hard way that spirituality was not a magic trick. So why was I trying to dumb myself down in order to make these crystals work? Why did I want so badly to turn to something outside me when the power was already within?
I decided then: no new crystals. But two days later, I relapsed. One minute I was not even thinking about crystals, and the next, as though in a blackout, I found myself standing in the middle of a pricey metaphysical shop in Santa Monica. When I went to pay for some tiny stones, the woman who worked there made me feel shitty for their size—as though I wasn't "spiritual" enough for the giant geodes. This, I decided, was my rock bottom.
There comes a point in every woman's journey when she has to ask herself: Is the person who can afford to spend money on giant fucking crystals more spiritual than the person who can't afford to buy any? The same goes for $960 mantras and $2,000 retreats to holy places. Not to shit on anyone's path, but I don't think this is the way the universe works.
Also, it's not really about the crystals. Anything I hope will set me free always ends up imprisoning me. It's probably because I want so badly for something else to do it for me that I become so dependent. I think we all want something to believe in, to rescue us from the terrestrial. But some people are able to be more casual about that thing—to simply let beauty be beauty, and a moment be a moment—whereas I can't help but cling.
Now I see people around me with the crystals and I'm like, I don't get it. How do they just get to be casual crystal users and not me? It's triggering. I am triggered by fucking crystals. I'm like, Let me go buy just one crystal to prove I don't have a problem. If they can do it, why can't I? But it's not for me to know exactly why. What is for me, I suppose, is to remember that an opulent inner life is worth more than anything shiny outside myself—at least until my next obsession.
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