Anna Sale

This message comes from death, sex, and money. From perimenopause to your father's dying wish to an eating disorder that's turned into an obsession with money, Slate's Anna Sale explores the questions and choices that are often left out of polite conversation. Listen now.

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Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. When you realized you couldn't feel anything from below your sternum, was it scary? What do you remember feeling? Was it like mystifying, like confused?

What were you joking about?

That makes me emotional. You're immediately thinking, how will I spend my time? You're casting forward on this backboard. That's interesting.

It took a few hours, but eventually Jim was transported to a hospital in a small Chilean city.

Hi. Oh, it sounds so much better. Oh, good. Okay, let me also move this out of the way so it's not so in your view.

So you were in a foreign country in the southern hemisphere in a hospital. Were you comfortable with Spanish?

Jim had the use of his arms but was paralyzed below his rib cage. He had full lung function, but his abdominal muscles didn't work. He stayed in Chile for another week and then was transported back to the U.S. for surgery. Coming up, Jim begins the slow and hard process of rehabilitation.

Hi, PJ.

I'm good.

This is Death, Sex, and Money from Slate. I'm Anna Sale. After Jim was transported to the U.S., he was confronted with the extent of his injuries. He'd fractured nine vertebrae, and he had surgery to relieve the pressure on his spine and fuse five vertebrae. That went well, restoring some nerve function and proper blood flow that had been cut off.

And a few days after the surgery, he was able to move his right big toe. A few weeks later, he could lift his right leg a bit. But Jim did not know how hopeful he ought to be.

Jim transferred to a different hospital, Craig Hospital in Colorado, which specializes in treating brain and spinal cord injuries. He spent five months there doing intense physical therapy. Eventually, he made enough progress that he was able to become an outpatient.

You were in a literal old folks home?

Would you compare walkers with your neighbors? I like this idea of you're surrounded by people who are also using walkers.

Okay. That's a lot.

Well, this is where taglines are helpful. We say it's a show about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. And it's an interview show where I talk to people who are well-known and people who aren't public figures about the stuff that all of us go through and are figuring out in some way.

Yeah. I will say that's a bold couples counselor.

Oh, given the proximity of that breakup to your accident, I wonder, are you all, are you still in touch with that, that ex? Did you all stay in touch throughout your recovery?

By the summer of 2015, months into his recovery, Jim was ready for a change of scenery. A nonprofit that supports injured adventure athletes called the High Fives Foundation offered him free physical therapy in Northern California. Jim flew there and stayed in a buddy's rec room for the summer. In July, he joined a crew of people at a big music festival near Tahoe.

String Cheese Incident was playing. It was the kind of concert where people are dancing and laying around on blankets.

Jim was avoiding alcohol during his rehab, but most everyone around him was drinking. Then someone gave him a large psilocybin chocolate bar, one with magic mushrooms, and he ate it. This was not a microdose.

Psychedelics, including psilocybin, have been reported to cause muscle spasms in people with spinal cord injuries, causing the muscles to flex involuntarily, and it's hard for your brain to tell them to stop. Scientists don't know why. And for Jim, right as his psychedelic experience began to peak, his right quad muscles and knee began to vibrate and kept wanting to lock.

It's not usually quite like that. But my favorite is when it's maybe an older woman who I feel a little bit sheepish about saying the name of the show to. And then they go, oh, interesting. And then I know we're off to the races. It's not that they give me story ideas. It's that we just dig in with each other.

When you start noticing that, Jim, are you like telling people around you like, I'm noticing something in my leg. And what was the response like? Was there an awareness among the people you were with that psilocybin could have that kind of physical manifestation or were people sort of like... and was it mysterious?

When that day was over and you started noticing the trip was ending, were you afraid it was going to go away?

You're saying it could have just been that? You're not sure?

And did that functionality with your right hamstring from that day, was that a milestone of recovery that you've got functionality that stayed?

A milestone, but not an end. Alongside his physical rehab, Jim was also struggling with his mental health. It hit a low point two years in.

Well, the way I experience it is, you know, I was raised in West Virginia. I am a polite person. I am eager to please socially. And so it feels like this moment where I kind of like flip around my cards and say, like, I've got a little punk rock edge to me. And so then that can be fun in social situations, especially where it's a little bit more buttoned up or stuffy.

And you're turning 35 that year? It's 2017?

So you're a young person, and you're looking at a long downward slide. Mm-hmm. And how long... How long did that sort of heavy, dark period last?

Did you have psychiatric help during that time?

What for you did you not like about antidepressants?

Coming up, Jim keeps looking for a solution and tries a new psychedelic.

Two years after his spinal cord injury, Jim Harris was able to walk with a cane, but he tired easily, and he sometimes struggled with how much he missed his body pre-injury.

And was your experience, I don't know if it like feels this way, but like did you feel something in your body in a way that felt familiar to what your experience had been like? when your right hamstring recovered? Did you feel as if something after that experience, something in the way your brain was functioning, was happening differently?

You didn't get any answers, but you got some sensation.

Jim now lives in western Colorado, in a town surrounded by mountains and ski resorts. He's able to do some physical activities like pack rafting and mountain biking, with limitations, and he makes art like woodblock prints of nature scenes.

Jim also has become a vocal advocate for therapeutic psychedelic use, including during the successful 2022 voter ballot initiative in Colorado to legalize psilocybin therapy and decriminalized five psychedelics, including DMT, the active psychedelic in ayahuasca. But Jim says he relies on other long-term supports to take care of his mental health, too. One came unexpectedly.

Was it a younger men's group?

Does it still meet?

I see. So you're a winter young men's group.

And being together.

Can you describe for me where you notice your accident now in your body? Like what doesn't work in the same way that it did before your accident?

Mm-hmm. Are you dating these days?

Seven-year?

That seems significant. So is this officially now your longest relationship?

What's that like? How's it going?

I mean, a lot has changed. I would say that the origin story for me of wanting to make a show about the most important building blocks of our lives or the ones that we can't avoid is that I was desperately looking for guides at the point where I started the show. You know, I was 33, 34. I was divorced. I was living in New York. We were working in the same building together.

You know, it was a time where I was like... I don't really know what I'm doing here and I just want to have conversations with people where I don't feel so alone in not knowing what I'm doing here and to feel reassurance that it's something you figure out along the way. And Then over the course of the last 10 years, I got married. I became a parent. I've got two kids. I cross country.

I live in a house. I have two dogs. My life is characterized by stability right now. Like I'm living out the consequences of some really big choices I made in my early adulthood. And so now I think this is also a response to the political climate and what's shifted over the last 10 years. I'm really interested in...

And ambiguity and uncertainty and having conversations that add complexity rather than certainty, it serves each of us and it also is going to serve how we have to make decisions together.

This is Death, Sex, and Money. The show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. I'm Anna Saleh. In 2014, Jim Harris was 32 years old and kite skiing on a South American ice cap. The wind would catch the kite and pull him forward. But then the wind changed and dropped him hard.

Jim injured his spine, and then about eight months into his rehabilitation, he found himself having another profound physical experience, again set against a beautiful outdoor backdrop, this time soundtracked by a live jam band. A friend had invited Jim to an outdoor music festival, and by then he'd recovered the ability to walk with a walker.

But standing and moving around a lot was still exhausting and physically awkward. But he didn't want to miss out. And then when he got there, someone offered him a chocolate bar, a psilocybin mushroom chocolate bar, and Jim didn't want to miss out on that either.

And what did you notice about how it felt in your body?

Jim grew up in Ohio and often felt like an outsider. He wasn't a sports guy. He didn't like the competitive dynamic. So he mostly adventured outside, on his own or with just his family. When he went to college in Montana, Jim finally found a community where it felt like he fit.

And he made outdoor adventuring into his work, too. In his early 20s, Jim taught mountaineering courses and then was hired by places like National Geographic and Powder Magazine to document his wilderness travels all over the world, doing things like hiking remote mountains, backcountry river rafting, and snow kiting.

So on the one hand, I'm imagining it feels like you're sort of, I don't know, like tapping into this force that's bigger than you.

But also that you're not in control, right? Necessarily? Like it's surrender too.

I've never like considered like a river current and the wind being, you know, cousins of forces that you can kind of appreciate and tap into. I like that. How old were you when you were injured?

So it was wintertime in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern hemisphere?

Jim was with a small group of friends near the Chile-Argentina border. They planned to ski the Patagonian ice cap with the help of snow kites.

I see. So it wasn't like you're going out. It was to cover ground. It was like a rope tow.

Yeah. And what happened on the run when you got injured?

When you woke up, you were face up?

And after you regained consciousness, how long were you alone?

Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex, and Money, the show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. Many of us have something going on behind closed doors, like a listener we called Elizabeth, who told us she's a hoarder.

We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex, and Money. Listen wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex, and Money, the show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. Many of us have something going on behind closed doors. Like a listener we called Elizabeth, who told us she's a hoarder. I see mess beyond probably what most people think of when they think of mess. We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex, and Money.

Listen wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex, and Money, the show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. Many of us have something going on behind closed doors, like a listener we called Elizabeth, who told us she's a hoarder.

We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex, and Money. Listen wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex, and Money, the show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. Many of us have something going on behind closed doors. Like a listener we called Elizabeth, who told us she's a hoarder.

We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex, and Money. Listen wherever you get podcasts.