So many times before, my leaps of faith — my daring to walk into the total darkness — had rewarded me brilliantly. Clear-cut improvements to my circumstances came steadily into view. The only thing clear about my choices this time around was that they’d landed me in a fog.

One person’s mellow glow following a hit off a joint is another’s nightmare cruise to the land of the lost. It was shown to me long ago that I’m the nightmare cruise guy.

Sure enough, there I lay, not at all sure I’d feel like getting out of bed in time for a jam-packed day of appointments still 36 hours away.

While Eric has been delving further this week into the highly concentrated activity going on in Pisces, my confounding experience with a sexual performance potion has this weekend’s Sun-Neptune conjunction in Pisces running right down the middle of it.

I am fondly familiar with Neptune’s wonderfully inspiring and visionary qualities. But I’m no stranger to its capacity to be misty and foggy, if not downright deceptive at times, and it’s these qualities that take center stage in my story today.

As Amanda Painter pointed out on Thursday, it’s not uncommon for Neptunian influences to be felt before the aspect is exact. Perhaps similar effects have become more obvious for you the closer we’ve gotten to the weekend.

Escapism was not on my agenda when I accepted the offer to indulge in this sexual enhancement potion. Quite to the contrary, I wanted to be majorly engaged. Engaged in a more exhilarating and fantastical way than I ever had before. You might say that is what tested the groundedness of my aims.

As with most interests, my sexual voracity is ever moving up and down the scale. I find regular breaks from sex quite beneficial to my body and my overall sexual appetite. However, during periods when sex is pretty much a constant for me, I can begin to question if it’s as good as it could be. Most recently, I experienced a conflicting mix of lackluster physical sensation with a sexual appetite that was making its hunger very clear.

Flash forward to a casual connection who listens to my dilemma and claims he has just the thing. Tea concoctions he’d read about online were supposedly making everything more awesome for him: sensation, stamina, full-body orgasm, and even girth when formulated specifically for men. He rattled off a bunch of ingredients that meant nothing to me; but since it was all natural, he assured it would be an asset to my overall wellbeing.

Betting these were largely a bunch of empty promises anyway, I drank it on down. Well, right away I started to feel lightheaded. Being one of the first to try Viagra when it was introduced, I know any of its effects pretty much just go right to the organ in question. This potion, though, was yielding a definite high. Truthfully, it made me feel far less sexually potent.

Oh, but that was only a feeling. Fairly soon that girth arrived on the scene. And other dimensional enhancements, too. Geez, it was like a frickin’ Polska kielbasa between my legs. And that gave rise to… well… activity. Major activity. Exhilarating and fantastical activity!

Sure, I felt a little sick to my stomach and my heart was pounding with a heaviness that concerned me but — damn! — we were going at it like crazed animals. When at last came the orgasm, it was indeed so full body this usually inaudible climaxer let out sounds I am quite sure vibrated eardrums all through the building.

If that wasn’t enough — and apparently it wasn’t — usually one to call it quits after the crescendo, I wanted to go again. I felt it would be a regrettable mistake not to. And so we went again. I was wincing with areas of tenderness much of the time, but we went again anyway, by golly. And if those tenants’ eardrums weren’t vibrated before, they were now.

But on the drive home, it became deeply clear just how horrible I was feeling. ‘Tired’ was hardly the word. ‘Depleted’ was more like it. And whereas I questioned if certain organs were still functioning, others felt as though they had been hit by a Taser.

I was so glad to finally get into bed. So tired I felt literally threadbare, I closed my eyes to welcome sleep. Accustomed to drifting off right away, I never drifted. I just laid there, my heart pounding through every capillary, my mind and eyes dead to the world but my underlying body buzzing with electricity.

Then, just as I was concluding that no roll in the sheets — no matter how fantastical — is worth this aftermath, it became apparent that something in that potion was a diuretic. I had already peed like ten times and now I had to get up and go again.

Hour after hour, I would close my eyes, open them, get up, go to the bathroom, lay back down and start all over again. The only variation on the theme was that after about twenty trips to pee, my prostate started enlarging and it became terribly difficult to go. We’re talking urgent feelings but just can’t go. Things still haven’t perfectly gotten back to normal down there to this day.

As a man happily sober since age 24, I really do not have a tolerance for not feeling good anymore. Meaning naturally, intrinsically good. For that reason, and with the aim of taking the most fortuitous path for all involved, I stop and offer my intention to my higher self before setting off to connect with others. Or before I do anything at all, really.

I knew the possibility existed on that day to address my sexual enhancement questions with this tea concoction, and I indeed offered the situation to my guidance. Satisfied that I had included the part of my self that sees beyond the immediate, I felt secure in the aftermath of the experience regardless of how terrible I felt. With levels of higher wisdom on the scene, I was deeply satisfied that there was something not only worth discovering but important that I do — although that particular herbal mixture was not the right balance of ingredients for a sensitive type like me.

Hindsight being 20/20, however, there was the option of another path that had been quietly welling up from within me; a path more direct and free from bodily harm.

This inner nudging had been rising in and out of my awareness for a while. But any enhanced sexual experience without using substances would rely so much on my ability to be in the moment and connected, it was easy to write it off as an idealistic notion beyond my abilities. After all my unforeseen and undesirable experiences taking what looked to be the easy way out, honoring that inner nudge has now become the logical — and far more desired — choice.

There is something else, though, that spoke to my heart amid all this. It’s about being gratified by what is just naturally on offer every single day — for me, for you, for all of us. Lying there feeling so, so bad, I began to consider what is actually rather exhilarating about two people holding each other. Just holding, nothing else. Or how transcendent it can be to have fingertips running down your cheeks, arms, and legs as well as between them.

So if conditions, people, or even ideas are proving to be a little foggy this weekend, I’d say take some time to appreciate the simple things. Those ways of connecting that you know you can rely on. Those things that just feel good. No risks, no walks in the dark, just what’s there for you now. Right now.