Molly, Mushrooms and Mayhem [Interview]
BY ANASTASIIA RIDDLE
@nastjacosmos
As we are all patiently waiting for the festival season to come back (hopefully?), we are trying to create our favorite EDM festival atmosphere and vibes, whether it’s throwing a virtual Rave-A-Thon at your house with a few “chosen ones” (social distancing and all), or going to the Drive-ins that are gaining more and more popularity due to our “series of unfortunate events”. But I've got one more thing for you to do to get yourself in the feels, laugh, cry and hopefully learn from other people’s experiences.
Molly, Mushrooms & Mayhem - is a book written by Jim Bollenbacher, an EMT and later on a Paramedic at the music festivals. Jim grew up in Western Pennsylvania wanting to be an FBI agent until he met one in college. That experience was so bad that he decided to reroute and become a lawyer instead. When he retired he took some EMT classes so he could help those in need. While working at the numerous music fests he met all kinds of people and heard all kinds of stories. That’s how Molly, Mushrooms & Mayhem was born. The book is a collection of short stories from inside of the EMT tent, some are hilarious, some are educational and some are… well, you gotta read it yourself to learn!
Atlanta EDM sat down with Jim and talked about his background, book and festival experiences. Tune in to learn more!
All proceeds from the sale of this book benefit the First Responders Children's Foundation.
First Responders Children’s Foundation provides financial support to both children who have lost a parent in the line of duty as well as families enduring significant financial hardships due to tragic circumstances. First Responders Children’s Foundation also supports, promotes, and facilitates educational activities and programs created and operated by law enforcement and firefighting organizations whose purpose is to benefit children or the community at large.
VISIT THE FIRST RESPONDERS CHILDRENS FOUNDATION
ATLEDM: So tell us a little bit about yourself, and how do you become an EMT and then a paramedic at the music festivals?
JIM: Yeah, it's an unusual career path. I mean, I was a lawyer for many years. And then I was in the corporate world, I left the legal department, went out and was one of the executives of a very large, multinational company. And I got tired of that. I got tired of the politics, I was at the senior level. So I got to see how all the decisions were being made. And I just, I didn't care for it anymore. I didn't think our people's values were very strong anymore. So I hit a point where I could retire, which allowed me to keep some of my benefits, financial benefits and things like that. And I always had sort of… I always describe it as a voyeuristic interest in medicine, right? Like I was the one that wanted to stop at the side of the road, see the car accident and watch all of the gross TV shows. And so we sort of stumbled across this EMT class at a local community college. And I thought well that you know, that'll be kind of fun. I'll just take that just for the kicks, right? But it turns out I loved it. We had a great instructor, really fabulous instructor. I enjoyed it. I had been volunteering at our local hospital in the emergency room. So once I got my EMT license, they hired me to work there, which was awesome. I got to see a lot. I also got hired through this class. I got hired by a company here in Chicago that handles most of the major events in the city. A lot of the music festivals, major sporting events, concerts, things at Soldier Field, those sorts of things. And so that was fun, but I thought, you know, EMTs don't really get to do all that much. So I decided at age 60 to go back and become a paramedic student and I was the grandfather of the class. But it was pretty cool.
ATLEDM: What inspired you to write this book and share these stories?
JIM: Yeah, it was really a spur of the moment. I mean, I had no long term plan to write a book, it wasn't something that I really had ever even thought of. But my sister and niece were here for a weekend and my niece is a pharmacy resident. So she and I always end up talking about, you know, sort of these gruesome, gory medical stories. And I always tell stories from the festivals, and it always gets a reaction, either one of laughing or sort of shock or, you know, sort of amazement. And I went to bed that night and I couldn't fall asleep, just thinking about it. And it came to me like the first thing that came to me was the name of the book. That's the absolute first thing that came to me. And I literally got out of bed. I came downstairs sitting right where I am right now, and I started putting together kind of an outline of what I wanted to do. And it evolved over time.
ATLEDM: So how do you feel about electronic music, electronic music festivals and do you have a favorite genre or type of festival to go to, to work at?
JIM: The EDM festivals are my absolute favorite? The vibe at them is really... it's really hard to describe as you guys will know, and coming from the medical side, you know, I'm not there to kind of have fun and to party and listen to the music. I'm there to help out. But you get caught up in the whole scene and I have just talked with so many people who are having fun and you look around and think nobody's talking about whose football team is better, nobody's talking about politics, at least not when I'm around. Nobody's talking about, you know, is the economy getting better. Everybody's just there having fun. I love the inclusiveness of the events, people just hugging and the whole Kandi thing, like where you exchange candy, I don't have the lingo down. I apologize. But I just love that and, you know, some of the events, there's a lot of law enforcement around and by the end of the weekend, you see they've got Kandi all up and down them. I mean, it's just an amazing event and so I love that whole energy and the vibe and the feel of it. From a medical standpoint it's a lot more fun because with some other festivals where it's not EDM... I don't mention festivals in my book and that's by design, but I'll mention one here like Lollapalooza here in Chicago, great festival, awesome, 120,000 people a day, right? But most of the people that we see at that festival are there because of alcohol, we see them because of alcohol. And so they're throwing up on you, we find them face down in their own vomit. I mean, after about the third day of that, just, you know, I'm over it. At the EDM festivals, we get very little of that. People maybe have had a little bit too much of whatever it is they're taking, maybe they get a little super excited, whatever. But I can call them, I can call that crazy person down right. I have some pharmaceutical ways that I can fix the naked guy running around the campground. So, from a medical standpoint, I just enjoy the EDM festivals as well. It's different kinds of problems and more fun.
ATLEDM: In your book, you mentioned that you learn about many drugs that festival goers are using. Did any of your patients tell you about them and how they work?
JIM: Yeah, I mean, look, I admitted in my book and my kids know this, it's no secret. When I was in college, and particularly in law school, I smoked a lot of weed. That was kind of what people did. Then there were some people that were doing coke, but I've never heard of drugs like molly, ketamine, stuff like that. LSD was a thing back in my day, but it was like the scary drug that everybody was putting in little, tiny candy things and you know, you're warning kids not to eat them. It was weird. So I was a complete neophyte. And I remember at my first EDM festival, it was the night before everything kind of got started. So it was real mellow. And I was with some paramedics and EMTs that I hadn't known. We were just sitting on our carts and they were sort of debating, what's a hippie flip versus something… a candy flip. Like, what are you guys talking about? And so we grabbed some people who were walking by and they just went on this, like Wikipedia sort of rant about, oh, yeah, there's this and that. And I thought, holy crap. I didn't know any of this kind of stuff. So it was very eye opening, very eye opening.
ATLEDM: Do you have a favorite war story to tell that doesn't take away from one in the book?
JIM: It was actually at Burning Man. And I was walking around and it came across a crowd. It turns out it was the sex Olympics. I thought, well, I got to stick around. I got to see what this was about right? So it turns out it was a deep throat competition. And they had these people get up on stage and they had these rubber dildos, I guess. And the competition was to see who could do the best job and the winner, as I recall, was the guy that I think he got 13 or 14 inches down. Yeah, I know. The crowd went crazy. I mean, it was just unbelievable. The crowd went crazy. So that evening, I report to the to the medical tent I walk in and a friend of mine who is a flight nurse there was getting ready to take this patient out and fly them to Reno for trauma hospital and it was that person. They had significantly damaged their esophagus. I think they probably ended up in surgery. I don't know. But yeah, I just thought, how do you go home and tell your family that you ended up in the trauma hospital because of that? Yeah, so I wanted to put that in the book but I thought yeah, maybe not. And I chose not to but I don't know why, maybe just because I saw both ends of it right? I saw the start and the finish and quite a celebrity. In the book I did include chapters on things that weren't funny, that ended up being quite serious. I've worked at a number of festivals where people died. And that is awful, just really, really awful. I mean, it's awful for the medical staff, obviously, for the family. It's inconceivably tragic. It does happen. There are a number of other stories like that, that I did not include either for legal reasons or privacy reasons. But I think the book is funny. It's intended to be kind of entertaining, but I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that there are serious consequences sometimes. Very rare, very rare, that people can make mistakes, and sometimes we can't fix the mistake for them.
ATLEDM: So in your book, you mentioned that a lot of unpleasant things happen to the medical staff, like rude patients, vomit and blood and all that fun stuff, you know? What is it that makes you keep doing what you do?
JIM: It's the patients honestly. I've been thrown up on, peed on, I've helped more men urinate than I ever imagined I would. But when you're doing that, it's just kind of clinical, it's just sort of a clinical thing that's just part of your job. And then when you see the patient that really needs you and really appreciates that you're there and thanks you or, you know that they're grateful for it, that's what I really enjoy. I love the science part, sort of the medical part. For me when the shit hits the fan, I want to be involved. I have that adrenaline junkie kind of tendency. I want to be right in the middle of it. But I also enjoy just the patients and I try to talk with the patients, I try to learn a little bit about them. There's some amazing stories, there are some pretty cool people. And the thing that I've learned is that and I talked about this in the book a little bit, again, I came from a pretty conservative buttoned down guy, short hair, no tattoos, I do have a tattoo now, but no tattoos, things like that. And so there's a lot of people at these festivals that don't look like me that don't look like the people that I hang out with. They don't have the same backgrounds, right? But what I've learned is that they're just cool people too.
ATLEDM: Do you think your book will help educate frequent festival goers and learn from other people people's mistakes?
JIM: It's interesting, I hadn't thought about that. Again, I hope that mostly people will be entertained by the book. But I hope that the chapter on the serious things does allow people to realize that sometimes we can't fix you. And how horrible that is. I think in terms of education, I had more of a goal of educating people who don't go to the festivals. Who, who think oh, it's just a bunch of punks running around, you know, doing drugs and getting naked. I was really more interested in educating those people that the music festival really isn't that negative kind of thing that a lot of people my age or the people don't know about maybe think. I hope that people read the book and the festival goers read the book and have a little bit of better understanding of what we do and why we're there. We go out of our way at these festivals to make sure that people understand that we are safe, and that our medical facilities are safe spaces. If you've got drugs on you, we don't call the cops. If you want to give them to us, we will take them and put them in an amnesty box. There are no consequences for you coming and saying, Hey, I did this and I'm a little scared or I don't feel well. We go out of our way to make sure that it's safe in that respect. We're there really to make sure that you guys all have a good time and we are getting paid. We are not getting paid very much. At some of these festivals, it's all volunteer. So for the most part, the medical people are there because they enjoy this. And because they want you guys to enjoy it. So that's sort of my goal.
ATLEDM: We have one last question for you. What advice do you have for all of us dealing with a postponed 2020 festival season eagerly awaiting the first festivals of 2021?
JIM: Read my book. That's the best advice I can give. Read my book and it'll take you back. It'll get you excited. Yeah, I mean, it sucks. It sucks for me. I miss these festivals. I think that we're going to start seeing some things open up. I know here in Chicago, they're starting doing some drive in music, concerts. It's not the same. But it's at least a start. I'm hopeful that next summer we'll be able to do some things. I don't want to get political but my biggest comment in terms of if you want to go to a festival next year, wear your mask this year, because that's what's going to do it and people can disagree with me if they choose but that's my comment. It's been a rough summer. So hang in there. Use this year to kind of recharge your batteries, figure out what's going to happen next year and then I'll see you all out in the campground next year.