{"id":465,"date":"2018-02-11T11:09:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T19:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bctimeslip.skullcrackersuite.org\/?p=465"},"modified":"2020-08-26T14:42:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T21:42:10","slug":"pkd-at-x-kalay-and-interview-with-david-berner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bctimeslip.skullcrackersuite.org\/index.php\/2018\/02\/11\/pkd-at-x-kalay-and-interview-with-david-berner\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with David Berner"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Philip K. Dick ended up at X-Kalay is unclear. In an interview<\/a> for Vertex<\/em> magazine in 1974, he claimed to have been told about the centre by the\u00a0 councillor he spoke to over the phone during his suicide attempt. After talking for over an hour he was finally told: \u201cHere\u2019s what\u2019s the matter. You have nothing to do; you have no purpose; you came up here and you gave your speeches and now you\u2019re sitting in your apartment. You don\u2019t need psychotherapy. You need purposeful work.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is likely, given the circles Phil had been moving in, that he would have heard about X-Kalay which at that time was well-known on the counter-cultural scene. Founded in 1967 by David Berner, X-Kalay had begun as a half-way house for First Nations ex-cons called The Indian Post Release Society. Within a year, inspired by the examples of therapeutic communities like Daytop in New York and Synanon in California, the organization was re-named The X-Kalay Foundation\u00a0 (or Unknown Path) combining the Kwak\u2019wala word for \u201cpath\u201d or \u201cway\u201d with the sign for an unknown quantity. Using an extreme form of daily psycho-dramatic group therapy known as The Game, X-Kalay began to stage 48 hour open house sessions at its club house in Mount Pleasant, where its house band would play, its live-in community growing rapidly to include families and its self-reliant business operations expanding to include a pizza restaurant, beauty parlour, stationary business and a hotel on Salt Spring Island. David Berner explains how the foundation moved from working primarily with First Nations ex-cons, to working primarily with anyone with significant substance abuse issues.<\/p>\n