Into the multiverse
of madness and psychedelics
The past six months have been covered by a dark, oppressive cloud that made me doubt if I would ever feel good again. I sometimes wondered if life was worth living, and though I quickly extinguished these kinds of thoughts, I had lost faith in my ability to understand how I felt and what I needed to move myself forward. I hated being alone but couldn’t enjoy the company of others. Crying spells came over me at random times throughout the day. Nights were unbearably restless. I felt stuck and lifeless, like a ship without a sail.
Fortunately I’m now starting to come out of it, in no small part thanks to the help of psychedelics. This was my second time taking them (I wrote about my first time here) which I approached with three specific intentions: 1) to let go of the shame and feeling of being a failure associated with the end of my relationship, 2) to reflect on my career and desires, and 3) to feel more in touch with life again. I had done a lot of inner work and received an absurd amount of help from family and friends (thank you guys) prior to taking them, though they certainly enhanced and accelerated the healing process.
The rest of this post will highlight parts of the experience and insights (that I remember) I had that seemed to have led me to a better state of mind. It will be more personal and anecdotal since others have already written about the potential benefits and reasons as to why you might want to embark on a similar journey. Disclaimer: I’m only a doctor-in-training, and not the kind that can credibly prescribe medical advice lol. I am in no way suggesting that anyone reading this should use psychedelics for any reason.
I woke up early and started the morning with a short stroll around the block to solidify my intentions. Two grams of psilocybin were waiting for me upon my return home. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the trip, but I knew it was important to be open to whatever came up during the experience. Still, a part of me was hanging onto the hope that I would be granted specifically what I asked for: more clarity and a renewed license on life. When the clock struck seven, I lit a candle and began the journey.
There was nothing for the first hour. No changes in perception, no notable differences in the order and ordinariness of my living room. Then I started feeling irritated. I also noticed the presence of a heavy weight hanging over my head. I wasn’t sure if this was my mind attempting to keep itself intact while being unraveled by the psilocybin, or something else, but I leaned further into it. Slowly my mind states felt less discrete. I became less inhibited as the boundary between the world and my sense of self loosened. Time was losing its grip over reality, and moments started merging together like a continuous fluid I was no longer separate from.
At one point I picked up my guitar and tried playing a song I knew, but I couldn’t get past the first chord. Each note reverberated with an overwhelming beauty and multitude of meanings that filled every inch of body and left me dumbstruck. Music is so fucking beautiful! It wasn’t long before my mind went down the rabbit hole of other seemingly unrelated thoughts. There was less a sense of control over myself, but I didn’t feel afraid. I wanted to be carried down the current and see what wanted to be shown.
I thought about consciousness and the many layers of story we choose and don’t choose to live by, how they sometimes prevent us from doing certain things and push us toward others, how flexible and amenable they are to change, all while witnessing the recursive and layered nature of self and identity. One moment I would be laughing wildly, the next crying like a helpless infant, though again, the moments didn’t really feel like moments at this point. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions flowed through me the way water does when rushing past stones in a river. There was the constant urge to sense-make, to grasp and understand what by nature never could be. I thought about how absurd we are at times, how absurd society is, how absurd it is that we believe we know anything with certainty. Everything felt connected and meaningful. And then it didn’t. And then it did again.
Later I arrived at thoughts of my relationship. Living in my chest was a sense of being a failure and the fear of failing again in the future. There was a lot of shame too in how things ended, in how I couldn’t overcome myself to keep what should have been enough. I had to keep trying I thought, and in a way I was still trying to make things work for me. I reached out to hold these emotions and began to forgive myself. I recognized that I had tried my best and acknowledged how much pain I was in from trying to prevent the ship from sinking. Waves of ecstasy and sorrow moved through me as I rummaged through old photos, loving text messages, thoughtful memorabilia I had received throughout our relationship. Everything was a reminder of the love that existed and was created by us. There was so much of that, so much love.
I also saw that we were propelled by dreams and fantasies that were beyond our reach. Getting married. Coming home to the safety of each other at the end of the day. Having kids and spending our days learning together. Sharing a quiet life full of our perfectly boring and specific kind of fun and love. It was excruciating to see their beauty, and to let them go. (Writing about them now, I continue to feel their pains echoing across my body, though it’s much less intense than the previous months.) The reality was that something consistently felt off for me, and not listening to that feeling made the relationship more difficult than it had to be. That I could see and was beginning to finally accept. I wanted the love to be enough, but it wasn’t able to bridge our dreams to something more real. What was real was that something wasn’t working for me.
I cried on my couch for the next hour, then laid there with a sleeping mask over my eyes. Colorful geometric patterns with fractal-like structures pulsed in and out of the darkness in a dance with my fleeting feelings and fragmented thoughts. Nothing was really coherent at this point, but the visions induced an unspeakable awe in me. I remember seeing a constellation of bright lights in the center of my mind that put me in a religious trance. It looked like a small cloud or series of sunbeams piercing the void of space, a little bit like the album cover of “Make Yourself” by Incubus. I felt at peace and felt that life was going to be okay.
Some time later, as my mind slowly pieced itself together, I made my way to the kitchen to eat leftover tortilla chips. It was difficult to walk because my sense of myself in space and my connection to my body was still somewhat severed. But I got to the counter soon enough and gathered my delectables. It took several minutes to put one chip in my mouth because I was stupidly astonished by the damn thing. How it was made, its intricate shape, the way it felt between my fingers, the joy it brought to so many people – I was on the verge of tears again. And then I ate it. What followed was virtually an orgasm – a foodgasm. My whole body shook with delight each time my tongue made contact with the chip and tasted what was the golden ratio of salt and lime. Chewing and swallowing was clunky and unappealing like my walk into the kitchen, but still, it was the best damn chip I had ever eaten in my life. Eating is so fucking sensual! I said to myself. (Thinking about the experience now is kinda turning me on lol)
When I felt more grounded, I went outside and walked downtown toward the lake. There was a lightness in my step and an unfamiliar confidence in the way that I carried myself. I felt less self-centered. My attention was more easily captured by what was happening around me rather than the content of my own thoughts. Everything was fun to look at: flowers, clouds, worms crawling on the ground, porches, sidewalks, people. Who knew it could be so fun to look at the world? I, Mr. budding writer, supposedly did, but I had forgotten how pleasurable it was to give something my fullest attention – no, rather, to have it be completely seized by something beyond myself.
I loved noticing my attention shift from an intensely focused microscope to a softer panoramic view. I couldn’t contain my smile and constantly had the urge to laugh. That was funny to notice: the desire to suppress my emotions in order to come off a certain way. I went to a bookstore to test the state of my cognition, which I found was highly functional if I tried hard enough to read the book I was holding. A computational psychiatry book held my interest for some time, though I grew bored of it pretty quickly. Nothing else in the store really caught my eye either. My motivation to read and tendency toward abstraction had become less existent. All I wanted to do was walk around, look, and experience the moment firsthand. Nothing felt as interesting as what I could perceive.
My girlfriend and I broke up five months ago, but we had continued to try to make things work until very recently. A part of me had wanted the trip to bring us back together, to bring me to a place where I had found a way to keep the relationship alive. But it only showed me more clearly that I had to let her go. I wasn’t anxious about it anymore, just sad, which is perhaps the best state to be in given the circumstances. I still think of her and feel lonely at times, but I know that my letting go came from a place of total acceptance. I have an unwavering faith in that wherever life takes us, it will be a better place. I’m also certain that this was the most loving thing to do, for her and myself.
I’m returning to a certain mood baseline already, which was to be expected, but I also seem more able to trust my instincts. Old compulsions and lackluster habits don’t have as much gravity anymore. The urge to control my experience has been reduced. I feel comfortable in my body again, and there’s more lightness and joy when I go about my day. I feel more content to be who I already am, which is much better than only believing that you are. I find myself quite charming and funny. It’s easier to smile and laugh. I still have my moments when I’m wrapped up in thought, but letting them go comes more effortlessly when the moment warrants it. My emotions are less turbulent, more consistently happy.
People who know me would say that I was already a happy, optimistic, and care-free person. What they didn’t see was that so much of my existence was also riddled by incessant self-doubt and worry. I never had the sense that I was doing anything right with my life, hence the fear of failure and associated shame with regard to my relationships, my winding career trajectory, and my creative pursuits. They always recognized the potential in me and tried to nurture and encourage it, but I never felt like I was good enough. I never felt like I was enough, not in a viscerally manner anyways. I fully recognize this now and feel confident that I can catch myself if I fall back into the depths of these thought patterns.
As for my career and desires, I don’t see myself hopping out of the PhD quite yet, or at least I don’t feel as bad about doing it as I did before. It feels more like a job that neatly fits where I’m at in life than a crucial part of my identity and happiness. I also want to write more and focus on honing my creativity. I used to think that my craft was specifically writing, but I’m seeing now that maybe it’s about expression and learning more generally. In my high school years I enjoyed writing guides, coaching newb League of Legends players, streaming my gameplay, and making YouTube videos with my online friends. Later I learned how to code and build websites, math and statistics, and how to grasp the gestalt of difficult subjects. As long as I’m learning and making things that affect even one person, I think I’ll be pretty content. This is something I want to explore more across multiple mediums.
It will never cease to amaze me that a compound like psilocybin can produce so much clarity, insight, and joy. Obviously I still need to go about living my days and engaging with the world, which is the true testing ground. But I feel all the more prepared for it. The fear of losing the confidence and lightness is real, but I’m guessing that as long as I stay and act within the vicinity of my desires, life will continue to feel good. It’s possible too that at least some of these changes will be more or less permanent. If not, I may have to take the word of my therapist, who cutely said that “people should do psychedelics every six months”, and see again what lies both within and beyond the universe of my mind.