A Recent Trip

This past Sunday, I tried magic mushrooms for the first time. It wasn’t much – around a gram or so, which is a bit less than what this paper suggests for someone of my body weight – but it was enough to dig up some insights about myself and the nature of the mind.

At the beginning there was nothing. I had just eaten the mushrooms – they felt like dried mango slices, though without any of the succulence and sweetness – and was sitting on a floor cushion in my friend’s apartment, meditating and waiting to be flooded by the expected perceptual disturbances – visual distortions, heightened bodily sensations, dissolution of the self, the initial nausea that normally follows their raw ingestion.

It wasn’t until two hours later, after I had asked my friend to drop me off at my apartment, that I began to feel the mental reverberations. Slowly two worlds began to emerge. The first was one in which everything was happening to me, to the “I” I identified myself with in conversation and daily life, to what Buddhists would call the ego. In this world we are the center of the universe, the master of our experience.

In the second world the ego ceased to exist. Who “I” was became irrelevant and meaningless. Any sense of time and temporal experience was seamlessly framed in the present moment. There was only consciousness and its contents. I was no longer separate from the universe; I was an indistinguishable part of it.

I cued one of my favorite songs - Blackbird by Tash Sultana - as I traversed the two landscapes. The usual mental clutter and noisy digressions that frequently accompanied my days gently dissapated. It felt as if a thin veil or fog were being lifted from the forefront of my mind, and the residual effect was one of growing clarity and freedom. The boundary between myself, Blackbird, and the world continued to dissolve. I felt able to freely move into and out of the rhythms and melodies of the music, as if the song itself were an open ocean one can freely choose to enter.

I wasn’t entirely removed from reality. I was still highly functional, even more so perhaps. Free from all my usual neuroses and thoughts of the future, what naturally followed was a boundless sense of joy, wonder, and connection.

An hour later I went for a walk by the lake. Everything seemed more colorful than usual, despite the overcast skies. The trees and plants shimmered with aliveness, and I felt especially confident and unself-conscious while looking at various strangers. I smiled at them when they looked at me, and when they smiled back, I cherished the simple act as if it were the last smile in the world.

Later I ran into three young people trying to climb one of the sculpted stones by the water. I couldn’t help but laugh at the pure innocence and playfulness of the situation. One of them was on the ground with her legs raised in the air, wobbling and unsteady like those of an overused stool, serving as the base from which the others would ascend. My laughter came out fully and abruptly, free from any hesitation or awareness of social decency. I surprised even myself, though it was short-lived: without much effort I quickly fell back into the absurdity of the moment. The three then looked at me, smiled, and laughed along.

Walking back home, the effects of the psilocybin began to wear off. The vibrancy of my surroundings faded back to their usual hues, though my uplift in mood was still present. I knew I hadn’t taken enough to experience complete ego dissolution or any sort of astronomical mind-bending, but there was a distinct qualitative difference in how I viewed the world, one I hoped would have some permanent bearings. Already the future was returning, but for that I was grateful too. Any sense of struggling for the unreachable had slipped away, like snow melting on alpine in Spring.

I am now thinking of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech. Two young fish are swimming along when they encounter an older fish swimming the other way. The older fish says to them, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The younger fish ignore him and swim on, then turn to each other and say, “What the hell is water?”

What the younger fish are unaware of is the nature of the place that they have lived for their entire lives. They lack any knowledge of its geography, currents and contours, which is fine if you’re a fish. But for us, it’s consequential to be unaware of the water we are swimming in.

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with indecisiveness. It was unclear to me whether or not I should continue taking classes in order to apply to UVM’s M.S. program in Complex Systems and Data Science, pivot into a full-time online web development course, or do something completely different. I knew that something was bothering me on a fundamental level, but I couldn’t get a good grip on what it was. All I knew was that I felt deeply dissatisfied and unfulfilled most days. I was in a constant state of worry and uncertainty, and I couldn’t focus on anything. Reading, playing outside, and even spending time with friends was no longer enjoyable. If I wasn’t doing something that contributed or related to figuring out my career, then it didn’t feel worth doing at all.

This is clearly a destructive mindset to be in, yet it was difficult to think and act in any other way. The alternatives felt faint and out of reach. I was mired in the slog of my own sorrows, and I was unable to see that the lifeline was hanging right in front of me.

After the fish story, Wallace states that:

“the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

The thing that seems most obvious of all is what is right in front of us; how we see and move about in the world, how can this be any different from what it is, from how we perceive it to be? Changing our perspectives and attitudes isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either. Things can be different, if only we attempt to look at and pay attention to the narratives and dramas that dictate our lives.

It’s been five days now since my modest trip, and I can honestly say I’m in a better place. The current psychedelic research finds that there can be lasting positive effects on one’s personality after a trip, specifically on the dimension of openness. For me, joy and playfulness seem to come more easily; I feel alert and alive and am burning with creative energy; the days seem lighter, more open, and I take things less seriously than I need to.

It doesn’t take a mushroom trip to glean these insights, but I’d be lying if I said that psilocybin didn’t play a role in redefining my convictions and revitalizing my sensibilities. I’m convinced of their therapeutic potential, given that one uses them intentionally.

Part of happiness is about being present enough to recognize what is already in front of you, choosing how to behave and react, and allowing yourself to step through the open door of the world when it presents itself. Any compound, practice, or experience that removes you from your default setting has the power to help you see it more clearly. But the secret is that the door is always there, open, available, and ready to enter at anytime. Sometimes, though, one needs a capped friend to prod them through.