On respecting psychadelics as a healing pathway

No, it has to be a one-time thing,
I’m not going on a drug for the rest of my life.

My response to my guide who was suggesting a hero’s journey followed by a microdose protocol with psilocybin. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program growing up really put that message deep into my psyche.

I was open to doing a relatively large dose, a one-and-done attempt to open myself up for healing. Up till then, I was somewhat stuck with talk therapy, with some EMDR in the mix.

Needless to say, my brain was completely melted. It was a rough excursion to seeing the universe in one sitting.

You don’t need to go that fast.
Slow down.

I’m a little wiser now.

In my last post, I shared how I went to a ketamine-assisted psychodrama retreat up in Alaska. The majority of my healing happens with the psychodrama work in itself, the safety of the container formed with other souls.

The ketamine plays a nice boost.

At the retreat, we had three opportunities to receive three doses of ketamine on three separate days, a low dose, a medium dose, and a high dose (to end the retreat). It was intramuscular, meaning the injection happens in the muscle of the arm.

Ouch.
I hate needles.

In addition, as a participant in the structure (the technical term for doing a group work with a protagonist, the person doing their work), or as the protagonist (either to help you turn off the thinking brain, or to let the work land deep).

I had finished my structure, I saw my dad across time and came to the cathartic acceptance that I am him, and that he is me.

Then I was held by a really big dude, and a moderate dose was administered.

I laid there.

Are you comfortable?

I feel somewhat uncomfortable that all these people just witnessed me crying my eyes out, and now all their focus is on me as I lay in between the legs of this giant man. He’s got his arms holding me tightly. People surround me.

Then my vision started to blur, and the images became like a graphic novel.

Wow, this really kicked in fast.

I melted into him. I could feel hands touching me. I lose sense of who I am, where I begin, and where the other bodies start.

There’s no deep mystical imagery or anything profound, just a colorful rollercoaster. I feel a hand touching my cheek, it’s the only thing I feel. Everyone else is melted into me. She’s rubbing my cheek. I feel the loving caress, what I would’ve felt as an infant.

There’s a humming melody, I don’t know it, but it feels nice.

I recorded my session.
I later listened, heard the humming,
and it was such a profound moment,
a remembering.

Slowly bits of my vision comes back. I’m partly on the graphic rollercoaster, riding through space and time, and I see glimpses of familiar faces. I don’t immediately recognize them, it was like a rebirth, waking up to smiling faces. They were singing to me.

One person boops my nose. She keeps doing it.

I can’t do anything about this,
but it’s really annoying.

I experience what it would’ve been like, to be born into a world with healthy and calm nervous systems. They would've sung songs. They would’ve touched me, held me. They would’ve together, an unbroken village to greet me at the veil. It was my birthright, something that was taken from me. And yet, in this room of healing, ten other people gave that to me, fulfilling that missing part of my experience.

And the rebound begins

A couple of weeks after this experience, home life became a little challenging (I’m understating this).

There are moments in this healing journey where I’m gentle to myself, and there are dumpster fire moments when I need to put out the fire. This was one of those moments.

There’s little time to break way from life, and do this work.

So I found one evening where I had that time to myself. It was the only time available, not ideal, but all I got.

I turned back to 🍄 because I became familiar with her over time. I learned to respect her, to pray to her, and to set the right intentions.

I made up a tea, with a moderate size dose I knew was enough without going overboard. As I was preparing it, it became less about measuring exact dosage, but more so feeling into what felt right.

I burnt some sage, whisping the smoke to help me see, help me hear, help me smell, taste, and feel what the universe is prepared to share with me.

I drank the tea.

I went upstairs into my bedroom space, and sat there in contemplative meditation.

The effect kicks in fast. It’s always fast for me.

My eye sight is diminishing, I need stronger contacts. Yet as the effect kicks in, I can see some writing on the chalkboard wall so clearly. The letters glow, and morph into an almost alien writing, like the movie Avatar.

Missing you is the best part of my life.

My wife wrote that when we were dating. It was almost eight years ago, the note stayed there. I’m narrowly focused on it.

I close my eyes, and I’m whisked into this dreamlike state, where I see moments in time. My vision focuses narrowly on things. I don’t see the whole context, but instead see just snippets of the scene.

I see myself, back in high school, at the back of the bus wiggling my toes with Sara. We’re giggling with each other. I felt the deepness of that connection, an intimate moment among two kids, a shared experience. It wasn’t the connection, it wasn’t the mechanics of what was happening, it wasn’t even the person, but it was the moment. It felt like a dance that was happening outside of my current body, outside of my body back then, a dance that transcends space and time, a familiar soul, a remembrance.

Then the moment shifts to college, when my friend told me that she was moving to Sweden. We share the last day going about the city. She casually says something about massaging my shoulders, and I missed that moment. Awkward me back then didn’t catch on, and yet she felt like Sara from high school.

I’m walking down the streets of Oakland, 14th street if I recall correctly. I’m walking with a former coworker who became a close friend. We’re going on a walk, and yet again, it’s the same person (but not).

Each of these glimpses, moments.

They sit at the crease of space, sparking in the bits of time.

I cross though many moments, each a reminder of the moments I shared in relationships that I long forgotten.

When I look back, they’re a bunch of relationships, friendships, and romantic pursuits. Yet when all these moments collide, when time is no longer linear, but a cosmic web, it becomes a dance.

My body, my self is just passing through, experiencing bits in my narrow lens. But on the medicine, I’m able to feel them all together, a remembrance of her.

Who is she?

I know her.

I’m sitting with this now, trying to make sense of it, or not.

It’s been such an experience to dance at a cosmic level, to not rely on any one relationship to be my all. I no longer believe in soulmates. It seems like a man-made construct only to make us miserable. We’re seeking something so great, that no one person can be our soulmate, but instead, perhaps we are simply bodies that are tiny vessels that graze across cosmic beings beyond our comprehension.

So, instead of wasting my time trying to find fulfillment and completeness, I stay present, noticing these moments.