Tripping

Okay, the photos have nothing much to do with what follows, but what follows is long, and pictures will give you a place to breathe…

“You are in the pipeline now,” my counselor Harry said as the dose of psychedelic mushrooms began to kick into my system.

I was stretched out on a small bed in a magical basement room that was the sanctuary of my dear friend, Pixie. She had opened her home to me and my counselor for this purpose: A strong mushroom journey that could possibly help better manage my 35-year struggle with severe, treatment resistant depression.

It had taken me nearly three months to taper off of the most recent cocktail of four drugs that had kept me “stable”—and utterly emotionally blunted— for the prior four years. I had wanted to do a mushroom journey for years, but mushrooms and antidepressants are a toxic mix.

A few months back, my psychiatrist began working with me to at least attempt to lower the doses of medications I was on, and once I got started, I told her of my strong desire to try magic mushrooms, and so we began to see if I could slowly come off of all of my medications completely, if only just long enough to do this “hero journey.”

I’d read a good deal about how mushrooms had completely obliterated depression in some lucky souls, and after years of dreaming about trying this path—suddenly, it seemed—the time had arrived.

The taper off the drugs had not been easy. My entire nervous system was being carried along by my medications, and when the drugs ceased, I was fragile, grouchy, sleepless, and in physical pain. A component of my individual response to depression has been physical pain—deep body aches that were sometimes so severe, I was bedridden weeks at a time. Off of the drugs, that pain was returning.

I felt an urgency to hurry up and get a plan together before my whole house of mental cards started collapsing again, and—blessed be—a plan fell into place quickly and perfectly. Pixie offered her house, Harry offered to sit with me through the process. Both are not unfamiliar with mushrooms and I felt safe with them.

I got my mushrooms from a reputable source, made a strong tea of them that morning, and headed down into Pixie’s magical sanctuary of silk wall coverings, figurines of goddesses and elves, statues of every kind of animal you could imagine, and framed affirmations on every wall.

And that is how I found myself under a blanket with Harry on a chair to one side of me, and my dog Carter next to me on the bed.

I’ve never taken any hallucinogens in my life so I can’t say I had no anxiety going into this event. Harry prepared me for the trip, telling me not to go into the process with a lot of expectations. “The mushrooms are in charge of this, not you. They tend to give you the medicine you need at the time,” he said. “Go in with your intentions, not your demands, and trust the medicine.”

It took longer than I would have thought for the tea to start having her way with me. I had wanted—expected—a full on, wild journey of visions and fractal images behind my closed eyes, of other dimensions opening up around me, of my ego turning to melted butter and flowing away like an ebb tide.

But the mushrooms had other ideas. The medicine came on slowly and gently, and I welcomed her, saying to myself, “Hello, Mother, I’m here…”

“Hello Daughter. Don’t be afraid. This medicine is for you, and will never hurt you. You are safe with us.”

I never lost my sense of grounding. I could speak and move as Carter shifted next to me, his eyes moving back and forth between Harry and I. Behind my eyelids, landscapes moved: cities with night lights, tents waving in the desert, shopping malls with escalators, ocean shores, all drifting past one after the other.

I said to the Medicine, “You know, I’ve come through a long path of pain and fear and medical challenges to get to this threshold. Here I am, laying her like a quiet blob, and just waiting. Tell me all that was worth it. Tell me that I didn’t go through all this for nothing.”

Time passed. Then, something: an incredible sorrow for the Earth. This pain was not new to me. I’ve felt it all my life, this visceral sense of horror and guilt at what we do to Earth and to all life on Earth. I thought of my home ground, the exquisite patch of forest that houses my family these days. A place that I feel is more than a place but rather an extension, a mirror of my deepest heart. “Don’t hurt this place,” I whispered to myself as tears fall and fall and fall. “Don’t let this 21st Century hell we live in touch a leaf, a cedar branch, on my ground…on any ground. On any… more… ground. Don’t hurt this place.”

A stunning epiphany out of nowhere: Nature is my proxy. She is hurt and hurting, and all the pain I carry and refuse to feel, I process through her. She carries it all, at one step removed from me. I say “Don’t hurt her.” Yes it is true, but the deeper truth is “Don’t hurt me.”

Let’s take a step back into a bit of my personal history so that this all might make better sense to you.

As personality types go, I am classified as an HSP—a highly sensitive person. This means that my nervous system is easily overwhelmed. We HSPs are highly susceptible to anxiety, depression, and burnout because our baseline is always hovering so close to maximum capacity. Intimacy is uniquely challenging because sharing a roof means our protective perimeter is constantly being breached by another human’s “weather system.”

The branding does not, however, come without its gifts. As an HSP, I have an unparalleled capacity for wonder. Because my shield is thin, I both see—and feel—the sacred in the mundane. Nothing is sensed “out there.” Everything lands directly in my heart, my nervous system, my bone marrow.

Every little thing can be a source of delight, or a jolt of discomfort. The world enchants me, and it pricks my skin in a million little ways each day. And so I have spent a lifetime saying without saying “Please don’t hurt me.” Overwhelm is my middle name.

There on the bed, I got how deeply this outsized sensitivity had affected every step of my life, and all the decisions I had made.

This was the gift of the mushroom journey, and the mushroom medicine departed so gently, leaving me with a mass of insights to integrate. It seems that a mushroom journey is more about what you do with the insights after your experience. The mushrooms leave behind a gift of heightened neuroplasticity—a profound openness to establish new ways of being and seeing the world. This openness can last for weeks or months. I intend to make the most of this new opportunity for growth, for change, for deepening in my life and relationships.

I’ll be exploring the aftereffects of my journey here in my blog space, for those who might want to follow along. Meanwhile, my counseling sessions continue, micro-dosing will be part of my weeks to come as I work hard to welcome whatever shows up.

The morning after my mushroom trip, I was sitting next to my lovely calico cat, Luna. She was looking up into my face as I stroked her head. Time stopped for just an instant: “Time on Earth is so short. Decades pass in an instant. Soon, you will be gone, she will be gone—don’t let a moment pass without acknowledging the preciousness of it. Fall into the cherished instances. It is all holy ground.”

That night, struggling to fall asleep with my restless limbs—a byproduct of coming off of my medications: “Why do you struggle with this. It is just as it is. Just be restless. No Big Deal.” And so I tossed and moved and fidgeted just like always. But not just like always. Yes, my body did its regular nightly thing, but my mind slipped into “Well, look at this!” instead of “Oh no. Lie still. Turn left. Take a sip of water. Have some crackers. Oh no…the night is so long…” Not a lot more sleep, but a lot less agitation in my heart.

Everything, it seems, has shifted two steps to the left: Same view, sort of, but not quite…