An adolescent psychedelic misadventure that saved my life
Ten years ago I had my first psychedelic experience.
Ten years ago I began fulfilling my passion through work in psychology.
Ten years ago I had my last panic attack.
It’s all connected,
I’m sure of it.
Here’s the story.
A Tough Childhood
I don’t identify this as childhood trauma.
Though maybe that’s a masculine cultural narrative speaking?
As I loved my childhood.
However, there were several events that made my internal headspace utterly horrific.
So, if you’re currently experiencing difficulties with your emotions or if you find this too emotive, I wouldn’t read this article today.
Traumatic Events I Do Not Even Remember
I have been told.
In my early years I moved primary school because I was beaten up in the toilets.
I developed severe encephalitis after I was misdiagnosed by a physician.
It subsequently worsened to the point where by the time it was treated, I had to learn to walk again.
This all happened before I turned five.
Though I do think these events left a relevant neurological mark.
Traumatic Events I Do Remember
I recall it clear as day.
With complete clarity.
The memory of that feeling.
That sense of impending doom.
As I waited for the bus to my first day of secondary school.
I didn’t know it then.
That there was a word for this collapsing, introspective, internal world of pure fear.
Social anxiety.
Unfortunately.
It was justified.
Enter Bullying
Five years of endless verbal harassment.
Choked unconscious by older kids for the kick of it.
Slammed onto a car bonnet.
Belongings thrown into a river.
A broken nose.
I could continue.
There’s no need to.
By the end of it I couldn’t be around people I wasn’t familiar with without my muscles painfully seizing, my body overheating, my heart palpitating & my thoughts racing.
I didn’t know it then.
That there was a word for this.
Panic attacks.
I never said a word.
I thought this was normal.
I did make attempts to trivialize the events to my peers though.
I would create self-deprecating memes of my injuries.
How humour can signature pain.
Enter Psychedelics
A benefit of being forced into the socially anxious internal world of constant introspective self-narration, is curiosity, for me anyway.
I got very versed in understanding the why’s of the world.
A likely unconscious search for an understanding of my pain.
One why of the world I became familiar with is the theory that Alexander Fleming serendipitously discovered penicillin on LSD.
So, at the age of sixteen, at a festival.
When I overhear a bubbling, incoherent, joyous hunk of an human mention such an ethereal thing as LSD.
What more can I say?
Curiosity killed the cat.
The Inception
Twenty minutes in.
I feel free.
I feel wonder.
I feel humorously silly.
These new-found feelings. I love them.
I ask myself what harm would I come to if I swallow another one of these pretty little pieces of paper?
Well.
A Storm of Synesthesia
Sixty minutes in.
A storm is coming.
That sense of impending doom.
The words of others morph into nothing more than a metallic taste.
The sound of music blinds me as it is transposed into light that surrounds all around.
The concept of breathing is metamorphosed into incomprehensible mathematics.
I existed as pure terror.
Any attempt to understand the experience was met with bewildering delusions.
So I hide in a pile of hay.
I peek out, on guard, for the infinite witch-hunt of the psychotic bad trip is out to get me.
Every second is an eternity, a terrifying mess of a fractal sensorium.
The Arrival
Hours later.
I find myself sitting around a fire.
The moon gives way to the sun that rises over the lake.
I have no idea how I got here.
I cannot articulate a single sound.
Though I can feel a tangible tranquility in this new day.
The clothes of someone else warm me.
The fire is stoked by the graceful care of the humans it illuminates.
I see compassion.
I see love.
Truly, for the first time.
Lost in the flickering of the fire, I reflect.
It is over.
It was all in my head.
It was all self-inflicted.
It was concluded with an introspective adage.
“You don’t have to do this to yourself anymore.”
The Aftermath
It took me a couple days before I could even speak.
I was completely reborn. I had a new lease of life.
The impending doom, banished.
I made friends.
I met my first love.
I developed an infinite energy to understand the mind.
I began volunteering at a hospital as a ward befriender.
I hit the books and enrolled on a neuroscience degree.
I still, ten years later, live to work.
On the mind itself.
The Afterthoughts
We’re in a psychedelic renaissance.
However.
Do not try this at home.
I think this could very much have gone the other way.
The science is coming.
It is exciting.
There is a vast sea of impassioned scientists, psychologists, physicians, you name it, working day and night.
On a mission to incorporate psychedelics into our modern day therapeutic framework.
All under the firm belief of the transformative experience.
It must be done with complete delicacy.
But a delicacy it shall be.
Biatorasphere is a regular blog exploring archaic, scientific and spiritual perspectives on psychology, psychedelics and culture. Free links to all articles are available via his Instagram page.