at 30 years old, in december 2022, i had spent basically the entirety of my adult life clinically depressed. i didn’t realize how bad it really was until i was out of it.
i have a pretty tenacious habit of intellectualizing my feelings instead of like, feeling and processing them. i get the tingles in my chest or belly, go “hmm, guess i don’t feel good. feels bad, actually.” and metaphorically click the X in the top corner. remind me later. i don’t feel like dealing with this now.
when i am depressed, life loses all color, all but the most drastic of contrast. i call it the dark cloud, because while i don’t feel much, i do feel a looming… something… keeping me from the complexities of the human experience. it’s the bouncer that doesn’t even look me in the eye as it holds it’s arm out to block me, and keeps me outside.
it’s absolutely maddening. so in december, i decided to take things into my own hands in one of the most drastic ways i could think of. i found magic mushrooms and took a trip inside.
now, i feel like i should make it clear that this was not a decision i took lightly. i researched for months, as i do. read studies in dozens of journals. watched documentaries. went on erowid and read as many first-hand accounts as i could find. then, once i felt properly informed of risks v. benefits, i talked it over with my wife, made sure the kids were taken care of, and made a tea that would change me completely.
one of the things i kept reading over and over is that you don’t forget your trip. once you’re out of integration, life is divided into “before” and “after”. i absolutely, totally, wholeheartedly agree.
i don’t share what happened in totality, because it feels so intimate and personal and it honestly won’t make complete sense to anyone besides me. but, one of the most striking parts of it for me, once i just closed my eyes and let it happen, is that i saw just pages. pieces of paper, with photos of different facial expressions of myself and my loved ones. at the top of each page, there was an emotion written. it was how i was unconsciously deciding how people felt, and it highlighted how reductive my perception was when it came to judging feelings.
then all the papers flew away, and i died. and decomposed. and all the cells of my body fed the dirt and i turned into a tree, and that is how i existed for a long time. it felt like years.
it is impossible to describe all the little nuances and tiny happenings and how they changed me. there are no words. i can describe the images here, but the thing with mushrooms is that the experience you have is directly molded by the life experience you’ve already gained. it took pieces of my childhood, my preteen years, my high school years, growing into the adult i was before, and packed all the symbolism it could into every flickering image i saw behind my eyelids. i could describe it to you, but it would mean different things to you.
that’s how humanity works. realizing that broke barriers i didn’t even know were there. and now, over half a year later, i still feel so connected to myself, to you, to my family and everyone i love, to the vital energy of the universe.
about two weeks after that, i decided i needed more of that, and i signed up for a course that would teach me how to become an integrative life coach. i’d been eyeing it for months, and finally made the decision. it was exhilarating, and probably the best leap of faith i’ve ever made. it’s certainly my favorite one.
over three months, i learned techniques to rewire the brain in ways very similar to the mushroom medicine id used before.
i see the world in so many shades now. and i look back on my depression differently, too.
the bouncer’s arm, keeping me out of the party, now feels more akin to my mother’s arm flying out in front of me as our car comes to an abrupt and unexpected halt. seatbelt or not, it was love, keeping a bad situation from getting worse. as much as i hated myself, or thought i did, my depressed state was at its core an act of self love.
when it comes to our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, there is always a positive intention underneath. there is a need we are attempting to meet. i believe depression is no exception, but the way it affects our brain can be unpredictable and destructive if we don’t know what to do with that force of nature.
as i was learning how to coach the unconscious mind, the part of ourselves that we expose with psychedelics, there was one specific block that i wanted to make sure i dealt with. the wall between me and accepting any love that people wanted to give me.
our unconscious mind, magic, dreams, and prayers all speak the same language: metaphor. and it is metaphor that helped me move this.
i remember it clearly. it was on my right side, near the bottom of my rib cage, right where i get extra squishy. it felt like a boulder, pocked over with chisel marks where i had desperately tried to remove it before.
in this trance, i took a wide stance, like a sumo wrestler. i dug my hands into the earth underneath this unfathomably-huge boulder, that was suddenly more like a mountain than a rock.
and i flipped that son of a bitch.
i felt the block in my side lift immediately. it was gone. and i sobbed, for a long time, as the love that had been so freely given to me before had a way to flood in. submerge me. envelop me, and heal me.
this is the power of the work that i do. the healing that i have done myself, i now know how to facilitate in others. and i firmly believe that this is my life’s purpose. this is why i am here.
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