The Night My Life Changed. Part 2: The Weight of Death
WARNING:
This post does not promote or encourage the use of any illegal psychoactive substances, and this text is for information purposes only, describing my journey and my journey alone.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND the unsupervised use of magic mushrooms for healing. I consider myself quite experienced in navigating and confronting deep-lying sub-conscious trauma and beliefs within me, hence why I have used them as I have.
If you are interested in taking mushrooms for healing then I recommend reading this book and/or investigating for yourself the full expectations of what a mushroom trip could hold for you:
The Magic Mushroom User’s Guide
************************************
Introduction
Before I begin, I would like to say that I am OK. Better than I have ever been, so as you read, whilst what I write may be alarming, I’m fine. I’ve spent the last month taking a break from my personal work, punctuated by the mushrooms experience I describe in this series of posts.
My Inner Child journal (workbook) beckons once more, and tonight I made a start again. It’s time. I’m ready to carry on, confronting and continuing with my healing journey. Some three to four months of hard work awaits.
**
To use a phrase from my previous post:
Facing my deepest fear was what I needed to do in order to understand the story of my life so far, and ultimately set myself free.
************************************
Thucydides (circa 400 BC) :
“The Secret to Happiness is Freedom,
The Secret to Freedom is Courage”.
************************************
The Run-up
I was feeling pretty strung-out. I hadn’t slept well in days, and the anxiety was toying with me. I have what could be called an ‘anxious attachment’ style, and, deciding to stay in contact with my ex was chipping away at me, mentally and physically. You see love is a hard thing to decide upon. What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s the Universe trying to teach me? The communication was healthy, I looked forward to it; it was loving, and, whilst in many ways staying in touch was helping me to learn to navigate my attachment, ultimately it was exhausting and massively destabilizing for me.
We learn as we go, right?
Love. Ah. I’ll figure it out one day. Me first, though.
So I was tired, and I was, like it or not (as had been my general state for the latter half of 2022, and still now, to be perfectly honest), heartbroken. I’m a man who feels deeply. An ‘intense empath’, apparently, or at least that’s the story the lines on my hands tell. Makes sense to me. When you add an anxious attachment to that ability to feel, it’s a big old weight to carry.
So. Where was I?
Ah, yes. Strung out.
Using my logic, of, ‘if I’m going to go in hard on the mushrooms, and get to my core, well, I may as well be in a fragile and vulnerable state, eh?’ Yeah, great thinking Juan. You fucking genius. I often marvel at the situations I find myself in – yes, I am a MASSIVE risk taker, and my life reflects that. In fairness to me, the risks I take are normally very measured (in my head), and are of the type which would otherwise put other people off. Fortune favours the brave, and all that.
Sometimes though, even I go off the rail.
Why? I have no idea. Whilst I have suitably sized cojones that have sired two sparkling specimens of humanity in my two young boys, we’re not talking Buster Gonad here. Must be the Latino blood in me. ‘Foolhardy’, some would say, or perhaps ‘Div’, would be more appropriate.
I was massively regretting being in such a state about 90 minutes in, but I’ll explain that later.
As mentioned in my previous post, I had decided to take a large dose, larger than I had taken before, as I had felt the need to crack my mind open. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that when you’ve taken a sizeable dose of mushrooms before or, I assume, any psychedelic for that matter, you are acutely aware of your powerlessness in front of it. Or at least I am.
There is no control, there is no get-out clause. Once you’re in, you’re in. So, again, as I mentioned previously, I wasn’t afraid. It was a mixture of curiosity, excitement (a tad) and a massive, massive sense of respect and surrender. For me it’s literally surrendering to God. To the Angels, to the Universe.
‘Fuck it, you brought me here, and I know you love me, and this is for my own good. So let’s get to it. Crack on’, I said to myself.
I was sombre. That’s probably the best way to put it.
I brought my notebooks (yes, I collect various notebooks and use any one of three depending on the focus) and my laptop to my living room. Pencils and pens were ready to write, my voice recorder app on my phone was open and ready.
I ensured the apartment was clean, it is normally clean, but I had to make sure it was impeccable. I cleansed with sage, white vinegar, crystals and had Tibetan bells on the speaker to harmonise the room, I took a salt bath and made sure both the space and my own energy were as clean as a whistle.
There were candles and incense burning, I had set my intentions, the temperature had to be right, the clothes, carefully selected and comfy, my t-shirt was my well-loved blue and yellow ‘Hikerdelic’ T, and I was as snug as a bug in a rug.
I figured the trip would last around six hours, judging from previous experience, so I decided to start at 5pm. I would be done by around 11pm, ready to crash before midnight. At least that’s what I believed.
I measured my ‘shrooms’ on my brand new scales (whilst I am of Colombian descent, we’re not born with a set of scales in our hands to weigh white powder, these were new, I’d never done this before, so there), and ground them in my brand new coffee grinder. Oh, by the way, I don’t drink coffee. Slightly weird for a Colombian, but hey, I’m am slightly weird.
The mushrooms became dust very quickly. I added a touch of lemon and the kettle was full.
I was ready.
Well, nearly.
************************************
The Music
Music has always been, since I was allowed my own personal tape player from the age of, like, 9, a massive part of my life. It allowed me to escape my childhood, it gave me company when I most needed it, and, when my dad died, it became my healer. Around 18 months later, when I started mixing and eventually djiing, it was what lifted me, and helped me through a period of grieving that lasted around a decade. I poured my grief, and all of the cacophony of emotions into the music, and the music fed all of it back to me, transformed, exhilarating, beautiful, ecstatic, hairs standing on neck and shivers down spine….you know what I’m talking about. Up and up and up. It’s what kept me going. It's what lifted me each day. Anyways, another story for another time, but, music, with mushrooms, was always going to be key.
Ayahuasca, or ‘yagé’ as it’s known in Colombia, is taken during musical or tribalistic ceremony. During my holotropic breathwork session, music was the central energic catalyst of the journey, the rhythm of the experience, the facilitator, the all-encompassing sounds that would whisk you on pulsating waves of vibration to the place you needed to get to.
During my first and second mushroom experience we had a mushroom retreat playlist to hand, which, I can only say, was perfect. Much of the music I believe was, and is inspired by the effects of the psychedelic, hence the sounds, the messages, the sheer feelings, accentuated all in the moment. And the moment seemed always to fit in perfectly to the track. Or was the track making the moment happen, perfectly? Probably a bit of both.
So I had the playlist, and that was my guide of sorts. I was ready.
I was ready.
************************************
The Journey to The Beginning
I poured the water into my new ‘Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ mug from Alice in Wonderland. I waited a few minutes for it to cool down and I set my intentions, my hands clasped around the warmth of the porcelain, my eyes closed, focused on what I wanted, what I hoped for. Understanding, healing, transformation. I surrendered to the Divine and I swallowed the contents.
The music was playing, and from previous experience, the psychedelic could take just a few minutes to start working. I waited as the music played. I laid down on my sofa, my blanket over me as I quietly stared at the walls, the pictures of Gustav Klimt’s ‘Sea Serpent’ on either side of the TV. I watched the candles as the music bubbled through the still air of the living room. I waited.
Around thirty minutes passed before I started to feel something. The pictures had started to pulsate, as had the candles, and the music, with its swirling, lapping sounds, had started to take on a new dimension.
In that moment, I felt completely vulnerable, exhausted and sad. I hadn’t slept well in days. I was emotionally drained. I understood now, very clearly, just how battered I was both mentally and physically. I knew, deep down, that whatever was to come, it was going to be big. I could feel it. It was what I had wanted most, and, knowing what I had been through before, I sat there, breathing. Ready, yet not.
I waited for the wave to take me under, where I would tumble, and tumble and tumble. Where I would let my limbs flail and let the river take me with its irresistible flow, onwards, towards my source.
I suddenly felt very alone, at the mercy of the Universe. At the complete mercy of powers that I don’t and won’t ever fully understand, at least not on this plane of existence. It was humbling, and I felt so, so small.
The music continued, congas tapping away, light, soft voices moving through the layers of foreground and background, moving forwards, always forwards.
Boom, ba, buhm, buhm.
My mental expanse had become so wide, so all encompassing, it almost swallowed me whole. Senses became multi-sided, multi-faceted. The music, kept moving forward, on and on, onwards, no stopping, no getting off the ride now, on we go, on we go, let’s go.
Budumbudumdum, pah!
Budumbudumdum, pah!
I felt something bubbling up inside. I knew, that by grinding the shrooms into powder, the effect, when it came, was going to come quickly and strongly.
‘Letting go of the way things are’ ….
the voice said…
‘Letting go of attachments’….
Yes. Yes.
‘I could sense a lifetime of judgement against myself’…
The grief began. I had prepared a large towel, where I could smother my sobs and not cause concern with my neighbours.
It was time. It was time to let go.
The grief started to flow into me, out of me, the music was soft and heartfelt, almost sad in its tone. I was taken away, it was the Divine Mother telling me, ‘it’s ok, let go, let go, let it flow’.
All the words hit home. The grief intensified.
‘Valley of my own shadow,
Letting go of expectations,
Free from the old stories I’ve been told’
************************************
I paused for a moment and caught my breath, the music carried on. Just me, just me and life.
I collapsed on the floor, ‘I can’t do it anymore!, I’ve got nothing left!’, I cried.
Desperate, I looked around me.
And the second wave came, and this time, it didn’t stop. I shook.
It intensified, got stronger, and tore through my body.
The pain, the frustration, the anger, the sadness came flooding out.
‘Why?, Why? Why???’
I screamed into the towel, and it rose, and rose and rose. All the while the music pushed me on, pushed me forwards, onwards and through.
I screamed and screamed and screamed whilst my eyes were closed, and there, I heard myself, screaming like a new born, with that rage and complete disdain that only a new born can throw at the world when they first emerge from the mother’s womb.
My eyes were closed and all I saw was white, like looking through eyes that had never been used before, wailing in pain, anger, fear and frustration.
************************************
I knew, that through physical movement in a heightened state of consciousness, I could be transported back to a moment of trauma in my life, as what had happened during a holotropic breathwork session, where I was taken to a clear vision of me in my bedroom, grieving for my father alone, as I had done for years. It had left me scarred, and changed.
I knew that the psilocybin, working together with my physical screaming, anguish and grief, coupled with the music, had unlocked a core memory….this had happened. And I wasn’t just living it, I was observing it too, for what it was.
************************************
I was alone! And there was nobody there to help me, no mother to hold me, to love me and take care of me, in my most prone and vulnerable moment, there was no one. I had been abandoned.
To a baby, with no understanding of the world, and without any of the mental constructs to protect myself as we have when we are older, all I understood was that I had been left to die.
************************************
I had been born 2 months premature, and my mum nearly died during labour. I was separated from her for the first ten days, and had a few hours with her each day.
************************************
I stopped. I was done. I had no more. 40 years of pain, of grief, of exhaustion. Of fighting, trying, to no end. It all came crashing down on top of me in that moment. It’s actually hard to put into words. I’m sure that in the coming years it’ll get easier.
There was no hope.
Life was so, so hard.
All that was left for me was to take my own life. After all, it had been so, so painful, so, so difficult. This weight was simply too much. There had been nobody there for me when I needed them most.
************************************
The feeling I had in me flooded my consciousness. But it wasn’t just a feeling, it was a belief, a belief so profound, so powerful and all-encompassing it enveloped me as I sat there, broken, not knowing what to do.
I had reached – unlocked – the belief in me that I didn’t deserve to live. I had been abandoned. I had been left to die. I wasn’t worthy of life, of care, of love. A belief that I had created and carried within the deepest part of my psyche since the day I was born, from my earliest moments, from my most impressionable days, throughout my whole life.
And now, it was here, sending waves through my mind.
‘There’s nothing more, Juan, you’ve given everything you had, and look, this is where you are’.
I understood then, with absolute clarity, and with an equal measure of disbelief, that I probably wasn’t going to last the night.
I was alone, I always had been, it had been so, so hard, it was time to end the pain…..
This was the way it would end. Surely not, this journey, for this? Is this the way I leave this world? Defeated? Empty? Alone? As I had always been?
The waves crashed through my mind and I was defenceless against them. I was tumbling, over and over and over, my air was running out, and onwards came the waves, turning me over and over and over.
I, now, was very scared. More than that, I was terrified.
It wasn’t meant to end like this!
I had nobody in my corner to support me. I had never had anyone in my corner, and that belief was the earth in which my consciousness had sprouted and grown during my lifetime.
It was all-powerful. I was defenceless.
I had gone too far. But wasn’t this the path?
************************************
I kept looking at the kitchen. The belief, like a silent sentinel pointed the way. The knives in the drawer. The belief beckoned. I was alone, facing death and filled with fear, gut-wrenching fear as my colon twisted. My body was gripped by the oncoming of death, weighed down with the unworthiness of life.
I was in no-mans land. I was helpless against the harshness of life and very, very cold inside.
What have I done?, I asked myself.
All that was left was me. And I was tired. So, so tired. I had given everything and had still come to this point. My hope, my irrepressible hope and faith that had driven me through the most difficult moments in my life had finally disappeared. And still, that belief, that voice, urged me, pushed me, deafened me. I was confronting death and I had no tools.
I was alone, I always had been, it had been so, so hard, it was time to end the pain…..
I gasped, desperately looking around, but there was nobody with me, nobody to hold me, nobody to tell me it was going to be ok. Just me and life, and life wasn’t going to get any better. The fight was over.
************************************
The music was a serene chanting, no beats, just pads and strings, sweeping to and fro, whistles, humming, so peaceful, so peaceful. It was time to rest. My will was broken.
In my mind I couldn’t fathom what was happening.
‘I have children!’ ‘I have dreams!’ ‘This wasn’t the plan!’ ‘I want to live!’
But it was no use, the belief was an impenetrable wall, all around me.
I was alone, I always had been, it had been so, so hard, it was time to end the pain…..
Live for what? Another 40 years of solitude? Of pain? For fucking what? More suffering?
I was alone, I always had been, it had been so, so hard, it was time to end the pain…..
‘Fuck it. Let’s see how strong this belief is.’
I went to the kitchen, I opened the drawer and took out the knife.
‘Remember why you came here
Remember your life is sacred…’
…..the female voice sung softly all around me.
I pressed the blade against my wrist.
************************************
To be continued in Part 3 of 3.
Thank you for being here with me, love to you all.
Juan
