Pseudo-Dying On Psilocybin
Elly, my therapist, sat beside me under a canopy of oak trees on my patio in Topanga Canyon, California. Her hands were outstretched; each upturned palm contained a few capsules and a piece of chocolate. She moved her hands up and down slowly, as if they were a scale, eyes closed, concentrating. "Ok," She said, opening her eyes, "This feels right, I want you to be coherent." One of her palms, the one with fewer capsules and chocolate, was hovering in front of me, indicating it was the one that contained the correct dose. Dutifully, I washed the pills with some tepid tea and nibbled on the chocolate. "Tastes just like chocolate," I thought, knowing full well this particular chocolate contained molecules that could send me to a psychedelic realm.
Elly had been my therapist for three years. I started working with her shortly after the pandemic began. At that time, my lifelong anxiety around illness and death had gone into overdrive, and I was having a hard time functioning. My thoughts constantly revolved around Covid, and I became obsessed with every detail about the illness. Convinced we were sure to die from it, I spent most nights calculating transmission timelines and reading every single trauma-porn article I could get my hands on.
At the tender age of three, I lost my older sister to Leukemia. My earliest memories were of visiting her in the hospital behind transparent plastic curtains, donning scrubs on my tiny frame to protect her weak immune system until the day her isolation tent sat empty. Images of patients dying from COVID-19 behind see-through barriers, away from loved ones, unearthed memories I buried deep for nearly thirty-five years. I couldn't help but see my childhood experience through the eyes of my own two children, an 18-month-old girl and a three-year-old boy, who adored each other. The fear that they would lose one another or that we would lose each other was unbearable, and I needed help. I hoped Elly was the answer.
She advertised herself as a hypnotherapist which made me extremely skeptical before we began our sessions, mostly because it sounded like a fictionalized form of therapy you only see in black-and-white movies where an old guy with a cigarette hanging from his mouth counts backwards until his subject goes unconscious on a couch. Regardless, she had come highly recommended by my chiropractor, so I thought I would give it a go.
Our first therapy session lasted two and a half hours. The experience was like going into a deep meditation. Instead of just talking out my traumas, we re-lived them in my mind and then reframed them one by one. We spent three years diving deep into my past, the fears that resulted from that time, and how it affected my life and relationships. Before I began with Elly, my anxiety was so bad I practically became agoraphobic, a far fall from the girl who once made any excuse to host a dinner party pre-pandemic. I could sense that my husband and friends were perplexed by my extreme phobia of getting sick, and they started to treat me with "pitycern," a combination of what felt like pity and concern. Within a year of working with Elly, I not only went outside but also enjoyed small gatherings and could hold a conversation without obsessing over whether the person I was speaking to would make me sick.
The craziest part of it all? I had never met her in real life until the day she showed up at my house, pockets full of Psilocybin.
For three years, all of our sessions had been over Zoom, which made it easier for me to slip into the vulnerable trance-like spaces necessary for our therapy. On this day, however, she sat before me, in the flesh, so much smaller than I had imagined her to be, with dark hair long and loose around her delicate Balinese features. She wore false lashes, which surprised me for some reason. I envied her effortlessly "zen-chic" look: a monochromatic pair of cream-coloured joggers and a matching top. I, too, was dressed in all white at her request and as the "ceremony" called for.
After I took the pills and finished the chocolates, she suddenly stood and suggested we head to my deck overlooking a creek for some gentle stretching and yoga. She almost seemed uncertain of herself as she said it, but I was thrilled because it was exactly what I had in mind. As I followed her lead through some basic yoga poses and balances, I wondered when I would begin to feel the effects of the Psilocybin.
I had taken it once before in high school, although at that time, we only knew the drug as shrooms. I was hardly a partier, and my friends and I approached the experience almost scientifically, recording our observations in journals as we lay sunning ourselves on enormous boulders deep in the mountains of Santa Barbara. Yes, we were dorks, but we were sensitive, well-liked ones. It had been such an incredible experience, reserved for only that one time, that I never thought to do it again.
That being said, in the last few years, it seems micro-dosing Psilocybin has become nearly as mainstream as marijuana, at least in California, just without the legal greenlight. A recent study found that "magic" mushroom use by young adults has tripled over the last few years, with 6.6% of adults using hallucinogens, namely Psilocybin. Living in Topanga Canyon especially, micro-dosing "magic" mushrooms is as common as tic-tacs amongst my bourgeois hippie enclave. Spending all weekend with the kids? Have an itty bitty mushroom chocolate. Do you have to sit through an entire Kidzbop concert and not want to get wasted in front of your children? I know something that will help!
Psilocybin has also come up more and more in conversations around mental health, with enormous benefits shown in people who suffer from anxiety, treatment-resistant depression, and trauma. Those with a terminal diagnosis who took even a single dose reported feelings of acceptance and peace. Research indicates that Psilocybin boosts your serotonin levels for a significant period of time and creates new neural pathways inside the brain.
Back on the yoga deck, I noticed a shift. It was subtle at first, almost like everything around me became sharper. Trees became a brighter green hue, and the leaves' outlines became more distinct. The buzz of a distant leaf blower was closer and louder than before, and everything seemed ever so slightly shimmering. My body felt soapy and somewhat heavy. I looked at Elly with what I'm sure was a dopey smile, and I guess from my face, she could tell it was time for us to head inside.
We walked up the stairs to my bedroom, and as we entered, I had the urge to crawl into my soft down comforter and pillows, so I did, the bed enveloping me in a welcoming hug. I sighed, closing my eyes while Elly busied herself, opening windows and lighting candles.
My bedroom is painted in a subtle hue of lavender, befittingly called "heaven." There is a modern glass fireplace in one corner, and on the adjacent wall, two French doors open onto a balcony surrounded by leafy treetops. Outside, next to our deck, we built a small plunge pool and waterfall feature to drown out the noise from the major roadway that ran through the canyon, but suddenly, the sound of water hitting water felt like it was coming from inside the room; it was thunderous. With my eyes still closed, I could hear Elly telling me she was balancing the room's elements by adjusting windows to let in the right amount of air and light, lowering the heat from the fireplace, and drowning out some of the waterfall noise. I didn't care what she was doing; I felt amazing and was all in on the voodoo.
I couldn't believe what I saw when I finally opened my eyes after what felt like hours. Elly was sitting cross-legged beside me on top of the bed. The walls of the room looked like a kaleidoscope in all the colours of the rainbow, and Elly, well, Elly was a sight to behold. It nearly took my breath away because Elly was bathed head to toe in gold.
"You're golden," I exclaimed gleefully, unable to contain my delight at what I witnessed.
"I am?!" she said, laughing.
At this point, I began to giggle uncontrollably, and Elly laughed along with me; we could barely contain ourselves. "Is this what it's supposed to feel like?" I thought, "Aren't I supposed to be doing work?"
The thoughts were not just in my head; I had said them out loud but hadn't been aware.
"You see, this can be work. Releasing pain and stress through laughter can be the work!"
"So I don't have to do anything right now?" I asked. I can just lay here and enjoy myself."
"YES!" Elly exclaimed as if I had just discovered the meaning of life.
And perhaps I had because the revelation felt profound. The notion that I didn't have to constantly DO anything to have value or to grow felt like a significant realization.
Ever since I was a young girl, I felt the only way I would be valuable or important was if I achieved things and achieved them well. Whether ballet, theatre, piano or academics, being the eldest child to immigrant parents who had lost their firstborn meant excelling above the rest was necessary. Constantly being helpful to whoever and wherever I could was expected. That behaviour eventually evolved into trying to be the best host, friend, and party girl, the fittest, most fun, prettiest, highest on the career ladder, model mom and perfect wife. "The best, the best, the best, the best." It had broken me and left me physically ill with a body that ached and a wrecked nervous system that couldn't stand my children crying or my husband in general. I was walking, talking disaster that had finally hit a wall, and laying there in that bed, bathed in a kaleidoscope of rainbows, was the best thing that had happened to me in years. It felt freaking incredible, And then I began to vibrate.
Every cell in my body began to vibrate. I could only keep my eyes open momentarily because the rainbow was too intense. However, I could hear myself speak and feel my vocal cords vibrate. In the fleeting moments my eyes would open, I could see the leaves hanging from the tree tops vibrating as well. We were vibrating together.
Holy shit, this was it. This is what people meant when they said, "We are all part of the same whole." I was living it, connected to every molecule around me. Suddenly, another thought entered my mind. It was as if I were watching it float in front of me, and it was as clear as day.
"Is this what we're here for?" I asked no one in particular, "Are we here just to enjoy ourselves? To just…go with the flow?"
"YES!" I heard Elly again exclaim like an emphatic camp counsellor, "You got it! Isn't it beautiful to flow?!"
And it was, it was so beautiful.
In the middle of my exuberance, the doubt began to creep in. The doubt that anything I was experiencing was real, or what I might look like to the outside world, even though we were alone. I was conscious of my surroundings, and a dark cloud encroached on my rainbow. My ego was starting to take over, and that bitch wanted answers.
"If we are all connected, and life is easy when we flow, why did she have to suffer?"
"Who?" asked Elly.
"My sister," I heard myself answer, my voice growing thick. For 35 years, I had walked around with a hollow loneliness inside me, no matter how many people were in the room.
"Why did she have to die? It doesn't seem fair."
"Her contract was up," Elly answered gently, "She did what she was supposed to do here on earth; she learned what she was supposed to learn, and now she is somewhere better."
While Elly was talking, with my eyes still closed, I had somehow entered a space I had never seen before. I was in a soft pink cotton candy cocoon that expanded with my breath. In and out, the walls of this cocoon breathed; I was in a womb, and I was not alone. Everyone I loved was here, with me. My friends, my mom, brother, my father who passed the year before…and there, with me, as if she was part of me, all around me, was her. My sister.
The sun outside my room had begun to set, and the canyon was turning to dusk. I cried that day in a way I never have. I released decades worth of sadness, loneliness, and self-doubt. As I started climbing out of the kaleidoscope of dreams and soapy waters, I knew I was profoundly changed. We don't need to say goodbye forever to the people we love. That realization was monumental for someone who grew up without an ounce of religion or faith.
The next day, I told my husband I wanted to leave our entire life behind, rent out our home, and travel the world for a year with the kids. If we were here on this earth to enjoy, then there was no time to waste. I also finally knew that healing didn't mean saying goodbye to my sister; it meant holding space for her inside me every day. We are all part of the greater whole.
Tijana is a recovering media executive and freelance writer travelling the world with her family. She is working on her travel memoir, "No Expectations," and you can follow her on @topangatravelers or read more of her work here.