My decision to attend law school was unconventional, at best.

To set the stage: I was alone at my apartment on New Year’s Eve, in the midst of a snowstorm.  Stranded at home with a broken-down truck and nowhere to go. Fast approaching my last semester of undergrad, I was at a crossroads in life. I recently broke up with my boyfriend of two years on Christmas (harsh, I know). I had no post-graduate plans nor attachments. Directionless, and with the desire to make the holiday memorable, I decided to drop LSD.

I assumed the acid was weak because I took some at a Dead & Company show weeks prior and could not recall a profound high. In hindsight, the atmosphere was simply too heady with a beautiful light show and music for me to notice my high. The visuals set in while I was showering. I realized the strength and purity of the substance when I saw rainbow water running through my fingers and down my body, and bright colors dancing on the shower walls.

My body felt amazing, and I moved to the living room to practice yoga and listen to music as per usual on my solo trips. While reflecting on my current (abysmal) situation, I had an epiphany, and creative energy flowed through me like I had opened the floodgates of inspiration and wisdom.

Go to law school.

I recalled a conversation with my headmaster in 8th grade wherein I received a disciplinary speech about my laziness as a student and my potential wasted. He said I had the mind of a lawyer with a strong sense of morality to compliment. Law school was a dream of mine since middle school. As a philosophy major, I was intimate with dense readings, crafting arguments, and well trained in logic. I recently befriended an alum from the law school my headmaster wanted me to attend. I had all the resources I needed to craft an application. It was as if the option had been there staring me in the face, falling into my lap, without my awareness.

The sense of urgency I felt compelled me to act immediately. I logged onto my school’s portal and immediately changed my schedule for the upcoming semester to every law and policy class offered. I texted my mother at 4:00 A.M. informing her of my decision to continue my education. I knew I wanted to make a greater impact on society. Perpetually unhappy with the status quo, I decided to become a player on a greater scale to shape the world I wish to see. I knew my vision for a better future, and I felt a compulsion to deliver my ideals into reality.

LSD is proven to increase creativity and problem-solving.[ref]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/01/lsd-could-make-you-smarter-happier-and-healthier-should-we-all-try-it/?utm_term=.d1adcb1541a5[/ref] Going into the trip, I was despondent and aimless. Hours into the experience I had a newfound sense of purpose and excitement for life. With the proper set and setting, LSD can be a master teacher. Now I am graduated and happily employed, grateful for the adventure.

The following story appears in The Psychedelic Anthology: Volume I as There and Back. 

The gathering was held at my mother’s home while she was away on vacation. The majority of our party had always been curious about hallucinogens but we never had the opportunity to experience them until now.

We soaked the mushrooms in heated water to extract the chemicals into a blueish brew and served it in my mother’s blue and white China teapot set I’d given her last Christmas. Each with our own cup, we drank the strange concoction and wished ourselves luck for the journey. After half an hour of waiting with no immediate response, we decided to drink more of the tea and then decided to finish off the remaining mushrooms in the shopping bag, just to be sure.

We all sat in my mother’s living room, which was decorated with family portraits, a large record collection and a high ceiling with paisley patterns. It was around this time that I started to get the giggles. I felt fuzzy and a slight tingling sensation came across my body. The colors and patterns of the room slowly began to increase in vibrancy and I saw that the others were feeling the same.

I turned to my friend Harvey, who was sitting next to me on the couch. He was leaning his head back, staring at the ceiling with the facial expression of complete awe and wonder. “Hey Harvs, are you feeling it?” I asked him.

“Duuuuuude,” he said, “The ceeeiling is moooving!” In response, I too decided to look at the ceiling to see the paisley patterning beginning to morph, twist, and fractal out around the room. I became fascinated with the intricate patterns on the couch’s cushions. It seemed to project out letters from various alphabets, like when a smoker blows smoke rings. Walking along the kitchen table, I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff face, with each step carefully placed to prevent myself falling into the fabricated abyss.

I moved from the living room into the bathroom to relieve myself, all the while adamant to remain focused on the task at hand, as to not make a mess. I turned the tap to wash my hands and was startled to see not water flowing out as I had expected, but jigsaw pieces filling up the bathroom sink. My first reaction was to attempt to put these liquid jigsaw pieces together and solve the puzzle. I was in that bathroom for a good half an hour splashing around with the water aimlessly, until my attention was finally alerted to the living room by the sound of familiar music.

I returned to the rest of the party who were all laughing and giggling, each having their own unique perception of reality altered and expanded. I sat down in a comfy beanbag chair and closed my eyes. On the speakers, Tool’s “Rosetta Stoned” started to play; a track I am very fond of. It was at this time I said to myself, “Hey, I’ve always seen pictures of hippies in the ‘60s sitting down with their legs crossed and eyes closed; I wonder what will happen if I do that, too.” Keep in mind that I had never meditated before, had never had mushrooms before and had no idea what was next in store for me.

Behind my eyelids, I saw an intricate and beautiful mandala pattern; spiraling and fractaling with a small, bright white light in the center. I began to hear a sharp tone slowly increasing in volume. The spirals spun faster and faster, the bright white light got brighter and brighter until it engulfed my entire being in a blinding bright white light… and suddenly I felt a distinct “POP!”

I slowly opened my eyes and as my vision began to return and adjust, I realized I was no longer sitting on a beanbag chair in my mother’s living room surrounded by my friends—I was standing on top a giant sand dune in a golden desert under bright blue sky with not a single cloud in sight. I slowly turned myself a full 360 degrees to take in this entire scene change. There was nothing else in sight except scorching hot dunes of golden sand and clear skies reaching out to the surrounding horizon. Suddenly and without warning, a traditionally-clad 7-foot tall Papua New Guinea shaman materialized in front of me. He was covered in paint, wearing a simple tunic with long black dreadlocked hair, feathers decorating each lock, face tattoos, and piercings, leaning on a tall tribal spear.

Together we stared into each other’s eyes, not saying a word, feeling the wind blow against us and the sun’s hot rays on our skin. We stood like this, eyes locked for what felt like an eternity, but not at any moment did I feel threatened or strange about this interaction. To me, it felt as normal as us breathing, like he and I had done this many times before. After what felt like an infinite amount of time, the 7-foot tall tribal shaman began to make a deep, low basso rumbling sound with his voice, like roaring thunder. I can no longer recall what his message was and why this was happening, but I felt the sensation that this shaman had already prepared to meet me in this realm.

The rumblings continued until he finally said, “Ohwaaaaaaaa – Lars, Lars, Lars, Lars, Lars…” and repeated my name over and over again. The desert began to fade away, the shaman vanished, and like a dream, I woke up on the beanbag chair in my mother’s living room with my friend Luke softly shaking my shoulder, repeatedly calling out my name… I had returned from whatever alternate dimension I had occupied.

To this day, several years later, I can still recount this experience to those who wish to listen. It truly was an incredible first encounter with psychedelics and fueled my endeavors to research the mind, igniting the flame of awakening in my heart and soul.

I‘d seen the snake only once before, on my first trip to the Amazon nine months ago. He appeared during my first ayahuasca experience, darting back and forth like some elusive creature of myth. At the time, I had struggled to maintain my concentration long enough to determine if the mysterious serpent was friend or foe. I had the feeling the snake was evaluating me as well, though he vanished as quickly as he had appeared, kept at bay by my intense fear and apprehension.

There was none of that fear or anxiety now, this being my second trip down to the jungle city of Iquitos to experience the ayahuasca medicine. As I caught my first glimpse of the snake slithering past in my peripheral vision, I felt only gratitude that I would get a second chance to interact with the majestic beast. My initial hesitation had been dispelled in the months prior by reading accounts of fellow psychonauts describing the benevolence of this great spirit and the benefits that could be attained by forming a relationship with the creature.

The night of my second ayahuasca experience, an army of shaman surrounded us, creating a wall of sound with their icaros, protecting the large ceremonial maloka. That night, their voices were needed more than ever. It was a full-moon ceremony, which meant the already powerful ayahuasca was made even stronger by celestial energies. All of this created a perfect environment for another meeting with the snake. After just an hour, the energy in the maloka was already reaching a fever pitch. The interplay between the icaros and the ayahuasca created a vibration in the room that was indescribable. It was almost as if the whole maloka was humming to a frequency that I was tuned into.

As the ceremony progressed, I could sense the reptilian presence creeping closer to me as his energetic field brushed up against my own. A slight tinge of paranoia crept into my mind as the snake approached. My subconscious did not want to relinquish control. I didn’t know if I was really ready to let this spirit inside; the possibility existed that this serpent was malevolent and meant me harm, but I tried to silence such fears.

“What do I have to lose?” I asked myself as I finally let go of my apprehension and mentally allowed the snake access to my being.  As soon as I did, the fear completely vanished. I knew that I had just put my trust in something that would not harm me.

By now, the reptile was circling the perimeter of my body and head like a whirlwind. I could see it getting closer and start to move faster. As it approached, I could make out its features more clearly. The snake was brown and spotted, thick and robust, resembling an anaconda. Suddenly, his approach stopped and he ascended into the air up out of my field of view.

“Was that it?” I wondered, as an eerie calm came over me. Perhaps, he had performed his work and departed painlessly.

However, this proved not to be the case. Suddenly, he reappeared above me and began to descend down through the crown of my head. My rational mind told me that I should be absolutely terrified, but I felt no fear at all. As his consciousness merged with mine, I knew instinctively that he meant me no harm. The snake continued his descent down my esophagus, through my chest, and finally settled in my stomach. What was so remarkable about his movement was that I could physically feel the entire process take place and my body respond in turn. The snake began rapidly darting around the inside of my stomach, gobbling dark matter with his mouth as he moved. I decided to simply surrender, giving the snake free reign of my body. I knew that whatever he was eating was foreign energy, and I was glad to be rid of it. As he swam around in my guts, I could feel every movement. When he would hit the wall of my stomach, the lining would protrude outward as he reversed direction. His serpentine shape seemed able to change size at will, depending on which crevasse of my belly he needed to penetrate.

Then all of a sudden he became much larger. His body outstretched, and he coiled himself around my entire stomach. The feeling was jarring, like something had totally commandeered my being. I was no longer in control, just a passenger in my own body. His head moved up into my skull, and I found myself gazing into his red eyes. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth with excitement. Again there was no fear, just calmness and gratitude. At this point, he began gently cradling and shaking my whole body like I was an infant that he was consoling. I was in awe. I felt totally cared for and protected. I hadn’t experienced this feeling of unconditional love and safety since I was a child.

With deeper concentration, I could see why he was doing this. He was shaking little black bugs loose from my body. All different kinds of insects—worms, spider-looking creatures, beetles—were flying off my energetic body and into the ether. I knew that whatever these parasitic creatures represented, I did not want them inside me any longer. I could feel tension throughout my entire body release as this process continued.

In the middle of this cleansing, one of the facilitators came to the front of my mat and whispered in my ear, “How are your visions?”

“I have a snake inside me,” I told her quite plainly, as if it was completely natural.

She laughed sympathetically. “That’s good,” she said. “It’s the spirit of Ayahuasca.”

I nodded with a knowing gesture. She sang me a beautiful song and then stepped back as the snake continued its work. The bugs were getting bigger and it was starting to become quite hectic. I could feel the itch of nausea creep over me as the parasites increased in strength and tenacity.

Sensing my physical disturbance, the snake began to move its tail. Without warning, he violently constricted his whole body as if he was ringing out a towel. My stomach was forced inward, and the vilest green vomit made its way up my esophagus guided by the tail. I barely made it to my bucket but watched as the green ooze exploded from my mouth. Instantaneous relief percolated throughout my entire system as the purging stopped.

I thanked the snake profusely. I felt lighter, like some leech that had been draining me was finally expelled. I sat there for a moment and tried to catch my breath, stunned from what I just felt ripple through all of my senses. I was heaving and exhausted, but calm. It felt like spiritual surgery had just been performed on me, and I was now in the recovery ward. After I regained my composure, I was ready for more work. I still could see that the snake was inside of me, but it was mostly dormant, only occasionally moving within my bowels. He seemed tired as well.

I was in no hurry to be rid of the snake. I enjoyed his company. His primal energy was strong and aggressive, but he used his strength to protect me. I felt a fraternal connection to the reptilian creature inside me, almost like a big brother. After spending some time being mesmerized by the snake, my gut started to ache again, and I knew it was time for some purging in the other direction. By that point, I was coherent enough to make my way to the restrooms located just outside the maloka.

I stumbled out into the humid night, opened the stall door, and plopped myself down on the seat bracing myself for whatever was to come. At this point, the snake became active again and started swimming around in my lower intestines. I’ll spare you the graphic details, but the snake exited in just as dramatic a fashion as it had entered. At that point, I felt total relief, like everything was in its right place inside of my body. I had just experienced a physical and spiritual flush of epic proportions. I was completely rejuvenated.

I knew that the main part of my journey was over for the night. As I returned to my mat to relax and listen to the sounds of the jungle, I reflected on my experience. There was no doubt in my mind that I just had an encounter with a spirit. What the snake was was another question. He wasn’t angelic or ethereal like most benevolent spirits are portrayed. He was primal and instinctual—an animal spirit, a creature of the Earth. The facilitator described the snake as the “Spirit of Ayahuasca.” That seemed reasonable. The anaconda is an incredibly frequent vision for many travelers on the vine, especially when journeying in its native habitat.

Whether it was an animal spirit, a shared vision in the collective unconscious representing our primal nature, or actually the Spirit of Ayahuasca wasn’t my concern that evening. All I know was that there was a benevolent force helping to purge my body of negative energy, and I was eternally grateful. This is a fundamental characteristic of ayahuasca, which distinguishes it from other psychedelics. Ayahuasca guides you and will provide assistance, especially if you ask.

When I graduated from the Air Force Academy, it was George W. Bush who handed me my diploma. The playful side of me gave him a hug after we traded salutes; the more serious side of me wanted to tell him something but couldn’t decide what to say. By this point, I had started to question the virtue of war and any semblance of truth in the notion of a “Christian nation.” In the haze of that moment, I found myself saying, “I’ll pray for you,” without being totally sure about what I would be praying for or if I would even pray at all.

Rewind 14 years earlier: I’m seven years old, secretly perched at the edge of my home’s roof with a deeply felt belief that if I jumped with enough faith, I would fly. As the years progressed, my day dreaming about flight matured into a full-fledged ambition to attend the Air Force Academy—a motivation that was entirely my own, yet also greatly encouraged by the evangelical Christian context around me.

Oddly though, it was my religious upbringing—and specifically the impulse to defend my beliefs—that led to my military undoing. During my last year at the Academy my roommate and I designed a hazing event for the freshmen final initiation week: we would transform our dorm room into a coffee shop and take on the personas of hyper-aggressive anti-war baristas. Our plan was to welcome the freshman into our room in groups of two, kindly serve them espresso, and then blindside them with every anti-war argument we could think of—all as a way to test and strengthen the thoughtfulness of their military commitment.

To help me play this role, I emailed an outspoken anti-war professor at Colorado College with a request for every anti-war perspective that he could think of—and he gladly obliged. One of those views was entirely new to me, yet hit surprisingly close to home:

“What if Jesus actually meant what he said about loving our enemies? What if most Christians make theological interpretations that conveniently cordon-off this message to the safe zones of life? What if you drew no such lines? What if you made no such exceptions? If your identity as a Christian was primary to your identity as an American, would that not lead you to embody a radical sort of love toward your enemy? How could killing someone ever be loving them? Were you not first loved by Jesus while still an ‘enemy of God’? And as follower of Christ, is that not the sort of redemptive love you’re called to extend to your enemies?”

My experience of inhabiting this perspective during the hazing event left a seed in me that would later sprout through the brick and mortar of my worldview. The works of MLK and John Howard Yoder deepened my understanding of a non-violent perspective rooted in Christian theology, and I began to see less and less resemblance between the Christianity that I was a part of and what I saw in Jesus and his early church.

After graduating from the Academy, I went to pilot training, where my inner-dissonance only intensified. The tipping point occurred while I was in an auditorium full of pilots viewing nose-gun video of an A-10 jet performing an air-to-ground attack. As we watched people run, get shot, and then try to crawl their mangled bodies to safety there was laughter throughout the room. My hands started to sweat. I felt sick and angry, and I wanted to stand on the stage and yell “what are you thinking?!” But I didn’t—I just walked out. And I knew in that moment that the only authentic move I could make was to request an early separation from the military.

Six months later I was out of the Air Force, and the seedling continued to grow and break open fresh lines of inquiry within other domains of my worldview. Yet however expansive this exploration became, it seemed to be propelled by a singular thrust—a theme—the idea that the enemy isn’t to be conquered, but understood, that fear and trauma aren’t to be avoided, but faced and processed, that death isn’t to be overcome or masked, but honored, that ego isn’t to be beaten or shamed, but integrated like the autumn leaf whose time has come, that the dark places we avoid or try to smite are precisely the only way through to that which we hope for. Whatever words we use to describe it, and however cliché or clumsy they may be, there seems to be this paradoxical stage of going into darkness/dissolution/uncertainty, which represents an essential place in the narrative of flourishing that animates what we call “life” in any categorical realm by which our minds parse existence—physical life, mental health, spiritual life, life of community, etc.

This is when psychedelics entered. The most compelling descriptions of this stage that I encountered were within people’s psychedelic trip reports. After reading hundreds of personal accounts in online forums, the DARE program’s thin story about psychedelic drugs cracked under the weight of direct experience, or rather, my reading of others’ direct experiences.

So, fast-forward 10 years after I left the air force: I’m happily married, with kids. I have an MBA, and I’ve been working for one of the world’s most respected businesses for eight years. I’ve never smoked a cigarette, or pot, or had any other interest in drugs. By most accounts, I’m a responsible, hard-working, stand-up sort of guy with “family values” and yet I really, really, want to trip. I want to directly experience what I’ve been reading and thinking about for years. But I know very few people who could relate to my desire, let alone anyone who could supply the goods.

Then things changed. When I knew that my wife and kids were going on a vacation to see her family, I saw a unique window of time. Assuming that I could buy mushrooms on the street, I texted an old and trusted friend to ask if he’d be interested in flying 600 miles to join me. I had no idea if he had experience or interest in psychedelics; I just knew that he was the sort of person that I’d want by my side. We talked irregularly and hadn’t seen each other in years, so I was a bit shocked when he texted back immediately and simply said, “I’m in.” I later told him that I hadn’t yet figured out how to get the mushrooms, and he assured me that he had a “trusted source.” It turns out that he had recently started to grow his own, and that my text arrived a few hours after their first fruiting.

We ate the mushrooms on the bank of a river flowing through an old growth forest. It’s difficult to put into words what I experienced and how it has changed me, but I’ll offer a few things. I was brought to tears by a newfound depth of love and gratefulness for my wife. I saw that my feeling of day-to-day melancholy was real and true but also a thin layer of sediment above a colossal geology of gratitude for the life that I am living. I felt a relaxation that was both visceral and cognitive that allowed me to look at myself with greater honesty and compassion. I felt more grounded and clear-minded than ever before in my life—but most of all I felt a poignant yet comical absurdity about the fact that what I was experiencing was illegal.

I was curious to know if psilocybin mushrooms grew in natural habitats in my local area, and I soon found multiple locations of hundreds, likely thousands of mushrooms within two miles of my home. I’ve tripped a few more times, at increasingly higher doses, and each experience has seemed to surpass and yet build on the others in how it impacts my everyday life.

My second experience was alone in a coastal forest. I was overcome with the feeling of being indigenous, not in the Native American sense, but in that I was literally “of the earth.” I became hyper-aware and appreciative of the life around me as I lay on my back under the trees. I felt the presence of a woman (embodying nature) lying down next to me (embodying humanity). The feeling that emanated from her was one of sadness at our separation and a longing to be in closer relationship with me, not simply for our survival, but for the thriving and joy that our symbiosis could create. She was at once other than me, and me. As someone who felt like they had often been duped and misled by religious teachers and texts, I had become skeptical of devotion to guru-types…and I was hit with an epiphany and felt the urge to write:

Nature is your teacher.

You are nature.

Mushrooms are a fun,

productive,

healing,

and creative way to meet HER.

I then buried a dead insect, rose to my feet, and walked for hours along trails with tears welled up in my eyes from the beauty that I was witnessing all around me. I eventually came upon a secluded ocean cove and hiked down to the beach where I saw a deer standing 50 yards from me. We looked at each other in total stillness for about 10 minutes, then we spent the next hour walking around the cove together. As I started to leave, she walked onto a rock outcropping, and I decided take a photo.

Describing any trip experience is difficult, and therefore a bit frustrating. It feels impossible to describe these experiences. It’s as though each one has given me a tome of meaning for my every-day consciousness to unpack and incarnate for the rest of my life. What’s easier to describe is how it impacts my life after the trip. As interesting and insightful as the trip experience can be, the primary interest of mine in the psychedelic experience is to ask, “how does this help me show up in my everyday life?”

What I can say is that I stare longer into my kids’ eyes. Instead of rushing them to sleep, I enter into their imaginative worlds. Instead of fighting an epic inner battle to wake up early (which I’ve had to do my entire life), I look forward to greeting the day with intention at 5:30 am. Instead of trying to galvanize motivation to eat well and exercise, I find that I actually experience a craving. I also have a greater impulse toward daily integrity: to own my feelings, to align my words with my actions, to be honest and open. I’m filled with new ideas and energy for how to be myself in the world.

Most of the people in my life have negative and highly suspicious views about psychedelics, so I feel a strong desire to come out of the closet. I want to embody a counterpoint to the stereotypes and reframe the basic ways in which we think about these substances. The challenge for me is this: my wife is concerned about the impact of me coming out the psychedelic closet. Will it hurt my career? Will it put me at risk of going to jail? These are fair concerns that I want to respect, so I’ll continue to search for ways to anonymously share my perspective—and perhaps live my day-to-day life in a way that brings others to privately ask, “what grounds you?”

Iwas on duty the night Alex decided to commit suicide in the communal showers.

I had reluctantly graduated from the Combat Medics course and returned to my unit for the 18 months of training left to qualify as “combat ready” and become a fighting member of the Israel Defense Forces.

It’s 5 a.m. and I am four hours into my shift.

The desert is mute and so am I, as I scan the rocks and lonely bushes beneath the old lookout tower. The silence is abruptly disturbed by a loud metallic noise. My heart misses a beat, and my whole body tenses up—I peer into my night vision goggles and listen to the radio.

Being a new recruit, I do not even have the courage to abandon my position without a “good reason,” so I decide to call in the disturbance and wait. Seconds after that, I hear the first cries for help; a young soldier screaming for a doctor—the entire base comes to life. I run down the tower as fast as I can towards the commotion. More and more dazed soldiers appear from their old and shabby brown tents.

I set foot on the scene moments after the arrival of the on-call doctor. Wearing thick glasses and panting heavily, he seems to be in control, well accustomed to these situations, perhaps.

The shower walls are smeared with dark red blood. In the middle of the room, the body of a young man lies trembling on the cold white floor. Alex shot himself just underneath his chin, aiming upwards, with his personal M16 assault rifle.

Half of his face is blown to bits, but somehow he is still breathing. I gasp. I breathe through the nausea and try to regain my equilibrium. I see the doctor kneeling beside him. My training kicks in. We proceed to perform a cricothyrotomy in order to establish a patent airway and administer fluids to raise his heart rate. The doctor shouts out orders; I obey. We call in a helicopter for emergency medical evacuation in hopes to get Alex to the nearest civilian hospital in time. He needs to be in an operating room.

Outside I can hear Alex’s best friend from home shouting. I hear others trying to prevent him from entering the room. I notice the smell of the detergents used to clean the showers earlier that evening and the smell of the alcohol we were using to sterilize our medical instruments, but most of all I smell the blood. The trauma is too severe and Alex takes his last breath. I call off the helicopter. The doctor covers his face with a cloth.

Alex died moments before sunrise. The last thing he must have heard was the hysterical cries of his fellow young recruits who were kept away, at a safe distance, from the barracks by the senior staff.

Everything seems dreamlike.

I sit next to his body for a moment, for as long as I could, before my legs decide to take me as far as possible from what now felt like a crime scene that lacked a clear perpetrator, one without a criminal, a scene of crime where everybody took it upon themselves to become the victim. I could not stand to prepare his body for extraction and went on to wander around the base before realizing that I had abandoned my guard duty.

Frantically, I rush back to man my post. I was in complete shock. All I could think about was whether or not my commanders knew that I had forsaken my guard duty. Am I in trouble? Am I to be punished? I climb up the guard tower and stare into the orange sky, the sun slowly rising over the hills of the Negev, Israel’s most spectacular landscape.

I do not notice the CO approaching my position as he makes his morning rounds. In light of the incident, he stops to enquire about my wellbeing. He takes one look at my pale white face and tells me to return to my tent.

There I sit for hours, on the verge of tears, not speaking and not making eye contact with anyone. I sit while Alex is taken to the hospital to be prepared for burial. I sit while the commanding officers undertake the task of damage control; this could be a disastrous blow to the morale of the young recruits in training. I sit as military officials pay a visit to Alex’s mother, informing her that her son took his own life. I sit as the army censorship sweeps the incident under the rug—soldier suicide, for the people’s army, is bad press.

Catatonic, I watch the base return to its business-as-usual schedule. Tasks are given, rifles are polished, and breakfast is served. With my eyes blurry and body weak, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is my staff sergeant who also happens to be a trained army medic.

Staff sergeants are traditionally the toughest members of the unit. They are feared and respected, more so than the officers. I prepare myself for a good old-fashioned army shake up, but he, in a moment of sensitivity and insight, sits beside me and says, “You’ll be okay. It’s just the beginning. You’ll get used to it.” I try to focus my eyes on one point on the ground as he says in a tone-dead voice, “I’m sorry, but this will not be the last person who you will not be able to save, it’s just…” He trails off.

I close my eyes and nod. I try to speak but my throat is too tight. He pats me on the back to motion me to rejoin the squad, which I do. I kept checking up on any news reports regarding Alex’s death—there were none to be found.

Perhaps it was all just a dream.

PTSD

Winter 2006. It is a Friday night several months after the war in Lebanon, and I am once again a civilian. I am, according to the doctors, making my first steps towards what could be described as “feeling normal again.”

After the traditional Shabbat prayers and meal, my family turns in for the night. I hug my mother and wish her good night. I am to go out and meet up with some friends for a drink—not the easiest feat for a person who just a few months earlier, while still in active service, was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, a common and well-known mental health condition amongst service men and women.

The house is quiet, only a few lights are left on downstairs. I shower and get dressed. I am just about to leave, shuffling the car keys in my hands, when I inadvertently glimpse into the mirror. I am startled to find that standing behind me, as reflected in the mirror, is a fully armed and battle-ready Palestinian combatant holding a knife.

I freeze. My heart is racing and my palms are sweating. I feel that old and familiar knot forming swiftly in my stomach, anticipating the worst. I am finding it very hard to breathe.

I turn around quickly, completely prepared for what I think is to be a hand-to-hand combat situation. If I can just deliver a quick disabling blow to his throat or groin I can get to the kitchen in time to draw out a knife and come out of this life-threatening situation victorious.

With my back to the mirror, I quickly realize that no one else is present in the room.

I scan the living room and listen for any strange noises. I crouch and look under the dining room table and the sofa; the house is empty. But it is not. I know this, with certainty. I saw him. He looked at me. I could smell him. He was preparing to make his move.

I was trying desperately to catch my breath, but then my training took over. I got underneath the dining room table and spent a few minutes surveying the “perimeter”, as if I was in a military operation in the West Bank.

The house I grew up in, where my friends and I celebrated birthdays, where I shared my first kiss and played the guitar for hours on end, transformed itself into a battle zone, and we were all in great danger.

I gradually became aware of a dual reality. It was as if half of my brain was processing and reacting to a situation the other half knew was not actually real. This must be what insanity feels like.

I try to focus on all that seems to be real—family photos, my wristwatch. I try to breathe. I remind myself of other occasions where the enemy was not there, where I did not need to hide, where I did not need to fight.

An eternity later, my heart rate and breathing stabilize and I regain control of myself. I calm down. I drink some water to relieve the pain in my throat and smile. Embarrassed. Confused. Alone.

I spend the next few days indoors, at home, within walls I tried so very much to trust.

Healing

I am lying on the ground. The smell of the fresh, moist soil is comforting and relaxing. Earth. Planet Earth. I am here. I take a deep breath; my lungs fill with sweet cool tropical air. My eyes are closed, but I am absolutely engrossed in the most jaw dropping and somewhat debilitating display of creation. It is as visual as it is emotional; every beam of light is a memory, every geometric shape a trauma, every neon-lit passage a feeling.

Frail and weak, my arms have never been heavier. I can almost not feel them. I want to cry but I cannot. I am intoxicated, I remind myself and take a deep breath. With my eyes closed, I seem to close them again, and again and then…all seems to disappear.

With the gracious guidance of the ayahuasca, on numerous occasions, I have experienced myself leaving my body behind, ascending and transcending, the space-time paradigm of our ordinary state of consciousness, but this experience, this journey, was different…very different.

All I ever wanted in this life, since my experiences in the army and probably before that, was to break free from these mortal shackles of human existence. To break free from the pain, the suffering and the unbearable anguish, to release myself from the irreconcilable crimes, actions and deeds we as a species, I as a soldier, have been subjected to and are still committing against each other.

All I wished for was to disappear, become the mythical and the mystical. I hoped to touch the faces of the gods, live amongst the magic, and transform into the mysterious and the divine. Those entities who do not feel, who are not part of the sorrow of man.

All this pain. All this confusion. All this death. I did not want to walk the same path, on the same ground, of those lowly evolved human creatures. I did not want to recognize myself in them. I refused and resisted the very thought of being associated with anything human―especially not with myself.

And so that night I was granted that wish. I received what I was hoping and praying for.

My eyes close. I lose all sense of my body. I find it hard to breathe, the sickening nauseating sensation travels up and down my spine, in and out of my digestion system and toward my head. It is painful as it is painless; at times it is almost enjoyable. I purge. I vomit. I cry. I faint. I am not alone. There are people here. I can sense them. In and out of this spiraling whirlpool I go. I manage to raise myself to a hammock. I am brought water. Everything seems to be collapsing.

All I want to do is to be here, in the ordinary reality. Hear the sounds of the music and the jungle, feel the warmth of the crackling wild bonfire and lay my head down to rest.

All I want, all my desire, all my wish is to just be. To be exactly what I am. A human being. An entity of sin and prejudice, fear and loathing, doubt and confusion, destructive and deceitful—but also, and more importantly, a pure life form, a sophisticated and grand form of biological life capable of feeling and understanding, a true miracle of nature, a meticulously designed comprehension, full of love, light, empathy, and compassion. A being both dedicated and subjugated to creation, expansion, evolution, and consciousness.

All I want is to be here. In my heart. With every living being, soul, spirit, and entity on the face of this planet.

I see my parents, my sister, and my extended family. I see myself in the eyes of my mother before I was born. I see my father in the eyes of his father before he was born, the human family tree and timeline; it is inspiring and vast.

I hear the natives of this land and the indigenous people in the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa. I listen to their stories, our stories, my story, without having to hear a word. All that has ever been said has been said in silent.

I feel the tectonic plates in motion, I sense the plants and flowers blossom, I hear the roar of the planet earth, inaudibly directed at us. I am to die. At this moment. My body cannot take it anymore, it cannot sustain itself any longer, and it is not designed to endure this type of journey. I surrender. I am yours. I am mine. I. Am.

It all goes quiet. Silence. Calm. Gentle.

The storm has passed. I came back. I came back for more of this human experience. More of everything, more of the misunderstanding and the violence, more of the selfishness and the power struggles, more of the wars and the death—but also, I came back for more of the tenderness, the compassion, and empathy.

I came back for more Love. I came back for more Life. I exist. And despite all that I have been part of and all that I have seen, I am here, and I am grateful.

I fell in love with my family and friends, tormentors and enemies that night. I fell in love with that piece of land, what people now call the Middle East. I fell in love with the religious fanatics, the Muslims and the Jews as one. I fell in love with the Israeli Military, the Palestinian Militias and the Hezbollah. I fell in love with the crippling corruption and the ongoing ruthless and global financial embezzlement. I fell in love with the broken political parties, the generals, and the profiteers and merchants of war and violence. I fell in love with the sickness, the confusion, and the gripping and seductive fear.

I fell in love with death, as I fell in love with life, as I fell in love with myself.

Read Part 2: Integration

This is part 2 of a two part series. Read part 1 here.

The ayahuasca experience is, for many individuals, a daunting experience. But it is also one that could be of great benefit for those who are deeply suffering. The potential is to do with the most important aspect of it, one that is active long before the person actually consumes the substance, or before the person truly understands its botanical origins, its anthropological significance, or natural qualities.

It is the very choice of taking responsibility for your own healing, your own life, for your own state of awareness and being. That in itself is already a gigantic positive step. Perhaps this is where change is born—when you are willing and prepared to work for your sanity, that is when you can start shapeshifting your suffering, and thus reimagining your destiny.

Based on my personal experience dealing with the emotional carnage caused by war and human violence, I believe that the primary, non-neurological aspect of combat-related trauma (and thus the psychological suffering associated with it) is to do with the toxic and debilitating emotional relationship that is formed between the person and the experience of death during those detrimental life events.

The presence of severe levels of violence forces both the physical and psychological experience of death into an extremely narrow paradigm, a limited sphere where every element of the experience is tainted and influenced by the overwhelmingly hostile audio-visual and emotional stimulation present during the traumatic event.

Death, as a psychological, biological, and metaphysical phenomenon, becomes a synonym for destruction, the total annihilation of life, and an occurrence where pain and anxiety are always the predominant features.

The ending of physical life can indeed be perceived as a natural and peaceful event, one that is part of the non-threatening aspects of our natural human existence. However, when it is experienced, once or during a prolonged period of time, as a malicious and premeditated act, a calculated and deliberate activity that involves the use of extreme force to dominate and control the ‘other,’ it is only natural to expect a multitude of negative emotional and cognitive responses and attitudes towards the phenomenon.

Soldiers, especially those suffering from psychological trauma as a result of experiences endured during their military service, are individuals that ultimately are yearning to be understood; individuals that are longing, on an almost cellular level, to be validated and approved, exonerated and forgiven, ironically and paradoxically, by those who are unfortunately incapable of doing so—the civilian population and, at times, their brothers and sisters in arms, who have had significantly less disruptive emotional responses to the same external events.

My encounters with the Amazonian plant and my experiences with other serotonergic psychedelics revealed to me that I was not able to understand and integrate the experiences and concepts of war, death, and life with my mind alone.

I realized that in order to move forward toward true peace and reconciliation, with both myself and all that surrounds me, I will have to learn to use perhaps the most simple and disregarded instrument we have in our disposal—the human heart.

Time after time during my work with the sacred plants and synthetic substances, this realization, at times nauseating and at others blissful, descended upon me with unrelenting force and uncanny persistence. It does so still.

It was clear that my heart had become a muscle that I had forgotten how to use.

Made redundant by the circumstances of my external and internal reality, this heart was closed, on lock down. But, curiously, at the same time of understanding these aspects regarding my own way of being, unconsciously and almost unwillingly, my heart began to open.

It imploded, with grace and humility. It blossomed and came to life.

These revelations and understandings, accompanied by many other deep insights and precious moments of epiphany, were fundamental to my process of healing and self-discovery. I was able to heal my relationship with death, and that in turn allowed me to heal my relationship with life.

I have come to acknowledge the tremendous positive psychological properties and qualities of both natural and synthetic psychoactive substances such the Amazonian ayahuasca, the Mexican peyote, the African iboga and the psilocybin mushroom among other plants.

I feel that these precious plants and artificial substances (such as LSD or MDMA) possess a potential so vast, so absolutely critically important for the evolution of human consciousness, for the understanding of the very notion of biological life, that it is nothing less than a perfect Aristotelian tragedy that we, as developed and modern societies, criminalize and prohibit their use.

I feel that the predominant psychological and spiritual experience produced by these wonderfully mysterious substances is one of unity―with oneself, the other, and the environment. It is an inclusive experience. They most often promote and inspire an interdependent state of being that is harmonious and peaceful, positive and trusting, innocent and loving.

When one is all, all is for one.

In contrast to the described above, it seems noteworthy to mention that, in many modern nations, the systematic breakdown of the utopian, social society, the welfare state, has led to the now entrenched absence of the very concept of community (in this context, a security net) from the daily lives and collective psyche of their citizens.

Countless individuals find themselves in a mode of being that is most commonly associated with economic segregation and vulnerability, lacking a socially acceptable personal identity and living in a state of physical insecurity and fear of social exclusion.

The post-industrial era is dangerously disconnected from the most natural and fundamental physical and spiritual needs of this planet and its inhabitants, and therefore there is a real and urgent need to reassess and reevaluate our current paradigms of personal, social, and national existence.

Whether the therapeutic or ceremonial ingestion and consumption of these substances takes place in the Amazon rainforest, the hills of Samaria, or in a studio apartment overlooking the Hudson River, they are always celebrated within a group of people.

A community that comes together, occasionally or regularly, knowingly or unknowingly, to practice a way of being that is more aware, more understanding, and most importantly, more compassionate.

They come together to share a peak experience, a mystical one that has a tremendous amount of therapeutic value. They come together, if only for a few moments, in a man-made world where the individual is king and where the illusion of separateness is the ultimate truth, to simply be—to expand their humanity and open their hearts. That in itself is important, that in itself is healing, that in itself is revolutionary in the most unassuming and unpretentious manner.

We are obligated to reconstruct our relationships with our family members and neighbors, with our allies and enemies, and most importantly with ourselves. We must rehabilitate our relationship with our life-enabling oceans and rivers, our forests and deserts, and with this phenomenon that is Life.

These medicines, these mysterious plants and synthesized miracles of chemical engineering as one, can play a crucial role in enabling this process of reconciliation to materialize.

Furthermore, the advent of the scientific revolution and the consequent decline of monotheistic religions in Western societies is forcing many individuals to cope and face the ultimate Life transition without a clear and solidified belief system, without an identifiable spiritual structure or sufficient emotional support mechanism. Left to their own devices, individuals confronted with mortality are chained to an archaic and stereotypical vision of death, one that offers little solace and relief.

Within this desperate existential gap and state of serious personal and global crisis, it is my strong belief that the substances in question have within them the capacity to revolutionize the psycho-emotional experience of Death and thus transform our experience of Life, with all that it entails.

The authentic human conquest is not one that is against death, the environment, or other members of the human family. It is neither a crusade against ignorance, greed, or the overcoming of our needs.

It is a sacred internal pilgrimage towards a vision, an existence of comprehension and surrender, of humility and gratitude and of peace and reconciliation.

For it is only by experiencing our infinite, shapeless, formless, and indeed boundless nature, the real nature of reality, that we can come to terms with, to love and forgive, accept and surrender to our own limited existence and perception as human beings.

Friends of various ages, some who have at different times during the last 40 years left the non-heterosexual closet, all agree: coming out of their respective drug closet in contemporary Sweden would have vastly more serious consequences than coming out as homosexual or bisexual.

They often found that some contexts would be more accepting than others, but most agreed that a total coming out to family, friends, colleagues, relatives, and overall society would have dire consequences. One friend even compared coming out of the drug closet today with coming out as gay in rural Sweden during the 1970s. That’s saying a lot in terms of social stigma.

Thinking on my own situation, a 100 percent coming out with my medicinal and recreational use of cannabis and my use of psychedelics and other drugs would have serious ramifications on my family life. I’d also risk losing my credibility as an academic and employee. Coming out as anything other than heterosexual would not even come close—at worst it would raise an eyebrow, but I would still feel empowered in that situation. Coming out of the psychedelic closet would entail me giving up my value and credibility as a human being and citizen.

Based on these conversations—my own and the collective experiences of drug users in Sweden—I find that in the contemporary Swedish context it would, in many cases, be more stigmatizing and have more negative social implications to come out of the closet as a psychedelic user than as a homosexual or bisexual. I will limit this conversation and my argument to homosexuality and bisexual identities as I have more personal experience and knowledge based on conversations with people.

How can this be the case in an otherwise progressive social democracy like Sweden?

Gender equality and sexual rights

Internationally, Sweden is often framed as a social democracy with progressive values related to gender equality and sexual rights. Its inhabitants enjoy the benefits of a highly developed welfare system that provides free education, free health care, and generous government-subsidized parental leave. Domestically, the issues of gender equality and sexual rights are, by many, considered to be a part of Swedish values and culture. I would even say that it is key to the self-image of many Swedish people. Organizations working with sexual and gender rights enjoy substantial influence in Swedish society and have contributed a great deal to the increased liberties and rights of the LGBTQ+ community in the country.

Sweden also has a feminist party, “Feminist Initiative,” that barely missed the four percent parliamentary boundary marker in the last elections. There is a permanently assigned Minister of Gender Equality. Even the far right and conservative parties are forced to include their own versions of gender equality and sexual rights in their nationalist rhetoric.

Gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights are deeply connected and embedded in the creation of the Swedish welfare state and therefore these social justice issues are central to Swedish national and cultural identity. It also means that in case of discrimination based on gender or sexuality, one has legal and normative pillars to lean on for support. This is completely lacking for people who, for different reasons, choose to consume drugs.

Drug policy in Sweden

A less well-known aspect of the Swedish welfare state and national identity is the drug policy. Today Sweden has one of the more conservative, repressive, and scientifically outdated drug policies in Europe.

One cannot talk about psychedelics or cannabis as separate from other drugs. All illegal drugs are bundled into one heap and usually referred to as “Knark.” If you consume any psychoactive substance other than alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine, you run the risk of being labeled as a druggie or a “Knarkare.”

Journalist Magnus Linton has shown in a brilliant way how drug policy since the 1980s is basically an unquestioned ideology. It was built on the idea that use of any drug (except the above-mentioned magic three) as non-applicable with Swedish culture, as foreign, and as a threat to the morals of the Swedish youth. An individual who uses drugs is viewed as a completely undependable, deviant, dysfunctional, lazy person and ultimately a traitor and threat to society and welfare state itself.

There is complete consensus in parliament: The goal is to achieve a drug-free society. In the 2016-2020 drug policy action plan this goal is clearly stated, together with the claim that all drugs (except the magic three) are not a part of Swedish culture.

In Sweden the consumption, possession, distribution, and use of drugs is illegal, including having any traces or markers from drug use in your body. In 1988 and 1993, changes in the law were made to focus efforts and legal consequences on individual drug use and consumption. As a result, young people and more established addicts were the two groups that were increasingly arrested on misdemeanor drug charges.

Individuals that consume cannabis, for example, are considered criminals even after the psychoactive effects have worn off. A drug user in Sweden is basically a walking criminal that can be picked and forced to give up urine or blood for testing. This just enhances the feeling of deviance for many people.

There are several examples of young people from specific socio-economic or racial groups being harassed and profiled by law enforcement. It is almost incomprehensible that the main focus of law enforcement should be to arrest individual users. I have seen the results of these laws. I know people who have been subjected to them and as a result have had their lives destroyed due to the social stigma connected to drug use. Several friends have had to give weekly or monthly urine samples, paid from their own pockets, for up to eight years in order to keep their driver’s licenses. This is despite the fact that many of them were arrested during circumstances with no relation to driving a vehicle.

It is horrifying that there is a political consensus on this blatant example of cultural conservatism across the political spectrum in Sweden. Usually it is the far right that identifies and argues that specific issues or practices, often related to Islam and Muslims, are not a part of Swedish culture or values. They tend to be met with fierce resistance, and intense debates usually follow, but on the issue of drug policy, there is a complete absence of similar debates.

Presently, the proponents of this ideology are expressing strong concerns regarding the liberalization campaigns around the world, more specifically in the U.S. There is political discussion on how to protect the Swedish model, the vision of a drug-free society, from the liberal and foreign view on legalization. I view this rhetoric as a renewal and strengthening of the nationalistic discourses embedded within the drug policy ideology—and a funny contradiction—since Sweden and Swedes are usually quite prone to accepting and incorporating ideas and trends from the U.S.

This issue has a vast number of complexities, expressions, and variations, and I am painting a generalized picture for the purpose of this article and a somewhat simplified and idyllic picture of the progress of gender equality and sexual rights. For example, in highly masculinized criminal environments where drug use is normal, it could be very risky for individuals read as males to come out as homosexual. At the same time, society at large would not find homosexuality problematic, but instead the drug use.

Gender equality and sexual rights on one hand, and drug policies on the other: both have been connected and associated with Swedish nationalism, culture, and values. The former is associated in a positive manner and the latter in a negative manner. Thus, gender equality and sexual rights are considered by many to be a deeply rooted part of Sweden and Swedish culture, meanwhile being a “Knarkare” is not.

We must look at how discrimination of drug users intersects with discrimination of other marginalized groups in different societies and think about similarities and differences of that discrimination. Looking at this from a perspective of culture, identity, and normativity opens up these issues to new possibilities for critique and change.

For me, the restriction on drug use, especially of boundary-dissolving drugs like psychedelics and cannabis, is a restriction of the right to think in the way I want to. These are tools that can help you question the norms of thinking and being, including sexuality and gender. The use of psychedelics has been and continues to be a huge part of my personal and professional development. The stigma connected to the use of these drugs forces me to compartmentalize my life on many levels. Some of the people who I had conversations with for this article have experienced this compartmentalization both in relation to gender, sexuality, and drug use, and they identify similarities in the way it affects their lives. I understand it as a fear of being “found out” as different or deviant.

I completely agree with Graham Hancock saying that it’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on consciousness where the aim is to keep people in line with what is considered the normative way a good citizen should think. This is particularly evident in the Swedish context where gender, sexuality, and drug use have been connected to the welfare state and the image of the ideal citizen. Sweden has come a long way with accepting critical perspectives on norms regarding sexuality and gender, but still has leaps to go in understanding how drugs like psychedelics and cannabis can contribute to questioning normative aspects of identity, thinking, and reality itself.

Writing this article and signing with my own name is a way for me to at least start opening the door to my own closet, one that I am not ready to completely leave at this time in my life.

All around me was the undeniable majesty of Joshua Tree. I’d thought I’d be floored by the alien tree structures, since that’s what the national park is named after, but I had not expected the gorgeous prehistoric-feeling rock formations stacking into the sky.

All this around me, and I was on crutches, my hip a mess. I had come to Joshua Tree to celebrate New Year’s Eve by tripping with nine of my best friends. We’d scoped the expansive park and found the place we wanted to use as our base camp for the day’s adventures.

We had all our provisions set up — blankets to deal with the cold we knew would come with the desert dusk, a tab of LSD for each of us, snacks for those who could eat while tripping, and our mascot Sparticus, a baby eagle stuffed animal who would watch over our stuff while we were off exploring. He’s very astute with those eagle eyes. And I, of course, had my crutches. I couldn’t part with them without extreme hip pain.

Let me interrupt myself to say that crutches are by no means the worst thing to happen to an adventuring person, or any person really. My injury had only been going on for a couple months, whereas some people live with differently abled bodies for their entire lives and are able to conquer mountains far greater than the piles of rocks in Joshua Tree National Park.

But crutches and leg injuries alike are a hindrance, to say the least, to off-roading — particularly to someone unpracticed in navigating uneven terrain with crutches. I was worried about my ability to keep up with my more able-bodied friends during our trip, but tried not to let it phase me.

So there we were, provisions all around us, bundled in coats against the cold. We passed out the tabs of acid, we toasted, and we dropped. And then we waited.

We reminded ourselves of the cardinal rules of tripping: Gravity is real. Drugs are not food. Beer is not water. Cars are real. To which we added, for the particularities of our setting: Everything is sharp. Because if you’ve ever been to Joshua Tree, you’ll know that all the plants out there are pretty much of the cactus variety, and the rocks are also very pointy.

Already before the acid kicked in, one of our party sat on a cactus, “Unintentionally”, she explained as we took turns picking nearly invisible prickers out of her butt. As if anyone would wittingly opt for that unpleasant experience.

And then suddenly, up we went. First a glimmer and that familiar vibrate-y feeling in our stomachs and extremities, and then the rocks started to shimmer and melt into giant embracing gorillas. We sat there, perched on the rocks, as we acclimated to our new reality. And then, one by one, my friends peeled off to explore. I sat on a rock by myself, trying to remember why I wasn’t moving with the rest. There was some reason, but I just couldn’t remember it. Oh right, my hip was messed up, I’d been hobbling around for weeks in a considerable amount of shooting pain from my right hip to my knee. But there were my friends, scaling cliffs, lizarding around in the sunshine. I wanted to join in!

I stood up, gingerly putting my weight on my right leg. And…nothing. No pain. No tenderness. I was invincible.

Speaking about this moment later, my partner said it was such a shocking transformation that he didn’t believe it. One moment I was on crutches, and the next I was bouldering about. But in retrospect, I’m not surprised. The brain is a powerful meaning-maker.

And since that trip, I’ve learned a lot about how pain works. Pain actually isn’t as direct response as body part gets injured → you feel pain. Actually what happens is that your brain is receiving and reading constant nerve signals from every part of your body, no matter how small, and deciding whether those signals indicate danger.

If your brain assesses sufficient danger, then it causes you to feel pain so that you stop doing whatever it is that is making you feel that way and instead spend your energy taking care of your parts. The problem with longer-term (also called chronic) pain is that the cause of the danger response can actually have gone away but your brain is stuck on it, and keeps your body in an active state of pain as a result.

So what happened with my miracle leg healing?

My hypothesis is that my hip had actually gotten better more or less, with my two plus months of crutching and otherwise being gentle with it. Now it needed to be used to build back up muscle, but my brain was still afraid.

Those of us who have personal experience with psychedelics know that part of a hallucinogenic experience is the sloughing off of deeply embedded fears. Researchers are currently revitalizing rigorous research into this phenomenon, as most recently and comprehensively reported in The Trip Treatment by Michael Pollan.

I was afraid to hurt my hip again, and so I treated it too kindly. I needed to run and be free, and acid helped me do that.

Imagine being in love. Everyone dreams about that euphoric feeling of loving your significant other unconditionally and knowing your significant other loves you unconditionally. The good times spent with each other outweigh the bad and it’s those good moments together that you truly cherish when times get rough.

Imagine being with the girl of your dreams for two and a half years, having begun to realistically think about living the rest of your life with her. After two and a half years of being in an intimate relationship, you imagine you would be able to tell if the relationship was on the fritz. Now imagine sitting in a car in a college campus parking garage where she looks at you, eyes starting to fill up with tears, and suddenly you hear her say the words, “We need to talk.”

Out fall the words, “I don’t love you anymore and I’m sorry, but I’m breaking up with you. I don’t know why I fell out of love with you, but something changed visiting you this weekend and I don’t know what that change was. I’m so sorry I’m doing this to you.”

Heart. Shattered.

Well, I did not see this coming and was blindsided by the one person I thought I knew everything about. The ambiguous loss that occurred in January of this past year was absolutely heartbreaking. I had no idea what to do with myself. If you have been in a situation like this then you would understand, when the person you love unconditionally tells you they do not love you anymore for reasons unknown, it hits you at the core of your soul.

You start to question yourself, what you could have done differently, whether you missed signs that led up to that moment. But, I couldn’t find answers to any of those questions. We sat there in my car for over an hour, both sobbing hysterically, because I had just lost my best friend who I loved to the moon and back, and she was completely helpless as she couldn’t console me the way she used to.

If you ask a grown man if he’s ever cried over a girl he’s loved and he tells you no, nine times out of ten he’s probably lying. Men were taught in the past not to show that kind of emotion and to keep it on the inside. Well, I was crying harder than I ever have before. Sitting in my car with my now ex-girlfriend next to me, knowing the worst of the worst had just happened with no way to reverse course.

From the beginning of January to the end of April, I was completely helpless. My graduate courses and internship were boring, I gained weight, and I just felt overall hopelessness. My friends would probably tell you that they didn’t think anything was wrong with me. On the inside though, my head was all over the place with constant thoughts about my ex and whether or not I should try to reach out to her.

Looking back on things now I can say that I was slightly depressed. Heartbreak is something that each person deals with differently, but the one thing each person wants is the same: to finally be happy again without thinking those negative thoughts about the previous relationship.

Near the end of April, I went to visit my best friends at my undergraduate school. While I was there, a friend and I reconnected after not seeing each other for nearly half a year. He felt incredibly sorry for what happened to me and wished that there was something that he could do. I mentioned to him that I always wanted to try MDMA. He looked at me with a slight grin and told me he would text me in the morning if he could get anything.

The thought of using it with the hope of getting me out of a slight depression was something I didn’t have the highest expectations for, but I thought it would be worth a shot. Given all the stories from friends and research by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), I was ecstatic like a little boy opening up presents on Christmas morning.

After I got the capsules of MDMA the following morning, I waited a little over a month because the set and setting needed to be carefully considered. There was finally an open night for me to explore the hidden wonders of MDMA as my friend would tripsit over texts. Down the hatch the two capsules went, both 100mg each, and the waiting game began for the roll to set in. As the evening rolled into the night, there were no noticeable effects going on, but my friend confidently said it was plenty for my first roll and to just wait it out.

I decide to go in my bedroom to listen to some music. I was listening to a Bonnaroo playlist that I made of artists that were going to the festival. The London Souls, Leon Bridges, John Moreland, HAIM, Lettuce, MisterWives, GRiZ The Floozies, Vulfpeck, Dead & Company. Basically everything was popping up on shuffle. I realized after a few songs that I was more into the music than I normally was.

But then, the song “Let It Happen” by Tame Impala came on as if there was a switch inside my brain where the drug started working.

The flood of serotonin made the music so intense I felt like music was in my veins. I remember texting my friend a picture of my dilated pupils, biggest smile on my face saying “I don’t think I’ve ever felt at peace this much before. Life is so extraordinary; music is literally playing through my veins right now.”

He got the biggest laugh out of my text then told me to enjoy the rest of the roll and text him if I needed. The bass resonating in my headphones translated instantly into feelings that were indescribably happy. The biggest takeaway I got from that experience was how overwhelmingly happy I was, but also that there was so much more to life than being stuck over an ex-girlfriend.

From the time the MDMA roll happened to my trip to Bonnaroo, I experienced an outlook on life that I hadn’t experienced before.

I was smiling or laughing all the time, my everyday outlook on life shot through the roof, and my overall wellbeing did a complete 180 after I rolled with MDMA.

Even though life seemed better, there was just something that kept bugging me on the inside. It was almost like I was over “the hill” when moving on from my ex. I wanted to try LSD for some time now, but it wasn’t easy to come by, so I never really gave it a shot. The horror stories the media perpetuates never scared me due to all the personal stories I’ve heard; even the worst of the worst didn’t dissuade me from trying a tab.

A friend told me that when they did acid once, every single worry in the world went away. Colors became vibrant, designs on shirts began to dance, the interconnectedness one had with the nature and people was so pure and joyful. It seemed for everyone that LSD helped give them meaning in a time of chaos. In the hope to find meaning in the chaos after my breakup, I eventually tried a tab of LSD.

When you go from having your first MDMA experience at home to having your first LSD experience at Bonnaroo, things get a little crazy.

A friend in our group asked me the Saturday of Bonnaroo if I wanted to try some LSD. “Yes! Hell yes,” I said with exhilaration. My mind was racing with the unknown that may come from the trip, but there was no holding back now as I put the tab on my tongue. I eventually started to get the giggles, the colors became more intense, and the feeling of the music was making my body want to dance like a flower in the wind.

Gradually, the LSD rushed to my brain with an immense amount of energy. The music of HAIM was some of the best that I had ever heard before. I remember looking at a sign in the mass of people that said “Existence is beautiful. You exist. You’re beautiful.” There was a flood of emotions that just took over my entire body and mind. Here I was laying on the ground at Which Stage when I had the biggest realizations of the breakup and life in general: “everything is going to be okay” and “just enjoy life.” Sure those are simple realizations but they had a tremendous impact.

Up until that point, I was anxious as to how long I was going to be held up with a broken heart. But it was almost as if the acid, along with the music, helped repair my heart and soul to the point that I was born again. I was laying down on the ground, listening to the sounds of HAIM, looking at the sky as the beautiful sunset was occurring on the Farm and I just felt at peace. There was no worrying about my past relationship, whether I was good enough, or what I did wrong in the relationship; I just felt serenity.

My experiences with MDMA and LSD helped me overcome the worst heartbreak I ever experienced. Psychedelics are drugs that are intimidating at first, but that feeling of peace they have given me is something that will be with me until the end. I will forever have psychedelics to thank, because they are the reason my heart is no longer broken and rather, is stronger than ever before.

I took notes on my phone during my trip of my overall experience, which I shared with my friends after the festival. The responses I got back helped solidify my serenity. In the group message a friend responded by saying, “I want to be as happy as you were that day, you were just this little ball of joy that seemed to explode!”

Candy Flipping: When Acid is combined with Ecstasy

The LSD rushed through my gums and into my jaw at the same time the bitter drip of MDA slowly ran down the back of my throat. I didn’t exactly understand what was happening nor did I care because I was excited. I felt as though I deserved this trip. It was a needed break from school, homework, and my not so comfortable social life. My friend had a bigger tab in his mouth and told me to hold it while he snorted his MDA. Without thinking, I put his tab in my mouth and swallowed.

About 30 minutes later my friend asked, “How does your jaw feel?”

Until he asked, I didn’t notice I was clenching my teeth together. My eyes flashed across the room – I was having trouble understanding my surroundings. The place was familiar but my mind couldn’t make sense of it. I repeated out loud over and over again, “We are just in his room, we are just in his room, we are just in his room…” Still my mind refused to believe my verbal affirmations.

My eyes focused in on my friend and suddenly a physical panic flooded through my body. It felt as though my mind was screaming at me, “You don’t know this man, you don’t know this man, you don’t know this man…” My mind was correct; I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know his favorite color, his middle name, or even his last name. I had seen him around campus a couple times, and we matched on Tinder. We hung out a couple times after the match, and then I found myself sitting on the floor of his room, tripping. Suddenly I heard loud noises coming from the kitchen. A group of drunk girls had decided to stop by his house. Their screams turned into sirens and his face contorted into Sarah Palin’s.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck , fuck…” What was happening?

I gave my friend a look of discomfort and he suggested we go outside. It was -10 degrees with a foot of snow but I didn’t mind. I would have done anything to get out of that house of screaming girls. My friend suggested we walk to ‘Shoe Tree,’ a tree on campus adorned with shoes that was likely to be unoccupied by visitors. We started walking down a narrow path, and I attempted to count the number of houses we passed, but that got confusing. It felt like we were walking for hours, and I started questioning if he even knew where shoe tree was.

I asked him and his response was, “I mean, I wouldn’t trust me,” My heart started pulsing rapidly and my gut told me to turn around.

Despite my fear I stayed with him. We turned around and walked through town, and the conversation that changed my life began. I soon forgot I barely knew this guy, and I felt open to talk about anything, and so did he. We talked about how we felt about college parties, and in that moment I decided they weren’t for me. Then we talked about how our school’s policies make no sense, and then we talked about our plans for the future, which turned out to be minimal.

The time passed by quickly, and what began as a short walk turned into a two hour adventure, our path leading us back to the front door of his house. We went back inside and shuffled into his room, then he asked me, “What is love to you?” It seemed as though everything stopped. I didn’t have an answer, but I had a feeling. I could feel his body’s vibrations intersect with my own. I decided to avoid the question and asked about his family. We got into an emotionally deep conversation about family and about where we came from. I could feel every word he said. We came from similar backgrounds and felt similarly about life. We shared our ideas about how we believe life should be lived, and I had never felt more safe. That’s when I started to notice him.

He had big beautiful brown eyes, a forest of eyebrows, and big lips. I noticed every small bump on his face. The bumps turned into a beautiful pattern that lead to the mane of hair that fell from his head. I was fascinated by everything my eyes were telling me about him. I saw his body in fragments starting with his head and down to his shoulders. I noticed his arms and admired the smooth skin that ran all the way down to his fingertips. His chest and torso were slim yet strong, holding up his delicate head. His legs ran for miles and at the very end there were long feet that helped him stand.

All the fragments came together, and I wasn’t just looking at some guy I had met on Tinder. I was looking at love.

I wanted to touch him. My small fingers ran across his arms as I looked into his eyes. I knew him. Though I didn’t know his favorite color or middle name, and had a hard time remembering his last name, I knew him. He didn’t have to tell me every detail of his life. He didn’t even have to talk for me to know him. I felt his vibrations and soon his vibrations became my own. We laid on a small pull out couch for the last couple hours of our trip and we didn’t talk. We started feeling each others’ bodies, and it felt as though we were one. When I was touching him I could feel his vibrations throughout my body almost as though I was touching myself. We slowly fell asleep and the sun came up.

I never answered his question about love, but after candy flipping with him, I decided that love is when you touch someone and it is almost as though you are touching yourself.

Psychedelics showed me love beyond words and turned love into physical vibrations passed between two beings.

As a child, I was taught there were steps when it came to partnerships, such as dating, being engaged, and marriage. I had the understanding that marriage meant love. But, psychedelics reconstructed my understanding of love and taught me that love can be found between two strangers sharing similar experiences, spaces, or trips.