After my first Ayahuasca session, I rather un-intelligently turned to 'mind-expanding' hallucinogens. I was 20, 21, going through my undergraduate degree, and still basically dumb. I guess I figured if I could just peer over 'the edge' deeply enough, or often enough, maybe I might find something which would make me feel better.
Well, be careful what you wish for.
One evening I had taken some peruvian mushrooms, and it's hard to say what really happened next...
Consciousness was disembodied, and existed in a rainbow-type unity free from identity - very peaceful, very tranquil. And then consciousness became 'my' consciousness again, and it was very un-peaceful. In fact, I began to experience the most profound terror. It was during this moment that my life finally and decidedly changed forever.
All the fear of my life that had been suppressed over the years by coping mechanisms, by self-medicating, by self-delusion - all of it began to surface. The mind was rent, broken, incapable of holding back the flood any longer.
The 'trip' ended of course, but the impact didn't - like a major break in the dam of my mind, I couldn't cope with my past any longer. Years of childhood trauma and exposure to violence began to surface over the coming days, weeks, months. So much fear came pouring out so quickly, that no rational narrative could explain it meaningfully. So my mind became delusional in order to make sense of what was happening to me - I was being 'straightened by fire,' by God, torn between love and sin, desperately praying to be relieved of myself.
At the time I believed all of it, because I had to.
On and on this outpouring went...severe nightmares, daymares, persecutory delusions...I was very unwell. It was profoundly exhausting, and can be characterized by the worst ongoing confusion. Somehow, on the surface however, I managed to go to my classes, get good grades, have a few friends. I think the 'normal' routine of being a student really helped me from ending up in an institution.
It took 18 months of day in, day out, battle, and the help of a damn good transpersonal therapist, before my feet were anywhere near back being on the ground. I survived only by surrendering, and it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
This outpouring, a true catharsis, and the many months endured, saved my life. The process unmade me, and thus I reclaimed feeling. I reclaimed morality. I was no longer entirely interred by a prison of fear.
And spirituality, either by design, happenstance or necessity, became a language which I could relate to. I met my family from throughout the ages in the words of Rumi, Zen teachers, Hafiz...and though I was still very much lost, at least I felt there was a road for me to walk.
