My Trip on Magic Mushrooms: Shattered Shield
(Part 10 of the story of my psychedelic-enhanced journey to mental health)
The magic mushrooms gave me another sequence of hallucinations in addition to what I have just described. This second set of hallucinations started with me finding myself naked and submerged in a small “pond” of black, viscous and disgusting liquid-like sewage. The substance reminded me of the similarly disgusting sewage-like material that comprised the crescent of shame that I had vomited out of my body during the other set of hallucinations.
Being submerged under this disgusting liquid felt nauseating and revolting. I didn’t want to let that stuff penetrate into my body, so I kept my mouth tightly shut and my eyes tightly closed.
But I couldn’t just stay like that and “wait it out.” My head was submerged, and I needed to breathe. I couldn’t figure out how to maneuver my head above the surface, so there was no opportunity to inhale.
In reality, I must have been breathing as I sat on the couch because the hallucination lasted too long for me to be holding my breath. When much later I asked David and Jimmy, they didn’t know because they weren’t aware of what was going on in my head at the time. I had been afraid to narrate the hallucination aloud because I didn’t want to open my mouth and let the sewage-like “gunk” enter my head.
Needing but unable to breathe, I panicked. My whole body spasmed, preparing to die. I felt as I imagine a drowning person must feel deep under the water, knowing that he will never reach the surface and be able to draw another breath: terrified and hopeless, yet all the while still disgusted by the sewage sludge that ensconced me, refusing to open my eyes or mouth as I prepared to die by asphyxiation.
Then the hallucination changed. I don’t know if it was a sudden change, or whether the pond of sewage sludge slowly morphed into something else. My next moment of awareness was of a pleasant warmth caressing all the skin on my body. I was no longer in my death-spasm, and I detected light penetrating my closed eyelids where before there had been nothing but cold depressing darkness.
Curious, I opened my eyes and saw that I was still submerged in a pond, but the pond was full of warm, crystal-clear water that felt pleasant on my skin, as if it had washed away the disgusting residue of the black sewage-sludge. I was only a little bit below the surface of the pond and could see that above it perched the sun in a clear blue sky with a few white, fluffy clouds. There were tall, pretty trees around the pond with sunlight dappling large green leaves that seemed felt welcoming with their vitality. Several birds clung to tiny branches at the top of the trees and chirped out their inviting springtime songs. (It didn’t occur to me at the time that I shouldn’t have been able to hear them while under water).
But I still hadn’t solved my original problem of figuring out some way to breathe. I didn’t have any way to raise my elevation in the pond or to maneuver my head above the surface of the water. With the sewage sludge having disappeared, I was more than willing to open my mouth, but there was no air pocket or other source of air.
So I was still going to drown. My body again started to panic and prepared to spasm like before into near-death mode. If I was going to die, I thought, at least it was in pleasant surroundings in which I felt warm and content. I somehow “relaxed” into the warmth and pleasantness, content that if I were going to die, at least it would happen while I was feeling good.
Somehow I was able to overcome my panic. Maybe feeling “content” was the key word or thought. In the hallucination, I enacted my contentment, lying back with my eyes open, enjoying the warmth and light and pretty setting, preparing to die by drowning in the attractive, comfortable pond.
In this hallucination, I never drew a breath — but I discovered that I didn’t have to! I was able to lie back under the surface of the pond, letting its warm water and the sunshine wash over me, without breathing. I don’t know how long I just lay there enjoying the sensations and feeling happy. I must have been breathing in real life on the couch, but as long as I didn’t fight or struggle to breathe in my pleasant hallucination, I didn’t need to.
At this point I remembered that I needed to narrate these experiences to David and Jimmy. It didn’t matter that I still thought I was under water. I know that I tried to describe aloud what I had just experienced, but, as David and Jimmy later confirmed, my words came out confused and jumbled, and they had no idea at the time what I was trying to describe.
As I emerged from this hallucination, my adult mind began to re-assert itself. As I thought about the psilocybin wearing off, I felt a big pang of regret. I had neglected to address one of my major purposes for taking the mushrooms in the first place: the lowering of my “shield of invulnerability” which had blocked my emotions for most of my life. Months of therapy had failed even to dent it, and I had put most of my hope in the mushrooms.
A little while later, when I had emerged from the trip sufficiently to be able to talk about it with David and Jimmy, I mentioned this regret to them. Their response shocked me. “You don’t remember?” Jimmy asked.
“Remember what?” I queried.
“About the shield,” Jimmy replied. “A while ago you looked at us and announced, ‘The shield has shattered.’” David nodded his concurrence.
I was prepared to accept this at face value. I wanted to accept it. It reminded me of the pronouncement that I had made but not remembered during my ketamine session until David had informed me that I had solemnly raised my hands to the sky and stated regarding my sense of shame: “It is lifted.”
But there were reasons that I doubted that I would have said that the shield had shattered. Not only didn’t I remember saying that, but I didn’t even remember having hallucinated about my emotional shield. When I emerged from the hallucinations about the ponds, I was convinced that I had neglected to deal with this issue at all.
More importantly, even in preparing for the trip, I had never conceived of the shield shattering. I had “raised” the shield when I was eight years old, and my mantra for the trip was to “lower” the shield. Given its apparent intransigence during therapy, I had even visualized the possibility of “eroding” the shield enough for my emotions to seep through, but I had never visualized it “shattering.”
I would never have used the word “shattered” to describe making the shield go away. I had envisioned it as a tall stone or metal barrier that might possibly be moved or lowered or penetrated. But I had never thought of it as something that could shatter. I shared these doubts with Jimmy and David, but they assured me that I had said that the shield “shattered.”
At that moment, revelation struck me. I immediately and instinctively knew what my hallucinations about the ponds had meant. They were both direct consequences of my emotional shield shattering.
My submersion in the black, disgusting sewage-sludge pond was me experiencing the full impact of my negative emotions. They were overwhelming and disgusting, and I couldn’t evade them, even as I refused to open my eyes or mouth to try to deny them entry to me.
The warm, crystal-clear pond was me experiencing the full impact of my positive emotions. Once I learned to stop struggling and fighting them, I could enjoy them and let them make me happy.
I knew from the core of my being that these explanations were true. I explained it to Jimmy and David, but they didn’t share my certainty of interpretation. David cautioned that we should wait and see what life was like after the trip before concluding that my emotional shield was gone.
Even though the psilocybin had worn off enough for me to converse normally, I was soon to discover that the trip was not fully over. In fact, the next twenty-four hours were critical to understanding the trip and effecting the internal changes I wanted to make.
