How Psilocybin Taught Me To Live
I’d always been an inquisitive kid, so when I first watched the Oliver Stone film “The Doors” the promise of alternate states of consciousness was too seductive. I remember walking around my bedroom as the end credits rolled thinking “Am I stoned? I think I’m stoned.” I wasn’t. But it did seem to unlock something in my head. The promise that somewhere in another dimension there was some all-encompassing answer to the meaning of life that would stop me feeling so empty and lost. So I spent the next 20 years searching for it.
I grew my hair and wandered around council estates doing my best Jim Morrison impression, trying (and failing) to find someone who would sell acid to a 13-year-old.
It took until my mid 20’s before a friend mentioned trying some magic mushrooms they’d bought “legally” from a stall in Notting Hill Market. My mum used to have to pick mushrooms out of my bolognese as a kid, so they weren’t my no.1 choice to break on through, but it was as close as I’d got in 20 years so I decided to go for it.
We tried to mask the pungent flavour in a few different stomach-churning ways:
1. mixed into a chocolate mousse
2. blended into tomato juice
3. chopped up on top of a salt and vinegar crisp like a psychedelic canapé.
None of which are ideal for inducing a pleasant trip. (Just brew them into a tea.)
Over the next few years, I had many blissful (and some terrifying) mind-expanding experiences. One particularly memorable “bad trip” involved rushing to the bathroom convinced I was about to vomit gallons of blood into the sink, and spending the next few hours convinced I was dying.
But those difficult experiences also helped me learn to let go, and once I could trust the experience and let my sense of self dissolve, I realised I could surf on an endless flow of consciousness for infinity. Here I experienced the realization that we are all one unified consciousness creating reality for our own enjoyment. That life is a succession of magic tricks we’re performing to ourselves to make us smile.
For so long I’d been searching for an answer; a way to transcend to another dimension, but the answer I got was to help myself and others enjoy the one I was in.
Simple. But that meant I’d have to work to make this happen. There wasn’t a magic wand that would solve all my problems.
So I went back to ask, again. And again. And every time I got the same answer:
“I told you last time, you’re supposed to be back there enjoying yourself.”
Now, I know there’s only so many times you can ask someone something before they lose their patience (even if they are the grand unified consciousness of the universe) so I knew I had to stop looking for the loophole that meant I could skip this bit and go straight to enlightenment and figure out how to implement this knowledge in my life.
So I went to therapy and started to practice meditation and yoga. These tools have helped me stay connected to the source of joy and love inside me, and allowed me to live the very best life I can. And now I have a two-year-old son, and he reminds me every second what an amazing magic trick life can be.
