I have not been much of a substance user in my lifetime, sans an addiction to Diet Coke. I was raised during the peak of the War on Drugs, and the message that controlled substances were wrong and harmful was effectively drilled into my head.
I have spent a lifetime feeling disconnected from other people. My childhood was filled with trauma and messages that I wasn’t worthy of human connection. This early template cemented itself into my personality and wreaked havoc on my existence. I have walked this world unable to forge solid and lasting connections since the beginning. The coping mechanisms I put in place to cover up these wounds have varied, but all in all, they amounted to destruction.
I am also a single parent of two teenagers, and I felt completely alone inside the prison that was my mind before I started psychedelic-assisted therapy. My children, the only humans I have ever felt pure love from and for, had to live with me like that. I was disconnected, volatile, aggressive, and asleep most of the time. I acted erratically on my best days and unresponsive on my worst. I have very few memories of the months leading into starting psychedelics, other than I wanted it all to end one way or another. I managed to fight through an extreme dissociative state well enough to research psychedelic-assisted trauma therapy and launch a plan to help myself. My will to survive did not care if the plan involved crossing the lines of legality.
The thought of consuming a psychedelic substance in the name of mental health seemed wrong. I never want my kids to feel like they need to turn to drugs to cope with their problems, so turning to psychedelics to face my issues seemed contradictory to what I was trying to model for them. My sense of desperation to survive had to win a battle over my sense of guilt.
As a parent, I preached the anti-drug messages to my children. “Don’t do drugs.” “Drugs are bad.” “Look at that person and what happened to him because of drugs.” My 16-year-old daughter, in particular, took these messages to heart. She has been a rule follower from birth and always worries about everyone doing the right thing.
I was watching YouTube videos depicting MDMA therapy sessions late one night when she came into my room to ask what I was doing. I considered making up a story to avoid telling her the truth, but that has never been my parenting style. So, I took a deep breath, showed her the video, and explained why I was watching it. She stood up and left the room.
I expected her to return shortly thereafter to blast me with facts and opinions on how I was going to ruin her life and mine if I followed through with the treatment idea. I braced for impact when I heard her coming down the hall.
She sat down on the bed and said, “I was thinking…with your luck, you will get caught buying the drugs. And if you go down, we all go down. So, let me buy the drugs. I am a minor and it will be my first offense. If I get caught, nothing will happen to me.”
That was it. She didn’t yell and she didn’t judge. She just dropped that bomb and left the room. I didn’t expect that reaction from her. I laughed a little, though less because it was funny than it was such an incredible relief. (For the record, I did not involve her in the procurement of the MDMA.)
I was prepared to defend my intentions, but it wasn’t necessary—she had the unpleasant privilege of a front-row seat to my PTSD struggles her entire life. She had done her best to insulate herself from my irritability, aggressiveness, mood swings, and depression. She wished I was like the other moms in the neighborhood, or at least how she perceived them to be. She didn’t understand why I was the way I was and showed an age-appropriate lack of patience with my antics. She also saw the drastic shift in hopelessness that washed over me after the sexual assault. She called for her brother to comfort me as I convulsed in utter despair. She saw the shame, the meltdowns, and the distance in my gaze grow with each passing day.
Although I never said it out loud, she knew I wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. Given that context, her response to the psychedelic treatment plan wasn’t that shocking. I guess if you want someone to understand your pain, you grant them unfiltered access to your deepest suffering. Her reaction to my plan was her acknowledgment that something drastic had to take place for change to happen.
The list of people to disclose my plans outside my children was nonexistent beyond the logistical necessities. No one else was in my life so closely that they would understand the degree to which I was suffering, and I did not feel the need to explain myself and then have to defend my intentions. I feared that others would not be supportive and I did not have the bandwidth to hear dissenting opinions. This was a big decision and having no one to share it with was a validation of the fact that I was disconnected from everyone.
The MDMA experience was intense. It was very emotional and presented a number of challenges. I felt significant anxiety relief and reduced hypervigilance as soon as the next day to the point that I thought for days that the MDMA must still be in my system. The MDMA helped me come to terms with the traumas I knew which created a new normal baseline for my nervous system. It also gave me a glimpse into traumas I had repressed. I subsequently turned to psilocybin to look deeper into my trauma narrative.
The use of psychedelics over the past year has brought down my protection mechanisms little by little to allow me to face my insecurities and rewire thought patterns about myself and how humans relate to one another. Slowly but surely I have invited other people into my world and accepted invites into theirs. Bonds are forming, even though I’m always sure that these people are going to reject me any time now because I am just too much. I’ve longed for human connection my entire life, but the fear of abandonment is a strong voice inside my head that makes me question if it is all worth the risk. The vulnerability is terrifying.
I brought photos of my three most significant abusers to a recent psilocybin experience. I faced the horrors I experienced with each of them. A couple of weeks later, I went with a friend and buried their pictures in the woods as if to hide their metaphorical bodies where no one, including myself, could ever find them. Sharing that experience with someone felt vulnerable. Afterward, I gave myself a pat on the back for fighting off the awkward feelings and recognizing it as a big step forward in my healing journey.
At a subsequent psilocybin experience, I brought pictures of people who have loved me in my lifetime even if I didn’t recognize it as love at the time. It felt like their eyes came alive during the experience and I realized they have been able to see my wounds all along but loved me anyway. The people who made me feel like I had to act or look a certain way were not present during the experience. It was just me and these beautiful positive energies I hand-selected to accompany me.
The experience culminated in my adult self compassionately apologizing to my younger self for the isolation and self-loathing. I finally realized I am worthy. I acknowledged that those closely-held negative beliefs came from a place that wasn’t my fault. Now, I can take responsibility for how I give and receive love going forward.
I’ve reached out to the people in the pictures and told them how much they matter and how much I appreciate the fact that I matter to them. Not one of them has judged me for the use of psychedelics. Instead, they have commented about how proud they are of me and how they are so glad I’ve found relief.
Psychedelics allowed me to see through my destructive thought patterns so that I could learn to love myself and finally turn the volume down on my internal battles. This new level of inner peace has led to creating true human connections. I am proud of my progress and how hard I worked to make this my new reality. If I choose to talk to someone about psychedelics, I feel secure regardless of their reaction because I know it was the right decision for me as a person and me as a parent. And if someone manages to displace me, I now have a strong support system to hold me up until I regain my balance.
Earlier this year, Alison Caldwell helped launch the Psychedelic Healing Collaborative, an online support group based in Minneapolis. You can learn more or get involved here.
