Thanks Red Cat. Just read your intro... man I salute your courage.
Interestingly, though our backgrounds are different, my psychedelic journey has been inspired by similar motives: a lot of pain and chaos and an ongoing attempt to heal through meditation and genuine spiritual seeking.
I grew up a white kid in the 80s & 90s in South Africa. Apartheid had just started to crumble culminating in the transition to democracy in '94. Growing up, I found the people and society in general brutal, traumatised and full of hate.
I was a sensitive, caring and inquisitive kid, with a lot of potential. But I couldn't respect authorities who, in my eyes, were clearly just full of shit hypocrite tyrants. So I went off the rails early.
I started smoking dope heavily around 14 and soon developed an addictive mindset. In my school years I became a complete scumbag, drinking and drugging to hide from the growing pain inside. By 19 it got so bad that I had become completely addicted to heroin.
But I'm lucky. God. I'm lucky. I had a good family who cared about me. They basically put the squeeze on me and I was forced to make a choice: hit the hard streets of Gauteng, or harden up and get clean. As a 19 year old white boy, the choice was easy. The streets of SA would've torn me a new one (possibly quite literally), so I went cold turkey.
Thereafter the long haul started. Though I didn't have sufficient school results to get into University, the psychologists saw potential in me and it was arranged that I register conditionally for a year after passing some entrance tests.
The condition was that if I got sufficient results I could carry on with regular University studies. This I did and I went on to get a degree in Philosophy and English. At the time I was not totally clean though. As a complete social outcast, I had developed a tormented hold on my heroin habit, indulging in solitary weekend binges when the pressure and isolation became too much.
Then I met a girl. She stole my soul. With her at my side, my H binges slowly subsided and eventually (after 5 years) stopped altogether. She was a rock to me and gave me the grounding to continue studying further (this time in Computer Science). We moved overseas to the UK where I worked as a programmer while I completed my second degree.
Then I lost her and my heart shattered into ten thousand pieces. After 7 years with this beautiful soul, I got complacent and she found someone else. I was left alone, without friends again, facing a meaningless existence in corporate IT as a developer.
So I did something right for once. I said fuck it and quit my job. I packed up my shit and hit the road. Alone. I learned to expose myself to people and accept vulnerability. I met wonderful people and made real friends. I started to meditate rigorously and found my emotions started to blossom and balance.
Despite the positive, subtle effects of daily meditation, I still struggled emotionally and found myself drinking and drugging occasionally when I really didn't want to. That all changed when, by complete chance, I met up with an old friend who spontaneously reintroduced me to psychedelics with some liquid acid (dude, you know who you are, if you ever read this, I fucking love you for that brother!).
I was surprised at how healing the experience was. In a few hours, I worked through a few very important emotional issues and emerged feeling truly healed. I couldn't believe it! My drug drive had been trying to get me here all along! I was just such a numbskull that I kept using the
wrong drugs!And this is where I am now. On my own, personal, authentic, psychedelic journey. I no longer drink. I no longer drug.
Finally I'm living a happy life exploring the world deeply in meditation, music, writing, further study (chemistry this time--I wonder why?). I'm still trying to figure out a more conducive form of earning a living, but I want to start a psychedelic society in my area and have tons of inspired ideas which I'll follow when the opportunity arises.
So Red Cat, I believe you made the right decision to approach psychedelics to move beyond ego and to heal. Mushrooms are perfect. I wish you all the best and hope the mushroom spirit opens you up to the realm of the gods!
I guess that was also a better account of my all too human story. Thank you if you took the time to read it. It's very scary for me to share like this. But that's why I do it.
<3
Your pain is the pain of the world.
Heal yourself, heal the world.
Heal the world, heal yourself.