Hey there Nexus,
Although this is my first post on the forum, I feel that I already owe so many of you a profound thank you! I have been surfing around the site for a good few months as a guest, reading some of the PDF files and browsing through the forum, and I can honestly say that I am amazed at the amount of legitimate caring and openness that takes place here. After experiencing some intensly crazy life events over the past few months, I feel that I have begun to integrate some deeper understandings and insights that may be of value to others here, and so I signed up for an account. Some of the things which have drawn me here are still too painful for me to honestly express with written words, but I will try to give a general overview:
I really got into psychedelics about a year and a half ago after unknowingly moving into a house with some really psychedelic people. I had been moving towards the esoteric/philosophical side of life slowly and unconsciously through the english degree I was pursuing at University, and the rampant amounts of LSD and other compounds that were around really grabbed me. Before I knew what was even happening, I found myself taking moderately powerful recreational trips with a bunch of kids who had been doing the whole concert, trip, and play music thing for quite some time. At the time, I had quite an ego on me, built up through years of defensive living and narcissistic ideals. Needless to say, the new psychedelic experiences I was having seemed like a great time, and my ego jumped at the opportunity to propel itself even higher, and soon I found myself living in a delusional reality of self importance and false wisdom. This all came crashing down on me one night when I took a high dose of LSD combined with some san pedro with a large group of said people in the middle of the woods and overheard one of them stating their displeasure at my presence. I went and laid down in a ditch and proceeded to be dragged through some very dark and unpleasant sectors of my psyche, basically undergoing an 8 hour panic attack with no one to offer any words of support or love.
At the time, I had no intellectual understanding of what these drugs do to base any semblance of integration off of. I stored it in the back of my mind and basically ran away from the whole situation, going on a year long travel adventure to New Zealand, looking for something, anything to allieviate the newly discovered emptiness within my existence. I was successful in this to a certain extent, journeying with San Pedro on 4 occasions, and attending a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. However, after the whole trip was over, I came back to my hometown only to realize just how deep my psychological wounds really were. Despite my increased level of awareness and understanding, I still had not even begun to really take control of my ego, and this again came back to bite me.
Upon coming back, I found myself slipping into a fairly thorough depression, having to work and relate to people outside of my girlfriend. I felt no connection with the people around me, and it soon became clear that the feeling was mutual. At the end of that summer, I went on a backpacking trip with all of my long time best friends, and made the unwise decision to take mushrooms with them. Under normal circumstances, it would have been epic. However, I was completely unprepared for the absurd amount of anxiety lurking just under the surface...I spent the next 48 hours in a living hell, being torn apart by my own inherent thinking processes, and I even took off sprinting into the mountains by myself with nothing other than a bottle of pepper spray. You would think that I would have learned my lesson by now. Apparently not.
About a month after the mountain adventure, I made another unwise decision...I decided to drive down to Colorado to attend a rave-ish concert event taking place over a couple days at Red Rocks with a group of kids I had grown somewhat uncomfortable around. Pretty much same story again-Took a bunch of acid and had another very shocking and profound anxiety attack, and I spent the rest of the concert trying to fight the urge to kill myself, although I wasn't very successful.
After this, I was understandably shaken to the very core of my being. Through multiple "bad trips" I had managed to create within myself an easily diagnosable anxiety disorder which led into a hearty depression. I got myself into counseling and began the long long road of trying to analyze my irrational thinking processes into submission. I was in school at the time, and the perceived destruction of my entire social life seemed insurmountable. Then I really started listening to what these experiences had to say...
This all took place at the beginning of this year, and since that time, I have made some pretty significant progress towards releasing the past and fully stepping into my own being, which is what I was vaguely attempting to do when I first began the whole process a couple years ago. I have experienced pain and suffering which I would have not thought possible before psychedelics, and for a long time I allowed myself to be trapped in the false construct of self-pity and despair. Now, 6 months down the road from any significant traumas, I am finally starting to see joy, and it's true joy, a real happiness and appreciation for life that I can feel budding slowly within myself. It's been a long journey to get here, but I am moving closer to being able to live in the moment, and because of that, I would not take a single one of my experiences back.
Wow, I just gave a very rambling attempt at an introduction essay...Anyway, to sum it all up, psychedelics have opened my eyes to all the facets of life, the good and the bad, and I hope that I can give back to this community of open, loving people in some real and tangible way in the months and years to come. Thanks for reading all, much love.
Kaids