So the planned day had come and my blotters had not arrived in the post. I thought this a possibility and wondered how I would react to the disappointment; would it spark my addiction? Had the disease been ignited by the idea of taking a substance recreationally for the first time in 17 years? In my early twenties I had periods of abstinence and during these times when I had decided to take a drug all bets were off, if I couldn’t get the drug I planned on taking I would be intoxicated by something else very shortly. The addiction was like an itch that just wouldn’t go away, once that decision to take a drug was made it would turn into an overwhelming obsession and compulsion until satisfied. I didn’t have the self control to plan to be clean and healthy for the next fortnight and then go to a party and partake in some chemical fun. If I let those thoughts in I would obsess about the getting and using of those drugs and be drinking alcohol, smoking pot or using heroin within the next 24 hours.
At 42 I felt different. I felt if I didn’t get the blotters in the mail, I would be disappointed but no more than the cricket being cancelled due to rain, maybe even less, I also thought it would be a good opportunity to research more of psychedelic literature I had and continue writing, but there was the risk, if they weren’t there could they trigger me to inebriate myself with something else, and if they were there when I arrived on Saturday night, would I be able to stop myself from taking them until the following morning? And how would I feel waking in the morning and trying to do my meditation and morning routine patiently and peacefully knowing I was about to indulge in a trip. This last part still remains to be seen.
My psychedelic use as a teen was for no other reason other than fun and escape. I loved the effects of alcohol and marijuana, and LSD was just an extension of that recreation. I also believed the myths of LSD that there was strychnine and other poisons in the blotters and that I was damaging my brain. I believed if I had too much I might go insane and never return and may have flashbacks and destroy my future. The lack of love for myself and the inconsequential teenage thinking allowed me to pursue this activity many weekends in my years of high school. While I still believed it was bad for me, by the time I had taken twenty or thirty trips I figured it couldn’t be as bad as I originally thought, since I was still able to function and get good marks at school.
By the time I left school my addiction was in full force and I just wanted to party all the time. I found a good connection of LSD and ended up taking over 100 trips in three months. It was reckless abandon and I believed I had a party in me that I needed to get over. I believed if I partied hard enough I would be over it and become a regular person and focus on a career. At times when placing another tiny square of paper on my tongue I would question, Is this really the best thing to do with powerful mind changing psychedelics? The way I was using these was as a replacement to amphetamine or cocaine, just a way to say awake all night, drink and party.
I went to my first re-hab when I was 19 ½ and learnt about the disease of alcoholism which seemed to parallel to addiction. I learnt about the total abstinence model of recovery and spent most of the next 2 years clean, one sobriety stint lasting un-broken over a year where I did lots of AA and NA meetings. I got to know myself in this period of recovery and basically grew up. I noticed the effects of all the LSD I had taken when I was 18 made colours brighter for at least a year, maybe forever, but I also noticed other changes. I had never been very good at English or arts subjects at school and always leaned to maths and science. I just figured that was how my brain was, but since the LSD I had noticed both an improved ability and interest in the written word. At the time I believed I had changed my brain chemistry and was please to find out that my maths and reasoning skills were not noticeably affected. I considered a career as a writer, but my interest in business seemed more practical so that is what I pursued.
Now I look back and I think that there might have been other changes. I often wondered why I was the only one out of my group of druggy friends that got clean, most died, and how did I get clean so young, could I have accidentally medicated myself with all that LSD that enabled me to get clean a few years later? This is something I will never know, but maybe in a couple years after returning to psychedelics again I will have a better understanding. Or maybe I will be a destitute heroin addict again, having taken my recovery for granted trying to experiment with LSD in my forties. This last time I was clean for any significant period, when I was 21, I relapsed on heroin only a couple months after trying DMT.
At the age of 21 after having celebrated one year clean in NA I started to hear about DMT. It was explained to me as not even really being a drug and the chemical that animals release in their brains at death. I missed my psychedelics and thought this sounded interesting, maybe I could try that. Then one night I was at a friends house who was not in recovery and he had some DMT there they would be smoking to celebrate the Mayan New Year that just happen to fall on the night I had randomly visited. OK, that’s enough coincidences, I’ll give it a try. They wanted me to smoke it with Marijuana, but I refused. I remembered strong dependence on weed, I was still in recovery, this was a spiritual path, and wasn’t going back to smoking weed. We had to find something to mix it with in the bong so decided on ripping open a tea bag. He packed my pipe and I took my first hit of a bong for a long time and then went further into the psychedelic world than I had ever been. But it was neither an awakening nor even very memorable experience. I remember seeing fractals of light in the trees, but then would get stuck in endless loops of thought where I would be confused and wonder what the fuck was happening, then remember I was on a drug, then get confused wondering what was happening, remember I was on a drug, and repeat this same loop for twenty minutes. There was very little fear, but also very little joy, the best part of the trip was when I was coming out of it and fully lucid that I was on a drug and enjoying the visuals. There was nothing spiritual or profound I felt. I tried another hit about an hour later, my friend upping the dosage to help me push through, but this just made the thought repetition more intense. What’s going on, oh yes, I’m on a drug, what’s going on, oh yes, I’m on a drug. I declined the third hit and just hung out and enjoyed the evening with them. It was a bit of fun and nothing more.
The next day I felt like drinking and taking drugs, but avoided it and then each month for the next few months I had the same obsession, until one month I had just broken up with my girlfriend and druggy friends came to visit – game on. I was pissed and stoned very soon and didn’t get clean for another 3 years. My past doesn’t give me great hope that this time will be any different. Why do I think I can handle psychedelics now?
Red Pill Recovery 