It’s been three months since I have taken any LSD. The last trip was so profound that I thought it was time to have a break. My ego died and I was re-born. I experienced the narcissist a baby experiences, lost in a world of complete self-centredness where I was the centre of the universe and everything was perfect. I found peace and acceptance in Narcissist, but also knew I had to re-join the world and re-construct my ego.
Now I am almost finished step 6 and things are not so perfect. I expected this. It has happened to me many times before when I have done the steps. In step 6 I get to know my defects and they become heightened. Also with the grief of my son’s life changing so drastically (and my psychedelic psychotherapy) causing a complete ego death, this is like step 6 on steroids. I have basically initiated C-PTSD on myself. I experience emotional flashbacks of my childhood and can tie nearly all of my defects to the relationship I had with my mother between the ages of 4-7.
My father died when I was 4 and mum was 8 months pregnant. She was angry at him for dying and my sadness reflected that which she so desperately needed to deny just to get through. I was controlled instead of cared for, criticised for anything that wasn’t her ideal of perfect, and shamed for any hint of vulnerability. I have grown to be critical, demanding, and emotionally unavailable.
As a kid I thought she was pretty good. I have since learnt kids have to pedestalise their parents to survive. She was all I had. When I became a drug addict she did her best to help me. She was the respectable member of society and I was the fuck-up. I called her from Lismore when I was 21.
“Mum, I’m sick. The hospital won’t treat me and I don’t know what to do. My piss is black”
She came and got me and flew me home to Melbourne. I had renal failure and my kidneys had been shut down for days. They put me on dialysis, my kidneys started working, and I was back using by the end of the month.
The inner critic volume is at full blast and I hate everyone and everything because they are imperfect and week. Look how fat that slob is, that person can’t even drive the speed limit, if you had half a brain you would be dangerous. I’m a horrible person, I can’t possibly let people in to know who I am. I need to rid myself of this inner critic. I need to rid myself of my mother’s voice in my head. Time for another dance with Lucy down the rabbit hole.
My plan was to take the acid and cry and cry at what a terrible mum I had. I had been reading books about self-reparenting and in this trip wanted to say goodbye to her and develop my own loving female energy from my imagination that could mother me. I dropped 2 Ganeshas – about 250 μg. The come up was ok, but I felt like the tears were on the brink, so much pain, so much to cry. Am I still doing this? Haven’t I been here before? Aren’t I just running loops around the same pain? There’s more. So much grief. My mum the narcissist driving my brother to the other side of the world. It’s so sad. I felt so hopeless. I don’t know if I can even start again.
Toxic shame, I feel shame for being me. Walking along the boardwalk of Margete beach I felt that next level of the onion – the shame. The fear of realising I am my own person and then to have shame around that. I am naked – Adam and Eve. I look at the other people on the beach, families, extended families. I feel so inadequate. My kids not having a proper dad that takes them to school sports and gets involved. I am on my own. I watch the kids play. I like kids. I would like to have family and watch my grandkids grow up.
Feeling terrible guilt for getting high. The drugs distance me from other people. I can chose drugs or intimacy. I could go back to NA. I remember the fellowship. I remember the love. The warmth and protection. I could do that. Standing on the edge of the water, so beautiful. I look into the water. Time to find a new mother. Good bye old mother, driving me mad, trying to control me, trying to obliterate any personality or individuality I might have. I thought about how I had been with my kids. I am not the same. Sure, they are a little bored and would like some more people in their life when they are with me – because I isolate so much, but we agree together on what we are going to do, we negotiate, we take turns. I don’t just make them do what I want to do. I am doing it. I am reversing it.
I walk into the ocean. As I wade ankle deep I say goodbye. Goodbye to the mother that I loved so much and needed so much, but could never have. Goodbye the anger, resentment, and fight. I don’t want you anymore. I want a new concept of femininity. I want a new feminine energy that I can love and trust. A woman that loves me for exactly who I am with no desire to change or control me. Mama ocean. The Rock’s mum from the fast and furious movie I saw last week flashes in my mind. Old fat islander with unconditional love. I’m standing in the water like Moana. The water swells around me. I start to feel the female energy in the water. I feel the old feminine energy leave me. The controlling conditional love, the entrapment I fought and pushed everyone else away to avoid a threat that was no longer there. If I let you close to me I am scared I will lose what little identity I have.
The water morphed into an older Polynesian woman. It was not a visual hallucination, but I could feel this large Polynesian woman (complete opposite to mum) that was half ocean and half women come to me. The water’s sparkling blues and reflecting the setting sun’s pinks and oranges, raised towards me as her love hit me and I burst into tears. I felt a wave of love pour over me. It felt so much it hurt. I waded further out into cool sparkling water and let her love flow over me. I listened to my music in my headphones and vaped my weed. Her love flow through me like I had never experienced before. This is the first experience of love a baby has when they recognise they are a different entity to their mother. This is the developmental stage after narcissist. I had a new mum. I came, I searched, and I found.
After 10 minutes I walked out of the water and back to where my shoes were on the beach. People were looking at me, my face wet with tears. Did they know what just happened to me? I didn’t really feel any different, in fact I wanted to vape more weed. I sat by the water and puffed on my vape. That one experience introduced me to the mother, but I had to build a relationship with her. I admonish myself for being so high. I have work tomorrow, you are moving warehouses, that’s the inner critic again, you’re a dickhead. And there it is again. I need the mama, the mama with mana. I pray to my new mum and she gives me love, but I realise I need more. I need it from real people not just my imagination. I then realised I would go back to NA just to have people in my life. I still may have to do that, but not yet.
The following afternoon I am lying in the bedroom in my warehouse after work nicely stoned and relaxed, hiding from the outside world, and recovering from the previous day’s journey. I hear a car horn tooting at the front gate and someone yelling my name. Damn, I left the warehouse roller door up so they think I’m here. I peer around the corner of my office. It’s Lisa; an older, homely, Polynesian woman I know from AA (The only Polynesian woman I know.) Fuck, if I just wait her out, she’ll go away. I’m a bit embarrassed that I’m stoned in front of an AA member and I just want to be on my own. A minute goes past and she’s still tooting and yelling my name. Fuck, this is embarrassing, what will the neighbours think, I have to go out there. I go out and talk to her for 5 minutes about nothing in particular and then lie and say I have someone waiting for me inside and lock her back outside the gate as I go back inside to be with myself.
The next day it dawns on my the synchronicity and I realise she heard the call from the ocean, came to me and I rejected her. I met up with her and told her the story. She said she was drawn to me that day and just had to visit even though she know she would be annoying me, we had a big hug and I felt love. Not just from her, but from myself and the universe.
Red Pill Recovery 