Psychedelic Recovery

I started therapy recently which has been nice. It’s interesting, I never used to have trouble talking to a therapist, but recently, as adult life has unfolded, I’ve developed fears around therapy. I realize that telling your traumas to someone can create an opportunity for their own negativity to infiltrate your life. That in some sense, therapy requires you to remove protective barriers that are in place for your own safety and well being. It requires you to be vulnerable in a way that can also be unsettling.

I did a ton of psychedelics over the summer and for the first few months after the trip, my brain felt like I had run 1000 lines of floss through it. It felt mushy and confused and I had mornings where I woke up with extreme light sensitivity. For whatever reason, occasionally smoking weed seems to have slowly put my brain back together. The light sensitivity is fading into the background and a healthier cognitive framework is starting to fall into place.

I keep trying to reconnect with myself. Today on the train I realized that I was getting there. It’s so weird to have dealt with so much trauma in my life. I’m so used to my nervous system getting annihilated that I keep a set of tools on hand that can reassemble my life, piece by piece. It’s kind of satisfying, like watching yourself die and then come back to life. A movie scene, where the protagonist’s bloodied body wanders through a hospital, secretly reaching for medical supplies, suturing himself back together.

I’m only 3 sessions into therapy but I’m starting to feel a little lighter. Today we discussed a situation I’m dealing with. I ran through it with my therapist and she seemed puzzled “I don’t see what is happening here that is causing you so much concern…are you being triggered by something from your past?” She gazed at me from the iPhone screen “I can tell you’re anxious…” My skin was crawling off my body and I started crying “I just felt the energy shift…there was an energy shift…”

My life keeps spinning out and I was scanning for threats. I’ve been trying to get my life back on track, for it to fall into predictable patterns. I finally made headway and want to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Saturday I had breakfast with a friend. Later that afternoon I curled up in a blue chair in my room for a FaceTime call with Moxie and Alex, who are currently in Budapest. I listened to them talk about their soft lives there. I miss their energy and the calm I used to feel in Alex’s New York apartment. Moxie, a prolific cook, started needling me “You’ll have to show me how you cook when you come to Budapest, I want to see what you do.” My cooking skills are unremarkable, but it’s nice to be called into the more saccharine sides of life.