‘I am fortunate enough to be the most well-adjusted version of myself that I am today because of these experiences, and I wouldn’t be here without them.’
Introduction
My relationship with illicit substances has been a long, winding path of exploring the different ways in which the mind can be inflicted and pushed to go to new places, new situations, new ways of seeing life.
I have always believed that life is meant to be lived. Thus a traditional 9-5 job, and all the usual stabilising materialistic milestones that go with it, such as a home, career, and holidaying to a different place for 1 or 2 out of the few weeks of annual leave one gets out of that sort of life has never fully appealed to me. The vast majority of your waking life based around a job – at the start, preparing for and commuting, at the end winding down and preparing for the next day, finishing the week with catching up on all of the mundane things you didn’t have time to do while at the job and only barely keeping up with family and friends who are all doing the same thing in different places – that’s never seemed like a life worth living to me.
But being able to facilitate that lifestyle for the purposes of exploring far more interesting places, not uncommonly from the comfort of my own home? Now that’s interesting. In the same way some people just love to get engrossed and all-consumed in the world of their favourite TV show, I began to love getting immersed in what could be found in extensions of our universe through psychedelic and psychoactive substances.
That’s not to say I was all-consumed. No matter what, we all have no choice but to accept the fact that every day we are still alive on this planet and the physical, social and financial responsibilities that come with this. This is where some people get it wrong, and where people become addicted to the feeling, or ‘escape’, that one substance or another brings. Their actual life is lacking in something, an empty cup they try and fill again and again; alas, they do nothing but exacerbate the emptiness when they finally have to wake up to a sober reality, and so the cycle continues.
Being born into a family that deeply engrained the value of societal responsibility within me, I have always been what would be considered a ‘functional’ substance user: a person who, despite how much or what they take, always makes sure they are fed, have a roof over their head, go to their job, sleep, etc. Unfortunately, quite a few people are not raised with this mentality, and the substance and the substance’s ‘alternate reality’ takes over.
We hear about these individuals all the time. No doubt it is to perpetuate the clear-cut, black-and-white media and government narrative that has been pushed since the dawn of time: ‘drugs are bad’ (except, of course, when the Science™ approves it). Another narrative is created from this in parallel: ‘drugs are inherently addictive’. You rarely hear the perspective of someone who simply maintains their substance use without it impeding on their life, and this is why I’m here.
A history
Without getting into extreme detail, the first substance I began taking regularly was alcohol – yes, it is a substance, the most legal and arguably the most dangerous. I first tried alcohol when I was 13/14 and began drinking secretly after school and at the weekends, then at 16 joined raucous sixth-form house parties with the stuff. I would eat a very light dinner or even skip it altogether to get drunk quicker, mixing six types of alcohol into one and not stopping until I would throw up and black out on my back at the top of the stairs at some friend of a friend’s house. It has always remained my most addictive substance – I have never felt the need to drink before school or work, but it’s like rolling the dice most times I drink nowadays – might stop at one or two, but there’s a big chance that if I just ‘go with the vibe’, I might end up drinking ten and all of a sudden I’ve shouted at someone, broken down, or fallen over into a helpless heap. That’s when the shit starts to hit the fan.
Then at 18, I entered a four and a half year long relationship with someone who introduced me to the wonderful world of psychedelics. I also began to smoke cannabis with them, and where I could, would smoke every weekend or every other weekend by myself. At that point in my life, I learned to overcome the initial anxiety following smoking an ‘illegal’ substance, and soon loved it. It relaxed me, helped me to sleep, and focused my mind only on the positives. It slowed my mind down considerably, enhancing my ability to just enjoy life for the sake of being alive, and allowed me to be present with my own self – something I found extremely difficult, which before this time, had been temporarily remedied by the beginning point of my drinking episodes.
Formative experiences with LSD
On my 19th birthday, in my purple-covered first year university student digs, I had my first ever LSD trip with this person, my then-partner. I won’t explain what the drug does here, as you can easily search it online if you’re interested. When a person takes LSD and they are in a secure setting surrounded by people they trust, it can be a truly wonderful, life-changing experience. My life changed forever from that day as I began to see and experience things I had never seen before in my life. I understood intrinsically that there was a whole world out there to access beyond the physical one we live in, and sowed the seeds of my spiritual awakening. A few days later, I believe we took LSD again, but this time when peaking from the effects we decided to go down to the beach, about a ten minute walk from my place. Here, sat down on a log by the sea, we decided to smoke a joint together. This is where everything changed.
As our visuals were fully jangling, we saw the formation of a police car and police officers over on the path by the beach huts. At the exact same time, we both got up in a flash. I know this sounds mad, but in this moment we were not saying a word to each other – we were communicating entirely through our private thoughts. How could it be that both of us, at the exact same time, out of the blue started hallucinating police activity in exactly the same place? I realised that our only option was to head back to safety – back home. Adrenaline pumping, we walked back along the beach in the pitch dark, riddled with terror that the ‘police were going to catch us’ (even though we didn’t actually have anything on us that they could realistically do anything about). We started upon the long concrete slope up to the top of the road and walked for what seemed like an absolute eternity – something I later came to understand as a psychedelic loop. I kept looking back on the path behind us, and for the longest time it felt like we were walking on the spot, never getting any higher. In this moment, I felt an enormous burden of responsibility as I reassured my partner that we were going to get home, I was going to take care of them and protect both of us. I was going to make sure we were OK no matter what. I had never felt this level of unwavering confidence in myself in my entire life.
When we finally reached the top, we looked back and realised the police had ‘gone’. We were momentarily eased of our anxieties, but still had to walk that ten minutes back home in the early hours, triggered by shadows and the odd person on the other side of the street minding their business. We got home, and until sunrise lay in bed as we resisted falling into the black void of anxiety, each of us with our eyes closed spiralling and then being jolted up and awake. After the trip was over, we discovered that we hadn’t done our ‘research’ properly: it’s common knowledge among trippers that if you smoke cannabis at the peak, it can induce severe anxiety.
Most people would read that story of mine and go ‘well that teaches you not to do acid!’. But that’s incorrect and frankly ignorant. For psychedelic trips are not to be taken lightly, yes, but this single, out of the blue experience taught me three things:
- 1. The aspect of the trip where we were both walking up the slope for what seemed like an eternity made us both realise that we were quite unfit individuals. The way it felt signalled to us that we needed to start looking after our health.
- 2. I was certain that there was a world beyond the physical. We had just both hallucinated the same thing at the same time and communicated to each other exactly the same response to the situation without saying a single word. What the fuck?
- 3. I actually had the capability inside me to take control of bad situations and make them better and truly, out of the goodness of my heart, cared enough about someone to take charge and become a leader – something I had never done before in my life.
After this ‘bad’ trip, about five days later in fact, I decided that I needed to look after myself better and lose some weight. Mind you I had never been a ‘normal weight’: I was a chubby child who developed into a chubby teenager, and dealt with my mental health issues by consuming copious amounts of food and alcohol. After a year and a half, I completely changed my eating habits, healed my food addiction, began exercising regularly, and lost 65 lbs. Years on, I haven’t regained the weight and I am now free from the emotional eating habits that had absolutely dominated my life.
During this relationship, I also dabbled in MDMA, cocaine and ketamine. All experiences were very moderate and ‘health-conscious’ in the context of me freshly having moved away from my family. Even with cocaine, I was responsible enough to literally put it away when I was done with it, and only take it out on the odd occasion.
COVID came, and I smoked a fair bit of weed, but I moved into a life period dominated by responsibility, which clashed with the effects it personally gave me, so I stopped. After some time, I resumed smoking once a week or so as a break from all the drinking I was doing to cope with some very extreme grief in my life – my partner passed away, after all, and weed just wasn’t the one. It would centre my thoughts on my present, awful reality, and it was simple as that.
Present day
About two years later I moved to a new part of London and began a fresh life for myself. Pretty instantaneously I connected with my now husband, who has been a long-term cannabis smoker, and one of the first things we did was go and buy some to smoke together (lol). In my heart I wanted someone who understood this part of me – someone adventurous, a little bit of a risk-taker, and ultimately someone open-minded. Even if they hadn’t tried much, I could potentially introduce them to this world that I appreciated and understood so much. I had dated guys who were not interested in drugs in the slightest and found myself just… not relating. They were too serious, or too see-through, or frankly, too scared.
In the beginnings of our relationship, I introduced him to ketamine, and it was love at first sight as he recalled drifting into the alternate reality of being a train driver and driving a train all over the room (lol).
We went to our first club a few months after and we took ecstasy together. It was a spontaneous decision – I didn’t have time to eat before getting there, so I took it on an empty stomach, and I spent a bit of time sat on the floor at the back of the club as my energy had crashed, but he loved his experience and had no issues.
We since have taken ecstasy several times, go to many underground raves and parties together and have our own experiences alone or with friends. It has brought us incredibly close with a deep layer of mutual understanding that causes us to stick to each other like glue. We never leave each other’s side during these experiences as we both understand the necessity of experiencing these things together and having us next to each other gives us significant mental peace. We understand each other’s limits and ultimately look out for each other – we always put each other first, even if it means leaving early to get home and have some interesting ‘personal’ time😊
One of our most memorable experiences in our relationship thus far is when we decided to spontaneously do acid together in the middle of a mid-summer forest rave. Alas, I had not done acid since my aforementioned experiences, so I was a bit nervous, but my higher self analysed the situation and concluded that though we didn’t know anyone, we were around people who would understand nonetheless, and so under my careful authority we went for it. It was my husband’s first time, and he became completely at one with nature, particularly focussing on continuously feeding a bonfire with firewood, keeping it alive. I watched from the other side as the men around him did fuck all but watch him keep the fire alive, the magic source of our light and heat through the cool, dim forest. My faint ego felt a sharp ping of satisfaction as the ancient hunter-gatherer part of me awakened; I remember being certain in that moment that I had chosen the right person to take care of me. I had chosen the survivor, the winner, the risk-taker – he really fucking obsessed over that fire, man. Looking back, it was hilarious, and I’m thankful to my past self that I could use my phone and take photos to remember the experience.
Our most recent and significant experience was when we took mushrooms together, both for the first time. I had heard mushrooms were like acid’s gentler cousin, and we had been interested in doing it for a while, but were waiting for the right time. This is incredibly important with taking substances: patience is a virtue. Doing anything too often – be that cannabis, cocaine or even ecstasy – removes its ‘magic’ very easily. There is no point in doing something just because you’re bored or, like a lot of people, want to escape. You have to be genuinely interested in the lessons that the trip brings you, and you have to be fully present to reap all of the benefits. That means focussing your attention purposefully – on the people you’re with, the recreational media you’ve chosen to watch or listen to, and to be on your damn phone as little as possible. (Taking pictures/videos if you remember how to use your phone can be awesome though.)
We drank the mushroom lemon tea, and my husband’s first thought was to have some fun ‘personal’ time – okay, there’s room for being frank here, he was horny as fuck. Fulfilling this need was rather difficult, as we were at a friend’s house in a completely different part of the country and we didn’t even have our own room to ourselves. This is when I said to him along these lines: ‘you are only focussing on just one part of your mind, when there’s all this other stuff that’s happening to experience that you’re not even focussing on’. Hearing this, he immediately understood, stopped, and went to sit on the sofa for a good hour or two, getting immersed in the music that had been playing this whole time.
In my adulterated state one of my favourite things to do is listen to a variety of music depending on my mood, or just solely focus on the music that is playing at a rave and dance, jump, feel completely un-self-conscious. My husband meanwhile gets the urge to do the dirty very easily and I go to fulfil his desire often, but unfortunately that means I can’t listen to the music – and trust me, this gets me frustrated, particularly after the event. Oh, what problems to have!
But from this moment on, as he told me, his entire mindset changed. He listened to me, and after heeding my words, realised that if he allowed himself to get lost in the music, it was a completely life-changing and extraordinary experience – experiencing is what it’s all about. His mental blocks are of course different than mine – and turns out, he needed a different kind of experience to overcome those blocks. In this moment, he had a different experience to the one he thought he wanted, a frustrating experience until I suggested an alternative. As a result, he learnt something completely new about himself that he now remembers and will bring into the rest of our shared experiences: to really learn how to get lost in the moment itself.
Conclusion
I may dabble in this subject in more detail as time goes on. To be honest, I love talking about this subject, particularly to people who are resistant to the ‘drugs-are-bad’ narrative, as I have plenty of personal experience to suggest otherwise.
However, it’s hard to find people that understand the specific perspective I come from with this. Even at clubs and raves, you come across many, many individuals that are just looking for a sure-fire way of numbing or escaping their reality, or can’t control themselves under their drug of choice, so you have to be careful, especially when doing this in unpredictable circumstances. I would recommend to anyone wishing to explore this part of life for the first time that they begin doing it with people they trust under familiar settings to solidify a threshold of trust. If you have unsolved mental problems or traumatic memories that dominate your life – be very, very careful. Remember that you can always take more to heighten the experience, but it’s very hard to do the opposite. Wear comfortable clothes, eat a full meal beforehand, stay hydrated – but not too hydrated, set a timer for every hour if you must – and most importantly… relax. If you’re having a bad trip – which although scary can be the most important thing you can have in your life in that moment to turn things around – the people around you should have the capacity to reassure you and help you, not make it worse. Only do these things alone if you are confident in your capacity to self-soothe and take care of yourself.
I am fortunate enough to be the most well-adjusted version of myself that I am today because of these experiences, and I wouldn’t be here without them. Thus, if you have read this far and learnt something new because of what I have shared here today, I am grateful. I believe my ultimate purpose on this earth is to help people, and that I have been given these experiences by the opportunities provided by the universe to do just that.
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Have a great rest of your day, wherever you are, and I wish you peace, love, joy, and mutual understanding.
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