My semi-ignorant interpretation of this experience

So I've obviously reflected on this a lot over the last few years. I have relapsed since. Nowhere near to the degree that I was gone when I had these breakthroughs. But I relapsed for a variety of reasons and with effective support and self care I would probably still be free of drug addiction today.

I mentioned my then therapist was really into this stuff, so he was up on the literature and we spent a few sessions talking about what had happened. My addiction psychiatrist who was supposed to be managing my taper started to really get the shits with me and fired me, still leaving me in a very physically dangerous situation. Total piece of shit, she was. She was sick of me from the first time I mentioned that I struggle with nihilistic and existentialist philosophy, she straight up told me she doesn't like working with nihilists. What the fuck.

So my understanding is, during many psychedelic experiences (or perhaps all?) there is a great sort of weakening of the neural pathways that form the fundamental patterns of our thinking and our behaviours. I mean it weakens them enough that you might wake up and take 15 minutes to recognise that other conscious entities exist, that the soft hairless long one is like you and the little hairy one is fren. "Hu- man. Bean?" were the first non-gibberish words to my trip sitter after the most powerful of these experiences.

I believe that if you have a conscious desire for change, or are sufficiently sick of the behaviours or thought patterns that plague your consciousness, that these deeply hallucinogenic states have a tendency to cull that which is not useful or desirable. I think this is why I didn't wake up with an entirely different personality, you know? I have a strong ego, a fairly coherent sense of identity, these are things I value enough that the pathways regenerated during the tail of the trip and the days following.

But the dose-impulse behaviour, as a component of my addiction? That was ruining my fucking life, over and over, and I knew it, and I hated it. It withered and died during those trips. With ZERO effort from me. ZERO intention from me. Other aspects of addiction too, were weakened or deleted from my mind. Other trauma-learned behaviours and patterns of thinking were significantly weakened, I've found it much easier to learn to love and forgive myself, to do something like what the therapist would call re-parenting, but it's different in my particular mental framing.

Lasting efficacy

As I mentioned, I have relapsed since. My mental health has generally stayed pretty good, but I'm still not back to being extremely high functioning like I managed to be before my burnout. I'm getting there though.

While the drug class (dissociatives) has a low risk of addiction, I have seen friends become ketamine addicts, I have seen friends become DXM addicts. These drugs are often not good for you in the long run. When you self medicate you run the risk of learning a new destructive pattern - I can fix this with a line of ketamine, for example.

I do not crave or seek out these drugs actively and haven't used any since the bag ran out on these experiences.

With a better support framework in place (that therapist ended up being a dud and triggered a bit of a relapse in me with his own reckless words) or a well prepared routine for active self care - physical, diet and meditation type shit - I think it would be possible to land on one's feet after something like this and literally get the closest thing to a fresh start that life has to offer.

My understanding is, that even in a managed, therapeutic environment, following all the protocols and shit, the psychiatric support staff are only on hand to hit you with a big dose of diazepam if you freak out, and perhaps to help guide your thoughts in a productive direction as you drift off into the trip. Even in a therapeutic medical environment ($$$) those guys are just there as guard rails. They don't know how this stuff works much better than I do, it's your brain doing all the work.

Final thoughts

Should you fuck around and find out?

I don't know Corgi, you're a precious comrade. We love you here.

What I have described above I credit a lot to the nature of the drugs and especially that class of drug for it's particularly potent combination of ego-death-ifying psychedelic properties and ego-buffering dissociative properties. Personally, I think it's fairly safe.

But I also have to acknowledge, again, that I came to this drug with a lifetime of experience using and abusing every class of drug you can think of. I'm a polydrug addict almost by nature. I'd like to change that eventually, I think? But I'm not even sure. I don't place a value judgement on substance use, except that I don't want the people I love using and abusing certain drugs that cause serious physical and psychological harm.

Dissociatives do have their outlier horror stories, so I can't say it is free from the potential to cause psychological harm, and blacking out on anything by yourself is physically dangerous.

Tread cautiously if you choose this path.

But me?

I will fucken do it again.