I've struggled with depression most of my adult life. I've taken nearly every anti-depressant available until they no longer worked for me. Then I tried transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a six week series of brain zaps five days a week. It worked! No more depression -- until the next major crisis. The other downside: rapid onset glaucoma, which may or may not have been stimulated by the TMS treatments. My last best hope (I thought) was psilocybin.
Oregon legalized psilocybin a few years back. I followed its adoption and legalization with interest since the medical community found it efficacious for treatment-resistant depression, major depressive disorder and substance use disorders. Several friends had tried it with positive results. Half a century ago, in my youth, I'd used it recreationally a few times with no ill effects. I contacted one of the newly established centers and signed up.
I met with the facilitator, an MSW, before our session, read, discussed and signed many forms. She said she would be there as a guide, a tether, assuring that I would not fall too far. Bodies know how to self-limit, she said. I wouldn't confront more than I could handle. That turned out to not be true for me.
On the morning of the session, I followed instructions and arrived on an empty stomach with pillows and blankets in arms. It was held in an old Portland house with large, high-ceilinged rooms and windows admitting the gray light of a rainy Portland day. In the room I chose, a mural of a rambling rose crawling along a white picket fence decorated one wall. Pillows, blankets, chairs, and couches invited rest. I brought a water bottle and snacks. Soft music played in the background.
I settled onto a couch, while my facilitator and another staff member mixed the powdered psilocybin mushroom with tea and honey. I took a few sips. Within 15 minutes, my world dissolved. But not into kaleidoscope skies or brilliant turquoise seas traversed by a yellow submarine. It dissolved into darkness. My facilitator encouraged me to move through it. I would gladly have done so, but it never wavered. The only vision I saw was of a hospital bed, which I desperately wanted to come for me. I wanted my spouse to return and take me away to safety. All was darkness, revealing only my greatest fears: of going blind and deaf and dying.
After four hours the material world reemerged. My facilitator comforted me, urging me to spend time in nature, to be gentle with myself. The scary part would pass. We would have two sessions to integrate the experience. My spouse arrived to return me to my ordinary world. She fed me. We binge watched BritComs. I was able to sleep.
That wasn't the end of it, unfortunately. I was left with the highest anxiety I'd ever experienced -- pretty much 24/7. My doctor prescribed medication but it was too much and just knocked me out. The next prescription did nothing. I contacted anxiety clinics. They were either too expensive and/or did not take my insurance. To manage the anxiety, I stayed busy, tried to divert myself, exercised.
I continued to search for resources and found Prism, an organization headquartered in Maryland that deals specifically with psychedelic experiences and integrating them. (www.prism-wellness.com) I spoke with the director, Erin Atkinson, who was compassionate and knowledgeable. I signed up for their first Thursday of the month free on-line facilitated peer support group. Unfortunately, I missed it because I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
After nearly two months of mostly unremitting anxiety, when I thought it couldn't get worse, it did. I started calling around for help and fortuitously connected with Unity Behavioral Health Center. They suggested I come in. There, I met with a psychiatrist and a social worker. The doctor wanted to try a beta blocker to lower my anxiety. Because it also lowers heart rate and mine is already low, he wanted to admit me to their residential clinic. Me? In a psychiatric hospital? I'd only ever visited them as an attorney. After some very deep breaths and no little hesitation, I agreed. I was desperate.
It took a Unity psychiatrist sixteen days to find a medication and dosage that calmed my anxiety, allowing me to return to my ordinary life (with all its demands and tech problems, but that's another story). Overall it was one of the best experiences I've had in years. The staff -- psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, volunteers -- were compassionate and highly skilled. Ninety-eight percent of residents were some of the kindest, most caring people I've met. The facility was exceptionally clean. Food was good and plentiful. Group therapy, as well as creative activities and games, were offered. Friends and family could visit twice daily. Also twice daily we were allowed outside into a small garden for fresh air and exercise.
The psychiatrist I met with daily, Dr. W., told me he'd had other patients with negative experiences from psilocybin. One of the therapists also shared that he'd had a bad trip on psychedelics, a trip that sounded a lot like mine. And it lasted months as well.
Dr. W. advised that psychedelics affect older bodies and brains differently than younger ones. We have decades more experiences, some traumatic, which we may not have completely processed. That was true for me. Friends and relatives have died. One year I lost nine friends. During my early professional career I worked with survivors of domestic and sexual violence, as well as prisoners. For a change of scene, I took a position in the former Yugoslavia collaborating with people traumatized by war. When war broke out again, this time in Kosovo, I coordinated a war crimes documentation project gathering testimony from refugees. I followed that for over three years by reporting on Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial, then spent more years writing a book about it.
On returning home, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and underwent several rounds of chemo and radiation treatment. I took in my grandnephew to keep him out of juvie jail, then again when he was released from prison at age 21. Only four years ago he was murdered, likely by one of the unsavory characters he met while locked up.
I've now been diagnosed with rapid onset glaucoma, cataracts, hearing loss, and two lung diseases. While my childhood was not trauma free, after more than a half century I've added enough tough experiences to turn my magical mystery tour into an unremitting nightmare.
I raise this as a warning for those contemplating use of magic mushrooms now that they're legal in Oregon. I continue to support legalization. But in the enthusiasm for what they can do (and the money they can generate), I believe the dark side gets short shrift. Potential trippers need to consider all possibilities, lest their anticipated yellow submarine lose its ballast and sink.