After the trip, I felt like a different person. I experienced total relief from the stuck feeling, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and had a feeling of inner worth and peace that went to my core. The difference was immediately noticeable to the others in the group.
As the rest of the retreat went on, and we had opportunities to share our experiences with one another and continue to practice meditation, mindfulness, and other activities to help us remain present. I found that I could sit still without restlessness. I could meditate with a clear head. I could fearlessly make eye contact when I chose to. This is a big one for me – I used to fear that if I allowed someone access to that window into my soul, they would see something ugly or unloveable.
In the information we received ahead of time, we’d been asked to bring something – art or music – that we could share with the group.
There was some muted conversation at the shop where our group met up as the women tentatively felt each other out. We met our retreat facilitators (two were there to meet us, two more were already at the retreat getting ready for our arrival), who told us the plan for catching our taxi back at Centraal Station’s kiss and ride (love that name).
Our facilitators already had a relationship with the shop. We individually went up and told the woman at the counter we were with the group, she gave us the right type and amount of mushrooms, and we bought our truffles.
I had been so focused on getting to Amsterdam, on getting to that shop on the right day at the right time, that I’d spent little time studying the retreat schedule beyond our meet-up. This ended up being a gift – it kept me in the present and didn’t allow me to worry too much about what would happen next.
The next phase of my trip was going to be a psychedelic trip, packaged in a retreat setting surrounded by practices and activities designed to help each of us get the most out of the experience.
When I first heard Michael Pollan’s interview on Fresh Air, then read his book, I knew I was onto something. I would read articles on Medium about microdosing LSD and wonder if I had the balls to ask friends to ask friends until I found someone I knew that knew how to get some. But we live in Trump’s America, and my husband is a legal resident, not a U.S. citizen. Doing something illegal and putting my family at risk wouldn’t be worth it.
During this time, the Chaplain and I were deep in talks about if, how, and when I should pursue trying psychedelics for personal development, spiritual breakthrough, and relief from depression and anxiety. We started with a fuzzy goal of wanting to make it happen by around my 40th birthday.
I wiki’d where it was legal to use psilocybin, a substance that has shown real promise for treating depression and anxiety. I came up with two places that seemed like they might work. I started with Jamaica. I was specifically looking for a guided retreat. I wanted it to be a safe, purposeful experience, and I wanted to get as much bang for my buck as I could. The retreats offered in Jamaica sounded amazing – a week long, with three different psilocybin experiences during the week with a day in between each one. The cost was about two grand, not including airfare. But cost aside, I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to leave my family for that long. Or if I even needed to do it three times.
Given the specs of the Jamaica retreat, I knew it would require waiting and saving, which I was OK with. But I was feeling very stuck. So now that I had an idea about the legality of it, I just searched, “guided psilocybin retreats” and up popped the Netherlands. Instead of saying, “Yes! It’s legal!,” the Netherlands chooses a more subtle approach of allowing it without condoning it. The retreats in the Netherlands were significantly shorter (a weekend) and significantly cheaper (even with airfare). Also, an important factor for me – they offered women’s-only retreats.
When I first came across the term “gateway book,” it gave me great hope. My firstborn is not a reader. According to him, he doesn’t enjoy reading even a little. He does the bare minimum required of him for school. And I keep hoping that someday, a gateway book will break through to him and help him love reading.
As I mentioned last week, after reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson, on the recommendation of my friend, Janeen, I realized even people who love to read can find gateway books into new subjects or genres.
Since I’ve been writing about the books I’m reading, I’ve noticed a pattern where often, I start a book and am slow to engage with it. It has happened enough times in the past few months that I’m starting to think it’s a reflection of me and not the books.
Furiously Happy was no exception. I started reading, and at first, a lot of the humor fell flat. I kept thinking, “Why is she cursing at me? I don’t even know her!” But as I got to know Lawson through the book, the laughs came more easily, and my respect for her grew.
“So, depression and anxiety are like two sides of the same coin?” The Chaplain asked.
We were standing in the kitchen one morning. I’d just walked in the door after a night shift. It had been a busy night, partly because I had floated to another floor. I didn’t know where anything was (including my patients’ rooms), and had more patients in my assignment than we have on my own floor. I didn’t have the entry code for the supply room. It was like a field trip where all the doors were locked and there wasn’t a map. I didn’t mind it.
As usual, though, I was exhausted, and hadn’t had time for a real break. Instead, it had been five minutes here, five minutes there. On one of those five minute breaks, I’d come across a research article entitled “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014. Sometimes journal articles bogs me down, but overall, I’m a fan of reading about research studies. (If you didn’t already know I was a nerd, there you are.)
