The first time I took a psychedelic I was seventeen and I split an eighth of psilocybin mushrooms with two friends in Ocean City. We were accompanied by two other friends, trip sitters who remained sober(ish) and held a safe(ish) space for whatever experience we were going to have. The mushrooms were nasty, as gross as you would expect, so we made psilocybin sandwiches with salty tortilla chips to cut the fungi taste of rot and dirt. It was quite clear that we were in pursuit of a recreational experience, and my friends may have had one.
However, my experience was purely therapeutic. My body; this fleshy meat sack that dictates my presence in this world, my hatred and disgust for it, my fervent desire to kill it off—My mind; a spiraling force of destructive willpower, a weapon of self-flagellation and defeat—We had been hoodwinked, a universal con. I sunk down into wet pliable sand, felt it seep through my fingers and toes, and I began to sculpt a little girl from the crumbling Earth. She was so worn down and misshapen that I didn’t recognize her then, but I promised that I would protect her.
The following months marked a drastic change in me, but not all at once— part of me was dying off and the overwhelming instinct is to resist death, not embrace it. I fought like hell; my mind spiraling, splintering into shards so sharp they cut through my tangible reality like butter; Atlas on the verge of collapse, vulnerable and exposed. It took years for me to realize I wasn’t Atlas and these things I kept on my shoulders weren’t meant to be held- I could put them down, plant them like seeds in the Earth to feed new life in their death and walk away hand-in-hand with a little girl made from salt water and sand.