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Mushrooms Freed Me From The Hell of Self-Consciousness
Cindy and I returned from our psilocybin-assisted retreat in Jamaica a couple of weeks ago, and, supported by our ongoing group chat and our first group integration video call yesterday, the changes have coalesced enough that I can begin to describe them. One major theme is related to a clarification of the boundary between myself and others.
There has been a softening of what a friend has called “the hell of self-consciousness.” I have a habit of being worried about how other people are perceiving me, often finding myself revisiting conversations in my mind after they have concluded, second guessing my responses, and questioning if I behaved in an optimal way, in a sufficiently kind, generous, or curious way. I have a habit of not trusting that I did the best I could in the moment and letting that effortlessly pass into history.
During all three of my psilocybin dosing sessions, this doubting of myself, this questioning of my own reality, showed up as a form of paranoia, a psychedelically-amplified experience of a usually sub-clinical process. The cost of these chronically-tolerated, old mental patterns were laid bare by being taken to their logical conclusion, to the extreme of almost complete delusion. But even in that confused and troubled state, some part of me seemed to be quietly witnessing. After coming back and…
