memoir
Strange Trip
I was paralyzed by anxiety, indecision and panic attacks. Therapy didn’t work for me, so I turned to psychedelics and found more answers than I expected
“I’m in some kind of hole,” I told my therapist. I was trying to The shaman said she had personally synthesized the “medicine” work out what was happening to my mind. Months of traumas— I was about to take, a substance called N,N-dimethyltryptamine— family issues, the violent death of a friend, the implosion of my better known as DMT. She produced a glass pipe and explained relationship—had, like a slow poison, seeped into my life until that I was to take five hits. “On number three, you’ll tell me you’ve I felt paralyzed. I was trapped in a loop of discursive, self- had enough, and I’ll tell you to keep going,” she said. If you have critical thought. I’m a freelance journalist, but I found myself ever been close to blackout drunk and seen the world spin unconunable to take on new assignments and, inexplicably, unwilling trollably around you, then you know what the third hit of DMT to invoice for finished work. My therapist, after our third ses- is like. The shaman guided the pipe to my mouth for the fourth sion, eyed me with indifference and handed me 40 photocopied and then fifth hits, and suddenly I was laid out on my back. pages on cognitive behavioural therapy as he shuffled me out Everything turned black, as though I was watching a blank the door. I got the sense that approach was going nowhere. screen, except that there was no “me” watching. The blackness I had researched meditation, exercise, dietary changes and was just there, happening. I was vaguely aware of the “self,” other ways to prevent myself from slipping but only insofar as I knew that I was aware at further down the hole. But the most intriguing all. Then a pool of green, red and yellow fire method I had come across was psychedelic appeared, swirling around what looked to be drugs, which had, in recent studies, shown a medieval helmet. great efficacy in treating depression, anxiety This was taking place within the confines of and PTSD. My underwhelming experience my brain, yet it was completely involuntary—a with therapy had left me with the kind of decisive, overwhelming subjugation of the ego. hopelessness that breeds desire for radical I started to feel some sense of self again, in the solutions. I opened my laptop and googled form of two distinct emotions: I was in awe of “Toronto psychedelic drugs.” the fire and terrified of the helmet. I felt as though Six weeks later, on a Sunday in February, I I would fall into it and, frankly, that I was going As the DMT was lying on the floor of a woman’s apartment to die. The image shattered. The pieces re-emerged in the east end, wrapped in a Mexican blanket as a pattern of purple and black shields, then hit my lungs, and weeping uncontrollably. I had met the disappeared. Soon, I was aware of the shaman’s I passed out. woman a few hours earlier. She was a selfhand on my arm, and I realized that I had been Later, I realized described shaman, a spiritual healer who weeping. “Respira,” she whispered. Breathe. practises South American plant medicine. In She was fascinated by what I told her about the I’d been sobbing her pre-shamanic life, she suffered from a helmet and shields. Like all of our emotions, the entire time severe drug addiction, was homeless and hadn’t anxiety is a chemical effect in the brain, one that spoken to her family for a decade. Eventually, likely evolved over millennia because it served she made her way to South America, where she trained in the a purpose in our survival. It was a kind of armour, meant to shamanic arts, conducting ceremonies using a psychedelic tea protect us. But when the mind surrenders control, anxiety can called ayahuasca. become a cage. The helmet made some sense. The author Michael Pollan, in his recent book on psychedelics, Sitting under the fluorescence of the 501 streetcar on my way describes the concept of “ego dissolution,” which is an often- back home, I thought more about the helmet and how it had reported and now scientifically supported effect of potent psy- shattered before it could take me. Perhaps my anxieties could chedelics. Scientists at Imperial College London have observed shatter, too, if I could manage to observe them from the outside. that activity in the brain’s default mode network, the system These are realizations that don’t require DMT or shamans, of responsible for building a sense of self and reflecting on the self’s course. But the trip brought shape and clarity to what I had been nature, can drop dramatically during a psychedelic trip. On a feeling. I can’t say that the fear and the panic have vanished. day-to-day basis, the default mode network is vital to healthy Sometimes they wake me up early in the morning, or accompany neural function, acting as the brain’s central co-ordinator. But unexpected moments of disappointment or failure. But they it’s also a real son of a bitch—the devil on your shoulder, the author seem more brittle now, with obvious cracks through which I of hopelessness and self-blame. Conditions like anxiety and can see a world that is a little lighter. depression can be associated with a default mode network run amok and, according to proponents of psychedelic treatments, a Sulaiman Hakemy is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. Email submissions to memoir@torontolife.com little dissolution of the ego can be a good thing. 116 toronto life August 2018
photograph courtesy of sulaiman hakemy
by su l a i m a n h a k e m y
