Back in September 2017, right after my second psychedelic trip, was when I had one of my epiphanies that changed how I viewed life and myself. A big group of us had gone to an art and music festival in central Texas. That night that I tripped, a couple of friends/acquaintances and I had stayed up all night. On my come down we shared stories, beer, and snacks. We stayed up late into the night and probably kept awake those friends who didn’t partake in any of the many stimulants we had that night. Sorry friends! Finally, we went to sleep around 5 in the morning, but I woke up a couple of hours later because the sun was beating down on my tent. I was very tired and something in the air was making my nose miserable. I went to sit in a camping chair under the canopy that had been set up the day before. I opened a beer. And I sat there dozing in and out of waking consciousness. This is where I started thinking about life and pondering why my reality felt completely different after a psychedelic trip.

At first, my thought process went to the fucking shit in the air that was making my nose run and made my eyes watery. One of my friends (I didn’t really know her at the time) sat down to paint/draw in front of me. As I sat in my chair, I started to watch her draw. I probably watched her for a good 10 minutes, concentrating on the canvas in front of her. Almost like woman, medium, brush, and canvas were all one. Like she was fully immersed in that particular experience of painting. Anyone that knows her, knows that she loves doing art and that she is very skilled in what she does. You can tell that she has spent hours perfecting her craft. I eventually got lost in my own thoughts and started thinking about all the things that I do. I came to the sad conclusion that I don’t enjoy doing anything in this world as much as this human being in front of me enjoys doing art. I felt kinda sad at that moment. There’s just no skill that I find worthy enough of actually dedicating my time towards. Or I guess the pessimistic part of me just doesn’t comprehend spending so much time perfecting a skill. Or the part of me that just wonders about all the different things there are to experience and picking just one sounds kinda boring. 

I don’t know how to describe it but I tend to get bored of things rather quickly. Or I guess I should say that I just don’t find the need to master or perfect a craft. I would like to say that I feel like there are a lot of things out there to experience and I want to learn them all. But really I just hate plateauing and really hate working on something without seeing any noticeable improvement. Almost like what’s the point of trying if I know I am not going to be the best at something? I rather save myself the trouble and time commitment and I guess, my ego and embarrassment, if I fail. I don’t like that I am this way.

Now that I know that I have ADHD, this feeling I explained above is definitely from me seeking novelty and quickly losing interest in things that I really enjoyed a month ago. Certain video games have been the only hobby that has kept my interest for longer than a few months. I do hate how I have become a jack of all trades, but master of none. I know a lot of information about many different topics, but not past the surface level just because I am always seeking the next thing that will give me that jolt of dopamine.

As the day went on back under the canopy more and more ladies started joining her in the middle of the circle of chairs. I sat there still being attacked by whatever was in the air and tired from hardly sleeping but still feeling content with life from last night’s psychedelic trip. This feeling of being content with life is not a feeling that I am familiar with. While turning my attention to the many different conversations happening around me, I started thinking of the unique lives all these people were living. There were about 20 or so people there and I hardly knew anyone at all besides my close friends and their significant others. I thought about the lives they had back home, about the childhoods they had, about the music they liked, the hobbies they enjoyed, and how we all ended up together that weekend. I also started thinking about how much drugs they did and their favorite ones. Then, I really started thinking about if psychedelics made them feel the way it made ME feel. I just couldn’t get over the fact of how great I felt at that specific moment. It was about 12 hours since I had just dropped a tab of acid. I had a couple of hours of sleep in me. And I just felt good. Not high, but like everything was right with the world. Like a warm 1990s summer night after riding bikes and getting lost in the fields across from your house. My mind also felt quick and like it was absorbing everything around me while I was also deep in thought.

From that day on, I started asking my friends and acquaintances about their experiences with psychedelics. These conversations happen casually and throughout the next few months. Wondering if there was that big of a contrast between how they felt in their “normal” life and how they felt when they were “high” on acid or mushrooms. Spoiler Alert: They don’t feel as big of a contrast as I do. In fact, they really can’t describe what happens on their psychedelic trips. I’ve tried many times to make them put into words what they experience. But they just can’t. Or maybe I am just naive and they don’t want to share something that personal. But fuck. I can tell you exactly how it feels. Almost like my brain. My body. Has been starved of this neurotransmitter. Well, this drug that mimics a neurotransmitter. And I CAN explain how it feels. And I can also tell you that something is wrong with me. Imagine someone who has lived their entire life without feeling how water feels going down their throat. Cold, refreshing water on a hot, summer day. My brain feels hydrated when I’m intoxicated with LSD. A once dried sponge now saturated and dripping from the excess lubricant. Like my brain is finally working correctly and efficiently. The way it was designed.

But just like a lobster doesn’t realize that it is being cooked alive. I hadn’t realized that my depression and ADHD had been slowly eating away at me for the majority of my life.

From researching LSD, I learned that it is also a D-2 (dopamine) antagonist. When talking to others about my continuous 5-year microdosing experience, I would often tell people that not only would it work very well for my depression, but that it also helped me remember to drink water throughout the day and I just felt more in sync with my body in general. Like if mind and body were communicating effectively. Why aren’t we researching this drug more? At least so we can better know our own species. 

The most important thing I learned that day is that we are all the main characters of our story. My stream of consciousness started with me thinking about whatever was in the air making my allergies crazy. Either my other friends/acquaintances were much better prepared or it was only me that was being affected. And eventually, I came to the realization about how different we all are. We are so alike genetically but yet there is this organ that interprets reality in a completely different way for everyone. This organ makes us who we are. Our interests. Our motivations. Our traumas. The brain is responsible for so much and yet we know so little about it. What are emotions? What is intelligence? What’s consciousness? That September morning I began to understand that my brain is sick. That perhaps… I’ve been struggling with depression and ADHD for quite some time.