These are strange and dangerous times. I am not just talking about the fact that we are currently living during what is being called a worldwide pandemic, but equally about the fact that in the past fifty years the human race has experienced so much ‘progress’ that, despite technology continuing to speed, I don’t think we will ever experience that dramatic of a shift again. 

Which brings me to where we currently are. It took a long time for the study and treatment of mental illness to become somewhat civilized, but it was also heavily influenced by pharmaceuticals, which created a crisis all it’s own. On top of all of that social diseases accelerated when we entered the age of technology. 

As a whole we have some problems, and that thought alone can be incredibly overwhelming at times. I mean, even before the pandemic there was a battle going on with the transparent illusion of celebrity, and the fact that the term ‘influencer’ was quite recently coined is proof we were not necessarily winning. It was diluting our society, individualism, hearts and souls.

Then the world went into physical isolation and the demand for communication and psychedelics reached new heights. I really don’t think that these were simply paralleled events, I mean I can only imagine how many psychedelics were consumed during lockdown-gatherings on Houseparty, and I have a hard time believing that a person who named an app ‘Zoom’ wasn’t high. 

Now anyone that’s into or has done any research on psychedelics in the past is quietly shaking their head as the conversation about the benefits of psychedelics has been going on for a exceptionally long time, but the endless attempts to silence it has put up a well-funded fight. But now people are more informed, connected, and brave – combine all that with a mild sense of desperation, and one can learn a lot about, well, almost anything. But I digress, as I know I must answer the question that is keeping everyone on the edge of their seat… Who the f#@k is Alice? 

Well it all began at the croquet game, you may be familiar, the one against the Queen of Hearts. I ended up there for a brief second one quiet Sunday afternoon after a friend asked me if I wanted to try DMT. 

Now at this point I had used some mushrooms and MDMA recreationally, but never anything like this. Not that I was not open to it or curious, but I had an almost two decade relationship with some serious medication used to treat a nocturnal seizure disorder – so I felt like even the dabbling I had done was already playing with fire. 

At this time I was off the seizure meds for about a year and suffering from anxiety and depression. These afflictions were not something new, but not something I could blame on the medication or the erratic electrical impulses in my brain for. Now I had to take full responsibility for my mental health and the only thing I knew for sure is that I did not want to go back to taking pills everyday. 

I had limited knowledge of DMT or most psychedelics at that point, but from what I had heard DMT was a journey to complete abandon that lasted only a few minutes. At the time I was still a little timid at the idea of a nine-hour LSD trip, so in a way it made sense. 

I really had no idea what to expect. At first I thought it wasn’t working, and then I remember turning my face to the sunshine, saw a bit of pixilation and I was there, looking right at her. The queen. In retrospect this does make sense, as a child I loved Alice In Wonderland but was terrified of the Queen of Hearts, and she was looking at me, which probably made me Alice. I had really hoped anyway. All I remember happening after that is thinking to myself, “This is unbelievable! And I am so high right now.” Then just like that it was over. I often questioned what happened that day, but it was a few years before I considered psychedelics again.

The motivation to not take pills did keep me away from SSRIs but things got worse before they got better and I began to rely too heavily on alcohol and cannabis. It did temporarily subside the anxiety, but the next day it would only be worse. Then one day I stumbled on microdosing. 

Continued…