Posts

Where goeth I?

Post-retreat continued. Surely you didn’t think my last entry in this strange journey was going to be my … well, last? (Warning to any new friends, you’ll need to go back to January this year in order to catch up!) So - how am I doing? Well I stopped going to see my therapist last week, we both decided that I didn’t need to see her any more. So that’s a good thing. In general I’m ok. I’ve found some of my anxiety has come back, which is annoying. Nothing major or about anyone, just a slightly increased level of unease. My mind is beginning to race a bit more and split off into separate channels, each one doing their own thing. (At the moment, the Spanish Armarda, these thoughts, the ending of Butch Cassidy… Nfi!) Professionally fine. Toddling along from one course to the next.  Relationship wise: IYKYK. And if you do, please tell me cos I’ve no idea! I’m a little more jittery than I have been. I put it down in part to the fact I sleep on average less than 5 hours a night. Strong co...
Post a Comment
Read more

“So we’re gonna live. We’re gonna jump off cliffs into oceans” (Gareth Emery)

  We had a zoom call on Friday to catch up with everyone from the retreat plus one facilitator, Neils. 7 of us made it, and it was really nice to see everyone again. It did truly feel like a family reunion. Someone said that I looked like Retreat Phil’s younger brother, which was lovely. We did some breathing exercises again to get us settled, and then did a round Robin to tell everyone how we were feeling a couple of weeks afterwards. We did it in the order that we sat around the circle, and I just want to take a moment to remember the room. Neils got us to remember coming to the retreat, walking through the door, taking our shoes off and going upstairs, left over the bridge and into the session room. It’s quite a large room, with one set of windows, which were covered with a curtain. My “spot” was by a radiator under the window and I usually left my glasses off on the window sill. The pallets were laid out around the room, and we would lie on them feet towards the centre. Each of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where I’m going from here

 More retreat pondering.  Just when you thought it was safe to peer back in my posts, there’s another one! I was really interested in working out exactly what happened to my brain during the trip. I had what is called a “heroic” dose of psilocybin (pronounced sill-o-sy-ben) which for everyone else “you took HOW MUCH?”  and it should have worked really quickly, and then 36 hours later I got my revelations. Did I experience an “ego death” or not? Why didn’t I get any visuals? So obviously I had to go looking. Apparently from everything I’ve read to wait for 5 hours for an effect is highly unusual. So this is what I think happened. My default mode network (DMN) which is the bit of the brain that holds the ego, feelings of self etc, first of all pushed the feelings of grief way down. It also knew they were there, and it was protecting itself from them. At the same time the DMN knew at some point I’d probably experience those feelings.  So in a sense, it was a little bit ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where I went from there

 A week on. It was a week ago that I first rocked up at the retreat, and a few days ago that I was finally able to get some closure on Jill’s death. We were told that things might continue to occur when we got back home. And they certainly did, as I’ve previously described when walking around the woods. I thought that was pretty much it, but it’s continued to happen. It’s really weird, because a thought just strikes out of the blue and instantly gives you a totally different perspective on things.  Happened again today. I’ve had what can best be described as a difficult relationship with my mother. I had demonised her I think, and I had a lot of anger towards her. And I could still be angry, but there’s no point in that. I can’t actually talk to her about it because she’s been dead almost 19 years to the day. I did have a therapist for a while before I sacked her, and she suggested writing her a letter. That has always annoyed me as a concept because she’s never going to read ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The aftermath

  I’m exhausted. It’s been a long few days now, and my head is still whirling with new thoughts and ideas. But I know I did the right thing. I believed in myself, and trusted my intuition and my brain came through and worked hand in hand with psilocybin to give me what I needed. I wanted to be able to say goodbye to the past. But I’ll admit it’s still scary; so many of us prefer to live in a familiar hell rather than explore an unfamiliar heaven. Not that it IS a heaven of course, but you know what I mean.  I’ve decided that this year I’m going to take a flight in a Spitfire. I’ve wanted to do so for years, but never have, for no good reason other than to punish myself by not doing it. Those days are, I hope a thing of the past, but for the next few weeks and months I have to be really cautious not to regress to different ways, old ways which are more familiar, so I’m going to continue to see my therapist.  I’m going to start wearing more colour as well. I’ll go through m...
Post a Comment
Read more

The retreat

  This is going to be long, but I promised you that I’d tell you everything, so that’s what you get. Fix a tea before we start… ready? Arrived in Amsterdam and two train journeys and two hours later I arrived at the station. We had arranged for 4 of us to then drive to the retreat which was in the countryside, really nice and peaceful. The retreat was in a converted Dutch barn. Downstairs was a long table and kitchen, with bedrooms off to the sides, stairs going upon the right with bedrooms etc to the right of that, a bridge across the dining area into the session area, which was quite large, and dark.  There were 9 of us from Ireland, the UK, Netherlands, South Africa, and Poland. I was just the oldest, youngest late 20s maybe? There were two facilitators from the Netherlands. We started by handing in phones and watches. That was a difficult thing to do, and if god himself asked for my phone he wouldn’t get it, but I was here for the experience so I gave the facilitator phone...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where do we go from here?

  Thinking back to who I was in my mid twenties to mid thirties I loved who I was. As I’ve described in the past, we were wild, carefree and happy. We had good jobs, a great social life and we were always going out to clubs and parties. I’d stand on pub tables and sing to our group of friends and they’d all join in. I loved it. I loved the attention, I loved having the confidence to do all of the things, and we were so happy. Of course there were clouds, but they just made the sky look even more blue. I enjoyed smoking weed and getting high. Oh, I do wish we had had MDMA in those days, I would have loved to take it with Jill keeping me company and keeping me safe. Those days, in hindsight, were the happiest we ever had, and of course we didn’t know it. The irony is the chosen never know they are the chosen.  But over the course of time other things took precedence and we got involved more in jobs, careers, earning money, thinking about moving to a house and doing all the adult...
Post a Comment
Read more