Coming Out

When I first wrote about my experience of psychedelic therapy, I feared I’d be shunned, or worse. What it inspired instead was an unexpected thread of connection.

Before I begin: I use the phrase “coming out” in the loosest possible sense here, conscious that the broadly accepted usage—revealing one’s homosexuality—implies, in my judgement, a high level of courage. I’m in no way suggesting that my writing about taking psychedelics demonstrates the same level of bravery, only that revealing it felt edgy and confronting.

The newsletter was cued up and ready.

I’d written it days ago, read and reread it, polished down the last remaining snags and burrs. There was nothing to do but send it, and yet still I hesitated. I hemmed and hawed another hour, thinking of all the reasons it didn’t really matter. And it didn’t: All I was doing was telling the world—okay, the very small subset of the world that reads my newsletter—that I’d spent the last couple of years undergoing psychedelic therapy.

What was the big deal? My parents were long since dead; my friends probably suspected I was into some pretty wacky stuff anyway. Who would even care? And yet I couldn’t shake the sense that admitting it was a mistake, and that I’d end up feeling humiliated.

So…why write about it at all? The truth was that those hallucinatory nights had rocked me to my core. When my wife and I stepped into our therapist’s office for the first of three MDMA sessions, we teetered at the very brink of divorce. I felt like I’d lost my way, badly, and that now—already deep in middle age—there might not be any way back.

Two years later—since the MDMA, and the ayahuasca, and even something called “toad”—I felt rewritten. My marriage was on a more solid—and far more honest—footing than I’d ever thought possible. I was present and unguarded with our twelve-year-old daughter. For the first time, ever, I could say that I truthfully and unequivocally loved my life.

Psychedelics hadn’t made me a different person, but they’d helped expose the tragic and self-limiting stories I’d always told about myself. I saw now that my life wasn’t some mistake or a cosmic joke, but just the natural and lawful result of my genetics, my parenting, and some admittedly awful childhood experiences. Viewed in this light, it was practically my duty to share my experience with the world, wasn’t it?

Maybe.

After I finally sent the post on its way, I resolved not to check my email or social media accounts for the rest of the day. (Well, at least most of the day.) When I finally did, I noticed that—while I hadn’t exactly ignited an internet firestorm—my post had earned a few brief “Thanks for sharing this”-type comments. Good enough, I supposed.

It was a couple of days later that the trickle of emails and DMs began to come in.

Some were from acquaintances; some from people I’d been out of touch with; others from complete strangers. Most were asking for practical help: What kind of medicines help with anxiety? How do you find a psychedelic guide? Can you connect me with one? I made what introductions I could—not a straightforward ask in the shadowy world of underground psychedelic therapy—and felt a quiet glow of having done, well…something.

More surprising—and more touching—were the unsolicited shares, some from people I’d never met. “I’m longing for connection too, but my path has been meditation (or yoga, or solitude, or prayer).” Some thanked me, and asked me to keep sharing my story.

But the one that really hit home came a week or two later. It was from P___, a guy I’d gone to elementary school with, asking if we could talk. It’d been years and—while I’d thought about him from time to time, wondering how his life had turned out—I’d never acted on the impulse. How could I say no?

When we finally connected, I felt a thrill at the familiar sound of his voice. P___ is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, wielding an antic sense of humor coupled with a deep distrust of authority. His absurdist perspective was intact, but now there was a world-weary edge to his voice. The last years had been hard—divorce, a once-promising writing career dissolving into aimlessness, even a stint sleeping in his van. But it was what he shared, after we’d already talked for fifteen minutes or so, that floored me.

P___ had just asked me about ayahuasca, the challenging but revelatory psychedelic that’d done so much to help me rewrite my life story.

“If you’re curious, you should think about trying it,” I said. “It’s hard, but it’s given me so much perspective. It helped me see around so many blind corners.”

“That sounds interesting, but…you know, I’ve been through some hard things too,” said P___. “I don’t know if you know this, but…I have full-blown AIDS. That was my ayahuasca.”

I was silent a long moment. I’d had no idea. In my mind’s eye, P___ was still the hyperactive third-grader I’d felt drawn to all those years before. Now the darkness undergirding his jokes had a different weight. I saw the extent to which things hadn’t worked out for him, and it touched some tender spot in me, too. He’d just needed someone to listen. We talked for an hour more, then agreed to keep the conversation going.

What I realized in the coming days was that what I’d shared—the psychedelics part—was totally immaterial. No one cared. But my tiny act of revealing something vulnerable—that I’d been struggling, and that I’d felt like maybe I’d lost my way—had granted others a subtle permission.

And so I keep going, sharing my experiences and inviting others to do the same. I still haven’t ignited an internet firestorm, whatever that is. I don’t feel like an authority, or that I’ve figured it all out. But now, at last, I’m in the conversation, no longer standing outside the circle.

Which was, of course, what I was asking for all along.