In this blog series, we are sharing some of the healing stories from our recent book: Psychedelic Healing Stories from Australia. In this blog, we share the story of Daniel, 39 y.o. Student (Mental Health/Addiction Studies) and his experiences with DMT and Psilocybin.
What led you to seek healing through psychedelic medicine?
The suicide of both of my parents twenty years apart led me to suicidal ideations, depression, and anxiety. With children of my own, I wanted to leave no stone unturned in trying to heal myself. Psychedelics were the last stop before I would finally check out. Luckily, they changed my life.
What was your psychedelic experience like?
Two experiences stand out.
The first was a spiritual awakening using DMT, where I discovered two distinctly different voices in my head. One was full of fear and the need to try to control the experience; the other was my true self, the part of me that’s infinite. The next day in looking for a self-help book, I discovered Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which explained in the intro, exactly what I had experienced. The voice in my head that wants and fears was not the real me, but my ego.
The second experience was on psilocybin, where my intent was to heal my anxiety. Very soon after ingesting the mushrooms, I felt like my son and I were drowning. This obviously invoked a strong fear response. The hallucination was so vivid that it spanned across multiple senses. I could actually taste the freshwater. Then one by one the experience showed me everything in my life that caused me anxiety. Somehow, I was able to see the underlying pattern that links all my anxiety triggers, and I could trace them to one source, one thought. My father’s suicide when I was just a boy had left a deep-seated subconscious belief that ‘I’m not good enough.’
How have you been able to integrate this experience? How has it contributed to your healing process?
Discovering the infinite part of myself changed my life completely. To roughly quote Eckart Toll, “What a liberation to know that you are not your thoughts.”
My thoughts were toxic drops that were poisoning my entire outlook on life. Depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideations are mostly derived from thoughts, and I was finally free, after decades of suffering.
Curious to read more? Read the Stories of 53 Australians That Experienced Psychedelic Healing, In Their Own Words.
This book will show you the deeply human side of the effect this medicine can have, and give you hope, inspiration, and clarity around what is possible for Australians when we get fair access to these breakthrough medicines.