Loop

Content Warning: suicide, drug trip

Summer Trip

I last got high on a certain over-the-counter substance almost a year ago—August 10, 2020. I felt nostalgic of my past experiences with this substance. In addition, I was stuck in a pattern of thinking—much the same as I have been recently—and I wanted to “change” my mind.

During the trip, I thought that I was dying repeatedly. I would die only to come back to life perhaps as a different person and then die again. I would feel that I’d become another person—changed perspectives—and I would think, “Who are we now?” I had delusions of committing suicide as well, and I thought it funny that I would kill myself over and over.

I felt like words and actions were scripted, that it all rewound and erased, that it was all on a loop. I thought that everything I said and did was scripted and that I was just to follow the script, though at one point I questioned doing so. I realized that I didn’t have to follow the script; I could break character, get out of the role, say something different.

Later in the trip, things began to seem more nightmarish, and I typed a note to my future self to stop taking the pills. I felt that I was in a dream or a separate reality.

I thought that life and everything was a program and that there was suffering because the program had bugs. I lay there through the process of debugging, which meant slogging through suffering, and I was zooming into higher dimensions, progressively evolving. Perhaps with each iteration of debugging, the suffering would become less and less. I evolved higher and higher, until I reached the source. I questioned the whole way there, and when I got there, the source asked me, “Is this what you wanted?” or maybe I was asking myself that. I replied, “Yes,” and then I started to feel that I didn’t belong, that I didn’t belong there at the source, like a kid going through his mother’s things when he knew he wasn’t supposed to be. As well, I questioned the source. I asked why until there was practically nothing, and then I just lay there questioning the color of the pills. Why red?

I felt that maybe I didn’t want to go mad. Maybe I wanted a place back in “reality,” a shared common ground. I no longer wanted to be bound to the personal world that my mind had created, to a reality of only me. I’d squint at the time and wonder how late that was in human hours or normal people hours, and then I’d go and die again.

With my more extensive use years ago, I had thought the substance to reveal to me the truth. But after my last trip, I realized that the substance didn’t necessarily show me the truth; if anything, it just showed me how much my mind could deceive me, or at least how much my mind could make me think things were real even if they weren’t.

After that, I no longer felt nostalgic. I didn’t want to go backward, didn’t want to revisit the past anymore. I felt that at least the events helped me to realize how much my mind could deceive me, how trapped I could get in the patterns, how much I could “stick to the script.” I realized that if I followed the script, the same things would keep happening. I’d get caught in a loop. The past would repeat itself, again and again and again. And the past no longer felt nostalgic. I felt something like shame for having had thoughts of wanting to die and kill myself.

I didn’t want to be stuck in my ways anymore, or stuck in resenting and trying to go against everything. I felt the trip helped me to realize what a convincing reality my mind could create, how much it could mislead me. I felt that I wanted to be cooperative and to be helped and accept the help that was given me. Funnily enough, now I question what help even is.

A few days after the trip, I began to return to baseline. My thoughts of not wanting to be here returned, and I didn’t feel averse to them anymore. I had decided to do the substance again for nostalgia and, ironically, change. But now, I seem to not care for actively achieving change; I recently wrote,

“It can bother me a lot to feel that I’ve been misunderstood. I don’t want change because I don’t see the point. Because what is change? To want? To desire? I do not wish to want or desire. I do not wish to attempt to attain certain things, what’s considered ‘healthy’ by others/seemingly the majority.

“I can feel that I care too much, about being misunderstood for example, or I can feel that I care very little. Perhaps the latter is a defense mechanism. The less I care about something, the less I care about it going away. People, pets, life. While away the time until there’s no one left to live for anymore.”

Until there are no anchors left.

Selfishness

On one hand, it seems that I’m not selfish in the sense that I try to stay alive because I wouldn’t want to hurt someone. On the other hand, it could be considered selfish of me to try not to care, to push aside emotions or people in some sense, to spare myself from attachment and the subsequent pain of loss. It seems for me, self-preservation is the name of the game, even if—or especially if—that leads to self-destruction.

Perhaps I find it easier to want everything to go away because it eventually will.

So…

I’m aware that I have biases and certain dispositions. My thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are influenced by both one another and the world. Things can seem to make sense in my head and then when I try to express them, I can feel that I could have explained better or that something gets lost in translation. During that trip, I felt that I wanted to get back to the shared reality. But is there really a shared reality when one can know only one’s own reality? Perhaps we’re all bound in our own personal worlds.

In the end, I merely have this human mind that tries to make sense of life.