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Snapshot
I'm a father and husband, mechanical engineer and former tech executive. I enjoy mountain biking, making music (guitar, bass, singing), skiing and other sports and activities. Meditation, mindfulness and moving my body every day is key for my mental health and makes me a better person to be around.
5-MEO journey - a rocky start
I always had a deep curiosity about consciousness and the nature of reality. My exploration of psychedelics started with wanting to know more about consciousness, what's behind the physical world we live in, and if there's a god or something bigger than us. I quickly learned that psychedelics had a different plan for me - therapy. I experienced significant growth and healing with different types of psychedelic assisted therapy, but I'll focus on 5-MEO here.
In my first professionally-facilitated 5-MEO session, I started with a "handshake" dose, where I experienced all the worst feelings I've ever had times 10. I had a little awareness of my body and I knew it was yelling moaning and doing pulses of release movements. My first thought was - Oh, that's hell.
Despite being really scared I knew it was important to go back in to the medicine until it feels complete. In the next bigger "hug" dose, all those feelings kind of merged into a lifetime of sadness, and then I cried, sobbing and whaling for 20 minutes. I was the little boy version of myself, and my son, and I was making all the little contorted crying faces that kids make. It was an amazing release and I realized that I had forgotten how to cry at some point in my life and I was grateful that I learned how to cry again. I remember realizing how similar crying is to laughing in the body. And both are so important. I wrote a song later that day, "Forgot How to Cry".
Then I took the "full embrace" dose. I went to a place of infinite nothingness. Nothing existed. Nothing had ever existed, not even time. There was only awareness and nothing else - the void. If there were feelings, it would have had a feeling of infinite loneliness. Then energy started forming and the first thought I had was, "I'm so grateful for something. I'll take anything. Anything is better than nothingness.". I felt like I was being created from scratch, or reborn. I wasn't sure if I came back to the same life that I left but my memories were all there so I thought I may as well accept it. I was a bit confused about how this reality could exist, with time, when I just experienced time not existing. I was grateful to be in a world of duality. Nonduality seemed really lonely to me. I didn't experience anything like love or bliss.
I experienced a lot of positive changes and insight in the months following the session, but I also felt disappointed that I didn't experience the ocean of love that people talk about. I also started developing a fear of death. What if I die and experience lonely nothingness for infinity? It would be way better to just "turn off" when I die, my previous worst case scenario.
During my occasional use of cannabis or psilocybin, I had some really heart opening feelings of love and connectedness, but also some terrifying experiences where I thought I was disintegrating and my life was just an illusion.
I had some fear of meditating too - afraid of going into the infinite void. My fear of death was preventing me from fully living.
5-MEO journey - the finish line
I found a lot of things helpful like breathwork, integration circles, ecstatic dance, and just connecting with people in person, like in my man club. Internal Family Systems (IFS) had a big impact on me - so much that I got trained in it, and it's a core part of my coaching practice.
About a year and a half after my first big 5-MEO journey, I knew that it was time to go back to the medicine and I booked a weekend group retreat. With IFS, I knew to check in to make sure all my parts were on board. I had a manager part who wanted to make improvements happen. I had a scared part that was worried about going back to the void. I spent time with the parts and made a Self-led decision to proceed.
The retreat had a lot of support and preparation. In my smaller doses I had my familiar fearful, disintegrating experiences with a lot of somatic processing. The group environment helped create a supportive container for the experience and we talked through a lot.
In my full release dose I don't remember anything after inhaling. The first thing I remember as I came back online was experiencing pure stillness. I was in a place of warm white light that was stillness and pure bliss. No thoughts or worries existed. I wasn't even worried if I didn't exist. I recognized it to be home, the place we all start and go back to. It was perfect. The first two thoughts I had were, "it's so simple." and "this is what people mean by "God".". I realized that this stillness and bliss is available to all of us all the time in our lives. It's there when our thoughts find stillness. This stillness is the core of our consciousness, that we all are part of.
My fear of death was gone.
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Education
- BSc in Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, 1995
- Certified Coach, Leadership and Performance, Canada Coach Academy, 2023
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Stepping Stone Program, IFSCA, 2024
- Fundamentals of Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, Numinus, 2024