I’ve been going through a lot recently. Multiple jobs, bills piling up, and my current relationship is falling apart. I want to cry. To bawl my eyes out and scream at the top of my lungs. But I can’t. It feels like there’s a wall between me and my emotions. Anyone else deal with this?
None of what I’m about to say is advice, just my experience. I’m an oldish person who’s been dealing with this for decades. I lost a parent when I was a preteen and sort of slammed the brakes on my feelings as a way to cope.
I apologize in advance for the indelicate comparison I’m about to make, but I recently had my first experiences with psilocybin, and found that (at least for me) it acted as a sort of “emotional laxative”. It didn’t cause me to immediately break down and sob or anything, but over the following weeks I had brief moments where I actually felt some of these clogged-up emotions and was able to open up the release valve a bit.
Afterward, listening to certain emotionally-charged songs or certain types of cinematic scenes was occasionally enough to tip me over into a short crying jag. This would last a minute or two, then I’d suddenly be back to “normal”, but with a strong sense of relief from getting some of that out of my system.
For me, psilocybin wasn’t even enough. I did one round in a therapy setting with MDMA, 5gs of mushrooms. Then later another round with just 5g of mushrooms. Mostly just laying in bed, listening to specific music with the facilitator making sure I stay hydrated and all that. I cried a bit but it didn’t feel like it got quite there. Mostly it was boring. I was quite frustrated because there was so much hype about psychedelic therapy but of course I was the one super special boy on whom even a high dose of mushrooms didn’t accomplish much. Because of course it can’t be that easy for me.
I’m sure it was minor long lasting effects though but it wasn’t the dramatic shift I was secretly hoping for.
I however did get the opportunity to do 5-meo and that… did things. Just the handshake round made me feel the worst possible emotional pain. Then the second round made me scream, dry-vomit and convulse. I thought I shat and pissed myself (thankfully not, though the facilitator said it wouldn’t have been the first time and it would’ve been fine). I felt like my whole being was put through a blender. Then somehow I still did the final round which was more of the same. I was with a competent facilitator and a few friends and weirdly, it felt good to have people witness it all without judgment. In fact I think that was one of the most important factors because it was other people that had taught me to suppress and push everything down. Having a different set of people hold space while I went through that all (and provide hugs after) was profoundly healing.
Afterwards for the first time in my life I actually felt healthily empty inside. The sense of stuck emotions was gone. It didn’t magically make me happy, I seem to just have a chronic depression, but at least I didn’t (and still don’t) feel dragged down by unprocessed feelings. I don’t have this constant sense of “something is wrong”.