Despair, The Void, God.

It could, should, have been a great evening, in my previous sessions with George I've seen and felt such wonderful things, such emotional highs, such closeness, a bond I hadn't known I was missing. I was excited to share that connection with Adam and Az, too excited - I'd only had great times, surely they will too!
George and I deliberated, experimented, learnt what we could, and felt like we knew what we were doing well enough to make good dosage decisions, and guide Adam and Az through the strange parts to the dizzying highs.

We started coming up, all sitting around comfortably as the buzz began, a little anxiety, a lot of "how are you feeling now?", laughter, jokes, music and vibes. For maybe an hour, maybe less, all was well. Az stated that he was higher than he'd ever been in his life, that he was having a great time. 
While stating this he had also started to claw at his face, shake and shiver, make strange distressed sounds, giggle uncontrollably. We didn't understand it then, but Az's mind had fractured.
Adam start to pace, I don't think he'd been able to relax into the feelings at all, and the distress signals Az was sending out were starting to worry us all. 

For the next hour or so - while *extraordinarily* high - George and I had to do our best to suppress our own experience and endeavour to understand what was happening to Az, try to help him understand it so that he could deal with it and calm down. At the same time we also needed to help Adam avoid the panic that was setting in. We tried to exude calm, to reassure them both that they were safe, amongst friends, that it would end soon.
They both needed completely different things and they both were amplifying each others bad time - panic begets panic and mushrooms amplified it all, the echo chamber escalated things until we were calling for outside help (working a phone while high is unbelievably difficult).

Things slowly started to clear, the mushrooms started to fade from Az and he regained some composure, and did his best to sit calmly for Adam's sake. We talked through what he felt had happened, what we had witnessed, calm started to descend. A while later Adam's guardian angel arrived and that brought immediate relief, the change in Adam was sudden, like a light had been turned on. Charlotte was here, Adam would be ok. 


I was still extremely high, I had taken a fairly large dose for me, and from our previous experiments we had discovered that I process the mushrooms quite slowly, my trips last a long time (ordinarily a good thing!). While Adam and Az were coming back down I was right at my peak, and had been - for a couple of hours at least - working on high alert to ignore/suppress my own high and protect my friends.

I was scared, I was terrified, and I quite suddenly broke. 

My friends took care of me then as best they could, but I had begun spiralling, a whiplash of emotion struck straight into my usual stable core and unravelled all of my strength, all of my composure. Fear for my friends became incredible sadness that I could do nothing but give in to. I cried like a child, I repeated "that was so hard", as the only words I could find to express where I was. 

George recognised immediately what was happening to me, and I am so very grateful that he did. He held me for hours as I continued to fall. 

And fall I did. Down, down, sadness amplifying the fear amplifying the sadness turning to grief until I was enveloped by an utterly bleak and all encompassing depression. 

Words slowly tumbled out as I tried to understand how it was possible to feel this way. How could anyone endure this feeling? How could anyone survive for years feeling this way? If this is depression, I now understood completely why some people give in. What felt like hours into this downward spiral, I came apart completely. 

And I mourned, I mourned for the person I was before I knew *this*, before I knew just how bad one person could truly feel. I mourned for George, for the lives we both had before knowing this awful truth. I wished it away, I wished I could take back this discovery, I didn't want to know this anymore, I didn't want this terrible knowledge, it was too much to fight, how could anyone fight this? Please take it back, what have I done to myself?

I felt like I could never again be the person I was before, How could I possibly go on being strong for others now that I knew *this*, now that I had felt this absolute, all encompassing despair.

And I felt then as I uttered those words that I suddenly knew exactly what God was. In that moment God was every other person who had ever been in this terrible place, staring into this abyss, lost to all, with nothing left but those futile words "oh God". The final realisation. A final bastion of shared desperation. I had wanted to meet God on my journey, but now how I ached to take it back. Oh God. Oh no.

In my minds eye I could clearly see an endless infinite dark in front of me, all of the threads of every life that had ever been or ever would be trailing out like wisps of pale light into this utterly black, vast, void. All was still, George was silent, I had only my breath... and for the briefest, longest moment, I knew that I could choose right then to just... stop. I could simply choose not to draw my next breath and I would surrender to this void, I knew, beyond doubt, that I could choose to just end. And I wanted it, I wanted it more than anything, for what else was there?

George spoke to me then, he told me it would pass, that I would recover - I couldn't believe how that could possibly be true - he spoke of the people that would remember me, of the people that loved me, the impact of my life. He spoke to me of Claire, the love of my life who waited for me at home. 
George pulled me back from the edge of this horrible abyss. George, who knew this place long before me, saved my life. I weep now just remembering the moment.
 
I *needed* to recover from this, for Claire - who has always suffered from the depression that now, finally I felt I understood. For George, for Adam, for Az, for everyone that I loved. I had to get back to who I was *before*, there was no other option. I had to recover.

I chose to breathe, I started fighting for my life. 

But oh my word, it was so very hard to do so. I still felt completely lost, so desperate to pull myself out of it, but with no idea how.
I righted myself once more and cast about for a rope, anything, something I could feel, something to make me feel anything but the pull of this infinite darkness. A glass of half drunk wine on the table, I downed it, nothing, only despair, I fully panicked, if I couldn't feel anything right now I would be lost forever. I reached for the next closest thing; a bottle of beer. I *hate* beer. 

I threw it in my face, upended the bottle over myself. 

It was such a strange desperate act, I couldn't understand it then, I'm still not sure I can understand why I did that, it was an utterly wild last ditch attempt to claw my way back to myself. I would never do that, but i was not me.

And it started to work. I felt guilt for the mess I had made, I needed to make that right, how could I do that to George? I suddenly needed to fix what I had done, stop making mess, clean up.

It was so very fragile though, I stopped for a moment and the void glared at me again and the despair grew inside. I scrambed for my phone, threw on the first nonsense I could find on youtube, I had to see normal life. It helped. I emptied my pockets, I had to clean up, but Oh god I couldn't ever let anyone know how low I had gotten, how could I ever be strong for my friends if they knew where I had been? I panicked again, how could I hide this? George please help me hide this from everyone. 

And so, after holding me like a baby for what felt like an eternity, George cleaned up after me, repaired the damage I had done, pushed aside his own needs to continue to take care of me. I will never be able to repay that debt, though I will try to for my whole life.

My mind raced, but it raced to find solutions, it raced to bring me back, and - I can only now assume - the mushrooms must have at last started to wear off, I felt myself return ever so slowly. So very slowly. 

Another hour later - clothes in the dryer, mess cleaned up, me still stinking of beer - we laughed as I struggled to get a pillow into a case, we analysed what had happened to our friends, we listened to queen, we recovered together, we built ourselves back up. 

I tried to sleep, but as I lay in the dark I could always feel this presence just under the surface, threatening to well up once more. I cried again, I slept, I cried, I woke. 
I went home.

This past evening I experienced things completely new to me, an emotional state I had thought I understood, that I now know I could never have possibly even come close to understanding. 
In my sober state now I can recognise it as a gift of sorts, a glimpse of a terrible thing without having to keep it. Maybe now I can understand others better? Maybe I can help more?

I don't know if I will ever fully recover from this experience. I am grateful for it, but I know this will haunt me for a long while yet.