I have come to describe the experience as the lancing of a psychic boil that had developed in my mind. An attempt to break free to find out what is there after we die. Overworked, pressure I put on myself trying to keep everyone happy, saying yes to every request, taking on jobs you know you will never get chance to finish. Sheer disgust at myself for having relapsed in to drug use after so many years of abstinence. Looking back through my computer searches there were suicide sites. Sites that give advice on cleanest ways, methods that leave as little mess as possible. Because, in many respects suicide can come across as selfish. The reality is a psychosis of self destruction overcomes all logic. That moment may only last for an hour, a day or a week but that is all it takes. I had come to amass a collection of opiate tablets of various sorts, downers and benzos by the bucketload and 2 grammes of methoxphenidine, a powerful dissociative hallucinogen that not a lot is known about. Chemical research sites advise 80mg at the very most. These drugs are like ketamine in that they can be used as anaesthetics. I read somewhere that ketamine was use as a buddy buddy drug in Vietnam. If your colleague got a leg blown off a shot of ketamine would send them so far out of their bodies that the pain was irrelevant. It is also used as an animal tranquilliser for when they operate on horses or dogs. At lower doses it can be quite pleasant I am reliably informed. I took the lot not expecting to see tomorrow. What happened was I lost control of my body for days, tripped for two weeks, now, over a month later I am still feeling the effects. I struggle to urinate so there's some damage down there too. I was completely psychotic for over a week and was lucky not to get sectioned. It looks like my relationship was destroyed but I will always be grateful for her saving my life.
Yesterday I remembered one part where I was an old man. A soldier from the First World War who had seen action at the Somme. I sat there watching spitfires flying overhead, returning from some display of victory. We had just won the Second World War. I looked down at my gnarled hands feeling guilt that age had prevented me fighting in this second war.
At another point which must have been after I had recovered control of my body I was being hunted by the village folk of old frome, sometime when witches were executed. I scurried down alleyways but I could hear the jeering mob, hungry for blood, determined to catch me and lynch me. At first a single crow called out 'skree', then more and more joined in till I was fighting my way through masses of crows all calling out my name to tell the village lynch mob where I was.
My memories of the first few days are few. I am told I kept trying to stand but couldn't, that my arms were making distorted spastic moves, my face distorted, pulling grotesque grimaces, saying horrible, disgusting filth.
I remember a landfill of brightly coloured plastic sex toys. A room that constantly changed size, ever constrictive. American trailer park bath salts. Hawaii and dog the bounty hunter type shacks where petty criminals hustle for crystal meth. Ugly. Broken.
To urinate I had to become a dalesman an old Yorkshire man of the hills. Stiles and dry stone walks, trickling streams of water. These thoughts of nature were all that could save me from the trashy Americanisation that was poisoning my world.
Yet there were episodes of incredible beauty. For a time I travelled far, far forward n time. The world was stripped of any trace of organic material. I was travelling in some advanced digital world but my twenty first century mind could nt understand it. I was as a caveman on the Internet or central Tokyo. Nothing I knew had any baring on the future so though I travelled in to the future I could only describe colour, form and speed of information exchange and even this I can't describe. There is nothing I have seen, nothing you or me share to which I can compare.
Other universes were available at the speed f a thought. The multiverse had been cracked and one could leap or at least access information from these alternative universes.
Slowly, over a period of two weeks I returned to a kind of normality though even after a fortnight I was in a condition comparable to acid tripping.
Looking back the selfishness of my actions appall a me. If my partner had decided to run I would surely have died. And she says she was sorely tempted. She says she will be unable to see me in the same light again. I have apologised to the drug workers who bore the brunt of my second week of psychosis. I accused them of all sorts. My paranoia immense at times prevented any true visibility of reality.
My brain may be damaged, further damaged one could argue after the battering I gave it in my teens with magic mushrooms and LSD.
Even more annoying for my partner is that, though I risked my life, left her in a position where my fate lay in her hands, the afterglow has felt positive. Like I burst a psychic boil. Like all the poison and crap of adulthood that can build in to a poisonous mass preventing free thought was smashed open. That I had freed myself.
Now, drug free bar some medication the doctors have prescribed me with, I live a simple life. My freinds came out of the woodwork, support in all sorts of forms came in. Like guardian angels they rallied round. I am taking two months off work on doctors orders. My client has been a truly good soul, allowing me the space to recover and the opportunity to repay a debt I owe him. I fear I can never repay the debt not only to him but to my close freinds. I never mope about it but I tend to think I am alone. This experience has opened my eyes to just how much love there is out there. I feel truly honoured to have the freinds and clients I have. If I were a religious man I would say it felt like the hand of god intervened in my time of greatest need. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is someone watching over me. So thank you, to my partner for literally saving my life and everyone else for getting me through.
I was a stupid cunt. And I am sorry.
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