I Am Ready For The Next Step…I Know What It Is…My Bags Are Packed…Let’s Go!

In my former life I worked at a church where part of my job duties were to help find recovery homes for people who wanted to get off the hard drugs. Meth, Crack, Heroine, were the big three, with Fentynol being in the close fourth.

Yesterday my mom was telling me she met a nurse who is apart of a study wherein they are studying psychedelics as a way to treat severe mental health issues…you bet your ass I want in.

I honestly never thought I’d get to the place where my mom is helping me find a psilocybin trial to deal with my mental health, but here we are, and yes I had a good laugh…she however, did not.

I don’t know much about psilocybin or “majick mushrooms,” but what I do know is that everyone I know who has tried it, have found that it has helped them exponentially with their mental health, and they are doing really well after just a few treatments.

Most of the people I know who are using it are using it recreationally, but more importantly they are using it medically, as opposed to just using mushrooms to get high.

The side effects that I’ve been hearing about involve deeper abilities to focus, and a deeper understanding of the issues that have been holding them back.

I WANT THAT!

I deal with a lot of fear, anxiety, depression, and all of this stems from PTSD due to trauma. I am more then ready to get to the point where I am no longer focusing on my trauma twenty-four hours a day.

There is a part of me deep inside, my Saint Little Self, who is strong, powerful, and wise beyond measure. She is fully aware of who she is, and she knows that she has majickal powers that can help her navigate the world. However I’m so bogged down with PTSD and trauma that I have really only just started to discover that part of myself again.

It’s scary knowing that inside of me is so much unharnessed power, because I’m afraid if I don’t find a way to control it, then I will spiral again, and I really think that doing a professional, medical, trial with psilocybin could be incredibly helpful.

In the past I’ve had many friends who used mushrooms for fun, as well as LSD, and other drugs, and I always chose to stay away. I could see how the drugs were having an effect on their mental health, and I could see that their mental health was having an affect on their lives, but I didn’t know how to pull them back from the brink.

I only smoked weed with those who made me feel safe, and there weren’t many of those people. When I started smoking it habitually, I noticed a big change. I found that I am able to convey things in ways that I didn’t know how to years prior. I am able to communicate better with how I am feeling, and how I am doing, but I’m also able to stand up for myself in ways that I couldn’t before.

I’m not desperate enough to throw my life away to meth, heroine, or crack, but I am interested in trying psilocybin, I’ve talked to my psychiatrist about it, and she agrees that it might be a good idea.

However, she also believes that the only safe way for me to try this medicine, is for me to do it via a trial, and I agree with her. So if I get into this study, then there is a chance that maybe I’ll start unlocking some doors that I’ve been keeping locked for too long.

I am afraid, because I know that some people have had some adverse reactions, sometimes people take too much, or they go too far, and they lose parts of themselves, but I also think that if I am doing this with Doctors watching over me, then at least I’m doing it in a safe harm reduced kind of way, and that’s the part that I am excited about.

I think that the reason that so many people get into drugs in the first place is because they just want to feel better. Drugs help us escape from the emotional and physical pain for awhile, but before we know it we can get lost in the addiction of ignorance and escape.

I’ve seen it ten million times, every day ordinary people, who had successful jobs or lives, have fallen between the cracks and lost themselves to addiction, because honestly addiction is just easier than sometimes facing all the stuff that led you there to begin with.

I am excited to see how Doctors are responding to the idea that some of these medications that we’ve demonized for centuries, can actually help people, largely because I’ve been in the group where I’ve often felt ignored by Doctors and medical personnel when I have asked for help.

For too long over the last four years I’ve been stuck in the “sad” part of the healing. Sad because I’m frustrated, frustrated because I’m not healing enough, angry because I’m not healing enough, angry because “no one understands me.”

When the truth is that everyone understands me…I have been “explaining” my trauma for so long that it never occurred to me that at this point people get where I’m coming from, I can stop explaining it now.

I’ve been struggling with the idea of “the next step“, because I’m not working from a list. There’s no how-to manual when it comes to healing from PTSD and trauma issues. I mean sure some people have compiled some, but they usually include shit like “take a walk,” or “go for a bath.“

These things are good in practice, and in theory, but they don’t solve the complex issues that come with acknowledging the kind of trauma so many of us have to deal with.

Sometimes we need an extra boost. I remember watching Limitless and when it was over I literally stayed silent for a long while before saying “I want that,” well, from what I’ve been told psilocybin is “that.”

It is the next possible step that will hopefully lead to me closing up some of these doors and wounds, so that I can focus on other parts of me that aren’t as wounded, that aren’t as raw.

It took me a really long time to get to this place where I started to really deal with it all. And then I had to find a way to actually heal, and for a very long time cannabis was a huge part of that journey.

For years I was terrified to try drugs of any kind, including cannabis, specifically because of how they were introduced to me, and because of who introduced them to me. Now that I am surrounded by people who are both knowledgeable, and responsible with their medicine use, I feel more comfortable stepping my toe into the arena.

In the past I spent a lot of time not doing things because I was afraid or didn’t have enough information, and now that I have access to people, places, and things, that are actually positive and helpful, it’s also still kind of scary, because I’m not used to being a functioning human being.

I’m used to being a mess all the time, and never really understanding why it is that I am a mess. Now that I can see the mess for what it is, I can look at it and I know where to start, it’s much less overwhelming, and that is the scary part.

I’m like “wait, what? this doesn’t have to hurt forever? I can move on? I’m free of the pain?” I’m still fighting, but the universe is trying to push me forward, and yes damnit, I just need to laugh about it.

It needs to be funny that a woman who used to try and help people get off drugs, is actively searching for a medical study so she can start doing drugs. Yes I recognize that the kinds of drugs I will be taking will be different, but then I realize that we really need to think about words, and the way that we say things.

I have struggled for a long time with the English language, even though it’s my first language, largely because the way that I understand the language to be, is not the same as the way that other people understand the same language. Our perception changes how we consume information in a million different ways on an almost chemical level for some of us.

The word “drug” used to mean something scary, harmful, dangerous, but today the same things that we used to classify as “drugs” are now referred to as “cannabis,” because as a collective society so many of us are changing our perception of how we see the effects of these medications.

We’re starting to understand, on a seriously intellectual and spiritual level, that just because we don’t understand something, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. And because of that hundreds of millions of people around the world are getting the help that they need, to deal with generations of centuries worth of trauma.

When I lost my mind in 2017/2018 I literally opened up Pandora’s Box inside of my most inner self, and I honestly didn’t think that I would survive the wave of exhaustion, misery, pain, sorrow, loss, that I was experiencing.

I resonated so much with Wanda during the Wanda Vision episodes because I get why she did what she did. I understood it from the first second that the opening line was delivered, (see Evans? No spoilers!), but what I didn’t understand was that like Wanda it was going to take time to come to terms with everything that I had done, while I was out of my mind with grief.

I am only just now starting to come down from the effects of letting everything that I was feeling into the world – in a very real and spiritual way I had vented everything that I needed to vent over the last four years, and now I’m ready to move on.

I wish that I could tell people who deal with drug addiction that there are better ways to escape while actually learning to do the work to heal, but as I’ve recently learned, every human needs to come to that place on their own, and they will when they are ready.

I am ready now. I cleaned out the attic in my mind, and now I have room to turn it into a space that is much healthier and stronger then when I started this Loud Mouth Brown Girl journey thirty-six years ago.

I don’t know if it will be this trial I get into or another one, but what I do know is that I am finally in a place where I can focus on the fact that even though it sometimes feels like I am stumbling around in the dark, it’s probably because I haven’t opened myself to seeing beyond what’s right in front of my face.

I’ve always believed in letting things unfold as they might, but I also now believe that I have power within myself to make healthy decisions that won’t end in pain and trauma. I hope.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall