Chapter 12: Chill Dose
.2 grams dry mushroom.
There is a shocking likeness between a Xanax and a low dose of psilocybin. And also an eye-opening difference.
I’ve had a prescription for Xanax for the treatment of anxiety for most of my adult life. If my stash ran low, panic would set in. Xanax had always been my back pocket secret weapon against life. Rough day? Xanax. Bad breakup? Xanax. Public speaking? New job? Social situations?
Xanax.
Xanax.
Xanax.
For me, Xanax worked exactly the way it was supposed to. It took the static out of my brain. It made that miscellaneous bad thing not matter because I no longer cared about that miscellaneous bad thing at all. I no longer cared about that worry. That life problem. That tricky situation I had to navigate, or financial pitfall I had to survive. Xanax allowed me finally sit down and just breathe. Because on Xanax, I was blissfully numb.
It’s a mind eraser of the best variety, and a mind eraser is a handy tool for a bipolar girl with suicidal ideations. At times, it’s been a literal life saver.
Because it makes me not care.
The first time I took a psilocybin dose high enough to detect, it was .2 grams of dry mushroom. That’s about 1/6 of a standard moderate dose.
I was reading on the couch when the first (I now know) telltale sign kicked in: my shins began to get chilly. Don’t ask me if this is normal. Maybe your shins, too, will get chilly on mushrooms. Or maybe they’ll be pleasantly room temperature. To each their own.
By the time I grabbed a blanket for my shins, I discovered a lovely haze had crept into my brain. And as though I’d taken a Xanax, I was suddenly very un-worried about anything at all. No bad thoughts in my brain. No more life problems or tricky life situations. Psilocybin allowed me to finally sit down and just breathe.
And though a familiar feeling for a Xanax Toter, it was also distinctly…different. I was unworried, but not because I was numb. I was unworried because I was hopeful. My head was clear of the fog and yet something was left in its place: a deeply rooted understanding that everything was going to be just fine. Life itself was not only going to “work out”, but it was already beautiful and amazing. And unfolding exactly the way it’s supposed to. My mind was never erased. It was thoroughly and uncharacteristically intact.
You may have heard of a Xanax hangover. I myself am not affected. But many people describe a feeling of lethargy the next day. Of cloudy brains. Of struggling to get up and moving. I cannot speak to this. But I can speak to the drastic and sudden return of yesterday’s problems. Yesterday’s worries and tricky situations. Xanax does nothing to cure them. Each pill is a BandAid. A sticker to be slapped over the wound, day after day, staunching a steady trickle of blood that simply will not coagulate.
Not that way. The old way.
…But maybe a new way.
The morning after I first took what I now refer to as my “Chill Dose” of psilocybin, the wounds were still there, of course. But they had formed a skin while I slept. A translucent barrier. I could still see them, but without the bleeding I was able to examine—with crystal clear vision—their true threat level. And with this new vision, I was also able to reassess the hold they had over me.
And I over them.
Overnight, the power dynamic had shifted. Not because the problems had gone away, but because that deeply rooted understanding that everything was beautiful and amazing had stayed. By morning, that small mushroom dose had disappeared from my system, but in its place, the shape of something new. The shadow of something new. A mind changer of the best variety.
And a mind changer could be a powerful new weapon for a bipolar girl with suicidal ideations.
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