McAwakening

My Journey of Chemical Enlightenment

First, a warm welcome to over 300 new subscribers!

A few weeks ago, I shared a thought on Substack Notes about something I rarely see discussed in mainstream health circles: the overlooked connection between ecological destruction and declining mental health. The environmental crisis and the mental health crisis aren’t two separate problems. They’re symptoms of the same disconnection from Nature. A disconnection that distorts our perception and leaves us feeling isolated in a world we are actually (and obviously) deeply connected to.

This is one of the reasons I believe psychedelics are so important. They can deeply reconnect us to Nature’s intelligence—and in doing so, they help recalibrate our perception. Not just of ourselves, but of the world we’re here to care for.

The following story traces my decade long journey with psychedelics.

I hope you enjoy—and thanks for being here.

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Age thirteen arrived with a Ritalin shaped hole in my brain, where my dopamine should have been, where my soul went to die in regularly scheduled doses of methylphetamine over five years, leaving nothing but the hollow shell of a medicated teenage existence. It’s somewhere around this age that everything went dark.

I saw the world as a circus of frauds performing their daily routines for nothing. I was trapped in a senseless existence where "normal life" was nothing but a cheap plastic trinket manufactured by the collective delusions we call the economy, careers, school, and all these other seemingly stupid inventions that made our broken society possible.

Culture? Empty of meaning. School? A factory for manufacturing obedient workers and consumers. Government? A criminal enterprise operating in plain sight (increasingly so). My parents moved through this nightmare like sleepwalkers, and everyone around me seemed hypnotized by the perpetual lie of happiness at the end of the work week. Nobody questioned why we were all pretending this made sense.

I fantasized about my own death with the casual regularity of checking the weather. Monday: maybe I'll jump from the window, watch the concrete rush up to meet me. Tuesday: perhaps I'll step in front of my school bus, solve everything in an instant. Wednesday: rinse and repeat the macabre daydreams amidst a consistent need to engage with boring homework. I sought an escape hatch from meaninglessness.

Maybe I’ll be a hermit, I thought, daydreaming about doing what the guy from that movie did, leaving society and dying on the bus in Alaska.

Death would be welcomed with open arms.

Then—during the sweltering delirium of my seventeenth summer on this bewildering spaceship Earth, I ate a fistful of mushrooms. The magic kind. The kind that grow from dead things. The kind that whisper secrets older than language itself.

This is the cosmic joke of my chemical enlightenment—how a spiritual death with prohibited sacraments cured my deathwish and made me fall back in love with life. How I learned to have compassion for everything when I cared for nothing.

Thanks to the magic mushroom narcotics I began to love again—the academic grind, the politicians with their forked tongues, the corporations grinding us into profitable dust, the soulless oligarchs feeding the infernal machine that pumps out endless distractions while Mother Earth gasps for breath. All so the bloated 1% can add more zeros to their digital fortune while the rest of us scramble for scraps in the wreckage.

The illegal drugs showed me that love, as Buckminster said, is metaphysical gravity.

This is the story of my spiritual awakening. Or, as I’ve come to call it, my McAwakening.

The Pharmaceutical Treadmill

That energetic curiosity and wild creativity the adults called ADHD? That wasn't a disorder—it was the raw, unfiltered voltage of my spiritual essence and authentic existence. But I was born into this grand asylum where they worship at the altar of conformity and obedience, so they did what any good disciples would do: medicate the hell out of the kid who couldn’t sit still or listen. Thus began my pilgrimage from the sterile chapels of the counsellor’s office to the forbidden garden.

I was being played—first by Big Pharma's white-coated pushers who saw my twelve-year-old neuroplastic brain as prime real estate for their chemical colonization. "Here, kid, try this sample pack of ADHD medications!" Later came the black market wonderland, where at fifteen I discovered that the difference between "medication" and "drugs" was mostly a matter of who profits from your altered consciousness.

After the great psychostimulant taste test, I settled into a comfortable relationship with Ritalin—pharmaceutical cocaine's respectable cousin. The white powder in those little pills became my daily sacrament. First swallowed as directed, then, years later—as my tolerance for both the drug and society's bullshit increased—crushed and snorted to bring life to the dead zone of standardized academic testing.

The irony wasn’t lost on me: they were giving me speed to slow me down.

But Ritalin was a devil's bargain. It sharpened my focus while dulling my soul, a chemical straightjacket that made me manageable but miserable. My appetite vanished along with my laughter. Sleep became a distant memory. I was becoming the perfect student-citizen-consumer unit: productive, hollow and quiet.

Meanwhile, I began enjoying the chemical carnival of street drugs—a magnificent smorgasbord of consciousness alteration that promised ecstasy and escape. But even in my drug-fuelled teenage distraction, a terrible clarity was emerging: these roads all led to the same dead end, just with different scenery along the way.

In those days, my hatred burned white-hot toward the system, the government, the whole rigged casino of modern existence. That hatred was jet fuel, propelling me into the shadows alongside the delinquents. I was searching for meaning in rebellion, running away from security, spray-painting incoherent “art” on any wall I could reach, and once, ending up in jail for a night because I was caught smoking a prohibited plant that made me feel good, sensible, and imaginative.

My teenage ego swelled with each boundary crossed, telling myself it was political rebellion, but really, I was just screaming into a void. I was committing small acts of destruction that I grandiosely believed were striking blows against the empire.

Stupid shit, really.

But necessary stupid shit that eventually forced me to face the lurking shadow behind it all: myself. And then—salvation sprouted from the earth itself.

The Illegal Sacraments

Psilocybin mushrooms aren't just fungi—they're ecocosmological telegrams from the mycelial underground’s intelligence network, Nature's own neurochemical rebellion against our collective amnesia. These humble teachers are biological keys that unlock the forgotten chambers of consciousness where we remember our ecological niche beneath the suffocating layers of social programming and cultural hypnosis.

They whisper ancient truths: that we're not merely economic units grinding away in capitalism's machinery, but rather infinite spiritual beings temporarily clothed in meat-suits, navigating a hyper-materialist illusion of infinite growth with finite resources.

But our wise forefathers—those titans of industry and guardians of social order—declared these natural sacraments dangerous. Illegal. Devoid of medicinal value.

Was it because these compounds couldn't be patented and monetized? Or perhaps because they didn't want the masses discovering that God wasn't confined to tax-exempt buildings with stained glass windows? Maybe they trembled at the thought of citizens peering behind the Hollywood set of the American dream. Maybe they understood real medicine and healthy citizens wasn’t good for the economy.

Or maybe—just maybe—they were too terrified to face the wilderness of their own souls that these humble mushrooms reveal with such merciless clarity.

After my fungal baptism, the criminalization of these ancient teachers filled me with more rage. What cosmic injustice! What spiritual tyranny! How dare these soulless bureaucrats in their sterile offices deny us our birthright to commune with the intelligence of Nature herself? How dare these mechanical men with plastic hearts declare illegal the very medicines that sprout from the soil to remind us who we really are? It seemed nothing short of spiritual warfare—a war on consciousness.

I peeked behind the cosmic curtain. I was finally in on the spiritual joke.

I had the same universe-shattering revelations that have been slapping seekers upside the head since time immemorial: Everything is connected in an unbroken dance of matter and energy. Consciousness doesn't die; it just changes channels. The universe is a single being pretending to be many. Love is the fundamental force binding it all together. Blahblahblah. The same insights discovered by mystics, sages, and that guy at Burning Man who won't stop talking about sacred geometry.

And just like that—boom—life began to have the deeper meaning I was looking for. But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t yet “get the message” Alan Watts was on about.

My soul still didn’t have purpose.

AI generated image of “ultimate spiritual enlightenment”

A few weeks after taking mushrooms for the first time, I took LSD alone in my bedroom and divine light exploded from my forehead like a supernova.

I was suddenly catapulted through the kaleidoscopic wormhole of…

The Ultimate Spiritual Enlightenment™

Exactly as AI-generated images now commonly depict it.

The barren wasteland of my teenage delusions of grandeur burst into bloom, every molecule vibrating with the most profound significance. The mundane world was suddenly shot through with divine light, a hierophany in high definition.

I rocketed through realms of unfathomable light and wisdom. I solved all of humanity's existential problems—poverty, suffering, the mystery of consciousness—but only inside my own private mind. I conceived billion-dollar tech-marketplace innovations only to realize, upon coming down, that Jeff Bezos had beaten me to the punch.

There I was—a teenage acid prophet—walking an invisible tightrope strung across the void at the cosmic center, perfectly balanced between heaven and hell. I could see both realms with crystal clarity but remained untethered from either. The few Buddhist texts I'd read suddenly weren't theoretical anymore—anatta, non-self, and sunyata, emptiness, weren't concepts but immediate realities.

I became Buddha under the Bodhi tree, I embodied the flowing paradoxes of the Tao, I realized Christ consciousness. I was spiritually enlightened—but only when on acid.

I swan-dived into celestial dimensions, baptized in the waters of unitive bliss where all apparent contradictions dissolve. I dipped my toes into infernal realms too, but, retreated immediately. I wasn’t ready for that particular tour just yet.

Instead, I witnessed the entire evolutionary pageant—from primordial cells to intergalactic civilizations that had transcended their meat-suits for light bodies. I watched history collapse like an accordion into a single eternal moment—the alpha and omega locked in an endless mythospiritual dance beyond linear time.

Psychedelics quickly became spiritual masturbation—sacred pornography for my seventeen-year-old mind. I was getting off on experiences that dwarfed anything my brief 21st century teenage existence had prepared me for. LSD quickly became the best thing ever. I loved it so much I felt a need to have some handy at all times. The universe was my palace, my playgound, and I was raiding its sacred chambers like a thief without remorse.

But, of course, I wasn't integrating a thing.

I was a psychedelic tourist with a collection of souvenirs I picked up in the non-dual gift shop. I had the intellectual delusion of knowing what Buddha discovered, but embodied none of it. The map was definitely not the territory, but I was too busy admiring my collection of maps to notice.

I was chasing ever-more-spectacular visions, getting high on spiritual revelations, tripping over insights of seeming magnificence—until I tripped, crashed and fell to my own demise. The universe—or God, or Tao, or whatever name you prefer for that which cannot be named—delivered swift punishment for my spiritual arrogance.

The Dark Night of the Soul wasn't just a bad trip—it was a sacred rite of passage.

My naïve teenage longing to see the formless face of God was violently interrupted by something far more terrifying. What I received instead of enlightenment was a crucible—a cosmic meat grinder that pulverized my identity. This wasn't just a trip where you trip; this was a trip where you fall—collapsing into a trembling fetal position while psychic demons circled like hungry vultures, their claws tearing at the fragile fabric of my soul. My confused teenage ego, that flimsy psychological lifeguard, desperately fought to keep my head above the rising waters of insanity and suicidal ideation. I was plummeting through an infinite chasm of hopelessness, a free-fall through chambers of meaninglessness, despair, and terrors so profound they existed in dimensions beyond language—a suffering so complete that I will carry its scar forever.

There I was, seventeen years old, being purified in the fire of mystical suffering that St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila wrote about centuries ago—the same territory mapped by Stanislav Grof and Chris Bache in their fascinating work.

Same archetypal journey, different vehicle. Theirs was divine grace; mine was laboratory-grade lysergic acid diethylamide.

Fortunately, on the other side of that purifying suffering—after the cosmic blowtorch had incinerated my illusions—I found something unexpected: myself. The real one, the loving one, not the imposter I'd been masquerading as for my entire adolescence.

Meditative Meaning

Until my first Vipassana retreat, I was absolutely convinced I had accidentally ruined my entire life beyond repair. I had failed at a cosmic, spiritual, mythical level.

I felt like the cosmic-spiritual judge—God—had slammed his fist down with a fury I feared. I spiraled into believing this catastrophe was divine retribution—punishment for my ingratitude, for the arrogance of being handed the keys to the kingdom through those initial psychedelic revelations but demanding more, always more. More than my teenage mind could possibly metabolize without shattering into pieces.

However, the flipside of the coin: I achieved Jung’s symbolic life. My life suddenly had the most profound meaning—the deep, spiritual, mythical meaning I'd been desperately hunting for in every corner of my teenage existence. And I found it in the last place any self-respecting young psychonaut would think to look—in gut-wrenching, soul-crushing suffering.

I was now a valued actor in a divine drama, an author of the divine drama, even. The suffering to get there was alchemical—a psychospiritual furnace that incinerated the impurities keeping me separated from the divine. It burned away the attachments, delusions, and ego-constructs that had me convinced I was this isolated island of consciousness trapped in a meat suit on a dying planet full of greedy corporations and controlling governments, at war for money and “resources” they stole and sold.

The dark night didn't vanish in some grand cinematic revelation either. It receded like a toxic tide—gradually, inconsistently, but undeniably. Throughout all those previous blissed-out psychedelic journeys, there had been this persistent voice whispering instructions I'd conveniently ignored. Meditate. Do yoga. Clean up your diet. Run. Pray. Connect with nature. I had dismissed these as the boring footnotes to my spectacular visions. Now, finally humbled by suffering, I chose to listen.

Meditation became my lifeline—not just some hipster hobby or Instagram-worthy wellness practice. I was dedicated with the fervor of the converted. I devoured books, mainlined lectures and podcasts, and practiced daily like my sanity depended on it—because it absolutely did. A few months after my dark night, I found myself at my first Vipassana retreat, sitting cross-legged in silence alongside other seekers of the void.

For the first time since exiting the womb, I felt a bone-deep sense of home. I wasn't speaking to anyone—that was forbidden—but I knew they knew. Or at least they knew about something that I desperately needed to know about. I was now being initiated into some meditative cult of the sane in an insane world.

Vipassana retreats are ten-day consciousness bootcamps. No talking, no music, no books, no writing, no eye contact—complete sensory detox and cognitive cold turkey. But before the clarity comes, the ego can throw a fire-alarm tantrum, sensing its impending execution throughout those ten excruciating days.

Some describe Vipassana retreats as hell, but, I’d been to hell and this was much better. My body screamed in protest from meditative positions, and my mind—that chattering monkey—screamed for any sort of stimulation, for escape, for anything other than this relentless present moment. Amidst it all, I was focused on coming back into a harmonious relationship with the present. I knew I hurt myself, and I knew I needed to meditate to integrate to heal. I was meditating my way back to wholeness.

Somewhere between day 6 and day 8 of this retreat, something cracked.

The dark night gave rise to the gentle light of dawn.

That unshakable conviction that I had cosmically cursed myself forever slowly revealed itself as exactly what it was: just another thought born from experience. An intense experience that crystallized into a belief. And beliefs can change.

While I could not change the experience of the dark night, I realized I could rewrite the meaning of the dark night. Instead of divine punishment, it was a divine teaching. Instead of a curse, it was a gift—a gift of meaning.

My life’s arc entered the redemption phase, like Jesus.

The meditation retreat revealed—not through flash and spectacle but through boredom and stillness—the same truths the mushrooms and acid had been entertainingly and blissfully screaming at me: the impermanence of all phenomena, the constructed nature of the self, the futility of grasping at smoke.

Instead of seeking myself in psychedelic dimensions or theological frameworks or philosophical systems, I discovered I had always been right here—in the breath, in the sensations, in the silent awareness that witnesses it all without judgment. No drugs required. No visions necessary. No roller coaster tickets needed.

Thus began my lifelong meditation practice.

Just this. Just being.

And for the first time since I was a wide-eyed, unconditioned child, that was enough.

Knowing Thyself

I call my story "McAwakening" because sometimes, it feels mass-produced—another chemical enlightenment narrative rolling off the cosmic assembly line. Another factory-standard spiritual awakening: depressed teenager with pharmaceutical-grade speed coursing through his veins can't focus on the soul-crushing curriculum designed to transform him into a productive economic unit. Can't stomach the prescribed life sentence: school, corporate servitude, marriage, reproduction, decades of labor to fund a brief twilight of "retirement," and finally blessed oblivion.

Fortunately, my doctor—unwitting shamanic gatekeeper—initiated me into the prescription drug paradigm, which became the unexpected doorway to subsequently more effective “illegal and dangerous” sacred medicines. A pharmacological-spiritual Trojan horse wheeled into the prison of my closed-off and depressed mind.

I sometimes sense that my journey was prescribed. Predestined. Predesigned.

Looking back on over ten years of walking the chemical path, it feels expected. Of course what began as teenage rebellion became spiritual revolution. Of course what started as suffering transformed into grace, just as Ram Dass describes it.

A prefabricated, 21st-century enlightenment story—an accidental spiritual awakening via late-stage capitalist malaise, jumpstarted by pharmaceutical intervention, blessed by the mushroom sermons of The Joe Rogan Experience and the acid valuation of the Steve Jobs biography, guided by the countercultural mysticism of Terence McKenna’s Youtube lectures and the soul-logic of Ram Dass’ bestsellers, and fueled by substances our “democratic” government deemed too dangerous for my own good.

But ultimately, I found something that can’t be mass-produced at all.

Myself as loving awareness.

Integrating Service

My initiatory psychedelic journeys during adolescence aren't just trippy stories—they're the bedrock of my existence. These self-chosen rites of passage—denied to us by a shallow, materialist culture with its hollow graduations and unembodied milestones—forged me in psychospiritual fire. I emerged with scars etched into my soul, but those wounds continually transform into wisdom.

And that wisdom continues to shape the path I walk today.

From the apocalyptic ruins of my McAwakening rose something unexpected: purpose. Not the manufactured kind you get from career counselors or personality tests—but the kind that arrives like thunder after the storm, uninvited and undeniable.

Out of those divine ecstasies and hellish descents came the seed of Psygaia—a psychedelic and ecological medicine nonprofit dedicated to research, education, and community support. But it’s also more than that. It’s my karma yoga, my offering to the world, my soul’s assignment. Through Psygaia, I’m able to offer guidance and support to others exploring psychedelics for discovery, healing and growth.

Woven emerged from the same soil—a retreat cooperative rooted in interconnection, offering holistic, nature-based spaces for healing and growth. A grounded approach built on respect—for the land, for the lineages, for the people (including non-human ones), and for the ancient intelligence of Nature’s medicines. While many retreats get a lot of flak for being costly—trust me—these retreats aren’t making us rich.

Out of the psychedelic crucible also came academic rigor. Not just for those shiny credentials—but because I wanted to translate my cautionary tale into something others could learn from. A story of both revelation and recklessness, written in the language of lived experience and backed by research. The degrees and credentials from the university don’t make it more true, but my hope is that they make people more likely to listen.

The difference between the 1960s psychedelic revolution and whatever this “psychedelic renaissance” is now becoming, is that there’s a growing awareness of the dirt at the end of the rainbow. The inescapable realities of ecocide, genocide, and systemic collapse are forcing us to outgrow the childish spiritual naïveté that sought transcendence at any cost. The fantasy that psychedelics are shortcuts to any kind of enlightenment is dissolving. What remains are spiritual allies, ancient teachers that demand not escape, but integration, responsibility, and service.

Some are still chasing the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s okay—they’ll catch up.

This isn’t about fleeing the world through spiritual highs. It’s about facing it. Head-on. Eyes open. With both compassion for all beings and fury for change.

My McAwakening taught me the point isn’t to transcend the world through mystical experience—it’s to return. Changed. Humbled. Useful. The true measure of awakening isn’t how high you fly. It’s how well you give back when your feet land back on the soil.

So here I stand—scarred, humbled, transformed, and devoted—offering not answers, but companionship on our long walk back to the wholeness that is part of our Nature.

My standardized, mass-produced spiritual awakening—complete with all the predictable stages of Campbell’s hero’s journey: rebellion, revelation, crisis, and integration—turned out to be preparation for something I never expected.

A life of service to what is—God, Tao, Nature, Source…

And that’s how this essay ends—with the story just beginning.

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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed please “heart” the post so that I know, and so you can feed my dopamine-starved ADHD brain.

If you’re a man interested in holistic men’s work, check out The Mindful Men’s Guild.

If you’re a man interested in grounded and holistic healing and growth retreats, in nature, with psilocybin mushrooms, meditation, breathwork and more, visit Woven.

If you’re a person interested in a 3-month psilocybin mushroom healing program happening this summer, in Vancouver, check out Mushroom Summer.

If you need guidance or support with your psychedelic journey, visit Psygaia.

Blessings!