Psychedelics
We ate the mushrooms. Thirty minutes later we were under the covers, laughing at our silly banter, the bed sheet making a translucent roof over our heads. “I’ll be right back,” she said and slipped out.
I was alone. Little by little, I felt like something was pressing in on me from all sides. “I’m going to die,” I thought, “Here. By myself. In the bed.” I called out from under the sheet, “Michelle, are you there?”
“I’m just using the bathroom,” her voice came from the next room.
“Can you come back? You’ve been gone a long time.”
“I’m right here,” she said, crawling back under the covers.
“I think I’m going to die.”
She was calm: “Remember what Henry said.” Henry was a friend who’d worked as a facilitator for psychedelic experiences. I’d told him my wife and I were planning a weekend getaway to Joshua Tree and might try some psychedelics. I asked his advice. ‘If you start freaking out,’ he said, ‘go into nature, touch the ground, and take some deep breaths.’ “Let’s go outside,” Michelle said, “you’ll feel better.
We threw off the covers and stepped outside. The desert surrounded us. The air was a crisp forty degrees. “Maybe a bath?” she said. Our room had an outdoor tub. I turned on the tap. I was in a cold sweat. The landscape looked like an image from another planet—an unforgiving world with toxic air. I watched the water level rise in the tub.
“One of us could drown!” I thought. I cut the water.
I glimpsed my reflection in the glass of a window. It was eerie and spectral. “Am I already dead?” The kids were safe at home with my mother. What would she tell them? I started feeling afraid—not of death, but of embarrassment. I curled up on the bed in a fetal position. Would we be one of those couples you hear about who try a drug and accidentally kill themselves? I had an image of my friend Ben talking to his wife in their refurbished kitchen, his eyes wide with shock, peering over the top of his phone: ‘Vishal and Michelle took some psychedelics. They died!’
“Call Henry!” I said.
“I already did,” Michelle said, “It’s going straight to voicemail.”
I needed someone to help me work through this. Who else could guide me? “Call Bill!” Bill was a professional philosopher.
Michelle dialed. I heard snippets of conversation: “... mushrooms… freaking out a bit… no, nothing like that… maybe just talk to him…” She handed me the phone,
“It’s Bill.”
I heard Bill’s voice: “Hey, Vishal. What’s up?”
“I can’t stop thinking about death.”
“What are you thinking about it?”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Okay. Let’s start with that. Why don’t you want to die?” What a bizarre question! It took me a minute to answer.
“I want to raise my kids,” I said. “They’re the most important thing to me. I want to be there for them. I want… I want… to teach them.”
“Okay. What do you want to teach them?” Bill said.
What was it that I wanted to teach them? I wasn’t sure. I tried thinking about it, but nothing came into my head.
Instead an answer seemed to well up out of my chest: “I want to teach them how to live!” I paused. Now that I’d said it out loud, I realized I had no idea how to teach someone to live. What exactly were you supposed to say or do? Did Bill know? I’d worked with him on things like logic, critical thinking, and cognitive biases. But we’d never talked about philosophy. “Bill, do you know how to live?” I asked.
“I’m figuring it out like everyone else,” he said.
“But you have a PhD.”
He gave a short laugh. “All that means is that I have a lot of stamina for a certain kind of mental work. But okay, sure: I’ve been studying the matter a long time.”
“I haven’t been studying it a long time,” I said. “But I’ve been wondering about it a long time.”
“Tell me about that,” he said. “Do you remember when you first started wondering?”
Memories began racing through my mind, one after another. It felt like I was being transported into a scene from my past, just a few years ago. I was in bed, my body shaking with sobs. The red digits of the bedside clock looked blurry through my tears: 3:23 a.m. Michelle stirred in the bed beside me, ‘Vishal, my love, what’s the matter?’
The scene from my memory seemed more real to me than my actual surroundings. I heard Bill’s voice, as if he were standing next to me, the two of us watching my past self in the bed, “Tell me where we are, Vishal.” I explained the background to him. My father had died a few months earlier. I used to take him to his dialysis sessions. I’d rub his feet to ease his muscle cramps, and we’d talk. I’d often ask him for advice, and on one occasion, I asked him about death.
“What did he say?” Bill said.
“He said, ‘Always go to funerals, and always visit people in the hospital. The hard times: that’s when real friends show up.’”
