What A Long Strange Trip it's Been

I just caught up with the season premire of "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver. Much to my surprise, his main story was about psychadelic assisted therapy. If you have not seen Michael Polan's series on the same subject, "How to Change Your Mind," I highly recommend it. Humans have lived with, and benefitted from, mind alerting substance since...well, time began. When the U.S. government put the brakes on LSD and Mushroom therapy in the 1970s (FU Richard Nixon) , all the reseach was halted. Now, many veterans of war are benifitting from this therapy in order to cure their PTSD symptoms. Last election cycle in Colorado, we voted to end the criminalization of these substances and the therapudic community is now using various kinds of drugs to assist in therapy for PTSD, depression, alcohoism and the like. I've been participating this assisted therapy for a few sessions now. Each session is very different from the other, and each time there are new insights and surprises. I trust my doctor very much, which is essential when you are this vulnerable. And vulneraable you are during these 'trips.' I used pyschadelics as an older teen, and used them in a conscious way to explore my mind and spirit, to great effect. That's one of the reasons I feel comfortable revisiting this kind of experience. I can't imagine doing this without my prior experiece. What do you do when you find yourself floating in the blackness of space? You go with it, and it leads you to a different space; maybe a tunnel or a series of shapes and colors. Most times I don't know if I'm upside down or still in the reclining chair in my doc's office. It's a true out of body experience. Much more powerful than any LSD I ever took. I'm hoping these sessions will help me shake my persistant depression, which has become much worse in the Covid world, and after the deaths of loved ones. Time will tell I suppose.