Self Help.

*This is a story inspired by true events that happened to me, some things have been changed based on how much I feel should be shared. although I believe that PTSD and other forms of trauma can be helped through the aides of psychedelics and other durgs, Everyone should seek help through more established channels first.*

Sean is bored. Really fucking bored, how bored is Sean?. Sean now knows that in this office there is 52 Styrofoam panels on the roof. Sean knows that there are 2 red pens, 4 black pens, and 1 blue pen in the Therapists pen holder. Sean knows that there are 18 blue stripes behind the graphic of the cutesy frog on the Therapists tie. He knows these things because he has been here for over two hours, the Therapist has been droning on now for two hours. what is a mandatory visit to check another box off on his transition from active service to civilian life is quickly turning in a big waste of a Friday afternoon.

"any feelings of regret?" asked the Therapist

"Nope" replied Sean

"Any unexplained headaches? pains in the head before bed?" asked the Therapist

"Nope" replied Sean

"Well it seems like your traveling well, its been 10 months since you left?" asked the Therapist as he fumbled through notes

"6 dude, its at the top of the sheet" said Sean sardonically

"ah, well even better, you say your about to go traveling then? I thought you may of wanted to spend some time at home" inquired the Therapist

"I'd like to see some parts of the world that aren't on fire" said Sean, this tiny bit of sarcastic aggression finally getting the short, rail thin Therapist to look over his binder. The truth of it was Sean had headaches, not all the time but enough to let him know something was wrong. and the massive feelings of regret rarely left him nowadays. And he never felt like home anywhere, so why bother sticking around somewhere that was just another place?

Sean got up from the chair and left the office cursing the Therapist in his head. Here this man stood trying to "Help" Sean but without even a shred of knowledge of what he had been through. Had this man seen the skyline of cities burn, the air filled with smoke and the night air pierced with screams, then maybe he would begin to create a space to help, instead of the over lit , childish office adorned with posters displaying people achieving with words like "persevere" or "commitment" written under them. Sean was angry but he knew he was just unfairly judging the guy who in all fairness was trying to help but was probably just jaded from hearing so many dudes talk about blood and death and war, it would get boring after a while.

Sean was a 28 year old veteran of what his type called the GWOT, or The Global War On Terror, which is a fancy way of saying really rich nations could legally just wander into a place they said had "extremists" in it and set up the most elaborate of money laundering scams in history. Now, like a lot of his friends he was tired, jaded and bored. About 2 months before Sean had started dabbling in psychedelics, really he always had but now he was getting serious about it, researching it more and reading up on potential mental and psychological benefits of them. like many of his friends he suffered through the pains of separation from something that had made him the person he was, the good and bad parts. That feeling of stepping into a abyss of uncertainty after being in such a sure place for so long was like a series of clawed hands dragging him into a hole of self loathing and constant questioning. He was happy he left the military, but for him like so many others, they may have left the deserts and the burned out city streets, but they're souls are still there.

Sean had done DMT before, but only in small quantities and with groups of friends best described as "skinny boy crying types". On his first experience he had been filtered piece by piece through a warm tunnel of expanding and contracting shapes. A bright hand reached out to him but when he grasped at it he felt it melt away, but one thing that stood out to him overall was the strong feeling of love. A love he didn't feel from his parents, his girlfriend, or from a country that he gleefully burned himself out for.

His general mood was slipping, getting worse almost. Sean wasn't working so was easily drinking most afternoons until his friends would finish work. An average day would be, wake up, force himself through a gym session where he despised those around him for being "herd like" then he would argue with himself on the way home about how pathetic he was for thinking this way, then he would sit about drinking until the afternoon when he would meet up with friends to talk useless shit and occasionally revisit the reasons why he was unhappy. A strong pattern had emerged and Sean was smart enough to see it, one of self loathing but also superiority and entitlement, his ego was enormous. This is the main attraction Sean saw in psychedelic experiences, the ego shattering that it provided allowed him to connect to others again, to level him to a place where he once again felt one with people, he had too much pride to see the military provided "professionals" and let's be honest, they have never really helped anyone, so Sean had embarked on his own trans-dimensional quest to make himself not such a fuck head.

It was a cold night when he secured a gram of pure dmt from his close friend and fellow wild cat. He had planned to take it interstate in the coming days and share with some also recently discharged friends, but with the post 911 world being ever less and less fair in regards to substances traveling in the air Sean had a pickle to tickle. He could feel the clutches of anxiety reach around him like he felt when he was alone but also the excitement of seeing his friends in the next few days that was fighting a pitched battle for his mind. He tried to watch the TV, talk to people on the phone, but he found himself moving from one room to another staring at walls.

"I NEED TO VISIT THAT PLACE" he thought. That void that filled him with love and let him relax. For the uninitiated dmt last 10 minutes to half an hour, then it's a slow come down to reality leaving the user feeling very relaxed for days afterwards. It's not uncommon for users to see and make contact with entities on some other plane, Sean had not had these sorts of experiences yet but he had felt the overwhelming love and out of everything he had put into his body so far this was by far the most worthy of his attention.

So he decided "Fuck it!" He proclaimed loudly to an indifferent and standard apartment roof. He would do am entire gram of dmt tonight. Sean's method of ingestion was to put a small amount of tea leaves in the seat of a pipe and pack it down with the dmt crystals then smoke it in a similar fashion to how one would smoke weed. This was by far the easiest way he knew of other than injection but seriously fuck that.

He sat himself down in his bed, facing his large glass sliding doors that faced a large courtyard that separated his apartment building from another one, these where your standard cookie cutter shoeboxes that people payed ridiculous sums of money to be unhappy in. He packed as much dmt into the pipe as he could, about 2/3 of a gram, placed it between his lips, lit the pile of chunky brown crystals and inhaled deep.

The first pull was harsh, it always was, he coughed hard but maintained and inhaled a second breath, it was foul-smelling and tasted putrid but he kept it in his lungs. He could hear a faint ringing, the unmistakable sound of the trip coming on. His vison was becoming blurred, this had never happened before. He was blinking tears out of his eyes as a purple smoke appeared in front of him, this was very different to the times before, normally he was overcome by bliss and patterns by now but nevertheless he reached the lighter forward across what felt like a football field sized gap to reach the the pipe and re light the pile and breathe in the last breath.

Ever been to a laser show? Or more accurately had a laser show 30cms from your face? Well that's what Sean was experiencing. He fell backwards on his bed staring into the light above him which had started to warp backwards and turn into a tunnel "Cool" thought Sean as he relaxed a bit as this familiar aspect of the trip seemed to happen. But something strange overcame him, he wasn't being pulled gently into the tunnel this time, this time he shot through the tunnel at a violent speed. He became surrounded by flashing lights in a cylinder of bright purple and orange as he tried to reach out and steady himself but as he reached out his hands had begun to turn inside out and melt into his body. Terror had now overcome him, the normal soft ringing of the dmt trip had become an awful cacophony of rising shouts that seemed to be accusing him, of what he wasn't sure but he felt he was being held to account for crimes he couldn't remember.

He began to panic as the speed of his travel through the tunnel increased. He was certain his whole body had disintegrated and he was now just pure consciousness hurtling through ribbons of light. Suddenly he came to a screeching halt.

He had come to an instant stop, the tunnel had disappeared and he found himself now in a vast, impossibly vast chamber that resembled outer space. Around him where thick columns of purple gases that towered up beyond his sight and went down into impenetrable depths. He floated in this space when his attention was snapped behind him, he didn't turn, but more his vision inverted to face what he thought was behind him and that's when he saw her.

A vast face, constructed out of moving fractals that opened and contracted and collapsed into themselves repeatedly yet still maintaining the shape and features of a female face. The face had a strong nurturing feeling, as if some sort of mother but was several ranks above a natural mother, somehow superior to everything Sean knew of. This face did not speak but it gave a strong feeling of disappointment. Sean could sense what it was saying even though there was no verbal communication. This mother, this being of pure existence loved him deeply, yet he had hurt it. Sean felt waves and waves of sadness and dread over come him, he didn't believe in any gods but here in front of this being he felt humbled beyond description. The being wept as it stared into Sean, he could feel it grasping his heart and asking "why"? He could offer no answers, he could not speak, terror and sadness had overcome him.

The dmt had begun to lose its strength, he could feel the bed sheets between his fingertips. Sean pulled himself up and off the bed and staggered toward his bedroom door frame. The apartment walls where alive, swirling and reaching out to him, he traversed his hallway and walked out into the kitchen and living area. He steadied himself against the shelves in the centre of the living room as a strange sensation of being watched overcame him.

Sean's house had been invaded, a sense of dread filled him. He felt eyes move across him, slowly, slower than anything he turned his head to his left. Behind his kitchen bench, standing nearly 7 feet tall was what looked like a stick insect but with three triangles where the head should be. The triangles all had their tips touching and were filled with darting electric blue dots, the dots must have been eyes because they all faced Sean, one dot would focus on him as the rest darted about wildly then it would alternate with another dot. Sean stared at this interdimensional visitor curiously. His fear was subsiding and was being replaced by wonder, this visitor was giving off the genuine vibe of "dude where am I?". In a strange case of transcendental mix ups it seemed as though Sean had emerged through the dmt doorway and this creature had mistakenly followed him. The two light travellers stared at each other.

"You lost man?" Asked Sean

The creature through what can only be explained as "vibe communication" replied

"I'm here to make sure you made it back OK, we are worried about you"

"I'm scared, I didn't think it would be like this" said Sean in his mind

"It's OK, we just want you to know that you can come back anytime, but we are not a refuge for your hatred" vibed the creature.

Sean went to speak but the creature was gone, the waves of dmt were leaving him. He collapsed on his gross beige standard apartment carpet and felt the world return to normal, his head burning with questions. Like a child he wept as though he had been told off by his parents for being naughty, he had the strong feeling that he was being a burden and a spoiled brat to those around him, even the universe itself had told him so, at least that's what he felt.

Sean went to his shower and sat on the floor, his happy place, and turned the water on. Fully clothed he pondered all his latest choices. His dismissal of people genuinely interested in him. His disgust at the way others lived, his strange need to go back to a place where death lurked for him. That was the most disturbing, that he longed for another dance with the reaper to make himself feel in some sense superior when in fact he would forever be no better than anyone else.

For a solid hour he pondered these thoughts when he turned to thinking on how the female fractal being had made him feel. He wanted to apologise, it's all he could think of now, but if he returned so quickly to that realm would he find the same terror he felt before?. He stood up, soaking wet he gathered his wits, here was Sean, a warrior, nay! , an inter-dimensional warrior. He stormed to the bedroom and grabbed the foul-smelling pipe, sitting with his soaked back against the wall he packed the remaining dmt into the pipe.

"I'm coming, I'm sorry but I'm coming back" he said to whatever was on the other side as he lit the pipe.

1 pull

2 pulls

3 pulls

This time was different, his back sliding down the wall he closed his eyes. He felt a cooling wave of serenity wash over him, like he was laying on a beach with his head toward the surf as the ocean air blew over him. Inside his mind the great void of the last trip was gone, now he was free-floating in a vast space of light. The void taking on the colours blue and pink. An endless display of twirling light rolled around him and held him, an embraced that gave more love than anything he had felt before. He looked forward, the great fractal being appeared again, this time her face was relaxed, looking lovingly and giving off a sense of great pride. Sean tried to say sorry , tried to explain how terrible he had been, but his words were smothered. The being was radiating love, radiating understanding. To Sean a message was being given "you are forgiven, we love you, remember that what you wish to become, you will become, hate and you will be hated, love and the world will always love you".

The waves receded.

Sean opened his eyes, he still felt the warm embrace of the light and lay in the most content state he could possibly imagine. Hours seemed to pass, the light of dawn had breached over the apartment building opposite and was beginning to bathe his room in warmth. With soaked clothes and for once a clear head he stood up and walked outside. What Sean endeavoured to do next would be how he would try to live from then on, no hate, no negative thoughts, he would try to make others feel how that great mother made him feel, he would give out love to everyone he met until he had left the hatred behind completely.

This is an ongoing mission, have the best intentions and hug everyone like they are family. You can do it. It's really not that hard.

THE END