Magic Medicine: Unmasking My Demons With Psychedelics

OCD and the Therapeutic Potential of Psilocybin and LSD

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

As far back as I can remember, I’ve had the tendency to mentally assign significance to words and numbers, avoiding the “bad” ones while finding ways to work the “lucky” ones into my daily life as much as possible. In the early days, I lived in fear of things that came in threes, and touched doorknobs or quickly flicked light switches four times in a row to avoid some faceless but ominous misfortune from happening.

I knew on some level that none of this was normal. The term “pathological” may not have been in my 8 year old consciousness, but I was painfully aware that none of my family or friends lived with this burden. There was something shameful about it even before I knew the name for what I had, and so I kept my mouth shut. Being raised Catholic didn’t help. The highly structured rituals and superstitions in the church only made my personal rituals evolve into ones of higher complexity that were backed by more sinister fears.

As a teenager, I learned about OCD from magazine articles and movies. By then, the beast had mutated into something that seemed far beyond the reach of therapy. Besides that, I lived in fear of my loved ones knowing such a horrible secret and had developed new sets of rituals that revolved around hiding it. One day, my mom and I sat together on our couch and watched a documentary about OCD. She spoke about how thankful she was that I didn’t have such an awful disease while I suffered in silence next to her.

During my first round in college, I took an abnormal psychology course as an elective and attempted to fight my OCD using cognitive behavioral techniques learned from the textbook. Any small progress was followed by several steps backward. I even made arrangements to see a therapist, but chickened out during the first appointment and crafted stories about feeling generalized anxiety and stress in order to hide the real reason I was there.

A few years passed and in my early 20s, I was living in the Bay Area with a boyfriend who never could have guessed my biggest secret. While shopping one day at Frye’s Electronics, he browsed laptops while I flipped through magazines. The pages of Popular Mechanics fell open to an article detailing how Leonardo Dicaprio had unintentionally given himself OCD while preparing for the role of Howard Hughes in The Aviator, then struggled to return to sanity after the film wrapped. The article described the underlying problem, “hyperconnectivity between…the orbitofrontal cortex and the caudate nucleus”, and offered another glimmer of salvation, this time veiled behind the science of neuroplasticity.

I repeated this cycle about a dozen times over the next two years, rereading the article when I needed a boost of false hope. Ironically, it became yet another unhealthy obsession.

I took pictures of the pages with my phone, naively hoping that understanding the detailed mechanisms behind my brain would make a difference. By fighting my compulsive thoughts with the mindfulness techniques mentioned in the article, I could actually rewire the neural pathways that gave my disease its power. I just had to stick with it, and this time would be different than all of the others. I repeated this cycle about a dozen times over the next two years, rereading the article when I needed a boost of false hope. Ironically, the article itself became yet another unhealthy obsession, and I never learned much from each previous futile attempt.

The first hint of light at the end of the tunnel arrived in the form of an unusual Christmas present from a friend of a friend who smiled mysteriously while handing me a plastic bag filled with psychedelic mushrooms.

“Be careful with the dose because they’re strong,” he warned.

I took a cautious 2 grams at noon on New Years Eve, planning to be sober again by the time I was ready to go out. An hour later, my partner found me sobbing on the bathroom floor and assumed I was having a bad trip.

This was not the case but it was difficult finding the right words to explain that my entire life had been worth living for this one experience. How can you be afraid of anything when you are everything? His trip had been pleasant but underwhelming, and he seemed skeptical. The self consciousness and unspoken doubts that pervaded our entire relationship started seeping into my still-opened mind. I wondered if doing this alone would have been a better idea, and secretly wished that someone with more experience could have served as my trip buddy. When the effects wore off, we took a train to San Francisco to watch fireworks over the bay. In the afterglow, I had no desire to drink alcohol or stay out late. Something dark lingered behind the superficially festive scene, and I felt a bit of sad compassion for the couples around me who vomited on the pavement and argued with slurred words.

On New Years Day, I woke up refreshed and clear headed. It was very early and I still felt bad for the countless individuals who would soon wake up hungover and miserable.

A mystical sense of potential and wonder shimmered over everything and I realized that for the first time, my mind was as silent as the world around me.

In the past, cognitive behavioral therapy had given me the strength to resist the compulsions, but never completely stopped the intrusive thoughts. Now I finally knew what it felt like to be a normal person without OCD. Before the day ended, I was turning off light switches and tearing paper towels from the roll without even thinking about doing it a certain way. It had to be too good to last.

The uneasy feelings and irrational urges to do things in specific ways returned a few weeks later. The mushrooms were gone and I didn’t yet know where to get more, or how to grow my own. Not to mention, my medicine of choice was still illegal and heavily stigmatized. I didn’t dare to speak of the trip to my therapist, even after she remarked about how much I had improved recently.

A few years passed and more mushrooms periodically made their way into my life. The errant thought patterns predictably receded for a few weeks after every session, regardless of how pleasant or difficult each trip had actually been. The mode of action seemed to be primarily physiological and I assumed it had something to do with psilocybin’s effects on serotonin.

Eventually some LSD came along. This was something different, as was my entire life by this time. The previous boyfriend and I had long gone separate ways, I had returned to university, and was living with a new partner in a new city. Sitting on a considerable amount of psychedelic experience, I knew the drill. Take the drug, accept the trip that comes, and feel better for a few weeks. I didn’t expect anything different, but kept an open mind. On a chilly late September morning, I sat on the porch with a book in my hand and a secret hidden under my tongue. Anticipation tingled like electricity in my veins.

I was able to pinpoint the exact moment that my OCD began, along with all of the things that I had done over the last 20 years to unintentionally reinforce it.

LSD has a subtle beauty and gradual onset. It’s not hard to forget you’ve taken something while waiting for the first effects. You may very well find yourself smiling and laughing for no reason, or wondering why the world appears to have a little more beauty than usual. Approximately an hour after placing the tiny square of paper into my mouth, the shimmering sense of wonder from my childhood returned, and everything felt unequivocally right with the world. It was a profoundly peaceful state beyond the reach of sadness, and yet more sustainable than joy. A floodgate of childhood memories opened and waves of insight rushed in. For a few hours, I conjured up a carefree time in life prior to numerical superstitions and the ominous but vague threats that loomed if I didn’t do a ritual correctly.

It’s true that one can reminisce at any time, but memories are particularly real on LSD. It was the closest I’ve been to actually having the power to travel back in time and do things differently. I was able to pinpoint the exact moment that my OCD began, along with all of the things that I had done over the last 20 years to unintentionally reinforce it.

Early childhood public school and Catholic youth group encounters had made it clear that I wasn’t like the other kids, and that I wasn’t okay the way I was. In order to become more socially acceptable, I needed to stifle my endless curiosity, along with the things that brought me happiness. The intrusive thoughts and compulsions had a predictable pattern, often popping up during attempts to do anything even remotely enjoyable.

For a considerable part of my life I genuinely believed that I didn’t deserve to be happy as I was, and that I deserved to be punished anytime I slipped and let my true personality show. Over the years, that message had somehow transmuted into meaningless attempts to feel in control of something by checking stoves, flicking light switches, and counting toilet paper squares. If I couldn’t change who I was, then I needed the burden of a disease that would punish me by keeping me afraid.

I had let it grow into a grotesque monster in my mind over the years, but the monster had finally been unmasked and I could finally meet it in a fair fight.

New research is suggesting that psychedelics have significant medicinal value. One study found that past year use of LSD may be associated with lower incidence of mental health problems, and Johns Hopkins researchers have called for the rescheduling of psilocybin. Compared to traditional therapy and pharmaceuticals, psychedelics seem to be highly effective in treating depression and anxiety disorders. With formal studies still heavily restricted, I can only offer an educated guess based on personal experience. OCD is a difficult condition to treat, and appears to stem from a labyrinthine mix of neural circuits, brain structural abnormalities, chemical imbalances, and psychosocial issues. Traditional therapy in conjunction with SSRIs has been the gold standard treatment model for decades, but there are countless individuals still suffering under this paradigm. In the best case scenario, SSRIs can take weeks to provide relief, and it’s often only partial relief. As in my case, many are disappointed to find that the best thing medication and therapy can do is dampen the compulsions and intrusive thoughts without completely silencing them. Many people with OCD don’t respond to antidepressants at all, and the side effects can be just as debilitating as the disease. It also must be said that for every good therapist, there are many mediocre and outright terrible ones in the world.

While psychedelics are definitely not for everyone and not without their own problems, they can solve many of these issues. Compared to SSRIs, psilocybin and LSD seem to be ridiculously efficient at lifting anxiety, providing instant relief in many cases. In one Johns Hopkins study, even those who experienced negative experiences while under the influence of psilocybin still reported significant anxiety relief in the aftermath. While the flooding of serotonin receptors seems to be a very important mechanism of action, the experience is not limited to the physiological and also gets at the psychological and spiritual dimensions of mental illness. The spontaneous insight that can arise during a psychedelic session is the kind that can take months to reach with a good therapist, and is likely to never happen with an average one. Imagine the possibilities if we could only combine powerful substances like psilocybin or LSD with the safety and guidance of trained counselors.

To have OCD is to fall into the trap of looped thinking while sober.

If you’re reading this as a psychedelic user, there’s a good chance you know what it feels like to experience thought loops during a trip. It can be disorienting and unpleasant, but strangely comforting at the same time to hold on to a repetitive thought while the rest of the world dissolves into chaos. To have OCD is to fall into the trap of looped thinking while you’re sober, hating the burden while simultaneously deriving comfort over the only thing that you seemingly have control over in life.

As I have learned from my most challenging moments on psychedelics, it’s a false sense of control and surrendering is often the best course of action. Psilocybin and LSD have shown me the light at the end of the tunnel, unmasked my greatest monster, and shown me how to transform difficult moments in life into the most profound learning experiences. I could get by without ever taking them again if need be, yet these medicines remain illegal and inaccessible for so many others who could greatly benefit from them. I can only attempt to repay these precious substances by fighting to remove the stigma and misconceptions, and working hard to see true drug policy reform within my lifetime.