​Extremely Conscious and Incredibly Scared of It
Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Health

​Extremely Conscious and Incredibly Scared of It

Sometimes I wonder if my conditions, which fluctuate on a continuum from the height of terror to a vague sense of unease, could instead be called seeing too much, feeling too much, or thinking too much.

According to the DSM-V, my official diagnosis is panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and underlying depression. Yet sometimes I wonder if my conditions, which fluctuate on a continuum from the height of terror to a vague sense of unease, could instead be called seeing too much, feeling too much, or thinking too much.

I was always a hypersensitive, frightened child. Then, at later points in life—sometimes sober, and sometimes under the influence of psychedelics like psilocybin, peyote, or acid—I saw, felt, and thought things that were perhaps beyond the realm of what I could absorb that quickly. Like, I saw the world as a game or a play. I saw humans as players or actors, and the identities we'd constructed (and those that were constructed for us) as just a farce. Everyone was walking around in a body, engaged in the drama of the world, but no one seemed to be asking What is going on here? It felt painful that no one was asking. It also hurt, and made no sense, that people were cruel to one another based on those seemingly arbitrary layers of self. Once you see these things, it's hard to shut the door on that awareness. It's hard to just go on pretending it's normal that we exist.

Advertisement

In the seminal 1960s text The Psychedelic Experience: a Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, authors Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner define "games" as "behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space−time locations and characteristic patterns of movement." They define heavy game players as "those who cling to their egos" and convey that it is the mind that renders the psychedelic experience, and all life experiences, as "heaven or hell."

I don't think my use of psychedelics was the cause, or primary catalyst, of my mental illness. I would not consider panic attacks an acid flashback, as I was having panic attacks prior to experimenting with drugs. But I do think that my psychedelic experiences called attention to the frightening dichotomy between the flimsy construction of self and a more fluid, unified consciousness. My experiences with psychedelics, as well as with mental illness, have presented similarities in the ways that they strip away various game identities. In that sense, the experience of depersonalization on psychedelic drugs is an apt metaphor for the feeling of decontextualization in the throws of a panic attack, and vice versa.

In fact, many of the physical symptoms of a panic attack mirror the ways in which Leary, Alpert, and Metzner describe the sensations of ego loss on psychedelics. In psychedelic ego loss there is "bodily pressure…body disintegrating or blown to atoms…sinking…pressure on head and ears…tingling in extremities…feelings of body flowing as if wax…nausea." Likewise, in the throws of a panic attack I feel suffocating sensations and a tightness in the chest, the experience that I am disintegrating, dissolving, or about to explode, and tingling in my hands and feet. During depressive episodes, often difficult to parse from periods of extreme anxiety (the sludge of mental illness, in my experience, doesn't lend itself easily to organization, clarity, or categorization), I feel caught in a sinking sensation as though all gravity resides in my chest.

Advertisement

As for the image of bodies made of wax, this is one of the scariest symptoms of panic attacks that I have experienced. In the throws of a panic attack, there is often a visceral shift in reality where the world suddenly looks like a movie: surreal or hyper-real. If I am with other people, they look plastic, melty, as though they are made of rubber or wearing masks. It's as though I am watching my self, the identity I have constructed, interact with other constructed identities. Not only is it scary—it's also very sad to feel like we are all wearing masks.

All of these similarities between an acute panic attack, or depressive episode, and the experience of psychedelic drugs make me wonder if mental illness is not, in some ways, a heightened state of consciousness, or intelligence. During these periods, I often find myself asking What am I really? and What's the point? While these aren't comforting questions, I wouldn't call them stupid questions. Rather, they are questions that point to an awareness that we make our own meaning, and that some of the activities, identity components, and life structures we utilize to provide this meaning, "role…status, sex…power, size, beauty," may not be particularly healthy, spiritual, or even real.

One might even see the questions of What am I? and What's the point? as beneficial questions, if we are willing to face the answers. Often the answers might necessitate a life overhaul—a restructuring of values to align with what we know deep down to be true—and this is terrifying. It can be a massive undertaking. When everyone is wearing masks, I don't know which is more uncomfortable: to wear a mask you know is false or to try and live in a more "naked" way among the masked.

Advertisement

As Leary, Alpert, and Metzner describe it, "Your ego, that one tiny remaining strand of self, screams STOP!. You wrench yourself out of the life-flow, drawn by your intense attachment to your old desires…if there is game distraction around you, you will find yourself dropping back."

It makes sense then that most people, if given the choice, would prefer not to access that questioning part of the brain. I know that in my deepest periods of mental "unwellness" I have felt like a curtain had been opened in my perception. All I wanted was for the curtain to be closed—to never see anything too clearly again. Similarly, in my psychedelic experiences I had many a trip wherein I felt that I had "gone out" too far and longed to return to a safer, more cloistered mind. Ego death is scary.

Having been clean and sober for many years, I haven't taken psychedelic drugs in a very long time. But even if I wasn't committed to sobriety, I don't think I would be able to handle tripping anymore. Perhaps that's because it was easier to live closer to the deeper "truth"—not so married to the external trappings of a false identity—when I was younger. It's not that I no longer see and feel the friction between a false identity and who I really am anymore. I feel it every time I have a panic attack. But just because you see and feel doesn't mean you change.

Leary, Alpert, and Metzner say, "Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream… physical reactions should be recognized as signs heralding transcendence. Avoid treating them as symptoms of illness, accept them, merge with them, enjoy them."

I have heard the exact same advice given for panic attacks: to ride the anxiety, float with it, bend as a blade of grass bends with the wind, experience it with gratitude as a sign that I am alive. But sometimes I don't want that much aliveness. Sometimes I feel so alive that it might just kill me.

If you are concerned about your mental health or that of someone you know, visit the Mental Health America website.

So Sad Today: Personal Essays will be released next March. Pre-order it here.

Follow So Sad Today on Twitter.