Drinking while shrooming provided an interesting effect. The alcohol mitigated the psychedelic effects while still allowing the mind to be wildly creative, emotions to be more intense, and sensory experiences heightened. Energy levels were lower, enough to allow a person to imbibe more alcohol than one normally would without having the effects of being drunk.

The real problem with this arose the following day. Even foo-foo drinks, if you consumed enough of them, created a hellacious hangover. That was the case when I began waking the next morning. I felt like I had been buried alive under ten thousand pounds of grimy sludge. I didn’t want to open my eyes. Even with my eyes closed the light in the room was brutal. I pulled a pillow over my head to darken everything. This helped but not with the bed spins I was still experiencing. I threw a leg over the side of the bed, a trick my dad taught me the first time I came home drunk as a teenager.

I caught hell the next day, but at least he waited until the hangover mostly passed. He had been there so he was incredibly cool about it all. Gotta love a dad who helps you through your first drunk with affection and care before being somberly straight about the dangers inherent with getting drunk at fourteen years old. Made an impression and I respected how he handled the situation. A nice surprise to gain greater respect for a parent in a situation in which I had fucked up. Love like that changed my perspective on many things in life. Fucking up can be good for a kid, but it depends on how parents handle the situation. I was more open and honest with him about things after that and we became closer as a result.

On this morning, two decades later, I simply felt like shit. I wanted to get up, but doing anything would require movement and staying as still as possible was the only thing keeping me from experiencing hell. After a few minutes, though, I remembered Sabina. I made myself remove the pillow, open my eyes just a sliver, and turn to where she had been sleeping. The bed was empty.

Well, shit. I didn’t know if she was still in the apartment or if she had left. Now I had to get up. I managed to stand and walk into the living room. I was naked, too fucked up to care. She wasn’t in the bathroom or the living room. I walked to the kitchen and she wasn’t there, either. I downed a few glasses of water, a few acetaminophen tablets, and went back to the bedroom to put on some shorts and a t-shirt. As I returned to the living room, I saw a note on the dining table. “Michael, tried to wake you, but you wouldn’t budge. Have to leave because of my flight. Last night was wonderful. Here’s my number in case you’re ever in New York: … Kisses, Sabina.”

Reading that temporarily took away some of the sting of the hangover. I thought about the night before and remembered all of it except for how I fell asleep. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face then to the bedroom again. My headache was roaring, all that movement, all that thinking. I went to the couch and loaded a bowl. Thank you, Mother Nature, for the weed of wonder, the hangover helper. I had a cigarette, but halfway through I realized that was a bad idea. I took another puff from the pipe then lied down. I slowly drifted off to sleep, a hangover pot nap.

I spent the rest of the day in and out of naps, smoking pot and an occasional cigarette. It was a miserable day except for the moments of reflection on the previous night. Those memories made me feel good and I wished that Sabina hadn’t flown back to New York.

At least I’d had a connection with a passionate, fun, and intelligent woman. I had completely forgotten what it was like to meet a woman on equal terms with mutual attraction. There were many ways to experience fulfillment, but none compared to connecting with a person.

Relationships, at their best, provided just such complex intimacy. The creativity involved in those connections were fulfilling. Even helping others who were suffering or saving another person’s life—which I had done on a few occasions—were not as fulfilling.

Shrooms, though, were simply different. Fulfilling in an entirely different way—when doing them as I had done them. They provided intellectual, emotional, and physical engagement. The beautiful thing about creating a synthesis while alone was that it seemed to fill the same needs as a synthesis with another person. The real beauty of it was that nothing within needed to be sacrificed to accommodate another’s needs.

I had achieved states like this only a few times in life previously, most notably for a few months after college when I was mostly on my own and without any social life at all. I found something through long hours of prayer and meditation day after day. I’d had no guidance.

One night I had simply wept, uncontrollably, for several hours. I had felt empty, lonely, and filled with despair. My college life was nearly over, I had only three credits to finish for an undergraduate thesis offered in the spring, several months ahead, and I had no plan for the future, I didn’t know where I fit in society at all, and I didn’t know what to do next. Nothing possible within the work world appealed to me and all I saw was a long life of droning nothingness until death. Wasting eight to ten or more hours per day doing something like sales, public relations, industrial design, or any other possibility filled me with dread.

I longed for social connection and there were no jobs that provided that; jobs were about productivity and profitability, not making meaningful connections with other people. The world looked ugly to me, and I had no place in it.

After sobbing for so long, though, I seemed to let out something that had been blocking me from within. It was not just emotional; it was also physical. I gagged and heaved and a yellowish goo hacked out of my mouth.

Looking back, I could possibly say that I had released toxins within me. The effect emotionally and intellectually was a clearing of the fog, a disappearance of loneliness, a tender but powerful love. I forgave myself for feeling miserable and for beating myself up for somehow failing in life in some way.

I had internalized messages of success. There had been nothing substantive on a human level related to those things and the emptiness I had felt was due to my pursuit or failure to achieve in those realms to the degree I thought I should. If I was not the best, then I was a failure. How that had become ingrained in me I couldn’t pinpoint, but it was there.

I had the luxury of not having to work for a few months as I stayed with my parents waiting for the next semester to begin. They went off to work every day and I spent anywhere from four to eight hours every day kneeling or sitting in prayer and meditation.

It took some time to get used to the practice, but even from the beginning I was incredibly disciplined and dedicated. I might sit for an hour without successfully attaining silence and even though there was frustration I continued to sit or kneel. Eventually the world and I would disappear and experiences of peace, total relaxation, and a quiet feeling of love arose to replace individuality and identity.

In those moments, I loved who I was. The aftereffects of my meditations gradually led to a deeper love of my parents, my brother, my friends, and all of humanity in a nonspecific way. My love of humanity stemmed from an acknowledgment and understanding that even the most successful and the most vile suffered.

As the time neared to return to college to finish my degree, I had serious reservations about going back. I was concerned that I would not be able to maintain this newfound way of living. I had lived a wild lifestyle in college and had a lot of friends who partied a lot, lived adventurously, and I wondered how I would maintain the seclusion I needed to meditate. I lived in a big house with five other guys who liked to throw giant parties three or four nights a week. That was partially how we paid rent and, really, one of the ways we had fun and hooked up with women. If I fell back into that lifestyle I wondered if I would ever regain the way of living I had adopted. I didn’t have other living arrangements available; I was going to have to try to make the best of the situation while living there.

Naturally, I fell back into the lifestyle. Not completely, but I got out of the healthy routines I had established. The wildness of activity and euphoric emotional thrills replaced the calm and peace. It wasn’t unfulfilling to live adventurously with roadtrips to strange places doing strange things; however, I noticed the emptiness during the times I was alone. Having only three credits, one course of study, gave me ample free time to live as wildly as possible. I justified living that way because it was my last semester of college—when would I ever be able to live that way again?

Eventually that semester, though, I met the woman I would marry years later. My relationship with her changed things and assured me that I would never fully return to that life of silent meditation as long as I was with her. There were other benefits to the relationship, of course, but an integral discovery of how to live well and build a powerful and secure inner core was lost.

I discovered Amsterdam through that relationship, though. Our honeymoon to Europe opened my eyes to how different cultures lived and I saw how much more balanced my life was there compared to my life in the United States. Perhaps it wouldn’t be for everyone, but the cultures within France and Holland, in particular, stuck out to me as far better ways of living, a way to find a home within myself while also being at home in the world.

Now in Amsterdam, the shrooms were waking long lost ways of living, introducing me to a more balanced way of living where I could work, connect with friends, find inner sanctuary, create and play. It still wasn’t clear where these changes were leading and I didn’t want to direct my life toward a specific outcome. Living the process was the way.

Once again, as it primarily had been the whole of my life, I had to guide myself through the unknown and figure out how to live. But Amsterdam, the shrooms, and my new friendships were providing guidance in indirect ways. I was attentively observing even as I participated. I was learning how to incorporate new perspectives and ways of living into my daily life.

I was struck by this at times. I’d had no intention of living this way when I first decided to go to Amsterdam. Even when I first started shrooming with the goal of a vision quest, I didn’t know what I would discover. In a matter of weeks, I had radically transformed my outlook. My willingness to play and create built confidence. I was transforming my life into a work of art within a culture that promoted this approach. It was a mix of directed action and unpredictable spontaneity.

These thoughts, reflections, and realizations didn’t synthesize all at once. They had come slowly over time, discoveries of puzzle pieces to be fit into a developing design. For the day, though, I appreciated the insights and wondered how the beginnings of wisdom could arise on a dreary day of hangover.