Jeff’s Fireside Story
EVERYTHING WAS INSANE and fine.
The walls had begun to bend, the grain in the floorboards was starting to run. Jeff Greenberg's body had blown apart into particles, pleasantly so. When he closed his eyes, chrysanthemums blossomed.
A tech executive of 54, Greenberg had eaten 5 grams of psychedelic mushrooms that afternoon. He had discovered in recent years the world—expanding powers of psilocybin. At some point that afternoon, Greenberg's thoughts took a dark turn, and soon dark melted into horrifying....
Greenberg thought of his puppy. He and his ex-wife shared it from when they'd been married, and now a memory came tumbling out of some corner of his mind: One day, in the aftermath of the divorce, he'd dropped off the dog with his former father-in-law.
The two had always enjoyed a friendly relationship, but once the handoff was complete, the older man had slammed the door in his face. And now it wouldn't stop slamming. How had he done something so awful that a fellow human would slam a door on him after being handed a puppy?
A dam burst. The difficult elements of Greenberg's life began exploding in dark technicolor. What had happened? Who was he? He felt the mushrooms clamping his head in front of a massive screen showing the movie of his life.
Greenberg was looping. Passing thoughts became black holes clawing him to untold depths, playing and replaying in a mad whirlpool.
Tricks that would have typically changed the channel—classical music, a splash of water to the face, waiting it out, crying it out—had no effect.
Worst of all, he had no help. Who do you call in such a state? Who could possibly understand this otherworldly misery with its indescribable new dimensions, its billowing revelations, its slithering dream logic?
So it was that, in a fleeting instant of lucidity, Greenberg remembered to reach into his pocket....
The day before his trip, he'd downloaded an app he'd seen somewhere called Fireside Project. What happened next was life-changing.
A volunteer named Jasmine picked up the phone. Immediately she emitted a gentle, knowledgeable, and grounded vibe. She didn't try to distract him from his anguish or minimize it.
On the contrary, she validated what he was feeling and gave him permission to explore his pain further.
“Very quickly she turned it into something I felt that I could go through,” he said.
Greenberg spoke with Jasmine for nearly an hour and a half, then called again later, as the crisis softened into something more like curiosity. With her help, his angst metabolized into a searing peek under the hood. Where before he'd felt abject terror, he now saw an invitation to make real changes in his life....
Within months, he had walked away from his job to focus on work “that adds value to the universe.” Eventually he got on the phone with Fireside again—this time not to ask for help but to offer it. By the time we spoke, he'd donated $100,000 and was poised to start as CTO, working for free....
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