John’s Fireside Story
who am I, and where do I fit in this whole big picture of everything?”
John didn’t plan on using the Fireside app the evening of his five gram mushroom journey, but when he found himself breaking through to a state of consciousness he had never reached before on psychedelics, a Fireside volunteer was there to provide support.
John grew up in Idaho in a strict conservative Mormon community. As a child and young adult, the pressure to conform to the expectations of the religion caused him to believe he was insignificant unless he followed the rules perfectly. John taught himself to stifle uncomfortable emotions so he would not have to feel them. He believed that if he just continued to follow the teachings and practices of his religion, his life would have value.
In his mid-twenties, John began to question his relationship to Mormonism and his place in the Mormon Church. John got married, and he and his wife had their first son. It was around this time that his family decided to relocate from Idaho to Northern California. While living amongst the Redwood forests and the oceans of Santa Cruz, John was exposed to a culture that was drastically different than the religion he grew up in. Mormonism was no longer aligned with John’s beliefs, and he made the decision to leave the Church. However, this also meant leaving everything he had ever known and losing a sense of identity in the world. John began experiencing depression and anxiety in a way he had never experienced before. He had panic attacks that sent him to the hospital on several occasions, and had a nihilistic view of the world that made it difficult to find meaning in anything.
John wanted to figure out, “who am I, and where do I fit in this whole big picture of everything?”
During this time, a friend suggested that John try using psychedelics as a way to cope with the challenging emotions he was experiencing. While he was skeptical at first, he decided to give it a try and ate about 1.5 grams of psilocybin mushrooms. John described having feelings of connectedness and oneness with the world not associated with religion for the first time in his life. Meditation became a consistent practice for him, and John began taking larger doses of psilocybin. John wanted to figure out, “who am I, and where do I fit in this whole big picture of everything?”.
On the night of his 5g dose, his wife put his children to bed early and John settled into the intentional space he had created for himself for his journey. As the sensations of the mushrooms began to take hold, he saw visuals that were beautiful and chaotic and described witnessing time on a cosmic level. Suddenly, his experience changed. The visuals stopped immediately, and John described this as the point he became one with everything; feeling both connected and united to all of existence. The experience of feeling that all life lived inside himself was so profound, he felt like he needed to tell someone about what he was feeling. That’s when he called Fireside.
John and the volunteer explored the teachings of enlightenment, and walked the nuance of carrying both beauty and pain together. John was able to uncover how the Mormon teachings of enlightenment had primed him to think that Heaven was the place he would finally prove that he had done enough for his life to be worth something. It was the place where he would become God, and start to create new worlds in that ethereal plane. The volunteer reflected these thoughts back to John, and asked a question that would have a deep and lasting effect on his life: if he was saying that all of life lived inside of him now, wouldn’t that mean that in a sense he’s already created everything he needs to, and that his life is already worth so much?
This was John’s “lightbulb moment”, where all of the remnants of his Christian Mormon background were deconstructed and destroyed in the most beautiful way. The volunteer held space while he cried and released the feelings of negative self-worth that he had been holding onto for so many years. John and the volunteer also came up with a metaphor to help him integrate this experience into his life; John now imagines life as a vinyl record. He can hold the record up and look at it, but in order to hear the record play he needs to put it on the record player. Sometimes the record plays happy music, and sometimes it plays sad music. All he has to do is dance when the music is happy, and cry when the music is sad. “Because of the volunteer’s guidance, I’m able to know what song is playing, and I’m just going to feel that all the way”.
The impact of John’s psilocybin journey and conversation with Fireside Project has had a ripple effect on his relationships. He recently went hiking with his dad and they shared an LSD experience that deepened their bond in a way that he didn’t think was possible before. He sat with his mom during her first mushroom experience, and held space for her while she processed her own history of trauma.
John said, “Before this experience, spirituality and religion felt like an arbitrary list of rules; if you break the rules it’s a sin and if you follow the rules it’s a point. And now I recognize that there are things in life that create a sense of disconnection from you to others, or you to the natural world. I don’t hold sin as a tally mark of good or bad, but there are things that you can do that are harmful that create suffering and disconnection, and there are things you can do that create unity and a sense of oneness. Now spirituality for me means looking for ways to increase my sense of passion and connection, and avoiding things that create a sense of disconnection. I feel at ease when I’m feeling connected to everything.”
Are you interested in sharing your Fireside Story?
Please send an email to info@FiresideProject.org
