They gave me speed
to slow me down
I was thirteen when the Ritalin started. It lasted five years.
It sharpened my focus and dulled everything else. I stopped eating. I stopped laughing. I finally had decent grades, but nothing else got better.
By fifteen I was daydreaming about stepping in front of buses, or jumping off a building. Not because I was mentally ill. Because I was sensitive, and paying attention to a sick culture.
The life on offer was a 9 to 5, debt, and endless consumerism. It seemed terrible to me. At seventeen I took mushrooms, reconnected to spirit, and wanted to live again.
Then I chased the mystical dragon. Bigger visions, more often. I integrated nothing. The dark night of the soul arrived on a high dose of LSD and took everything apart.
What put me back together wasn't more. It was less. Multiple ten-day silent retreats. A decade of sitting. Breathwork. And later, ayahuasca. As a teacher, not a thrill.
The point of this work isn't transcendence. It's return.
Background
I studied Psychology, Philosophy, and Comparative Religion at McGill, then earned an MA in Psychedelics and Consciousness Studies at the University of Ottawa. I founded Psygaia, a psychedelic and ecological medicine nonprofit. I've been practicing Zen and Vipassana for over a decade. Dzogchen now.
None of this is theoretical. I teach what actually worked.