The Death of Human Will

Part 1 of My Psychedelic Healing Journey

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

I remember exactly where I was when it all broke open. When I broke open.

Crumpled in a crying heap on the floor in front of the stove, two days before my 36th birthday.

It was the middle of an ordinary day in a life that, from the outside, looked full: marriage, children, a home. I had been up early with my little ones, making toast and kissing my husband goodbye with a packed lunch. But inside, I was unraveling. The pain I carried was no longer content to hide behind the veneer of “you should be happy.”

The gnawing feeling that I couldn’t stand to be me anymore, at least, not the version of me I had built in order to survive - was visceral amidst the background sounds of The Teletubbies on TV and birdsong filtering through the open windows. I didn’t know it then, but I was on the threshold of an experience that would change everything.

What followed became known in my life as the Salvia Experience. I was no stranger to psychedelics, but this was my first time with salvia. When the Bouncing Bear Botanicals package arrived in my mailbox, an early birthday gift from my husband, I had no idea that the Mazatec people revered this as “The Virgin Mary’s Herb.” I thought I was settling in for an evening of numbing myself a little more to a life that was feeling less and less like my own.

Instead, salvia tore through the illusion of control I’d been clinging to, stripping away everything I thought was holding me together, but was in truth keeping me in a perpetual state of anxious awareness, debilitating depression and a pain body that had had enough.

It was, astrologically speaking, a perfect storm:
🌌 Pluto transiting my natal Jupiter, both conjunct the Galactic Center and in my 8th house
🔥 Pluto squaring my natal Pluto
⚡ Uranus opposing my Moon

In other words, this was no ordinary moment. This was a divinely orchestrated breakdown.

Through that portal, I met the truth of my inner reality and began what I now recognize as a long and sacred initiation into Divine Will. I didn’t choose it consciously. But in hindsight, I can see that my soul did.

The trip itself lasted all of twenty minutes. I remember asking my husband, “where are the kids?”. I felt reassured when he said they were all in bed, and in the next instant I saw my body on a stretcher with a white sheet over it, my parents and husband crying at the front door as the coroner carried me out.

Next, I was in the center of what I knew to be a Stadium of Angels. They were cheering upon my arrival, and more importantly, exuberant that I was able to see them. I felt like I’d landed in my true home, only to be turned back around to the couch I’d been sitting on in our family room with these words singing in my ears: “If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we’re all OK.” Jewel’s lyrics were a comfort I have kept close to my heart ever since.

The fallout of this experience was messy. And the “knowing” that accompanied me back across the threshold of death and rebirth was difficult to integrate. My marriage began to unravel. I was able to articulate, for the first time, the wall around my husband - how his words invited intimacy while his presence repelled it. I began to realize that my carefully cultivated sense of “safety” was actually the suppression of my inner knowing. I had to squarely face the fact that the healing journey I thought I was on was actually me exhausting myself trying to hold everything together.

This short experience altered the entire course of my life, for the better…although it didn’t seem that way in the beginning.

The story of the path between being delivered into the Stadium of Angels and living into the message they sent me back with is one that continues to unfold. I’ll be writing more about this in future posts.

I’m sharing it now because we need more real stories of what it looks like to live through a healing crisis. Especially when the path includes sacred medicines and the complexity of family life.

If you’ve ever felt the floor fall out from under you - or if you’re in that space now - know that you’re not alone. And that sometimes the soul calls in the storm to set you free.

More soon,
Angel

PS…For those local to the Harrisburg/York, PA area, I’ll be facilitating a workshop on Conscious Creativity to benefit the Central Pennsylvania Psychedelic Society on May 10th.

Conscious Creativity: A Fundraiser for the Central PA Psychedelic Society