My Death

Yesterday, June 4th, I died. I had eaten some mushrooms and a good amount of edible marijuana. I did it out of boredom. I had been debating with myself if I should go out, maybe potentially meet a woman, or stay in and do drugs. I chose the drugs. I ate my drugs and then changed into black sweatpants and a black hoody– I decided I was going to workout. I went to the kitchen and made a pre-workout drink, 300 Mg of caffeine, mixed with creatine, right down into the belly–where the mushrooms and edible were waiting for it. I went to the garage and started to workout but almost immediately headed to the toilet. I spent a few minutes there, wiped, flushed, and went back out to the garage. I put on a YouTube video about overcoming our limits and controlling our thoughts–manifesting greatness, and all that. The drugs, the pre-workout and the video had me feeling focused, present, and like I really was creating the magic the video said I could. I’ve been a martial artist for most of my life, and as a result, I’ve created something uniquely special–a monster. This side of me that knows how to kick ass, he’s always there–he can always come out, but I bury him down deep where only I can find him. I do this so I don’t go seeking out some sucker to feed my monster. I spent an hour completely out of my head, completely in my body, simulating a fight, slipping and ducking, countering and blocking, japing and parring. I was becoming a true alchemist–fusing the body and the spirit into one flowing piece of art. I was transcending my mental and physical limits. Then, the drugs really started to kick in. I left the garage and went inside. I was going to take a long shower but I stopped and laid down on my bed. This is when I started to die. I remember thinking about the death of the ego and from there I started spiraling. I went to the dark-side. I wrote a poem once, it was something like, ‘Our emotions follow our thoughts like the tail of a comet. First the thought comes, then, lagging slightly behind, the emotion.’ I had been on mushrooms when I wrote that too. My thoughts led me to the darkest and deepest parts of my soul and I felt all of it, deeply and truly, felt it all. I started to think about my life– it’s worth, it’s meaning, the 29 years of existence, and I had to have had something like a panic attack. I couldn’t stop the negative thoughts or the negative feelings that went with them. I was overwhelmed. I was reminding myself that mushrooms make you feel negative and positive emotions at once. I asked myself, ‘Who is Clint?’ My life was flashing before my eyes. My inner kid kept popping up and I told myself not to ignore him, to embrace him and let him out of his hiding place. But the bad trip had complete control over me. It felt like I was not in control of my thoughts, and it terrified me. They were taking me to hell and I didn’t want to go there. I felt helpless and like I wanted to stop the trip–I wanted to get off the ride. But I didn’t know if I wanted to get off the ride of life, or just the feelings from the drugs. Suicide came to mind and I got even more scared. It started to feel like whatever I was thinking, really was manifesting itself into reality, and if that was the case, I really had to get a grip and stop thinking about death. Then I started to feel like I really was dying. I turned ghost white and I started to feel like consciousness was slowly slipping away from me. I felt so weak, so scared, that I started to think that I had either taken bad drugs, maybe laced with fentanyl, or that I had eaten the wrong mushrooms and that I had been poisoned. I started to narrate my own death in my mind. I thought I should call 911 but I was embarrassed about having poisoned myself, and refused to ask for help. I kept seeing myself as a child in the corner of my room, facing the wall, scared. My own thoughts led me down to the darkness and I couldn’t steer the ship out of there. I looked at myself in the mirror, and was convinced I was going to die. I was so pale, more a corpse than a person. I paced through the house, thinking and feeling like if I stopped moving, I’d die. It felt like if I closed my eyes, and stopped thinking, I would never wake up again. It felt like I needed sleep but I was convinced that I'd die if I slept. Then I started to think and feel like my roommates had poisoned me and that they were waiting for me to die. My roommate loves her true crime podcast and we always used to joke that she could easily get away with murder some day. I thought her and her husband must’ve poisoned something I had eaten, and that they had killed me. I kept pacing and I kept feeling weaker and weaker. ‘If I just let go, it’ll all be over. It’ll be just like falling asleep.’ These thoughts kept pin-balling between the ears, but something in me would counter, ‘Don’t give up yet, keep moving. You are closer to life than to death.’ It was the fear of death that kept me moving. I faded away more and more with each breath, continuing to convince myself that I was about to die. It was a summer storm outside and the rain kept coming down. It was gray and peaceful, perfect for my death. My roommates kept playing the perfect songs to die too, further convincing myself that they had poisoned me. Finally, at the end, I went to lay down in bed, ready to die–only, I kept resisting. I told myself that if I didn’t make myself throw up, I’d surely die. I shoved my fingers down my throat but just couldn’t do it. My roommate is 8 months pregnant and for some crazy reason, I started to feel like she had poisoned her kid and that somehow, I was the unborn baby boy. It felt like our two lives were connected by the same thread and that that thread was just barely holding on. It felt like witchcraft or magic. I thought I’d gone completely crazy. The abyss had consumed me, and every time I thought I was going to die, I resisted. I just kept moving and thinking, to prevent my death. I must’ve tried to throw up 5 times, but couldn’t. Then I went to lay down for the last time. I accepted the fact that I was going to die and that I was going to start a new journey. Something like reincarnation called to me. ‘Well, if there is something after death, I’m about to find out.’ I thought that coming back as a tree would be pretty neat. Then, God shook his fist at me. It made sense, because I had started to shake my fist at God. I had been fighting with God, in fact, that was a title I had been thinking of using for a collection of poems I have about God and I. ‘YOU THINK YOU CAN FIGHT WITH ME??’ God asked me. Only, I realized that my thoughts were manifesting my reality, maybe I was thinking myself to death, literally. It felt like I was the God of my own life, but also, God was there too, because I sure as shit couldn’t control where I was going. Maybe God was nudging me along, to kill the ego. I cannot stress enough that I was so convinced that I was going to die, at one point, I thought maybe I had, and that I was now in the afterlife– stuck in a loop in this house. I had to keep fighting. I had to keep choosing my own life. I had to deny the reaper, and fight him off with everything inside of me. I thought maybe I was a computer program and my program was being deleted and all my memories and everything that I was and am, was fading away. Eventually, I decided that I had to confront the people who had poisoned me. I got up from my bed and walked out to the living room. My roommates were sitting there watching TV. I asked them if they were okay. They said they were. They asked me if I was okay and I replied, ‘I don’t know… this is the craziest drug trip of all time.’ My color slowly started to come back and I slowly started feeling better. Then I spent the next couple hours trying to understand reality again and trying to make sense of what the fuck had just happened. It was like I really had died and I really was born again. It was almost as if I really had killed the ego. Well anyways, I am okay, and I think it’ll be awhile until I do drugs again. I’ll let you know what I learned from this experience, if I learned anything at all.

-C.H.