Two Years Clean, One Session
A man two years into opioid recovery describes the session that addressed what abstinence alone hadn't been able to touch.
I got clean from opioids two years before my first psilocybin session. The withdrawal, the early recovery, the rebuilding of a life — all of that was behind me. I was functioning. I was not in acute distress. But there was something I couldn't reach.
My therapist described it as "the wound underneath the addiction." The opioids had been medicating something for fifteen years. In recovery, whatever that something was had nowhere to go.
The session went to my childhood. To a shame so deep and pervasive I had stopped perceiving it as shame and experienced it as simply who I was. For several hours I was present with this material without the usual escape. That presence itself was transformative.
What emerged on the other side was something I can only describe as grief that had finally been acknowledged. The shame had not disappeared but I had been in the room with it, and it knew I had seen it. That changes the relationship.
Eighteen months later: still in recovery. Not because the session fixed the underlying wound — that work continues in therapy — but because I understand now what I was running from, and understanding it makes using to escape it less compelling.
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