Depression Ran in My Family. Psilocybin Didn't Have to.

My grandmother never spoke about it but we knew. My mother had her first hospitalization when I was seven. My older brother had his in his late twenties. By the time I turned thirty-one, I had been on antidepressants for six years and was beginning to wonder whether depression was simply what our family did.

I spent three months talking with a therapist who was familiar with integration work. When we finally did the session — 2.5 grams, in my living room — I had a clear intention: I wanted to understand whether this thing I carried was mine to change.

The session took me somewhere I didn't expect. I saw my mother — not a vision exactly, more like a presence with her quality — and I understood that she had carried this the same way she had carried everything: alone, and without complaint. And I understood that her carrying it alone had been a choice, not an inevitability. And that I had inherited the choice as much as the condition.

I'm still on a lower dose of medication. I don't think psilocybin cured a genetic predisposition. But I sit differently in relation to the depression now. It is something I have, not something I am.