When Chaos feels like clarity

In a desperate effort to get off Xanax, I started taking acid.

The trips were unlike anything I’d experienced on pills. I could actually remember them. Mostly. Sometimes, I wished I couldn’t. But after twelve hours of rainbows, ghostly whispers, and trees that seemed to breathe and speak, it was too much to remember everything anyway.

For six months, I was swallowing handfuls of what I thought were just sweet-tart-colored benzos. Later, I found out my dealer had been lacing them with rohypnol. Roofies. A twisted frat boy joke. I couldn’t recall much from that time- just flashes of waking up in strange places. Bushes. Strangers’ beds. Park benches. My car. Did I drive?

I made a decision my dealer didn’t like.

I switched. But was it an even harder drug? Or was it going to be my enlightenment? I’d soon find out.

The acid came from another guy. Dealer Dan. Tall, scruffy, unshowered. He wasn’t like the clean-cut frat boy who sold me pills. Dan served the underground- the music scene, the basement shows, the warehouse raves. His acid was the best in town. Reliable. Potent. Predictable. Which mattered, because I was taking it every weekend.

Friday night: one tab, solo missions to the bar. I liked going alone- groups felt too heavy. I’d drift between people until I couldn’t pretend to be normal anymore. Was I ever?

When their faces started spinning around their words, I’d leave (no goodbyes) and find strangers who didn’t know me. I could be as weird as I wanted. Free. Then I’d adventure home. That was always my favorite part. Would I make it? Would I not?

Saturday or Sunday, depending on Monday, I’d take two tabs. My “spiritual” dose. I’d sit, think about my weekend decisions, my life decisions. Rewrite my future with every trip.

This went on for months.

Acid made everything better. Or at least, explainable. It gave the pain a reason. The unease that haunted my sober hours suddenly had a place. At least tripping, I had something to point to- some psychedelic symbolism that helped me translate the discomfort I never had words for.

Is that what substances really do?

Are they less about numbing and more about giving our suffering a shape? A storyline?

Maybe it wasn’t about escape at all. Maybe it was about understanding. The risk, the chaos, the adrenaline- they made sense. For once, the pain was mine. I had chosen it. I was the author of my own suffering.

And in that choice, I mistook control for healing. It's funny how chaos feels like clarity when you’ve never had control over your suffering before.

The xanax was a darkness, a numbing that I actually never wanted. The acid allowed me to feel the pain and the discomfort that I had lived with for so long. While it was difficult to be aware of the pain, it also allowed me to process it in ways I never thought I would. Becuase I wasn't blacked out I could actually remember the healing that happened.

So yeah, maybe acid was a harder drug, but only in that it made me acutely aware of all the ways I had beeen trying to hide from myself. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy and took years of doing "the work" sober to actually get anywhere, but for the first time in my life I was willing to make friends with my demons instead of put them to sleep.