The Beginning of the Healing Journey

Video transcript edited for improved readability:

Podcast Episode 1: My Journey Begins

[Intro]

Hello, and welcome to my podcast. This is the first proper episode. The previous video was just me sharing a story, but this marks the actual beginning of what I intend to be a podcast.

I haven’t settled on a name yet, so if you have any ideas, feel free to share them in the comments - I’d love to hear your suggestions.

This podcast is going to focus on plant medicines, my personal experiences with them, and how they’ve played a huge role in my healing journey. For this first episode, I want to start at the very beginning - how I ended up on this path of self-awareness, self-study, and eventually, plant medicine.

[Early Life & Mental Health Struggles]

At 16, I had just finished my GCSEs, and up until that point, I had a happy family life. But after school ended, my family life also began to unravel. I can’t remember if this was before or after I started college, but my mental health began to decline.

One day, I woke up, and it felt like the lights were on, but nobody was home. My eyes were open, but I just lay in bed, unmoving, for nearly a week. I barely ate, only getting up to go to the bathroom. My family noticed something was seriously wrong and took me to the doctor, where I was given the standard questionnaire—On a scale of 1 to 5, how depressed do you feel? How suicidal do you feel?

It was easy to fill that in and get diagnosed with depression. From there, I was prescribed antidepressants - though I honestly can’t even remember what they were. That was the beginning of my mental health struggles.

[Escalation & Living in My Car]

As time went on, things got worse. I wasn’t taking care of myself. While I was on prescription medication, I was also using other drugs and completely losing control. Nothing seemed to have a purpose.

At this point, I was still living at home, but my family life had become strained. A family member assaulted me multiple times, and after the third incident, I knew I couldn’t stay there any longer. I packed up and left.

By then, I was 17 and fortunate enough to own a car, so I started living in it. Looking back, I know I probably could have stayed with other family members, but my only priority at the time was getting high. I couldn’t do that in someone else’s home, so I chose isolation instead.

[The Cotard Delusion]

During this time, my mental health took a darker turn. I developed a delusion - a belief that I was already dead. I genuinely thought this life wasn’t real, that my body was somewhere else, dying, and what I was experiencing was just the last few moments of brain activity playing out like a dream.

This wasn’t just a fleeting thought - it became the background to everything. I would obsessively try to prove or disprove it, but every time I explored the idea, I ended up convinced that none of this was real. I told no one about it at the time, not even my doctors. Years later, I learned that this is called Cotard’s Delusion - a condition where a person believes they are dead or that parts of their body are missing.

[The LSD Experience That Changed Everything]

My goal every day was simple: escape reality. But ironically, the very thing I used to escape - drugs - ended up breaking me free.

One weekend, I took an extremely high dose of LSD. Normally, an acid trip lasts 6-8 hours, but I had taken so much that I was tripping from Friday evening until Sunday night. I didn’t sleep.

This experience shattered the mental prison I had been trapped in. My mind had been shrinking, suffocating me, but this trip pulled me outside of it. I had no idea what I was seeing or experiencing, but one clear message came through:

If this is all you have left, then make the most of it.

If this really was a dream, then surely I had the ability to shape it however I wanted. That realisation changed something in me.

However, that same weekend, I ended up in the hospital - not from the LSD itself, but because I had jumped into a river and injured my ankle. In the hospital, I had what I now recognize as a psychotic break. Years of suppressed trauma, emotions, and pain exploded all at once. I was crying, screaming, completely lost.

My family was called, and they decided it was time to bring me home.

[The Path to Healing: Meditation & Yoga]

Back home, I was still deeply unwell. The Cotard Delusion still gripped me, but that LSD experience had planted a seed. I started searching for answers, trying to make sense of what I had felt. But I had no language for it. I was Googling things like “a big feeling in my chest that is also a hole.” I had no idea what I was even looking for.

Then, I stumbled across yoga and meditation. Slowly, I began practicing. I had no formal guidance, just my own trial and error. But something about it resonated with me.

Then, one day, I found a book - A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I had seen it in bookstores before but never picked it up. But one day, I walked into a charity shop, and there it was. So, I bought it.

That book changed everything.

It validated what I was feeling, what I was practicing, and for the first time, I started believing in what I was doing. My meditation practice deepened, and eventually, I was referred to a specialist. By the time I saw him, I had already built a disciplined practice. When I explained what I was doing, he told me, “That’s exactly what I would have recommended.”

By the second session, he told me I was fine - I had essentially started the journey to healing myself through meditation.

[The Calling to Teach Meditation]

Years later, at a music festival, I wandered into a field I had ignored all weekend. There were a few yurts and tents, not much happening. As I walked through, a woman stepped out of a yurt and asked me, “Do you meditate?”

I said yes and began explaining my practice. She invited me to join a group meditation session happening in five minutes.

I went in, sat down in the centre of the yurt, and as I closed my eyes, a blue light appeared in my mind’s eye - so vivid, so intense that it felt like it blinded me for a moment.

And in that instant, I knew: I need to become a meditation teacher.

[Closing Thoughts]

That was the beginning of my journey. I had suffered through depression, anxiety, and a delusion that convinced me I was dead. But through meditation, I found a way out.

I wanted to share this so you understand where I came from, and so that if you’re struggling, you know there is a way through. You don’t have to suffer forever.

In the next episodes, I’ll explore what I found through yoga, my experience with plant medicines, and how these practices can transform lives.

Thank you for listening - I hope to see you in the next episode.