I quit my full time, well payed government job and started a new life. From a financial perspective,  not a very wise descision and probably quite irresponsable too, like my mom and others told me, but otherwise an interesting journey.

At that time I was at about the age of 42.

So I quit my job and safety and went exploring other worlds. The most interesting of it was the world of psychedelics like LSD and magic mushrooms (paddo’s as we call them in the Netherlands). Paddo’s were legal in those days, but now sadly forbidden like in the most of our so called civilized world.

In the beginning I was too scared of trying these drugs. I imagined people jumping out of windows or off bridges and becoming totally paranoid or flipping in other ways. That was what I knew about this stuff from school and main stream media. But then I met people who where using these substances and stayed perfactly normal and relaxed.

So, after a while of watching them,  I decided to try it out.  I knew myself as stable  and grounded and people gave me advice like “if you ever panic during a trip, just think it’s the drug and after a while, its effect will end and things will get back to normal”.

They  were right and not. I did not panic because of what they told me, but  things never got back to normal. It is hard to explain, but when and after using shrooms you see things differently, you get insights that you did not have before, you experience things that you did not think existed.

You  might see and feel for example that we all and everything else are connected, you see plants breathe, grass grow, and sometimes you hear the earth or the universe speak. You might wander around and see a tower in your city disappear and only discover thet next day that it is still there.

This might sound weird or scary, but is really fun and interesting. It makes you think and see that everything is not always the way it seems at first sight. You learn to see things from different perspectives.

The main disadvantage to me is, that it drives you away a bit from friends who never encountered these experiences. The only “hard drugs” they know are alcohol or sometimes speed or coke.

That is at least what I feel now, living in a small Frisian village again and mainly disconnected from the people that share these experiences.

It’s not that I look down on people who like drinking and having fun; I  still like that myself now and then, but there is much more and it’s a real shame that governments think they need to frighten people and forbid them to experience things like magic mushrooms, and it makes me wonder where that comes from.

I’ll end this with a video of Terence McKenna. The sound quality is quite bad but he is an expert and it is funny, so enjoy!