How Psychedelics Helped a Skeptical Dad Heal His Broken Heart
A little more than four years ago, my oldest son Rob shot and killed himself. He was 28. He suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. He also had conflicted feelings about being adopted. Whip-smart, devilish, and funny as fuck, Rob could be a pleasure to hang with, but he lived his whole life with a pain that never left him. When he was a little boy he told me, “I have a space in my heart that never closes.”
In the days after his death, I was crushed yet oddly numb. The whole thing felt surreal and for a long while nothing made sense. Then, little by little, the anesthetic fog lifted and it became painfully clear: Rob was dead. End of story.
Everything you may have heard about losing a child—how it goes against the natural order of things, how afterward you’re never the same—is true, but it only hints at the agony.
Like Rob, I was walking around with a hole in my heart and I just wanted the pain of never seeing him again to stop. Despite joining a grief group and seeing a therapist, I felt hopeless and alone, and in those raw early months I was open to any and all suggestions. I’ve never been religious and didn’t believe in much of anything—until I desperately needed to. I had to believe that Rob’s spirit, soul, cosmic energy or whatever you want to call it exists in some form somewhere. Not to believe was simply too painful.
My search for otherworldly first aid began with a psychic medium named Fleur who promised to contact Rob’s spirit. You may be rolling your eyes, picturing a grifter who preys on people’s grief – so was I – but she more than delivered. She told me things that I thought she couldn’t possibly have known, and she informed me that my father, who died shortly after my mom passed more than 40 years ago, was there with Rob to help him transition to the other side. I burst into tears. My dad was a petty criminal who did time in prison while I was growing up. I had never cried for him before.
A few months later, a friend at the dog park confided that her brother had died by suicide and she said that chanting had helped her. So I tried that, too. I wound up in her living room, chanting Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō, which I still can’t believe I agreed to. Near the end of the ceremony, there was a prayer for the deceased. I pictured Rob and began to chant louder, losing myself for just a few seconds, and then it was over and I again bawled like a baby. Crying for Rob became the music of my broken heart.
It shouldn’t have worked. All this was completely foreign to me. I’m a 67-year-old Jew from Brooklyn, a proudly cynical agnostic. And yet, there I was: converted to L.A. woo-woo. And it was this new-found faith that led me, a few years later, to tripping balls on magic mushrooms, “dying” and communicating with the spirit of my dead son.
I’ve done my share of recreational drugs, but psychedelics always seemed like a kaleidoscopic bridge too far. Between hearing about friends’ bad trips and reading too much Hunter S. Thompson when I was young, I preferred to stay grounded on the lowest plane of consciousness. Maybe it boiled down to this: I was afraid of letting go.
When Rob died, however, there was nothing more to be afraid of and nothing of him to hold on to.
I had read about the psychedelic renaissance and how this class of mind-altering drugs, used for millennia by native cultures for purposes both medicinal and spiritual, has resurfaced from the underground. Recent studies have shown that when used correctly, psychedelics can help relieve depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction and most importantly (at least for me) grief.
My way in through the doors of perception began with Netflix. Late one night I stumbled across Fantastic Fungi, an entertaining doc about my favorite pizza topping. It suggested that mushrooms and the mycelium network can heal and save the world, but I didn’t really care about that. I was only interested in saving the little world of me. Still, Fantastic Fungi grabbed my attention. Cancer patients in a psilocybin study talked about how they no longer feared death. I understood this fear. I’d been living with the fear of death for 28 years—not mine, but Rob’s.
Those fears came true and opened up a new one I had not previously considered: what would happen after he died? Where would he go and what would he do there? This is fear of a different shade than waiting for the dreaded late-night phone call; one that is so otherworldly that it can only be addressed with an otherworldly remedy.
Reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, with its no-nonsense accounts of guided psychedelic trips, sealed the deal. Rob, who had done more than his fair share of recreational drugs including shrooms, would approve.
When I told my girlfriend Janie, a practicing Buddhist who had been gently nudging me toward exploring meditation and mindfulness, that I wanted to take this leap, she was psyched. She hooked me up with Lilah, a woman she knew from when she lived in—where else?—Ojai, southern California's premier woo-woo hotspot.
In the months that followed, I went on three guided psilocybin journeys with Lilah, which is not her real name because magic mushrooms are still illegal in California. Trying to describe these journeys reminds me of what people said to me when Rob died—there are no words—after which they’d use a torrent of words to drive home the point that there aren’t any. And yet, here I go.
The first trip was a low-dose warm-up: two pieces of dark chocolate infused with 1 1/2 grams of psilocybin mushrooms. This was just enough to produce a psychedelic experience replete with cascading colors, fractal patterns, trees pulsating with life, and a feeling of euphoria. I loved every second of it. The third trip—4 1/2 grams of raw psilocybin mushrooms dipped in honey—was a healing journey in which I saw what I can only describe as bird angel mechanics working on me with their tiny drills and fixing whatever it was they thought needed fixing. But it was the magical second trip—3 grams of mushrooms blended into a pineapple smoothie—that changed me forever.
On a beautiful weekday afternoon, I drove up the coast to Lilah’s hideaway in Ojai. Lilah, a striking beauty in her early 60s, has been guiding spiritual seekers in the ways of “the medicine” for more than a decade. She’s a warm, wise healer right out of central casting.
In her big backyard (“my garden of delight”), which is shaded by ancient oak and sycamore trees with giant branches that I’ve seen transform into octopus tentacles, we sat on the grass and discussed what’s known as “set” and “setting.” “Set” is simply stating your intentions—what you hope to get out of the experience—which in my case included the possibility of connecting with Rob. Anything beyond that would be, in non-psychedelic terms, gravy. “Setting” refers to where you’re doing this and who is guiding you.
After a half hour or so, we went back into the house where I chugged the shroom smoothie and then lay down in “the temple,” a big open room with pillows and blankets covering the floor. Lilah put on meditation music and told me to relax and wait for “liftoff,” which she said could take up to an hour and can be physically intense.
Lying on my back looking at black marks on the pine ceiling, I became first sweaty and then cold and itchy. I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually those marks began to swirl and then turned into hundreds of spiders skittering above me. The mushrooms had kicked in. Lilah suggested that I return to the garden and stretch out on the grass, facing a Buddha statue under the giant oak. This is where shit got unreal.
Moments later, I died.
Let me explain: I was staring at the Buddha and then gazing up into the branches when everything started to move gradually toward me. I saw what looked like jigsaw puzzle pieces disengaging from each other, and then it felt like I was disintegrating and being taken away. Closing my eyes, I found myself in this buzzy white space, and after some time I opened my eyes and apparently shouted: “I just died and it was fuckin’ beautiful!” I was absolutely giddy. Lilah, who had been sitting by my side the entire time, smiled. Then I told her that I was going back to the Buddha because I had noticed its face was slowly changing.
What I saw began as a blur, like a Polaroid snapshot, but when it came into focus I knew right away that I was looking at Rob’s spirit. He was wearing a beanie and John Lennon–style glasses and appeared as an old man with feline features, and I just started sobbing. I was looking at my boy’s spirit and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Seconds later, his spirit started to grow and light up and I said, “Oh my god, you have such a beautiful heart! I’m honored to be your dad. I love you, Robbie.” I thanked him and told him how much I missed him every day.
Then the face of the Buddha went fuzzy again and another spirit appeared, one I recognized immediately. “Hi, Dad,” I said. He was a handsome spirit, also with a big heart, and I told him that I could finally see what my mom saw in him. He looked sad, however. I told him it was okay, that I forgave him for everything. But when I tried to give him a hug, the Buddha’s face changed back into Rob, and he had this little smirk, which was trademark Rob. My mom also dropped by to say hi, which made the comedown even more pleasant than usual.
The next day, after a mostly sleepless night, Lilah and I sat down in the garden for an “integration” convo, basically going over last night’s highlight reel, reflecting on what I had learned, and discussing how I could take that back with me and integrate it into my daily life.
I had hit the magic mushroom jackpot. Seeing Rob’s magnificent spirit gave me the peace and comfort I desperately needed. I’d also seen my parents: a reminder of where I came from. All told, I got more out of this journey than 25 years of talk therapy. It was the most profound and transformative spiritual experience in my life.
But I had just a few questions for Lilah: Was any of what happened, you know, real? Was it magic? Was it the medicine? Was it just a home movie I made up in my altered state?
“The medicine always gives you what you need. You saw the truth. When we’re in connection with our consciousness, it’s all truth. It’s all God. And it’s all love,” Lilah explained in a caring tone that inspired confidence.
She suggested that I focus on cultivating and nourishing these new insights and feelings in whatever ways would work best for me. “This can be transformative if your integration is taken with some commitment, but it’s not unheard of to have this amazing experience and then go back into your old patterns and habits,” she cautioned. “That’s why people like to come back and do this again. They forget and the medicine helps them remember.”
That’s precisely why I was back at Lilah’s house over Memorial Day weekend, this time joining five perfect strangers seeking whatever it was they were looking for. I had forgotten a few things and needed a little help from my psychedelic friends.
Back when I’d met with Fleur, the psychic medium, I’d asked her what she saw in my future. “You will be a healer,” Fleur said, “helping other parents like yourself. And Rob will be working with their children on the other side.”
I sort of dismissed that at the time. Back then, I couldn’t imagine myself or Rob healing anyone. But about a year after my grief group ended, I decided to become a grief counselor and coach. I now volunteer as a group leader for bereaved parents at Our House Grief Support Center in Los Angeles and sit on its board of directors, and more recently I launched a coaching site called Grief for Guys. And yet, in spite of all this, I needed a spiritual tune-up.
Our little group of strangers sat crossed-legged on the floor while Lilah introduced what we would be taking—a special formulation of a plant called Kanna with a touch of MDMA added to give it that extra kick. She had a small specimen of the succulent in a ceramic pot which she passed around. She explained that Kanna has been used forever by the indigenous people of Southern Africa to induce euphoria while MDMA allows for “a softening around the heart, as well as clarity and insight.”
We each took two pills and found a place to hunker down. “It takes about an hour to feel the effects, so you may want to put one hand on your heart and the other on your belly,” said Lilah soothingly. And then she recommended that we think about the people we love.
About 45 minutes in, I was sweaty and tingly, two surefire signs that the medicine was about to do its thing. Soon I started to smile, and then I was grinning, and then I was beaming. I closed my eyes and all I could see was Janie’s smiling face, and I was filled with an immense love for her.
That feeling kept getting stronger until I flashed on my younger son Zach, smiling hard as he often does, and I realized that these are the two people I love most in this world. And that led me straight to another world where I saw Rob smiling back at me, and I was so happy to see him again, and yes, I was feeling incredibly buzzed but also incredibly at peace.
He and I shot the shit, same as always, and then we just started laughing. It felt so good to be with him again. A photo of Rob and Zach when they were teens flashed into my mind, and I started to think of other people I love and have loved. That was when my parents entered the picture. My father started to apologize for not being a good dad, but I assured him that I’d always love him for taking care of Rob when he crossed over, and I was overjoyed to see my mom, who thanked me for forgiving my dad.
Now I needed to ask Rob for a favor.
“Dude, can you do something for me? I’ve been talking with two fathers whose sons died recently and I wonder if you can check up on them and see how they’re doing,” I said a little too loudly, but no one in the room heard me because they were probably inside their own family portraits. I gave Rob the sons’ names and he said he’d be right back.
“They both said the same thing, Dad,” Rob began. “They said they were sorry and not to worry because they’re no longer in pain, and that they love their dads, just like I love you. By the way, Happy Father’s Day!”
Rob appeared in the photo with his two new friends, and then their fathers came into focus with their arms around their sons. Other friends and family began to squeeze into what now looked like the “Sgt. Pepper” album cover, but filled with people I love. I asked Rob if anyone was missing, and he just looked at me and smirked.
“Um, yeah, you fuckin’ idiot!” he said, as only Rob could say it. “YOU!”
That’s when a little boy wearing a winter parka and carrying a toy rifle walked into the photo—me when I was 4 years old—followed by an adorable little girl with pigtails who lives inside Janie’s heart. She took the rifle, put it aside, and held hands with the little boy.
By now I was crying for joy. I felt so lucky to be loved and deeply in love, and it was in that moment that I knew my heart was finally healed. I was home.
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