I have spilled much ink and spent many trips with you in our discussion of human connection. And we’re no closer to understanding than we were when our trips began. I often feel as if I’m standing on one side of a wide chasm, shouting across, and wondering if the response I hear comes from you, or if it is my own voice echoing back to me. It seems to me, on my side of the canyon, that the search for unity with another is behind much of the world’s unhappiness. You, my odd friend, conduct yourself as though you’re above matters of the heart. But in my candid moments, I sometimes wonder if you take the stance you do because love, for lack of a better word, is a game you fail to understand, and so you opt not to play. After all, if I truly had the purity of all my convictions, I wouldn’t regret so many of the things I’ve done nor would I persist, against so many of my better instincts.

I find you a challenge, one that, in spite of all that you’ve done, continues to stimulate. In every relationship that I find myself into I want to through myself into it and have a full “love” experience. Yet, you stand there looking at me with a smug smile telling me “we are bigger than that”. We keep having those arguments, you and I, where I keep telling you that people need second chances that despite of our convections maybe this specific time “it” will work. Yet, you keep winning. Maybe I created you to take care of me when I am vulnerable and sad. I can always see you taking over when I cannot manage and you always make the tough calls for me. Shortly after you disappear and I stay.

Hunter S. Thompson is quoted as saying, “Love. The word means different things to different people. To some, love is a fairy tale. To others, it’s a nightmare. But for me, love is a drug. And like all drugs, it can be good or bad, depending on how you use it.”

At 6 Am my mother woke me up. She pressed my arm and said “be with us, Dad is not well”.

I hurried to their bedroom and found him half seated, struggling to breathe and clinching his chest with a half fest. I realized what was happening and there was no time for an ambulance in cairo, so I ordered an uber to the closest hospital. He was suffering a level 2 heart attack.

I have never seen my father as weak and suffering that much pain. He was fighting for his life. On the exit door of the building he held me tight and said “I feel so cold”. I huged him and he cried.

The hug sent me in a place I know very well. A place where I meet my odd friend. I, simply, dissociated. I was on autopilot mood. At the moment it was not me hugging my father. I disappeared and there was a dark void wrapping itself It around a frail human who was cold and ready for to go to the place where no one returns.

My father recovered and I can still hear his shriek and feel his tear on my wet shirt.

Was I there? Was that real? At the moment, yes….

I have always entertained the idea of playing chess against death not for any hope that I would ever win in his cruel game but just to see how many moves it can still yet play to surprise me. Of course the easiest and most used technique of death is surprise. A move where the master skilfully takes away a piece of your board, your life, that you for some reason just took for granted. I would say he played this enough I kinda not get or at least try not to get surprised every-time the master pulls it.

I cannot remember how many times I sat on this board just examining with owe and tears the moves he played in everyone’s life and how it completely tears through the fabric of the….the board. his ability to just dismantle your carefully played game no matter who skilfully you through you really played. Yet, the cruellest card death has ever played is: Death by you. the chess master sits with command across from you watching you approach smiling holding the king piece.

I do not know why but I went back. The intrigue of that other world I discovered within my mind is irresistible. I have engaged in a pattern that would resemble a “weekend getaway trip” whenever I felt I need to retreat inwards. DMT is too strong for this so I shifted my recreational weekend trip to LSD. The beauty of LSD is that it is much gentler and it stays long enough to play with. I can perfectly control how far I want to go in my trip, unlike DMT that forcefully shoots me to him, my odd friend.

I remember the first time I used LSD after my DMT experience because it was not the same as prior to the DMT experience. Something happened in my brain and now it processes LSD very differently. First I dissociate, then I lose sense of body, time and place. When I shut my eyes I go there, to the edge. I can see the two worlds very clearly and I go between them with ease. I see my odd friend but for some reason we do not interact, not at all. This is a puzzle I still need to solve.

I feel a strange sensation of peace and warmth in the “nothing” world. My friends are concerned that one day I will go there and I will never come back. This scares me too, not to be there, but to lose control. For now, I will keep dancing on the edge.

When I started writing my memories in this blog I unearthed feelings, ideas, and a wave of emotions that I probably was not ready for. However, without talking honestly about what I have been through and what I have witnessed then I would not be where I am now and who I am now. To be fully honest I had a full blown CPTSD where even my dreams were not a safe place. Because I did not know what to do I went to psychoactive substances, it was terrifying.

The most aggressive experience I had with psychoactive substances sent me in an acute psychotic episode that I wrote about in an earlier post. It was a total nightmare that it scared me of my own brain and my own self. Slowly, I recovered and I even felt grateful for the experience because I would have never been able to explore those areas of my mind and soul if it was not for psychosis. I started then doing controlled psychedelics where I only used them for a purpose to answer a specific question or to visit a specific area in my soul. Of course they took me to other places and I finally could see how everything inside my mind was connected even if the connection seemed far and unlikely. I could see the construct.

In neuroscience we say that we have no objective way of knowing what reality is because once sensorial messages are transferred to our nerves the brain will construct whatever it wants out of them and tells you that this is the “reality”. We have no idea how things really look like, smell like, or feel like. It does the same thing to our memories and experiences. It constructs a reality that is plausible enough to be believable and that is pleasant enough to make us survive and exist. Psychedelics strip the brain naked and enable the user to either reconstruct a reality or just observe how the brain mapped out and designed its reality. This will sound silly until you try yourself.

In my next chapter I will talk about the deconstruction of reality that makes me stand on the verge of insanity. It is the place where I meet my odd friend where we together explore the vast universes and realities of everything.

“ah ah, I see you opened the door, you thought it was fun, just playing around ha..ah ah it is dark in here, you got food?” the odd friend

“You again, I thought I got rid of you” me

“That light is flickering, can you see it, it bothers me… wake up we need to go somewhere” the odd friend

“Man, it is post mid-night, I need to sleep sorry, whatever that is it can wait” me

“see, see, it is flickering again, you won’t be able to sleep like this, come on, i prepared everything, off we go”

The small light coming from my charging electric tooth brush was still flickering. My odd friend had a hat this time and looked much skinnier than the last time I saw him by the Seine. It was his trip but I was leading the way. I started hearing voices and they kept getting louder as we moved further in what appeared to be a tunnel. The tunnel was completely dark and when I looked at my feet we seemed to be floating, suddenly the tunnel disappeared, we were floating in space.

The voices were too many, too intertwined and I could not make sense of it. I saw the drops that contained my many lives before like in my psychotic episode but this time it was not scary.

“ts ts ts, see this is where I always get stuck, right here, I need you to take me inside” the odd friend.

“Inside where, what are you talking about” me

“the drops, see all the universes you lived in, i cannot get in without you” the odd friend

“No, last time this did not go well, one day we will never wake up from this” me

“ts ts, listen listen, aaah, do not look at the flickering light, stay here, listen, you see this? yes yes, this man with the grey moustache, i think that was the best one we had” the odd friend

I grab him tight “hey, listen man, you gotta listen to me, we are back there where the flickering light is” me

“ah ah ah, i hear i hear, but no no no, wait look look, this one is good too, look, here you have the little one, what was the name again, aah memory of eternity does get glitchy” the odd friend

“get out of my head please, illusions, what u r looking at are illusions” me

“No no no, not illusions, llll ookk look, it it it it is fi fine now. not illusion no, you live in one too, look, oh ahaha how beautiful that one is look” the odd friend

“wait wait, what happened, where are you? waaaaai” me

the flickering light disappeared and the voices got louder, a laughter, a scream, a crying child, a squeaky door not opening not closing… the sounds and voices were overwhelming….. I need to wake up NOW

“ah ah ah i see, you went there to the stripes, nothing is good there, very confusing” the odd friend

“what do you mean, what stripes?” me

“It is better to look at the dew drops not the stripes, too much information in the stripes, too many details” the odd friend

“where did you go? i called for you”me

“ah ah, yes yes yes, i i i heard you, i was right here did not move, you went” the odd friend

silence….