Hi, I've been away from shrooms and all drugs for almost a year now. My big sobriety streak comes up in only a couple days now. The things I used frequently were psychoactive weed and shrooms mostly. Since I was eighteen I smoked weed, then I came upon acid, did it for several months then shrooms for many more. I had a lot of periods like this throughout the years of binges on shrooms mostly where weeks I tried to maintain a high, sometimes mixing it with acid and almost always smoking weed except for the few months inbetween 18 and 24 where I prematurely convinced myself that I was stronger than that... I'm twenty five now and my reasons for stopping my usage were dysfunctional relationships, insecurities intensified and a sobering discontent in my ability to communicate and comprehend others in conversation. The intellect I felt I had in some way was disenchanted and I found myself slurring or silently scared, paranoid of a place I'd known all my life and questioning facets I'd once stood tall behind. All in all I was frying myself, unable to recognize myself and the dreams I still have.

Under the spell of a high my dreams were oh so close without any of the courage and determination to meet them exacted and enacted in stone. Weed was a cheap vacation that gave me the taste of sweet fog and the imminent belief that the future I saw was at hand. When I was 18, trying weed again I felt this is what I need. The grass was brighter, the music I loved pulled around me tighter and all the things I feared were put at ease, behind me or beneath me. I could socialize where before I would freeze or never associate with anyone besides the primary, conveniently close people I felt confident enough to approach. In other words, I was branching out a bit, developing a devil may care attitude and generally fucking off in a dream state before I came upon acid and the things I really wanted to do were more fully realized and the people I was smoking my time away in cars with were holding me down just like I was holding myself down. I felt free. I felt full of life again and in awe of the world I was ignoring behind foggy glass. My ambitions were at all time high until like weed, with acid and shrooms I stopped flying because I was doing it too much, suppressing myself in trying to flee myself and the courage I felt so intensely and beautiful was stamped out by my frequent use.

A lot of things happened that made me turn to drugs more. Life was unstable and my living situations became worse. After twenty-one things get a bit strange (and ten times worse with covid and the world on hold), especially when you drop out of school and you work odd jobs with no career in any field in mind, only one that is abstract and far off when one of the things you love and uphold most is also something you run from with the failures of past and reoccurring truama, abuse, self-abuse and a family you won't ever have something you chase even though that stage of your life will never replay or recollect itself. I was trying to turn inward from the world and holding onto things I should have quietly let go of.

Now I'm almost a year sober with my own place in a new state, a job I could see a career in with my main passion on the sideline (if need be) and ambitions to go to school in a year when I'm officially a resident here. I feel younger than I am, as years where only stones to get to this stability. I find it easier to push off old things but I feel like an ingrate among others. In my college town I feel too old. I can't relate to drinking (I never have) and I can't stomach parties. I look for passionate and creative people and I'm at a standstill. I'm typically an optimistic person, I've been depressed since I can remember and I've always felt if you turn the light on the darkness can disappear, though laughing in the blackness of an awful headspace doesn't always work. I want the childish wonder, the extreme joy and the creative stimulant of shrooms back. I don't want the dark roads I let myself fall into because I was fighting the trip, disrespecting the sacrament and taking more than I could handle and doing them more than I should. I want back the version of me interested in anything and everything, content and confident, wayward and wondering. I want more joy.

I don't want the anxiety and paranoia that possessed when I went too far with weed and shrooms. I want balance. I want the world back in HD and full of feeling instead where I often feel so numb. I want the psychadelic freedom I once had, not the mental shackles I've given myself, coweing from much of the world because that trepidation I thought I escaped so long ago I actually enhanced into a monster that follows me soberly. I want the free flowing smile and the intrigue of simple things, like natural agriculture gave me and the dimension they were given.

I don't want to go back to stuttering my worlds or stumbling ahead of my shadow. I don't plan on taking "microdosing" to extremes by actually "overdosing" and overdoing it. I want to restrain myself enough to lose this stiffness in my back that holds me down. I want to loosen up again. I've been grateful for my sobriety, I've come closer to the people I love and further from the habits that held me hostage. Nonetheless I feel I'm missing something.

Does anyone else feel this way? Has anyone else here felt their mind free and open up through shrooms but then closed up and disenchanted by over use? Does anyone else believe balance with psychadelics can give your life the freedom it deserves beyond a bleak reality binded by propaganda, systematic oppression, internalized self-hatred, debt slavery, shortened attention spans and winded empathy?