A Really Good Day(17)

Was he actually saying that microdosing was either as safe as or perhaps even safer than conventional antidepressants? I asked him, incredulous.

“Oh, absolutely.”

I am a rationalist who likes firm and clear explanations, and I was so excited to think I might have found one. Neuroplasticity! BDNF! Glutamate! Synapses and neurons and all sorts of things measurable by fMRI machines! But the brain does not give up its secrets so easily. For the time being, and perhaps forever, I’m going to have to accept not knowing exactly what is going on in my brain. As difficult as that is, I was comforted when Presti reiterated what I had learned, that psychedelics are not physically harmful to the body for most people, even at massive doses. He told me that he has absolute confidence in the safety of my project. It is, at least in the view of that one particular neurobiologist, perfectly safe. I tucked that thought away for the next time I felt like I was having a heart attack in the dead of night.





* * *




*1 ?Robin L. Carhart-Harris et al., “Psilocybin with Psychological Support for Treatment-resistant Depression: An Open-label Feasibility Study.”

*2 ?See American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, “Active Ingredient in Magic Mushrooms Reduces Anxiety, Depression in Cancer Patients.”

*3 ?See https://clusterbusters.org/.

*4 ?R. A. Sewell, J. H. Halpern, and H. G. Pope, Jr., “Response of Cluster Headache to Psilocybin and LSD”; Matthew W. Johnson et al., “Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction.”

*5 ?R. L. Carhart-Harris et al., “The Paradoxical Psychological Effects of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD).”

*6 ?Enzo Tagliazucchi et al., “Increased Global Functional Connectivity Correlates with LSD-Induced Ego Dissolution.”





Day 6


Normal Day

Physical Sensations: None.

Mood: Excellent.

Conflict: None.

Sleep: Woke up in the middle of the night, but fell back to sleep eventually.

Work: The words took some time to flow.

Pain: More or less the same as before I started the protocol.





Feeling good will make a woman do strange things; today I called my father. The call with my mother a couple of days ago went so well I figured, hey, you’re already experimenting with illegal hallucinogens; why not do something really wild?

When I talk to my father, it is less of a conversation than a monologue, or a series of mini-lectures. Kind of like attending a one-man TED conference at the Hebrew Home for the Aged. Today’s topics were, as ever, “Soviet History: The Stalin Era,” “Zionism and Trotskyist Theory,” and “Lincoln vs. McClellan: Whose Fault?” Or something like that. I admit I might have zoned out a few times during the call. What made today so unusual was that, instead of quickly losing patience and inventing an excuse to get off the phone, I hung in there. I stayed on the line. I heard the animation and even delight in my father’s voice as he gave me a detailed digest of his most recent haul from the Fort Lee Public Library. This is how he makes himself happy, I realized. Anyway, what did you expect? You call a telephone psychic, you get artful guesses and vague insights. Call Daddy and you get the Second Battle of Bull Run.

My father and I have always had a difficult relationship, but now, when I look back, I realize that it is my own expectations—my ideas about the father I need, the father I wish I had—that have been the source of the longing, disappointment, frustration, and ultimately anger that have characterized my feelings about my father for so long.

The futility of my expectations was made comically clear to me a couple of years ago, after my father somewhat mysteriously handed me a stack of microcassettes. They were recordings of his psychotherapy sessions, made during the early eighties with a New York City psychologist named Albert Ellis. I didn’t know what to make of this odd gift, what message they might contain, what he was trying to tell me by giving them to me. For a long time I didn’t listen to the tapes; I was too annoyed. You want to tell me something? I would imagine saying to him. Try talking! But sometimes I could not help wondering about what might be recorded on those microcassettes. All the feelings he had never expressed. His feelings about himself, his marriage. His feelings about managing his bipolar disorder. Most of all, his feelings about me. Maybe on those tapes I might hear the voice of a man who thought and wondered and cared about his daughter. The voice of the father I had always wished for, had always hoped, against hope, might be hiding in there, under there, somewhere.

Finally, at the urging of a friend, I sat down and listened to the tapes—six hours, representing two months of sessions with one of the most prominent psychologists of the day. So what did they talk about, my dad and the great Dr. Ellis? His feelings, worries, and cares? The people he loved? The personal and professional ramifications of his mood disorder?

Nope.

What they talked about, in great detail, was the history of communism, class struggle, and the kibbutz movement. They never got around to Abraham Lincoln.

When I was little, I used to wish my father could be more like Shimon.

Shimon is an old friend of my parents. He lives in Israel—where I was born. He and his wife have two daughters, on whom he dotes. Even before my conscious memory of him begins, there are stories in my family of the particular affection Shimon showed for me, and of how eagerly I looked forward to seeing him. Shimon is expressive, warm, even effusive. I could always feel, from the time I was a little girl, how much he enjoyed my company. The last time I saw him, a couple of years ago, he remembered having visited our apartment in Jerusalem when I was a toddler. He said that I brought a little chair into the living room, sat down in front of him, and regaled him with my firm opinions on all manner of subjects. He no longer recalled what I had said, but he did remember how much he’d enjoyed listening to me. I have no memory of that particular moment, of course, but I have the clearest sense memory of Shimon’s dry kiss on my cheek, of the warmth of his big hand, missing the tip of one finger, enfolding my little one. We moved from Israel back to Montreal before my third birthday, and after that I saw Shimon only rarely, but whenever I did, I would feel a rush of excitement, as if something that had gone missing a long time ago was about to be returned to me.