~ The Collapse is Coming ~

“I don’t know Ryan,” he said. “I really don’t know. I’m just so disappointed with my species. I give up on them. There is just so much potential for humanity, yet here we are wasting our lives in trivial routine, going through the motions, following outdated traditions, chasing materialistic things which don’t really make us happy. The way people treat each other is so bad. And even the way people treat themselves. People are their own worst enemies; they slowly build their own cages bar by bar – out of fear, comfortability, security, and conformity. Anything just to fit in and not think independently. Why Ryan, why? Life is such a glorious opportunity but we throw it away so willfully with these ridiculous lives we live.”

     I could see my good friend Bryan had finally reached the point in his life where he had simply given up on the world. Idealism had given way to nihilism and I watched as he downed the rest of his beer before throwing it onto the pile of empty bottles which had been gradually accumulating since my arrival. I was visiting him in his holiday home in The Netherlands. It was a small cabin in a holiday park which he had recently bought for ten thousand euros. You were only supposed to use it for vacations, but Bryan had decided to live there full-time. He was working as an urban planner in Rotterdam, but only had to be in the office two times a week which allowed him to ‘work’ from his cabin the other days. He was supposed to be engaged in his employment activities right this moment, but here he was drinking beers in his garden while putting the world to rights with me. I asked if he wanted another beer to which he reminded me it was time to take some psychedelic drugs.

    “Don’t you have any work to do today?” I asked. 

     “What’s the point, honestly, I don’t care about this bullshit job. It’s so badly managed, I can do what I want. And if I get fired, then so be it. Like you said, the collapse of civilisation is coming anyway.”

     “Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s go and get high and enjoy the day then.”

     We headed back inside to get the magic mushroom truffles from the fridge and began preparing them. Pretty soon we had taken our doses and then hopped on our bikes to cycle to a nearby nature reserve. We rode in the summer sunshine through rural lands and villages while waiting for the first effects to hit. Bryan was a seasoned veteran when it came to psychedelics, regularly doing mushroom and acid trips on his own; I, however, had only taken them a couple of times before – and not at the dose level I had just consumed. The feeling of excitement was mixed in with some apprehension, and I even began to start feeling a bit sick in the stomach, which was not too unusual for a short while after eating magic mushroom truffles, especially when you were also hungover from the night before. 

     We carried on cycling towards the nature reserve as the landscape became forested. Lush green trees surrounded us as we ventured closer to our destination. Pretty soon we pulled up in the car park and locked our bikes up. It was then that the first little waves of effects began to make themselves known; in particular, tree branches around me looked wavy and the light through the canopy began to have a heavenly quality. 

     We then made our way through a pathway in the woods that eventually gave way to a vast open expanse of sand dunes. It was a surreal looking landscape; not the type one would envisage when thinking of The Netherlands. There was an otherworldly vibe to it – small scrubs lay across the sandy ground with networks of cobwebs between them; that same lush green forest circled the wide open area before us; dead tree branches lay like skeletons of carcasses in the hot sun. We walked barefoot across that strange land as Bryan played some ambient music from his speaker and I imagined us as two neanderthals roaming the plains of the outback tens of thousands of years ago.

     The effects were soon getting stronger as I looked at the ripple lines of the sand beneath my feet. All of it was swaying and swooning in a playful manner. With each step, my feet were swallowed by this sea of sand, before soaring out of its surface again like two dolphins skipping through the water. The sun still stood above us and its searing heat led us to decide to search for some shade. A small way in the distance was a large dune with a few trees that seemed to be the spot the universe was guiding us towards. It was there that we agreed to seek shelter as the effects of the mushrooms started coming on even stronger.

     We threw our stuff down and sat down beside a tree trunk. We stared out at the surrounding area of sand dunes which was now looking like some sort of dreamscape, especially with the dust devils that were blowing around us. We were far away from the city life and we may as well have been marooned on another planet. The forest that circled the desert-like expanse we were in was now dancing, taking on that kaleidoscopic pattern which I had only seen representations of in posters and psychedelic artwork. Now it was happening before my eyes as the whole world looked like some sort of fantastical phantasmagoria. When I focused a little more, each tree began to look like a mushroom itself, almost on fire like the landscapes that featured in some of Van Gogh paintings. The world was more vivid and fascinating than ever – some sort of entrancing work of art that I was happily trapped within.

     We both carried on enjoying the captivating visual effects while discussing life. Me and Bryan had been friends for eight years at that point after having met while travelling in New Zealand. My closest friend from the past decade of my travels, we were two people who were incredibly similar at our cores – hell, even our names only had one letter difference. Aside from that, our lives just seemed to mirror each other constantly in the things we were experiencing. We both often felt out of place and misunderstood in this society, and deep down we longed for a life of free-spirited adventure instead of the one which the majority of people our age strived for. We were men with similar stories and struggles and I guess we provided some sort of sanity to each other by just knowing our thoughts weren’t completely alien. I knew Bryan was currently more at odds with the world than me though, having expressed ever-growing dissatisfaction since returning home from his last world trip. He was growing increasingly jaded, drifting towards self-destructive and reckless behaviour. Drink driving, skipping work, an increasing detachment from pretty much everything – he truly was a man who was teetering on the edge of sanity and society.

      He shared some more thoughts on this as he expressed how unfulfilling his current job was, how traditional middle-aged life was so uninspiring, and how much he missed working in the Tasmanian outback building hiking trails. This led to our frustrations with the system and popular culture as we discussed the possibility of what the world would be like if people regularly took psychedelic substances. “I mean, just look at what these mushrooms can do for people. There’s a natural substance that opens people’s minds to more perspectives, insights and growth? And what is the response of most governments? BAN AND CRIMINALISE IT!!” There was then a short silence before he proclaimed “honestly, what a complete joke.” At that moment, we both burst out into a fit of laughter. Just the authority with which the sentence was said struck deeply at some profound and fundamental level, like a divine truth being uttered. I mean, it was a big joke when I really thought about it. Society was one big madhouse, especially at the moment – PC culture, covid lockdowns, inflation, social media, consumerism, the climate crisis, and the general state in which late stage capitalism had left full-time workers barely able to heat their homes – it was quickly going down the drain and it was only a matter of time before the system collapsed completely. All the while, people voted for their own demise and busied themselves with the consumption of vapid TikTok videos. It was truly something to despair at, but the next thing to do was to laugh. This seemed the logical response for the sake of one’s sanity: just to laugh at the world and at yourself, to see the ridiculousness and absurdity of it all in plain, comic sight – it was a medicine for the soul and at that moment we dosed ourselves with that medicine as we howled atop that hill like two crazed apes. 

     Once the laughter had died down, a quiet period began and I started to get more introspective. Reflecting more on the feeling that the end times would soon be upon us in society, I couldn’t escape this feeling that my life was also destined to be some tragedy – that a great disintegration was coming of myself too. I simply seemed to face great hardship in life and at times I wondered how much longer I could get by living the way I had been. Now I was at a time in my life when I was acknowledging that I was probably autistic to some degree, and could probably get diagnosed with a few other things which would explain why I felt like I was constantly living my life on hard mode. My life had been a grand adventure but it had also been an immensely difficult ride, and I knew I was at risk of madness or homelessness with my outright inability to fit into this society. At the moment I had no job, no career, and no real talent or trade. I was in a strange place in my life and I no doubt needed to confront some things if I was to make it through another few decades without some sort of disaster occurring. 

     Deep realisations were hitting me as I sat tripping in the sand, but I was also seeing how beautiful the whole experience of just being alive was as the mushrooms continued to do their work upon my brain. I closed my eyes and saw the most insanely complex patterns unfolding before my eyes. I found it hard to process that my brain was automatically creating this rich tapestry of colours with an indescribable beauty, as great as any work of art I had ever laid eyes upon. Pretty soon after this Bryan put his hand on a nearby tree branch and we could see the tree breathing in and out as the veins in his arm flowed into the veins on the tree. At that moment I saw how we were all a part of some sort of mysterious, singular organism, and that no matter how absurd or ridiculous we felt the world was becoming, everything was going to be okay in some weird, fundamental way.

    Eventually we decided we had spent enough time atop our little hill. We continued roaming the nature reserve for another hour as the sun began to drop lower in the sky. Though five hours had passed since dosing, the effects of the mushrooms did not waver and I wondered when, if ever, I was going to return to my ‘normal’ state of mind. It seemed not any time soon as I passed a group of people entering the park who appeared all to have distorted faces, like that of deformed creatures. I questioned whether they were actually deformed, but then another group of people went past looking the same, at which point I concluded it was some weird, trippy effect from the truffles. I was going through a bad part of the trip, but I soon felt better by focusing again on that sunlight still bursting through the tree canopy in a divine and heavenly way.

    We finally jumped on our bikes and cycled back to his cabin in the sunset, the last rays of light illuminating the world with a dreamy, serene glaze as psychedelic rock music played from Bryan’s speaker. I couldn’t even feel my legs working as some higher force made it feel like I was gliding along on some sort of hovercraft. Though blissful, it was all a bit too much at some point, and I was happy when we arrived home and the effects finally started to fade. Some points of the trip had simply been too intense for me and I was eager to grab a few beers from the fridge and take the edge off with the comfort and familiarity of being drunk. I sat there drinking a beer in his garden while still appreciating the beauty of the world with fresh eyes, watching little helicopter seeds float down gracefully from a nearby tree, marvelling at my surroundings like a new-born baby.

     The next few days I carried on experiencing that afterglow, but some negative effects made themselves known too. Something had triggered in my mind and left it in a restless place it had been before in recent years. I had struggled with insomnia for a while now and it was one of the reasons I now had lost interest in travelling the world like I once had. Simply put, my body needed a routine in which for me to sleep, and as soon as my circadian rhythm was disturbed, then I quickly spiralled into an insomniac state. Now the new environment – coupled with the drinking and the drugs and the heat – had set my brain off once again. It appeared sleep just wasn’t going to happen to any decent degree for the rest of the trip. There were just a few days left so I just accepted what was and sought to make the most of the rare occasion me and Bryan got to hang out together.

     The searing summer heat continued as we cycled around, chilled out by lakes, went to bars, ate pizza, played ping pong, and generally had fun like guys fifteen years younger than we were. We spent a day in Amsterdam enjoying the bars and parks and sights of that famous city. Drinking and debates on life was the general vibe as we sought to make the most of the opportunity of having conversations we simply couldn’t have in our normal day-to-day life. To be with someone so similar to you was a strange and cathartic experience, and naturally there was an electric energy in the air. Every time we met this energy invariably led to us partying and causing mischief, and this time was no different as we sipped back those strong Belgian beers and drifted from bar to bar. At one point we cycled drunk to the nearest town, then cycled back blind drunk, leaving me crashing into some ditch at the side of the road, leaving Bryan once again laughing at the absurdity of it all.

      Monday morning soon came around following a final night of drinking in Rotterdam. The fun was over and there I was at the end of my trip, in one of the most sleep-deprived and burnt out states I had ever been in. I had just spent five days in the sun, drinking heavily, eating badly, barely sleeping at all, and having the biggest psychedelic trip I’d ever had in my life. I’d been in some depleted states before, but I deemed this to be the most extreme one yet, and I truly felt close to that great collapse that I had envisaged on top of that hill at the nature reserve. I was bordering on being in a state of psychosis, experiencing some auditory and peripheral vision hallucinations, making me wonder if the dose of mushrooms had permanently messed up my mind.

     This state wasn’t helped by a day that seemed set out to test me. This day included a delayed flight, sitting in an aeroplane on the runway for an hour in 30 degree heat next to a screaming baby, a delayed bus from the airport in London, waiting for that bus in a thunderstorm that proceeded to follow me up the motorway to Nottingham, and then finally arriving home thirteen hours later to find my landlady’s son trying to hang himself in the garden. The next morning I awoke after another night of bad sleep to hear that there had been a murder rampage in the city centre. Bad vibes were following me all around and the post-partying anxiety was at an all time high.

     I didn’t know what to do with myself and I just sat in my garden staring at the noose the landlady’s son had poorly constructed the evening before. I thought of how mentally ill he was, and how messed up the man who had just went on a murder rampage was. I then thought of Bryan’s growing nihilism, the troubles in society, and my growing sense of impending doom upon myself. Maybe the collapse was coming; it certainly seemed like it at that moment in time as I sat in a hole and reflected on the sad state of the world. A great sorrow filled my soul for moments, but then I looked out at my garden and saw the beauty of nature again that had been so prominent while high on those magic mushroom truffles. I saw the chirping birds bobbing from branch to branch. I saw the sunlight again bursting through the trees. I saw the butterflies and the flowers and the artistry of nature in the peak of summer. Maybe there was death, decay, and destruction in this universe – maybe the collapse of civilisation and myself was coming – but I felt once again ultimately everything was going to be okay in some strange way. This universe would keep on weaving its magic, and I would be forever cocooned in some indescribable cosmic blanket of infinity. The fact that I was a part of this great work of art that had been revealed to me on the truffle trip was enough for me to keep on keeping on for now. That was enough to accept the darkness of the world as well as the light. That was enough to pick myself up out of that hole and keep on marching through the tempestuous plains of life, transfixed by the strange wonder of simply being alive.