Psilocybin Trial Diary - Day five: Second scan and follow-up

Flowers from the Psilodep team

I wake up with a headache – is it a hangover? If it is a hangover then it’s far better than an alcohol hangover. I have a shower, which feels amazing and enlivening, and, after another veggie samosa and apple juice breakfast, make my way to the unit.

Robin comes to meet me in reception and we go to the patient lounge where I answer some questionnaires about the past 24 hours and provide the usual urine sample.

We move on to another ward where I put on scrubs once again and the nurse weighs me (I’ve lost a few pounds apparently). We then head to the scanner and once again I’m slid into place like a pizza going into an oven. Or is it more like being placed in a washing machine? Either way, I have to surrender once again, but this feels very different to the first scan. My levels of anxiety are much lower, my depression is much less heavy and overbearing and I don’t have the urge to escape my whirring, buzzing tube.

When the scan with the piano music begins, I feel myself willing the feelings on that I had when listening to music during my doses – just as I had willed those feelings on last night when trying to sleep. When I simply let go of these urges and demands though, the music takes on a new dimension and every key of the piano rains down on me like a waterfall. Again – expectation results in disappointment, openness and isness results in genuine experiencing.

I fill in a couple more questionnaires on Robin’s laptop and then we go back to the ‘chill out’ dosing room where Mark and James are waiting. I feel a bit disappointed that the room has been returned to a more sterile and less welcoming state with much of the colourful material removed. The people within the room are still warm and welcoming though.

We have a chat about the previous day, the breakthroughs and themes that arose and how I’m feeling about everything now. I mention the knot in my solar plexus and how I realised that that’s where I chased all of my unwanted feelings, thoughts, fears and emotions. I say in fact it could be called a ‘not’ without the ‘k’ as it’s where I keep all of the things I’m not prepared to feel, not allowing myself to experience etc. But in reality all that does is increase the size and weight of the knot, increases my anxiety and actually amplifies all of those negative feelings. They’re then placed under immense, resistant pressure and then explode out of me every now and then in an uncontrolled and damaging way.

I eat lunch in the patient lounge with the two chronic fatigue syndrome study participants I met yesterday afternoon (really nice people) and then go back to the dosing room where Mark asks me a series of questions about how I’ve felt during the past week (after dose one and before dose two).
We chat for a while longer and then I’m set free into the world once again, travelling to Liverpool Street on the tube and then getting the train home from there, all the time with the bottle of flowers poking out of the side pocket of my bag. I hope it brought some happiness to people that saw it, it certainly brought happiness to me.

Psilocybin Trial Diary - Day two: First scan and prep.

Me in scrubs

The torrential rain starts just before I arrive. I’m given a green wristband by the receptionist and Robin then comes to meet me and takes me to the patient lounge. After a quick urine test, I put on scrubs, my identity disappearing with my clothes, and we then head to the scanner unit.

Robin guides me through everything. He says it'll be loud and may be claustrophobic. I have ear protectors on and a mirror above my eyes shows me the screen behind my head.

The first scans involve me having to keep my eyes closed for the whole time. Am I lying still? I'm trying to. I must relax my shoulders. Does that make my head move? I don't know. I've been told to focus on my depressed state so I’m thinking about my abusive dad, my childhood, how bleak and horrible it all was. God this is depressing.

After each scan I have to rate how I felt using buttons on a pad that's strapped to my arm and wrist. Left and right on the scale with the first two fingers, then select with my thumb. Each time I have to say how depressed/happy/anxious/motivated I was on a sliding scale.

I feel massively anxious during the first two or three scans. I feel like jumping out of the machine as it grinds and whirrs and groans and beeps around me. I imagine this is what it would be like if I was miniaturised and placed on my flatbed scanner at home - with another one on my left, my right and above me, all about an inch away from my skin. I reassure myself that I have the round squeezy panic button in the pocket of my scrubs and that just about keeps me going.

After every scan (lasting around 8 minutes each) I hear the voice of (her name escapes me, Adele?) who is in the scanner control room, asking me if I'm ok and telling me how long the next scan is and what I need to do. The final three scans involve clicking a button when a face appears on the screen, listening to a piano piece (my happiness rating went up but so did my anxiety - it was quite an emotionally varied piece) and the last one is just a physical scan of my brain rather the activity inside it.

This is where my 4am start kicks in (I had to take my Norwegian nephew to the train station) and I fall asleep. Apparently this is the perfect time to snooze if I need to as it would have messed up all of the scans aside from this one. (Can you be depressed in your sleep? Good question).

The dosing room

After I've filled in a couple of questionnaires on Robin's laptop, we then leave the scanning unit and head to what I can only describe as the chill out room. It's another private ward but has multicoloured fabrics hanging over the curtain rail that encircles the bed. There are fake candles that throw out a soft, welcoming light, pot plants and a nice snug blanket on the bed. This is where I will be given my doses. Robin tells me there will also be an aroma diffuser, fresh flowers and music when it comes to the dosing days.

This feeling of comfort increases as I get to know the two psychiatrists who'll be looking after/over me better. Mark and James are both warm, welcoming and disarming and we talk more about my family background and my struggles to make sense of it all and how I've desperately tried to 'fix' things (normally by trying to get unreasonable people to see reason - futile).

Empowerment and disempowerment seem to be themes. I often feel powerless. I can't change arseholes into better people, even though I try my hardest. Robin brings me a massive lunch and I'm left in the chill out/dosing room to eat and further acclimatise myself.

Post-lunch we have more time to chat and we do a dummy run of the dosing day. I lie down on the bed and listen to a (brilliant) selection of ambient music (is that Eno?) that will be played throughout my dosing. I then put earbuds in, which brings the music even closer, put a facemask on to block out the light and we practise a special handhold (which involves holding each others forearms). That's pretty much it for what was an interesting and at times testing (no pun intended) day.