#definitely less mentally ill than pretty much all of my co workers

[stingingcake]

I’m worried about the kids these days.

[paulwalltran]

Dungeons and Dragons Loneliness

Another interview with lofi music. Today was a pretty shitty day, alot on my mind. Here to unload. 

Today’s mood: Fuck it all...

It’s a mad addiction, a horrendous one. It’s all I think about, it’s all I want to talk about. Or almost anything fantasy related. I’ve recently gotten a little closer with one of my co workers. Delerner Banks, everyone calls him Del. He’s always in the tunnel, and always brings warhammer books to read and do work (whatever it is he’s working on.) We talk about fantasy related things all the time, and sometimes we bounce ideas off each other, feeling out our thoughts of settings and lore. Talking to him about some fantasy before leaving work made me feel alot better. The loneliness inside has been eating at me.

I know it’s salt, I know its jealousy, that I’m mad at my friends. They been hanging out more without me, playing cards and shit. Its not a passion of mine, its fun sometimes, but its still not me. Its what they bond over, its what they do together, and that’s what theyre into. If I had to guess, they’re okay with Dungeons and Dragons, but even my best friend said that I take it too serious. Its fallen out of their favor, it eats up a lot of time, and they each have their version of what a fun campaign would be like. In me, I said to myself, “Fine, fuck it. I’ll have to assemble another crew to play with.” Tough situation then isn’t it? Wanting to play a social game that needs bodies, during an age where social gatherings are frowned upon, because they carry a potential to spread a virus... Still, this is what I want to do. I want a group of friends, who share the same passion I do. My current friends must think ill of me, they may just want to hang out. They think that if they come hang with me, I’ll want a game of DnD without a doubt. They just want to chill and kick it, they don’t want to roll dice. But ask me once and I’ll tell you yes twice, to playing DnD. 

I love it with all my heart, all of the contents and materials are here, ready to play. No extra investments, no money needed to be spent, we can get going off of nothing like we did back then. A table top roleplaying game, we started with cardboard and lego figures, and just two books to share. But there was fun to be had, and a few heated sessions. But fun it was, the more we played the deeper i grew fond of the game. I’m even willing to experiment with other systems if I have someone to guide me. With cards, you gotta constantly update your arsenal to keep up with the meta, and let’s be real, not playing anything remotely close to meta isn’t as fun. Different formats allow different decks, and to keep current you gotta keep up. I dont have the fundings for it, I dont have the luck. I would rather buy a module that’ll last for years, versus a pack of cards. I have two books that have skyrocketed in value, cards go up and down like stocks. But thats the appeal I suppose, I don’t care for it though.

Back to the thing at hand, I’m in their group chat as they make plans. I can’t be there for all that. But fuck it, that’s all Im going to say. Fuck it, on repeat, until its engraved into my head. Pride is getting the best of me, I refused to be denied again. If it’s not something they want to do, so be it, I need to look out for me in the end.  I must muster up the courage to start playing online again, the first one wasn’t bad, but it fell apart. I need to get the courage to be social, and get over the fear that everyone expects you to be a pro player. I’m scared going into this green still, roll20 isn’t my forte. But if I want to play DnD, this seems to be my only option. It may fulfill my wish, to find friends who are just as passionate as I. My other friends, they’re over on the other side. Its fine, it truly is, they have one another, and I need to be strong. I need to find the strength in this loneliness, even though its tearing me apart. My circle becomes smaller, thats just the way of the world. Adapt to survive, be formless like water...

Dungeons and Dragons, my greatest escape. I can be anybody, and do things I normally can’t. I can clobber up bad guys, indecent folk, and finesse my way out of punishment from the law. I can save a village, a town, a kingdom, when I can hardly save myself. I can fly, cast spells, break locks, imagination is my only limit. I can hoard and amass vast amounts of riches, I myself can even become a dragon. I don’t have to be me, although a bit of me resides in everyone I’ve made before. I can never truly separate myself, from those Ive breathed life into. For hours on end, I can go anywhere, do anything, I melt into the world thats placed before me.

 Because the reality is that I’m practically shit, and nobody. The world is fucked up and jacked up and spiraling down the drain. I’m mentally fucked and my physicality is pretty much the same. I’m stuck in place when the world is demanding me to change. I lost with no real direction. No map in hand, no guide, and I’m scared out of my mind. I don’t know whether to trust the process or commit suicide. Im not sure where I’ll end up, if it’s good or bad. Im struggling, I’m suffering, and there seems to be no end. I could say I’m trying, but I would be lying, if I had to look at the brighter side. The positive things in life are so hard to identify. But my emotions are raw and hit hard, slamming against the walls in my skull. Demanding me to give them attention...and attention I give them, as they tear me up. Like being pulled at by the limbs, drawn and quartered is the method it seems like today. I was thinking that I couldn’t drink forever, my body would eventually reject. But what if I drank energy drinks on end, a heart attack to get me out of this place. I can down those all day long, so whats stopping me from taking that way out of it? Less grotesque and violent, it’ll probably be painful as hell. An organ seizing up, as the body ceases the function. I get said thinking about it sometimes, but one day, enough will be enough. But damn that lady...damn her for speaking those words... Tomorrow. If nothing is better by tomorrow, then do as you may. But sleep it off, tomorrow is another day. 

It’s not verbatim, but its the gist. Just wait for tomorrow, and hopefully things will change. The choice is still mine to make, and something in me pushes me forward, keeps me going on. Sometimes I think about who I’m leaving behind, and maybe how much it’ll hurt. The evil darkness inside me says that they’ll get over it, they have to, and time doesn’t wait. I won’t be immortalized, I’ll simply end up a statistic. That maybe itll be a few years the sadness remains fresh, but wounds always heal. Discrediting my actual existence, and any form of relations. Like I wouldn’t have made any actual impressions, people don’t weep for me now. People kind of forget I exist already, what makes me think they won’t after I’m gone? 

I think about my folks, my grandma, my girlfriend, my second family, and other close dear friends. I think about how many last will letters I would have to put out there, before I call for the curtains. Sometimes, I say I will start writing them, but they give me pause. I end up not wanting to leave this world, after pouring out my heart. Because I don’t want to leave any questions behind for people who matter, I want them to know how I felt before I passed. I want to leave with them apart of me, so they would never forget. 

Still it doesn’t change, shit is rough as of lately, work has been eating me up. I feel like Im never hundred percent, and me back on gaming is making it worst. I’ve gotten back onto Elder Scrolls Skyrim, its been my virtual version of DnD. Waiting for the Outer World Expansion, so I can get addicted to that again. All I want to do is play Dungeons and Dragons, the question is how do I make that into a living? I think being a Matthew Mercer is one in a million, I don’t think I’m that great. I’m willing to learn, grow, evolve because it is my passion, but I’m always scared of making mistakes. To be one of the greater Dungeon Masters, to be THE Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Master, it may possibly be the dream. To eat, sleep, breathe, Dee en Dee. My obsession isn’t that crazy though, I’m still behind on the lore of creatures and settings, I haven’t studied at all. But with the right drive and motivation, I would, especially with something as real as a legit group.

Enthusiastic players, who show up every week, bi weekly, once every month even, to play this fantastic game. Group of chill folks who is willing to take the Dungeon Master Mantle with I get burned out and have the desire to be in the player seat. One of those is the driving force, they make me want to plan. They make me want to make the world, the style, everything in general better, with the constructive feedback. I mean it’s been so long as I was a player in a campaign until the end, I’m beginning to think paying for a Dungeon Master wouldn’t be so bad. Once a month? A couple of hours? I mean I’m thinking like seven USD per hour? Eight isn’t bad, but after that it becomes a questionable amount. It repeats in my head, “No DnD is better than Bad DnD”, this much is probably still true. I say still because I still might want at least one session with said game, so I can at least say it was the worst after having attempt it, rolling something. Ha ha, I kid myself, I’m lying because I know the rage would be all to real and caution is my game most of the time. But I mean, I just might have to start exploring the idea, I was definitely going to ask on FaceBook if any Roll20 games was recruiting a newbie. 

Alas, today won’t be the last time I speak on the matter, Dungeons and Dragons haunt me everyday. I stare at minis, I stare at the upcoming books and modules, and I watch youtube where they tell RPG Horror Stories, Its become a huge part of my life, such as dancing once was. It almost links right into my earliest talents...writing. I love to write, just like I’m doing now. Im fairly decent at the writing game if I must say. Hey, real life failed Bard here, I should make one who always ends up playing big bro, and end up being friendzoned by all his interests. Im short, so Halfling is very true. Am I charismatic? Who knows, I can’t say for sure. But yes, I feel like this is what I need, a solid weekly game, maybe once every two weeks, hell, once every month would still be great. Something to look forward to the very least, in this life of routine and mundane. Something to look forward to for me, something that’s my own. Something I don’t need my closer friends to be apart of, since they’re not interested anyhow. I’m really talking shit because I’m hella salty, but at least I’m being upfront. Get it all out now, before the typing is done. 

It’s been a productive session, I may have to attribute it to Lofi it seems. The Lofi Hip Hop Radio on YouTube, also found on Spotify. Some tracks still strike me deep in the chest, giving me horrible flash backs and feeling in my chest. Others keep me going, forward, almost propelling. I’m currently training myself to be accustomed to the sounds, because I at first was very scared. That it would just transport me to a dark place and keep me there. I’ve been trying to confront my feelings more with this music, I think I felt better after last session like this. The more I faced myself, the better I became. Yes, I most definitely referenced Persona 4, another amazing and loved title because of the message it portrays. I always wondered what my shadow self would look like, and what they would say. But eh another time, I’m about to start rambling again. I have to conclude here, before I get off topic.

Until next time Tumblr...

[uptightcitizensbrigade]

Annie Clark is not where she’s supposed to be. At the last minute, the artist known as St. Vincent decided that instead of trekking to a country store as planned, she wanted to stick closer to her studio in the hills of Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon. When I arrive at our new meeting spot, breathless from a steep climb, the first thing I notice is that neither of us is dressed appropriately for a rendezvous in the domesticated wilderness. Of course, in Clark’s case, this means looking pretty damn cool, in a sky-blue duster, gray sweatshirt, and leopard-print shorts, her trademark curly dark hair (which took a silvery lavender turn last album cycle) pin-straight and tucked under a Duran Duran cap. We make our way to a picnic table in the middle of a hiking trail that apparently enjoys more use as a bird lavatory. “Is this OK?” she asks, straddling the bench and setting down her mug of Yogi tea. It is. Anything to stop moving vertically.

“Up,” however, is a fitting direction for the 34-year-old Clark. Over the past decade, she has evolved from a clever multi-instrumentalist to critical darling to indie icon—her last record, 2014’s St. Vincent, took home the Grammy for Best Alternative Album. She’s a road warrior (with the bed bug stories to prove it), having toured for much of her life, beginning as a teenager when she was the tour manager for her uncle’s jazz duo, Tuck & Patti. And her latest album, MASSEDUCTION, is most definitely a career summit. It’s her Lemonade, her OK Computer—whatever reference conveys the urgency with which it demands to be listened to when it drops on October 13. “This one’s better,” she says of her fifth solo effort, nodding. “I was focused on writing the best songs I’d ever written.”

That goal comes at a cost, or so Clark’s body language seems to say on this late-August evening. She stifles a yawn, and cradles her tea. For the last couple of months, she’s been celibate and sober. Some of the monasticism she favors during recording stuck: An illness last March prompted her to quit alcohol altogether. “I loved my white wine,” she says. “But I just can’t stand the smell anymore.”

She is also insanely busy, still recuperating from yesterday’s flight home from Australia for press, not to mention the whirlwind trip to Tokyo that preceded it, where she performed at Summer Sonic (and shot this cover). And while it’s been three and a half years since she released an album, Clark’s been working on it all the while. “I’ve just been collecting things, bowerbird-style, and making elaborate plumage,” she says. Meanwhile, she’s been flexing her creative muscles: A week ago, Lionsgate announced that the Dallas native would be helming its female-led adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Clark made her directorial debut earlier this year with a short called “The Birthday Party” for the female-driven horror anthology XX.)

She’s also spent a good part of the last year getting over her breakup from 25-year-old British supermodel and actress Cara Delevingne. The pair dated for 18 months, thrusting Clark into a tabloid existence she’d never known before. You won’t find her in any formal pictures from (the old) Taylor Swift’s last Fourth of July bonanza in 2016, but she and her soon-to-be ex were captured by paparazzi in a private embrace. “It was really bizarre,” she says. “No joke, I’ve been in high-speed chases in London with at least five cars and six motorcycles following me and Cara. You’re going to kill someone, and for what? A photo of a sweet girl?”

The last thing she wants to talk about is how much of this album was informed by that relationship. She’s baffled by such inquiries—she only just recently admitted that 2011’s Strange Mercy was partly about her father being sent to prison for investment fraud. “I never think, ‘If I only knew who Kate Bush was singing about in “Running Up That Hill,” I could enjoy the song,’” she says, shooing a mosquito off my shirt. “I do not wonder who or what songs are about. And the Texan in me is like, ‘It’s none of your goddamned business.’” I ask whether she cleared the disclosure of her dad’s incarceration with him beforehand. “Is it OK with me that he’s in prison?” she responds dryly, but quickly adds, “I’ve only ever spoken highly of my father.”

Clark is a vivid storyteller whose knack for relating tales of dirty policemen or down-on-their-luck friends would make her the most popular guest at a dinner party. On MASSEDUCTION’s first single, “New York,” which debuted last June, she sings along to a plangent piano about “the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me.” While the song’s grief over lost heroes could easily apply to David Bowie or Prince, as Clark has suggested, it’s the identity of the “motherfucker” that piqued curiosity. “I totally understand it, I do,” she says, and frowns thoughtfully. “But the point is for the song to mean whatever it means to somebody else. Some people have a real hang-up about being misunderstood. I don’t care.” She stops to clarify this point: “I would be concerned if someone was like, ‘Wow, she seems like a Holocaust denier.’ But racism, sexism, or homophobia aside? I’m happy to be misunderstood.”

In the past, Clark’s music was more often respected than adored, like Love This Giant, her 2012 album with Talking Heads savant David Byrne. She is a masterful guitarist, a performance artist unafraid of experimentation. Artificial sounds, brass sections, unhurried choruses? All play a part in her eclectic repertoire, and she rarely stays monogamous to any one genre or rhythm.

“A lot of people are skilled at bending notes, but I think she actually bends the parameters of what guitar is,” says longtime friend Carrie Brownstein, whose prowess on the same instrument helped usher Sleater-Kinney to stardom. “She doesn’t approach it in a traditionally worshipful way. While she’s playing guitar, she seems to be destroying the very concept of it, which I think is very exciting.”

The opening track of her last album famously depicted Clark running naked from a rattlesnake. MASSEDUCTION (pronounced “mass seduction” on the title track) somehow finds her even more exposed. Clark says “New York” was the first time she ever wrote something and thought, “This could be somebody’s favorite song.” The same could be said of many tracks on the album, which, taken as a whole, sounds like Clark violating her own sense of privacy in order to grant access to her vulnerability. “I’m not eschewing any of the work I’ve done in the past,” says Clark. “But I was less concerned [here] about doing a lot of musical tricks that to me are intellectually interesting. The point of the record was to go, like, mainline to the heart.”

For this, Clark enlisted co-producer Jack Antonoff. Through his work with Lorde and Taylor Swift, as well as his own band Bleachers, Antonoff has developed a reputation for channeling ideas and emotions into their most approximate, frequently synth-driven expressions. “Jack changed my life for the better,” says Clark. “He makes you feel like anything is possible. We were merciless, trying to push all these songs past the finish line to accept the gold medal.”

None of which is to suggest that Clark has sacrificed any virtuosity or ambition. Several of the best songs break off into their own compelling codas. “How could anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind, too?” moans Clark on “Los Ageless,” backed by an aggressive beat that would not be out of place at an adults-only club, before dissolving, like a film melt, into a series of bleary synths and barely audible whispers.

The theme of Clark’s last record was “near-future cult leader.” Here, having traded in those wild lavender-platinum curls for an austere black bob, “It’s dominatrix at the mental institution,” she says. “I knew I needed to write about power—the fiction of power and the power of fiction.” The concept is at its most powerful on the more adrenalized songs, like “Pills,” whose opening lines function like a Valley of the Dolls reboot: “Pills to wake/ Pills to sleep/ Pills, pills, pills every day of the week.” The words are delivered by Delevingne in a demented, cheerfully vacant chant.

“You mean Kid Monkey, obscure DJ,” says Clark, gamely referencing her ex’s pseudonym. “It needed to be a posh British voice. I was like, ‘Cara, wake up. I need you to sing on this song.’ And she’s kind of grumpy. And I’m like, ‘Please. It sounds so good. One more time.’” That song, too, starts with a blinking alertness but finishes drowsily, like Pink Floyd at the planetarium. Clark says the inspiration came to her after popping a sleeping pill on tour, and speaks to larger issues of opioid addiction that have affected people she cares about.

But the song that’s most likely to be picked over lyrically, for obvious reasons, is “Young Lover.” It’s set in Paris, where gossip rags once reported that Delevingne, proposed to Clark. The relationship described in the song suffers as a result of the titular subject’s hard-partying ways. “Did I have experiences that emotionally resonated in the way they do for that character? Abso-fucking-lutely,” says Clark, who’s also been linked briefly to Kristen Stewart. “But did that exact scenario happen? No!” She makes a dismissive face.

Clark didn’t grow up feasting on the sordid details of celebrity coupledom, though she admits to a fascination with Kate Moss, Shalom Harlow, and the early-’90s supermodel set. (The musician has recently done some modeling herself as one of the new faces of Tiffany & Co.) Her parents divorced young, and Clark lived with her social worker mother and two older sisters. “I was free to be a wild card, because the other roles were spoken for,” she says. A breeze kicks up and she rubs her legs as they prickle with goosebumps.

A tiny part of her early musical education includes a crate of CDs that fell off a truck in front of their house. “It was good taste for someone in the suburbs of Dallas,” she says, citing Nine Inch Nails and Pet Shop Boys. Clark started playing guitar at 12, and was encouraged by her maternal uncle, who hired her as a tour manager for his jazz duo when she was a teenager.

Eventually, her family swelled to include eight siblings, with whom she is close. A younger brother now works as her assistant. “We grew up hearing my dad talk business on the phone, and it was ‘motherfucker’ this and ‘fucking cocksucker’ that,” she says, laughing. In part, this informed her curse word of choice on “New York.” “If people don’t curse at all, I always think they’re hiding something,” she says.

The next day, Clark is filming a video for MASSEDUCTION’s as-yet-unannounced second single at a soundstage in Hollywood. She spends more time on the West Coast now that she has built a studio here, but still keeps properties in New York and Texas. She hesitates to use the word bicoastal, which feels “kind of douchey,” she says.

The video set changes from a Pepto-Bismol pink beauty salon, where the pedicure tubs are filled with green slime, to a yoga studio. Clark is dressed in a cheetah-print leotard with an open-face hood. She’s been bending over for 15 minutes straight in order for director Willo Perron to get a dolly shot of her face hanging between her legs. I marvel at her stamina. “Are you really asking me how I’m good at bending over?” she says, wryly. She rests between takes, curling up on the yoga mat like a cat in a sunbeam.

Clark wasn’t involved with the concept for the video. Back in Laurel Canyon, she admitted to being preoccupied with Dorian Gray, working with Elle screenwriter David Birke and rereading the book for the first time since high school. “I jumped at the chance to explore themes of transgression, narcissism, youth, beauty, queerness, but through a female protagonist,” says Clark, who’s currently considering a cast for the project. She’s new to this milieu, but credits Tuck & Patti with teaching her the rigors of knowing her shit. “They really were the coach in Rocky,” she says of her uncle’s duo. “I learned how to be professional. It’s not as if I need to be a camera expert in order to direct something, but you have to have the respect of the crew. This is not a vanity project. This is something I want to do for the rest of my life.”

Melanie Lynskey, who starred in Clark’s XX short, was pleasantly surprised by the musician’s command of the set. “It was like working with someone who had been doing it a very long time,” she says. “She’s so smart and she had such a clear idea of what she wanted, but gave me all the room in the world to come up with ideas and collaborate.”

In the meantime, Clark is also preparing for this fall’s Fear the Future Tour. As we slowly make our way down the hill, clutching at branches to steady ourselves, she says there won’t be as much postmodern dancing this time around. “The record is full of sorrow, but the visual aspect of it is really absurd,” she says. “I take the piss out of myself. The last tour I sat atop a pink throne, looking very imperious.” She kindly helps me down the last step. “This one will let people see that I have a sense of humor.”

[mikemortgage]

Brandon Truaxe built, then nearly broke, Deciem. Can it go on without him?

Nicola Kilner, chief executive of the skin-care company Deciem, has a joke about last year. If you didn’t get fired in 2018, she says, “then you didn’t really live 2018 at Deciem.”

Kilner was fired twice, by Brandon Truaxe, the company’s founder and one of her closest friends. Last year, even as Deciem grew, Truaxe plunged the company into chaos. He was committed to hospitals four times in three countries. He died in January of this year, after a fall from a Toronto condominium.

His death left Kilner at the top of a company that is projected to sell US$300-million worth of products this year. She is working to stay faithful to Truaxe’s vision. She considers him a genius, but she also wants to integrate new values into the company’s culture, like kindness.

Because 2018, she said, “wasn’t a very kind year.”

Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe dead at 40

The inside story of how Deciem, the Abnormal Beauty Company, lived up to its name

Deciem founder ordered to stay away from Estee Lauder offices, workers after ’harassing and menacing’ communications

Kilner and Truaxe met in 2011, when she was working as a buyer at Boots, the British pharmacy chain. She was inspired by his energy and constant stream of ideas, and when he founded Deciem, in 2013, she was excited to be hired as the company’s brand director. They spent every working hour together.

Truaxe was passionate and funny, but also quick to anger. Kilner, who is preternaturally calm, would help soothe tensions in the aftermath of any given blowup. He recognized his own volatility, though, and the two grew to trust each other. She soon became Truaxe’s co-chief executive.

Deciem was conceived as a skin-care product incubator, a company that would house 10 different brands with different missions. Truaxe’s background was in computer science, and he approached moisturizers and toners as engineering problems.

Shamin Mohamed Jr., Deciem’s director of operations under Truaxe and his good friend, said that beauty was supposed to be just the beginning; Truaxe had intended to disrupt other sectors, including apparel, nutrition and technology.

“He’s more Silicon Valley than beauty,” said Nils Johnson, whose company Beautylish was one of the first retailers to stock Deciem products in the U.S. “He was kind of in a position where he didn’t care about status quo and he didn’t have respect for status quo.”

Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe is shown in this undated handout photo posted to Instagram.

Truaxe grew frustrated in an industry in which brand names determine prices and packaging is crowded with marketing gobbledygook. So he created The Ordinary, a line of a la carte ingredients that are usually prettied up or disguised and sold at a premium by other brands. Much of Deciem’s value derives from The Ordinary, which has become its most popular offering, leaping over brands like NIOD, Loopha and Ab Crew.

The Ordinary was released as a product line in September 2016, just a few months after the company started opening retail locations. It was Deciem’s 11th brand. None of its products cost more than US$15. Between August 2016 and August 2017, the company more than doubled its wholesale revenue, causing a stir in the industry and attracting Estée Lauder Cos. as a minority investor — even as Truaxe’s behaviour shifted from passionate to disturbing.

What Does a Visionary Look Like?

Truaxe’s behaviour began to change in the early days of 2018, after he said he had spent the end-of-year holidays in Mongolia. (Kilner came to believe that he was not in Mongolia but in Venice, Italy, and Amsterdam; Mohamed said that Truaxe had never planned to go to Mongolia.) In January, he announced on the company’s Instagram that he would be taking on all marketing — that there would be no more barrier between himself and Deciem’s followers. “From now on I am going to communicate personally with you,” he said.

It was difficult for his co-workers, including Kilner, to make judgments about his behaviour. When the founder announced that he would no longer be using his cellphone or email, they weren’t sure whether he was being unreasonable or a genius.

“Brandon was so infectious in whoever he spoke to,” Kilner said. “You were just in his magic charm. I remember having conversations with my husband around things he was saying. You challenge yourself thinking, ‘Am I the one not getting this?’ ”

Mohamed thought that Truaxe’s behaviour was less a sudden break than a continuation of familiar behaviour. “Brandon didn’t magically become crazy in eight months,” he said. “He’s always been like this. He’s always been this manic guy who ran this company.”

Kilner felt compelled to say something in February when, on Deciem’s Instagram account, Truaxe abruptly ended the company’s relationship with cosmetic doctor Tijion Esho. Esho was caught off-guard and upset, a preview of what the rest of the year would look like for those in the founder’s orbit.

“I started to ask him, ‘Are you OK? Are things OK?’ ” Kilner said. “The next day I was terminated.”

Truaxe delegated the firing to the company’s human resources director, Neha Gupta. Kilner’s husband, Sean Reddington, booked the couple on a flight to Barbados. The two had been married for several years but had put off having children. They decided that, free from an all-consuming workplace, it was time. In March, she became pregnant.

Progress within the company almost ground to a halt. In March, Truaxe fired Deciem’s U.S. team. In early April, after he published an Instagram post insulting Kilner, Reddington emailed him, disclosing that his wife was pregnant and that the stress was unwelcome. Truaxe responded warmly, congratulating the couple. He knew that Kilner had always wanted a baby and had told her he worried that Deciem would keep her from starting a family. Then he posted the news on the company’s Instagram account. Kilner was only about four weeks pregnant and had told very few people.

Kilner said that such behaviour marked a definitive break. “Before 2018, Brandon was the most respectful person in the world,” she said.

The Vanishing Line Between Public and Private

Deciem’s employees embraced the common startup practice of referring to co-workers as one’s family. Kilner, the company’s U.S. director, Dakota Isaacs, and others tend to speak in superlatives about their colleagues. (And Truaxe’s longtime partner, Riyadh Swedaan, worked at the company for years.)

But Truaxe’s actions further confounded the boundaries separating the workplace and the home. His Instagram posts and conduct within Deciem suggested that he was having trouble parsing which behaviour was appropriate for the public, what might belong at Deciem and what he might keep private.

Kilner did not deny a report in the Financial Post that he was ingesting psychedelic mushrooms in front of employees. She said he did not attempt to persuade team members to take drugs with him.

But he did recommend that they take mushrooms; he was convinced of their creative and spiritual benefits. This behaviour constituted another change. “Before 2018, he barely even drank alcohol,” Kilner said.

Mohamed said that he did not think that Truaxe had been mentally ill, but said he did think that he had been addicted to drugs: crystal meth and psilocybin.

In May, according to an interview with the Financial Post, Truaxe took crystal meth in Britain, which led to him being arrested and committed to a hospital. By June, he was calling Kilner and begging her to come back, partly, she said, because he was hoping to win back the support of Estée Lauder Cos., whom his behaviour had alienated.

At first, she was not sure whether she would return. But ultimately, she decided, “This wasn’t a job. This was family. You’re there for family.”

View this post on Instagram

Our co-worker is back—but never behind. We love you, @nicolalkilner. You’ll always be our only 🐌—and always stronger than any 🐅 can ever hope to be or become. 🧡💛🌕😜

A post shared by THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY (@deciem) on Jul 3, 2018 at 7:04am PDT

Breaking Point

At first, Truaxe seemed improved upon Kilner’s return. He was in the Toronto office infrequently, which helped Kilner and the rest of the team to get things done.

But it became clear that he would not return to being the person he had been. At one point, in late summer, he and Kilner spent hours together in a New York restaurant talking about new products, one of the most normal exchanges she had with him in months. She texted her husband, telling him that she wanted to cry with happiness. Ten minutes later, Truaxe got up and said he had to leave the restaurant “because people were in there watching him.”

In August, Truaxe and Kilner cut off Deciem’s relationship with Beautylish. Johnson said that in the meeting, Truaxe seemed to be “having one of his episodic experiences” and that he talked at length about subjects that were unrelated to the business. (Johnson has not forgiven Kilner. He sees her as having enabled Truaxe’s darker tendencies; it was she who sent the email terminating the relationship.)

In an email sent Oct. 1, Truaxe addressed the distrust for him that had grown rampant at his company. He wrote, referring to himself by his own initials and in the third person, that “I recognize that many of you may have allowed doubt to cloud your judgment of B.T., despite much kindness, love, respect and generosity that our founder has shown us.”

People react as they look outside a Toronto Deciem store after all locations closed unexpectedly on Tuesday, October 9, 2018.

Eight days later, he announced on Instagram that the company would stop all operations and close down its own stores, provoking pandemonium within the company and a run on its merchandise from a consumer base worried that their preferred products would soon be unavailable. Three days later, Estée Lauder Cos. successfully sued to have Truaxe removed from Deciem. Kilner, then seven months pregnant, replaced him as chief executive.

“You’ve got 700 people who’ve got livelihoods, they’ve got families, they’ve got bills to pay,” she said. “So when it came up what needed to happen there was a part of me that thought ‘Maybe this is what he needs.’ ”

A New Deciem

Kilner believed that he would recover and return. She called him as the court case was proceeding to see if one more conversation could make a difference. But after that, she made a firm decision to focus on Deciem and on her soon-to-arrive baby.

She stopped talking to him as much. Conversations with him were trying. Truaxe seemed consumed by the idea that those around him had committed financial crimes, and had an obsessive interest in and affinity for President Donald Trump. His anger at being removed from Deciem also made him hard to talk to.

Mohamed thinks that Truaxe may have closed the stores to cause his own ouster. He does not blame Kilner for taking over, but does think that Truaxe should have been able to remain in contact with some of his co-workers. Cutting him off from the colleagues he saw as family was cruel, Mohamed thought, and he said he believed it led to the further deterioration of Truaxe’s condition.

As she entered the final month of her pregnancy, Kilner began to envision the company’s future. Deciem this year will open a new, 70,000-square-foot facility in Toronto, the first in years that will be able to house all its employees. The facility, in the Liberty Village neighbourhood (the location was chosen by Truaxe), will include an on-site laboratory, a factory and a store. They expect to introduce between 100 and 150 new products this year, and several new brands. Both Kilner and Mohamed plan to devote their organizations to furthering the study of mental health.

One of Deciem’s new brands will make skin-care products for babies, something Kilner said the company’s customers ask for all the time. She had a daughter at the end of December. She did not know the sex of the baby until the birth, but had already picked out a name for a girl, Mila, which she shared with Truaxe in July. He adored it, she said.

Kilner took no leave from work; she answered emails about Deciem from the hospital. She said she loves her job so much that managing the company does not feel like work to her. When Kilner was interviewed in early April, her infant daughter had taken more flights than she had lived weeks.

Kilner learned in January that Truaxe might be dead from reporters emailing one of Deciem’s publicists: one last awful piece of news that strangers had access to before Truaxe’s work family did.

She said she feels privileged to be able to work on building the company that he created. “The best thing that we can do to honour him is to make sure his vision lives for eternity,” Kilner said.

—

For general information on mental health and to locate treatment services in your area in the United States, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Treatment Referral Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). In Canada, visit the website of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

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[tinyscribblefairy]

One must always grow from mistakes made regardless of how damaging it may feel at the time. 

If things were to happen for a reason, I am already negotiating how to handle this one. 

Let me just start with one true fact. I have been fired from almost every single job I have ever had. I have learnt from each firing how to grow from each one. 

Two of these jobs, I really loved. One was a cook’s assistant in a company kitchen and the other one was as a fitness instructor for a women’s only circuit gym. 

I will not name the places or people involved to respect privacy and such. 

My main ambition, since I was a child has always been to become a published author, a writer, novelist and also wanted to be an actress and I have not given up on any of these dreams even if I have set them aside without really giving it a real go. Without giving myself a chance for the sake of society’s obsession with “Wake up, you gotta make money” and earning a living without sacrificing it all for a what some would call a pipe dream seemed incredibly foolish, unlikely and too risky. 

For three years I was not working at all and decided to give stand-up comedy a try and I still perform today in open mics, however every time you leave the scene or put yourself on the back burner, you kind of have to prove yourself on stage all over again. Just like any business, consistency and perseverance does eventually make a difference. No guarantees, but I have personally seen careers bloom and people actually getting to a point where they were earning their main income from comedy and various television appearances. 

It’s not impossible. It’s a hustle and it’s hard for the average Joes and Janes to understand, since very often they are hellbent on security, building families and buying mortgages and it does not fall into their spectrum of what they believe to be realistic ambitions. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting or being content with an average life. It’s a choice and the more people you have with you or depending on you, it’s a logical, safe, practical and responsible choice. 

We need practical, logical, responsible people. Sometimes I envy them. 

Because practical, logical people don’t get fired. They don’t lose their jobs. 

I feel it would be important to tell you, as I am wiping tears of my face after typing that last line that for close to 2 years I have held another job, a job I have grown to love and been really good at. 

I’m a barmaid. My job involves serving clientele promptly, making drinks, pouring beers, also preparing food. The social aspect of the job is something I excel at, we have a regular clientele and all seem to be very happy with me. The administrative, inventory, cashing out part of the job is my Achilles heel. 

Focus has never been my forte.

Also, what made it difficult is mindlessly allowing myself to get distracted by my phone. Fell way too far into the Facebook vortex and got sidetracked, almost neglecting the job I am paid to do. 

 I have probably one of the most understanding, patient bosses in the entire universe but everyone has a breaking point. 

I’m pretty much what you could call a social media addict and I have also created a Facebook page for the bar where I work and have enjoyed some success with my posts. Nothing viral, but I take pride in anything creative that I do. 

You might be thinking, “Where is she going with this?” Well, since it just happened a few hours ago, I am still trying to process how to explain what happened. 

I work Mondays and Tuesdays from noon until closing, which occasionally means really late like after 3. 

The mistake was an err in judgement, I am also bipolar which means I am aware of certain situations that can trigger mania or hypomania . 

I had a particularly busy weekend, did not sleep very much and that’s never good as far as triggers are concerned, it can create an imbalance and—bingo!—fertile ground for lacking judgement and making irrevocably dumb choices.

While I was counting my cash and dealing with inventory, somewhere in my brain I thought it would be a really fun idea to go Live on Facebook which unlike Live on Instagram, it doesn’t disappear as soon as you finish recording.  

Also, I clicked on share. (Rolling my eyes as I wince thinking of how horrible I feel about this. As with every other mistake, I have learned to focus on the solution and the lesson. What’s done is done)

I did realize from comments I received that I should probably delete it. I did. Only, the damage was done. My co-worker, also the assistant manager, called me to inform me to delete it. 

I had already done so.

My boss, on vacation, had been contacted and understandably livid and furious. He mentioned, in anger, that my job is now in jeopardy, this was not to be overlooked, things were gonna have to change, no more phone use at work and also discrepancy with my register reading and the cash. I am basically facing a very real possibility of being let go. Fired. Given the old proverbial ax. 

What stung the most was when he said “I won’t be able to keep you and I really don’t know who else would hire you” 

I’ve always felt more than a little inadequate when it comes to employment and the fact that I was just unfit for most jobs. It’s not like I have not really tried—and succeeded at times—to be an upstanding, honest, hard-working member of society. Until I came undone at almost every single job. Something would happen and I would have to start again.  Find another job. A clean slate. Even after I was given chances, it would inevitably come down to being told “We feel we have done everything we could and given you all the chances we could afford to give you.” Some were more abrupt than others. Some were horrible bosses. Others I miss dearly and feel sad I could not live up to what they wanted, which was never unreasonable. Which added to my insecurity regarding being ever able to keep a damn job! 

I feel very shameful of my behavior, something I don’t often feel. Shame usually involves valuing what others think of you, which I avoid doing.  I wasn’t thinking properly at the time. When mania, anxiety and distraction such as a mobile device are in play, recipe for disaster. At the very limit, it could be compared to being on drugs. I was not. Not this time.  

Sitting here with stones in my chest. Feeling crushing disappointment with myself because up until that point, I have been doing relatively good. Things were looking up. I was maintaining some balance. 

Ups and downs. Most have them. People with bipolar have both in spades. 

Again, it’s always the case when mental illness/mental health is concerned, the battle is never completely won and if you take your eyes off yourself for one second, that moment where you forget to remain self-aware, can be your downfall. Your demise. 

I can see why younger generations are into Snapchat, less record of any possible stupidity to go potentially ruin something they have worked hard to achieve and maintain. 

I am reflecting on my behavior. There is such a thing I call the three-day snowball effect, including lack of sleep, accelerated thoughts, excitable energy, potentially mixed up with irritability, anxiety and can bring paranoia. 

…Aaaaand BOOM! It all culminated in the catalyst event of this morning.

Still shell-shocked from how I allowed this to derail so quickly but just as with any other recovery; admitting, being honest with yourself and making an active change is the first step to growth and success, right? 

It’s like a guitar, I need to fine tune my instrument. Maybe get new strings. 

Back to the drawing board. Accept the consequences. Whatever they will be. It’s still unsure at this time. If they do take me back,  I will do my best to be impeccable. Definitely no more phone at work. I feel like I should have applied this already.

 Could’a. Should’a. Would’a. Still can. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As an adult, I am very much able to admit when I failed and accept what I did wrong as one more lesson in wisdom.

This is one cautionary tale about how quickly things can derail when caught up in overshare on social media.

[ramialkarmi]

Psychedelics could be the cutting-edge treatment for mental illness that we’ve been ignoring for half a century

Estalyn Walcoff arrived at the nondescript beige building in Manhattan's Grammercy Park neighborhood on a balmy August morning, hours before the city would begin to swell with the frenetic energy of summer tourists. She was about to face a similar type of chaos — but only in her mind.

Pushing open the door to the Bluestone Center at the New York University College of Dentistry, Walcoff entered what looked like an average 1970s living room. A low-backed brown couch hugged one wall. On either side, a dark brown table held a homely lamp and an assortment of colorful, hand-painted dishes. A crouching golden Buddha, head perched thoughtfully on its knee, adorned another table closer to the entrance.

Months before, Walcoff had volunteered to participate in a study of how the psychedelic drug psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, affects the brain in cancer patients with anxiety and depression. The promising results of that five-year study, published earlier this month, have prompted some researchers to liken the treatment to a "surgical intervention.”

The researchers believe they are on the cusp of nothing less than a breakthrough: A single dose of psychedelic drugs appears to alleviate the symptoms of some of the most common, perplexing, and tragic illnesses of the brain. With depression the leading cause of disability worldwide, the timing seems ideal.

In people like Walcoff, whose depression and anxiety struck them like a powerful blow following a cancer diagnosis, one dose of psilocybin seemed to quiet her existential dread, to remind her of her connectedness with the world around her, and perhaps most importantly, to reassure her of her place in it.

And these results don't seem to be limited to people with cancer or another life-threatening illness. Participants in a handful of other psychedelic studies consistently ranked their trip as one of their most meaningful life experiences — not only because of the trip itself, but because of the changes they appear to produce in their lives in the months and years afterward.

Still, the existing research is limited — which is why, scientists say, they so badly need permission from the government to do more.

Clark’s story

1990 was a year of life and death for Clark Martin. It was the year his daughter was born and the year he was diagnosed with cancer.

Over the next twenty years, as his daughter took her first steps, experienced her first day of school, and eventually began growing into a smart, fiercely independent teenager, doctors waged a blitzkrieg on Martin's body. Six surgeries. Two experimental treatments. Thousands of doctor's visits. The cancer never went into remission, but Martin and his doctors managed to keep it in check by staying vigilant, always catching the disease just as it was on the brink of spreading.

Still, the cancer took its toll. Martin was riddled with anxiety and depression. He'd become so focused on saving his body from the cancer that he hadn't made time for the people and things in his life that really mattered. His relationships were in shambles; he and his daughter barely spoke.

So in 2010, after reading an article in a magazine about a medical trial that involved giving people with cancer and anxiety the drug psilocybin, he contacted the people running the experiment and asked to be enrolled.

After weeks of lengthy questionnaires and interviews, he was selected. On a chilly December morning, Martin walked into the facility at Johns Hopkins, where he was greeted by two researchers including Johns Hopkins psychologist Bill Richards. The three of them sat and talked in the room for half an hour, going over the details of the study and what might happen.

Martin then received a pill and swallowed it with a glass of water. For study purposes, he couldn't know whether it was a placebo or psilocybin, the drug the researchers aimed to study.

Next, he lay back on the couch, covered his eyes with the soft shades he'd been given, and waited.

Within a few minutes, Martin began to feel a sense of intense panic.

"It was quite anxiety provoking. I tried to relax and meditate but that seemed to make it worse and I just wanted everything to snap back into place. There was no sense of time and I realized the drug was in me and there was no stopping it.”

Martin, an avid sailor, told me it reminded him of a frightening experience he'd had once when, after being knocked off his boat by a wave, he'd become suddenly disoriented and lost track of the boat, which was floating behind him.

"It was like falling off the boat in the open ocean, looking back, and the boat is gone. And then the water disappears. Then you disappear."

Martin was terrified, and felt on the verge of a "full-blown panic attack." Thanks to the comfort and guidance of his doctors, however, he was eventually able to calm down. Over the next few hours, the terror vanished. It was replaced with a sense of tranquility that Martin still has trouble putting into words.

"With the psilocybin you get an appreciation — it's out of time — of well-being, of simply being alive and a witness to life and to everything and to the mystery itself," said Martin.

Lots of things happened to Martin over the course of his four-hour trip. For a few hours, he remembers feeling a sense of ease; he was simultaneously comfortable, curious, and alert. At one point, he recalls a vision of being in a sort of cathedral where he asked God to speak to him. More than anything else, though, he no longer felt alone.

"The whole ‘you' thing just kinda drops out into a more timeless, more formless presence," Martin said.

Over the next few hours, as his trip slowly began to draw to a close and he began to return to reality, Martin recalls a moment where the two worlds — the one in which he was hallucinating and the reality he could call up willingly from memory — seemed to merge. He turned his attention to his relationships. He thought of his daughter. His friends. His co-workers.

"In my relationships I had always approached it from a, ‘How do I manage this?', How do I present myself?,' ‘Am I a good listener?', type of standpoint. But it dawned on me as I was coming out of [the trip] that relationships are pretty much spontaneous if you're just present and connecting," said Martin.

That shift, which Martin stresses has continued to deepen since he took the psilocybin in 2010, has had enduring implications for his relationships.

"Now if I'm meeting people, the default is to be just present, not just physically, but mentally present to the conversation. That switch has been profound.”

While he felt himself undergo a shift during his 4-hour trip on psilocybin, Martin says the most enduring changes in his personality and his approach to those around him have continued to unfold in the months and years after he took the drug. For him, the drug was merely a catalyst; a "kick-start," he likes to call it. By temporarily redirecting his perspective within the span of few hours, Martin believes it unleashed a chain reaction in the way he sees and approaches the world.

This squares with what researchers have found by looking at the brain on psilocybin.

Taking the road(s) less traveled

Ask a healthy person who's "tripped" on psychedelics what it felt like, and they'll probably tell you they saw sounds.

The crash-bang of a dropped box took on an aggressive, dark shape. Or they might say they heard colors. A bright green light seems to emit a piercing, high-pitched screech.

In actuality, this "cross-wiring" — or synaesthesia, as it's known scientifically — may be one example of the drug "freeing" the brain from its typical connection patterns.

This fundamental change in how the brain sends and receives information also might be the reason they're so promising as a treatment for people with mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, or addiction. In order to understand why, it helps to take a look at how a healthy brain works.

Normally, information gets exchanged in the brain using various circuits, or what one researcher described to me as "informational highways." On some highways, there's a steady stream of traffic. On others, however, there's rarely more than a few cars on the road. Psychedelics appear to drive traffic to these underused highways, opening up dozens of different routes to new traffic and freeing up some space along the more heavily-used ones.

Dr. Robin Cahart-Harris, who leads the psychedelic research arm of the Center for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, captured these changes in one of the first neuroimaging studies of the brain on a psychedelic trip. He presented his findings at a conference on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in New York City last year. "[With the psilocybin] there was a definite sense of lubrication, of freedom, of the cogs being loosened and firing in all sorts of unexpected directions," said Cahart-Harris.

This might be just the kick-start that a depressed brain needs.

One key characteristic of depression is overly-strengthened connections between brain circuits in certain regions of the brain — particularly those involved in concentration, mood, conscious thought, and the sense of self. And in fact, this may be part of the reason that electroconvulsive therapy, which involves placing electrodes on the temples and delivering a small electrical current, can help some severely depressed people — by tamping down on some of this traffic.

"In the depressed brain, in the addicted brain, in the obsessed brain, it gets locked into a pattern of thinking or processing that's driven by the frontal, the control center, and they cannot un-depress themselves," David Nutt, the director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the Division of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, told me.

Nutt has been one of the pioneering researchers in the field of studying how psychedelics might be used to treat mental illness. He said that in depressed people, these overly-trafficked circuits (think West Los Angeles at rush-hour) can lead to persistent negative thoughts. Feelings of self-criticism can get obsessive and overwhelming. So in order to free someone with depression from those types of thoughts, one would need to divert traffic from some of these congested ruts and, even better, redirect it to emptier highways.

Which is precisely what psychedelics appear to do.

"Psychedelics disrupt that process so people can escape. At least for the duration of the trip they can escape about the ruminations about depression or alcohol or obsessions. And then they do not necessarily go back," said Nutt.

A 4-hour trip, a long-lasting change

"Medically what you're doing [with psychedelics is] you're perturbing the system," Paul Expert, who co-authored one of the first studies to map the activity in the human brain on psilocybin, told me over tea on a recent afternoon in London's bustling Whitechapel neighborhood.

Expert, a physicist at the King's College London Center for Neuroimaging Sciences, doesn't exactly have the background you'd expect from someone studying magic mushrooms.

But it was by drawing on his background as a physicist, Expert told me, that he and his team were able to come up with a systematic diagram of what the brain looks like on a psilocybin trip. Their study, published in 2014, also helps explain how altering the brain temporarily with psilocybin can produce changes that appear to continue to develop over time.

When you alter how the brain functions (or "perturb the system," in physicist parlance) with psychedelics, "that might reinforce some connections that already exist, or they might be more stimulated," Expert told me.

But those changes aren't as temporary as one might expect for a 4-hour shroom trip. Instead, they appear to catalyze dozens of other changes that deepen in the for months and years after taking the drug.

"So people who take magic mushrooms report for a long time after the actual experience that they feel better, they're happier with life," said Expert. "But understanding exactly why this is the case is quite tricky, because the actual trip is very short, and it's not within that short span of time that you could actually have sort of new connections that are made. That takes much more time.”

The clinical trials that Walcoff and Martin took part in, which took place at NYU and Johns Hopkins over the course of five years, are the longest and most comprehensive studies of people with depression on psychedelics that we have to-date. Last year, a team of Brazilian researchers published a review of all of the clinical trials on psychedelics published between 1990 and 2015. After looking at 151 studies, the researchers were only able to find six which met their analysis criteria. The rest were either too small, too poorly-controlled, or problematic for another reason. Nevertheless, based on the six studies they were able to review, the researchers concluded that "ayahuasca, psilocybin, and LSD may be useful pharmacological tools for the treatment of drug dependence, and anxiety and mood disorders, especially in treatment-resistant patients. These drugs may also be useful pharmacological tools to understand psychiatric disorders and to develop new therapeutic agents.”

Because the existing research is so limited, scientists still can't say exactly what is happening in the brain of someone who's tripped on psychedelics that appears to unleash such a cascade of life changes like the kind Martin described.

What we do know, though, is that things like training for a musical instrument or learning a skill change the brain. It's possible that psychedelics do something similar over the long-term, even if the actual trip — the phase of drug use that many people focus on — is pretty brief.

In other words, a trip "might trigger a sort of snowball effect," said Expert, in the way the brain processes information.

And something about the experience appears to be much more powerful, for some people, than even years of antidepressants. A small recent trial of psilocybin that Nutt co-authored in people whose chronic depression had not responded to repeated attempts at treatment with medication suggested that this may be the case. While the trial was only designed to determine if the drug was safe, all of the study participants saw a significant decrease in symptoms at a one-week follow-up; the majority said they continued to see a decrease in symptoms at another follow-up done three months later.

"We treated people who'd been suffering for 30 years. And they're getting better with a single dose," said Nutt. "So that tells us this drug is doing something profound.”

Killing the ego

Between 1954 and 1960, Dr. Humphry Osmond gave thousands of alcoholics LSD.

It was part of an experimental treatment regimen aimed at helping them recover. Osmond thought that the acid would mimic some of the symptoms of delirium tremens, a psychotic condition common in chronic alcoholics when they try to stop drinking that can involve tremors, hallucinations, anxiety, and disorientation. Osmond thought the experience might shock the alcoholics, who'd thus far failed to respond to any other treatments, into not drinking again.

He was wrong.

Rather than terrifying his patients with an extreme case of shakes and hallucinations, the acid appeared to produce positive, long-lasting changes in their personalities. Something about the LSD appeared to help the suffering alcoholics "reorganize their personalities and reorganize their lives," said New York University psychiatrist Michael Bogenschutz at a conference on therapeutic psychedelics last year.

A year later, 40% to 45% of Osmond's patients had not returned to drinking — a higher success rate than any other existing treatment for alcoholism.

In an interview with the Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Halpern, Osmond's colleague, the biochemist Dr. Abram Hoffer, recalled, "Many of them didn't have a terrible experience. In fact, they had a rather interesting experience.”

While some call it interesting, other have called it "spiritual," "mystical," or even "religious.”

Scientists still can't say for sure what is going on in the brain during a trip that appears to produce these types of experiences. We know that part of it is about the tamping down of certain circuits and the ramping up of others.

Interestingly enough, one of the circuits that appears to get quieter during a psychedelic trip is the circuit that connects the parahippocampus and the retrosplenial cortex. This network is thought to play a key role in our sense of self, or ego.

Deflating the ego is far from the soul-crushing disappointment it sounds like. Instead, it appears to make people feel more connected to the people and environment around them.

Cahart-Harris, who conducted the first study of its kind to take images of a healthy brain on LSD, said in a news release that his findings support that idea. In a normal, non-drugged person, specific parts of our brain light up with activity depending on what we're doing. If we're focused on reading something, the visual cortex sparkles with action. If we're listening carefully to someone, our auditory cortex is particularly active. Under the influence of LSD, the activity isn't as neatly segregated. "... the separateness of these networks breaks down and instead you see a more integrated or unified brain," he said.

That change might help explain why the drug produces an altered state of consciousness too. Just as the invisible walls between once-segregated tasks are broken down, the barriers between the sense of self and the feeling of interconnection with one's environment appear to dissolve. "The normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of re-connection with themselves, others and the natural world,"said Cahart-Harris.

Given that one of the key characteristics of mental illnesses like depression and alcoholism is isolation and loneliness, this newfound interconnection could act as a powerful antidote.

"It's kind of like getting out of a cave. You can see the light and you can stay in the light," said Nutt. "You've been liberated.”

A spiritual experience

Humans have a long history of looking to "spiritual experiences" to treat mental illness and of using psychedelics to help bring such experiences about.

Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic beverage brewed from the macerated and boiled vines of the Banisteriopsis caapi (yagé) plant and the Psychotria viridis (chacruna) leaf, has been used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru for centuries. Its name is a combination of the Quechua words "aya,"which can be loosely translated into "spirit"and "waska,"or "woody vine."Europeans didn't encounter ayahuasca until the 1500s, when Christian missionaries traveling through Amazonia from Spain and Portugal saw it being used by indigenous peoples. (At the time, they called it the work of the devil.)

It's now understood that ayahuasca has a similar effect on the brain as magic mushrooms or acid. Yet unlike magic mushrooms, whose main psychoactive ingredient is the drug psilocybin, ayahuasca's psychoactive effects come from a result of mixing two different substances — the drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT), from the chacruna plant, and the MAO-Inhibitor (MAOI), from the yage plant, which allows the DMT to be absorbed into our bloodstream.

In the early 1950s, in fact, writer William Burroughs traveled through South America looking for the yagé plant hoping that he could use it to help cure opiate addiction. Some fifteen years earlier, a man suffering in an alcoholic ward in New York had a transformative experience on the hallucinogen belladonna. "The effect was instant, electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an incredibly white light," the man wrote. Shortly after that, the man, whose name was William ("Bill”) Wilson, would go on to found the 12-step recovery program Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson later experimented with LSD and said he believed the drug could help alcoholics achieve one of the central tenets of AA: acceptance of a "power greater than ourselves.”

Nevertheless, ayahuasca, LSD, and other hallucinogens were slow to gain notoriety across Europe and North America. They saw a temporary surge in popularity in the US in the 1960s, with people like Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert writing of the "ego loss" produced by magic mushrooms as part of their Harvard Psilocybin Project. But in 1966, the US government made psychedelics illegal, and most experimentation, along with all research into their potential medicinal properties, came to a screeching halt.

Meanwhile, scientists have continued to experiment with the drugs in whatever capacity they can. Bogenschutz, one of the presenters at the New York psychedelic conference, has spent years studying the effects of a single dose of psychedelics on addicts. He's found that in most cases, studies suggest the hallucinogens can improve mood, decrease anxiety, increase motivation, produce changes in personality, beliefs and values, and most importantly, decrease cravings. But how?

"One of the big questions was how would a single use produce lasting behavior change?" he said in 2014, "because if this is going to produce any lasting effect, there have to be consistent changes.”

Based on several small pilot studies that he's helped conduct, Bogenschutz hypothesizes that the drugs affect addicts in two ways, which he breaks down into "acute" or short-term effects and "secondary"or longer-term effects. In the short-term, psychedelics affect our serotonin receptors, the brain's main mood-regulatory neurotransmitters. Next, they affect our glutamate receptors, which appear to produce the so-called transformative experiences and psychological insight that people experience on the drugs.

"This is the most rewarding work I've ever done. To see these kinds of experiences ... it's just not as easy to get there with psychotherapy," he said.

Staying in the light

From the time she was born, Clark Martin's daughter and her father had a difficult relationship. He and his wife were never married, but they loved their child and divided their time with her as best they could. Still, Martin couldn't help feel like their time together was consistently strained. For one thing, the spontaneity that's so vital to many relationships was absent. He always knew when their time together started and when it was coming to an end.

"You're not having as much everyday experience," Martin recalled. "Instead you're having kind of a planned experience. And that affects the depth of the relationship, I think."

Martin felt similarly about his father, who had developed Alzheimer's several years before. Martin would visited when he could, but whenever they were together Martin felt compelled to try and push the visits into the confines of whatever he thought a "normal" father-son interaction should be. He'd try to make their discussions mirror the ones they would have had before his father became ill — "I kept trying to have ‘normal' conversations with him," Martin recalled.

About three hours into his psilocybin trip at Johns Hopkins, Martin called to mind a memory of his teenage daughter. "I'd been so focused on pursuing my own ideas about what was best for her," he realized, "trying to be the architect of her life," that he had let that get in the way of making sure she knew how much he loved and cared about her.

One afternoon about a year after the trip, Martin drove out to visit his father. This time, instead of trying to have a "normal" conversation with him, Martin took him for a drive.

"He always loved farming and ranching and we'd just get in the car and spend hours driving along," Martin recalled.

As they drove, rolling green hills sped past them on all sides. His father looked out at the lush horizon with awe, as if he were seeing it for the first time. The crisp blue sky. The soft blanket of grass.

All of a sudden, Martin's father saw something. He gestured out the window, but Martin saw nothing — just grass and trees and sky. Then, something moved in the distance. There, in the middle of two emerald hills, a deer cocked its head up.

"It was miles away," said Martin. "I would have completely missed it."

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