How It Feels to Disappear

Welcome to the Psychedelic Blog. I write about the Impact of Psychedelics on Grieving, Relationships, Culture & Death. This week, I’m exploring what it feels like to disappear — and the unexpected beauty of surrender.

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“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” — Sufi proverb

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I. Intro: How It Feels to Disappear

I was visiting a friend in the hospital here in Vallarta recently. While I was there, a mutual friend and I got to talking. After I shared a bit about my story—why I moved here, what I’ve been up to—she looked at me, puzzled, and asked:

“What brought you here? How long are you planning on staying? And do you ever think about how crazy it is to move to Mexico in your 40s?”

I said, “I do now.” She laughed.

They were simple questions. But I didn’t have simple answers. That moment made something click: I don’t think the way she does anymore. Which is to say, I don’t think the way most people do.

Most people follow the script. Buy the house. Renovate the kitchen. Work a job they tolerate. Watch Netflix. Golf on weekends. Life becomes a loop—predictable, safe, slightly numbing.

But some of us vanish from that loop.

Some of us disappear—on purpose or by accident. Call it the free spirit archetype: Hemingway, Bukowski, Huxley, Watts, Thompson. Maybe it’s rebellion. Maybe it’s wiring. Maybe, like me, you took a Psychedelic and something inside you just…unhooked.

Wherever you land on the free will debate (I spent three months down that rabbit hole and concluded it doesn’t matter—what matters is living as if we have it), most of us are operating with far less agency than we like to admit. Hormones, conditioning, neural circuitry—they make the decisions long before we do.

Psychedelics rewired my brain. And the result? I disappeared from the life I was supposed to live.

I’m not saying that’s good or bad. I’m not sure that’s even the right question to ask. But as more people begin waking up to the lives they were programmed to follow, I think it’s worth asking:

What happens when we disappear?

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Photo by Jack Swords on Unsplash

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II. When We Want the Trip to Go Our Way

“You do not need to know where you are going, provided you know where not to go.” — Aldous Huxley

We always want something from the trip. A breakthrough. A vision. A message.
But this hunger to extract meaning on our timeline is exactly what keeps it at bay.

As my great aunt used to say, “a watched pot never boils.”

The more we chase clarity, the further it slips. The more we try to steer, the more lost we feel.

And sometimes, that’s the lesson.
We can’t engineer awe.
We can’t schedule insight.

During my first journey with Samadhi (DMT + MAOIs), I went through a grueling five-hour ordeal. At times, I found myself frustrated—Where are the downloads? Where’s the insight? It felt challenging and chaotic and completely off-script.

But the next morning, everything landed. Sitting on a balcony with a cup of coffee, I was overwhelmed with clarity—about every meaningful decision I’d ever made, why I’d made it, and why I was on the right path. Not because I forced an answer…but because I finally stopped needing one.

We don’t disappear when we find the answer.
We disappear when we stop demanding one.

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III. The Illusion of Control (and How It Breaks You)

"Control is a funny thing. The more you think you have, the less you really do." — Terrance McQuewick, Ari Gold’s boss in ‘Entourage’

The most common answer people give when asked why they don’t do Psychedelics is: “I don’t want to lose control.”

O boy…

This illusion of control that we waste our lives pretending we have.

We can’t even hold our breath for more than a minute or two.
We don’t make our heart beat.
We have zero say in what dreams show up when we sleep.

But despite all the evidence to the contrary, we cling to the fantasy that we’re running the show.

We micromanage our lives—love, work, image—trying to make everything bend to our will. But beneath that hustle is usually just fear. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of being seen. Fear of not being enough.

And then we enter the Psychedelic space, where the illusion shatters instantly. We think you're in the driver’s seat…until the wheel disappears. Sometimes it's blissful. Other times it's brutal. But either way, our grip is gone.

And that’s when something surprising happens:

We let go.
We stop performing.
We start feeling—maybe for the first time in years.

Control kills connection.
Surrender invites it.

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IV. Holding On to Ghosts

“Try to let go of the world. Let it go. It is not yours to hold.” — Jack Kornfield

You ever talk to someone who got divorced years ago, but they talk about their ex like it happened a few weeks ago? Like their reality hasn’t moved, even though time has?

That’s what it looks like to hold on to a ghost.

We all do it—cling to people who left, versions of ourselves we outgrew, futures that never happened. Not because we want to suffer, but because letting go can feel like betrayal. Like if we stop hurting, we’re saying it didn’t matter.

But pain isn't proof of love.
Grief doesn’t need to stay sharp to stay true.

In the Psychedelic space, these ghosts come alive. You see the person. You feel the memory. And for a moment, you're back in it—tempted to hold on, to rewrite it, to keep it alive.

And then, if you’re paying attention, you get the real invitation:
Let go. Not to erase it, but to carry it differently.

Letting go isn’t forgetting.
It’s remembering with grace.

Sometimes we need to disappear.

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V. The Stories That Keep Us Safe

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” — Carl Jung

Some stories were never true. Others were true once—but no longer are.
Still, we cling to them. Because they kept us safe.

We learned to play the caretaker because your family needed one.
We chased achievement because success was the only way you felt seen.
We wore the victim story like armor—because if we were always hurting, no one could expect us to lead.

These identities weren’t flaws.
They were adaptations.
They worked…until they didn’t.

In Psychedelic space, these roles unravel fast. Suddenly, the “you” you’ve been performing—ambitious, broken, strong, whatever—doesn’t show up.

What shows up instead is something quieter.
Something real.
Something that doesn’t need to be explained or defended.

And that’s where the grief sneaks in—not just for what we lost, but for who we never got to be while playing those roles.

I remember one journey in particular where this hit like a freight train.
During a high-dose Psilocybin experience, I saw how much of my “edge” wasn’t confidence—it was defense.
The ambition, the sarcasm, the need to look like I had it all together...none of it was me.
It was armor.
A survival script that once served me—but had started to cost me.

And then, just last week, I got a message from someone I used to work with:

That kind of reflection doesn’t show up when we’re still gripping the story.
It shows up when we start letting it go.

But here’s the gift:
We’re not the story.
We’re the awareness beneath it.
And that awareness can’t be hurt, abandoned, or defined.

It just…is.

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VI. When There’s Nothing Left But Love

“Love is what remains when all else falls away.” — Ram Dass

I remember waiting tables in college. There was this couple—regulars—who came in one night glowing from a recent vacation. She was vibrant, attractive, animated. He…was none of those things. She kept gushing about the hotel, the food, the massages. Every time she described another luxury, she’d look over at him and say, “I just love him so much.”

But I remember thinking…she never once said a word about him.
Not his heart. Not his character. Not who he was—just what he gave her.

That version of love is everywhere. It’s transactional.
And most of us learn to offer our own love conditionally, too.
We give it when people behave how we want. When they affirm us. When they fit our vision.

But in the Psychedelic space—after the ego dissolves, the identities fall apart, and the ghosts are gone—something else remains.

Not performance.
Not preference.
Not power.

Just love.

Not the kind we perform to be chosen.
Not the kind we offer so we don’t get abandoned.

But the kind that just is—like gravity. Like breath.
Awe.
Trust.
Connection.

Sometimes it arrives in the middle of a trip.
Other times, it’s weeks later—while folding laundry or holding someone’s hand—and you realize:
You’re no longer withholding love as a bargaining chip.
You’re no longer chasing it like a prize.

Letting go isn’t just how we heal.
It’s how love enters.

To truly feel it…we might have to disappear first.

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Photo by Martin Marek on Unsplash

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VII. Closing Thoughts: Dimittas

One of my many tattoos—on my left hip—is the word Dimittas.

Interestingly, it was inked by the wife of the facilitator who guided me through my first 5-MeO-DMT ceremony. During that journey, the word Dimittas began pulsing through every cell of my body—over and over, like a mantra I didn’t consciously choose.

I had gone into the ceremony with a clear intention: to let go of the grief I was still carrying after losing my sister a few years earlier.

It wasn’t until after the experience that I looked up the word and found out what it meant.

Dimittas — Latin for “let go.”

At the time, I thought I understood it. I thought it meant releasing pain. Releasing grief. Releasing the weight of what I couldn’t change.

And maybe it did.

But now, after disappearing a bit—from old identities, from who I thought I needed to be, from the stories that once kept me safe—it means something deeper.

Letting go isn’t a single act. It’s a posture. A way of being.
It’s how you stop resisting what is.
It’s how you stop grasping at love and start becoming it.

I still forget. I still cling. I still try to grip the wheel.
But more often now, I remember:

You are free to let go.
You are free to disappear.
And what remains…might just be who you really are.

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