So it’s probably not “standard” practice to do DMT to have a conversation with your cancer. But then again, I’ve never been standard. I woke up at 5:30 a.m., made tea, sat in stillness, and felt something clean slice through the fog. A kind of clarity I’ve only touched a few times in my life. The kind that doesn’t ask. It commands you to do something.
It’s time to meet the thing inside me. Time to speak with the sickness.
I always have cannabis close. It’s a balm, a bridge. And for years, I’ve kept a quiet collection of psilocybin and DMT tucked away. Not for escape, but for entry. For ceremony. For reckoning. I’ve been circling this moment for weeks. Waiting for the right opening in the chaos. This morning was wide enough to step through.
Why? Because sometimes the only way to face a demon is to invite it to sit across from you and look it in the eyes.
A few years back, my youngest daughter shattered. Not for you to know how. Just know she found her way to healing. I didn’t. Her pain cracked me. I stayed on the floor for two full days. No food. No water. No motion. Just stillness, thick and cold like grave dirt. When I got up, they gave me a name: Clinical Depression. Major Depressive Disorder. Labels dressed up as science. What it really was, was sorrow so deep it swallowed time.
They gave me pills. They gave me sessions. They gave me the vocabulary of despair.
Then a friend, no, a fellow traveler showed up with an ounce of weed and a gram of DMT. I flushed the pharmaceuticals. Rolled a blunt. And went under. For two days, I spoke with something holy. Or broken. Or both. Doesn’t matter. I came back with my eyes burning and my spine straight. That Monday, I logged into work like I’d never left. I was better than I had ever been in years.
So this morning, I returned to the same couch. Same bong. Same sacrament.
I lit the incense. Closed my eyes. Breathed. Set my intention:
Let me meet the cancer. Let me speak with it. Let me understand it. And if it won’t leave, let me be strong enough to end it.
The veil thinned. The edges of the room began to ripple. Then the presence arrived.
And yes, cancer speaks. But not like some mystic force. Not wise. Not divine. It was crude. Charred. Arrogant. The voice of rot, of bitterness, of things left too long in the dark.
“You were broken before I moved in,” it said. “I’m not the villain. I’m just gravity.”
It sneered. “You think you can scare death with herbs and visions? I’m the rust in the machine. I don’t negotiate. I devour.”
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t run.
I just listened. Then I answered.
“No,” I said. “You’re not death. You’re decay. And I’ve lived too much, lost too much, to be scared of you.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” I told it. “This is the last time you speak.”
We stared at each other across the astral coals. Nothing left to say.
And then the light came back. My body remembered breath. The room stopped pulsing.
Still here.
But changed. I heard its voice. I felt its weight. And now, it feels mine.
This isn’t just a statement. It’s an invocation.
A prayer whispered through clenched teeth.
And now my enemy is known, it has a face, and I will kill it.
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
