“At the root of my interest in both drugs and art was the longing for an encounter with otherness, a seeking-out of astonishment for its own sake. ...The counterpoint to this hunger for the strange and sublime was the profound boredom I felt for the world I had grown up in, the revulsion for what seemed to me a crushingly drab, incurious, cultureless environment.”

Thanks to this quote, Threshold hooked me very early. I have never related more with words I’ve read in a book. The dreary greyness of rural Irish culture almost drove me insane as a teenager. My small school of 500 had two suicides in two years. The emotionless, cold, judgemental, and colourless vibes that were prominent in the school and town made drugs the only rational option in my eyes. They broke my fellow weirdos and I out of the oppressive box that the environment made us feel we were in. Hard drugs led us to crisis, which led us to psychedelics, which led us to healing. For this reason I look on the rising issue of drug abusive amongst youth in Ireland with a glimmer of hope that it will at least lead to some positives. The idea of the archaic revival comes to mind. Through hedonism, and straying outside of the culturally decided boundaries, we are shaking off the old redundant skins that we’ve been ordered to wear, skins which disconnect us from our humanity and our natural states of consciousness, which in turn leads to dire consequences like a lack of emotion and alienation from one another.

The next paragraph in the book further strengthened my sense of resonance with the author;

“I remember telling a friend, when I was twenty or so, that I took drugs so that one day I wouldn’t have to take drugs. The idea was that, by gaining access to the weirder potentialities of consciousness, my basic stance towards existence would be altered: shorn of the tedium and banality that oppressed me in those years, I hoped I could come to experience consciousness itself, and the bare fact of being in the world, as ineffable, awesome, impregnably mysterious. The funny thing is that this really did happen. The occasional mushroom excursion aside, I rarely bother with drugs any more.”

I too have reached a stage where I no longer require substances to enjoy life. I used them to become more capable and aware, then I made adjustments to my software/perception/subconscious/beliefs/consciousness, so that I am now rewired in a way that stops me from becoming depressed or apathetic. Drugs led to hallucinogens, which led to meditation and books and music, which led to a greater quality of life and a seemingly permanently altered state of awareness.

“I spent part of my youth oppressed by a boredom I now consider to have been a delusion, born of the depressive belief that the world around me was mundane, paltry, comprehensible. Bitterly at odds with my surroundings, I needed certain jolts to get me back in touch with my own capacity for wonder, which I now happily find to be a self-replenishing source”

“Was it perhaps the coldness of the sea that gave life in Ireland its harsh and sullen quality, produced such coarse, tormented, lumpen people?”

I always figured it was the weather mixed with the inherited trauma from Irelands history. The troubles, the famine, English invasion, and the toxic parasitic influence that the guilt and shame peddling catholic church was. Alcohol being so prevalent doesn’t help the situation. Too many Irish people, young and old, consider getting wasted and talking shit an actual hobby.

“Never, even as a child, had I felt proud of my country, or even that I really belonged to it.... People of other nationalities romanticized Ireland but to me it was an uninteresting place, a backwater of banal, misshapen people.”

It was really cathartic seeing someone else articulate the frustrations I had felt as a child and adolescent. I always felt disconnected from this countries culture. I’ve always appreciated the nature here, but the people always felt cold and antagonistic. Despite growing up in a rural town since birth, I was always a blown in, an outsider, simply because I didn’t have 3 cousins within arms reach of me at all times. ‘A bunch of inbred wankers’ I remember thinking to myself when bullied by the GAA boys.

“The effect meditation had one me was dramatic and immediate. My psyche was like a virus-clogged laptop that had been defragged and rebooted. Meditating for around half an hour every day, I was amazed at how clear and focused I felt, how in control of my habitually racing thoughts I was. I decided that, in order to explore this new-found source of clarity, I would quit all the stimulants I’d been greedily consuming since my teenage years”

Another paragraph which struck as relatable. I too found miraculous benefits in meditation when I was quitting substance abuse. It became my source of healing, and replacement. Meditation initially stops the pain or discontentment which fuels drug abuse. When you continue with the discipline, it then brings you sincere bliss and euphoria. It increases your life quality to the point where drug use is a downgrade. At least this was my experience. To feel at the wheel of your ship is an amazing feeling, especially after suffering from addiction for years, along with the compulsivity that comes with it.