A year that dismantled everything
In this episode of the Eleusinia podcast, Jason shares the story of a year that dismantled his life and the unexpected experiences that helped him begin to live inside his grief rather than fight against it.
Jason is 55 years old and retired. When he joins the conversation, he describes himself simply and honestly: someone who has been shaped by pain, but who spent much of his life building something beautiful. That life collapsed quickly. Within eight weeks, Jason lost his mother, his father, and his husband of fifteen years, Marcus. Marcus was also his best friend, the person he shared his home, dreams, and daily life with.
After their deaths, the losses continued. Jason found himself in a legal battle over what was rightfully his as a spouse. He was forced out of his home. Many relationships fell away. Along with them went his sense of identity and purpose. He describes the year that followed as one in which he was stripped bare, left without the structures that had once made him feel anchored.
Letting grief lead him to Eleusinia
As the one year anniversary of Marcus’s death approached, Jason knew he needed something different. He says he needed to feel safe, held, and supported. He needed to be away from the constant intensity of his grief, even briefly.
Around that time, Eleusinia appeared on his computer unexpectedly. He had not been searching for a retreat or researching psychedelics. The dates of the next session matched exactly the week he knew would be hardest. Jason signed up immediately.
In the interview, Jason explains that he did not go looking for psilocybin for grief as a solution or cure. He trusted that what was meant for him would find him, and this did.
Arriving without psychedelic experience
Jason makes it clear that he arrived at Eleusinia with no prior psychedelic experience. He had never taken psilocybin before and had never even heard of DMT. What he brought with him instead was grief, exhaustion, and a willingness to let the experience unfold as it needed to.
That openness became important as the week progressed.
Rest, protection, and the first macrodose
During his first macrodose of psilocybin, Jason noticed something immediately. For the first time in a year, he was not anxious or fearful. Instead, he felt curious.
As the experience deepened, he became aware that he was resting inside what felt like a protective bubble beneath a large tree, which he understood as the tree of life. He noticed the roots beneath him and imagined a dragon guarding the space so he could finally rest.
Jason explains that sleep had been elusive for over a year. His body had been locked in survival mode. In this moment, he felt protected enough to stop struggling.
Later, the bubble began to feel like a cage, and Jason realized it was time to move. Even this shift felt natural, as if the experience itself was guiding the rhythm between rest and release.
Discovering grief he did not know he carried
As the day continued, Jason describes what became a pivotal realization. He visualized a locked closet inside himself, one he did not know existed. Psilocybin opened that door.
Inside, he found grief he had never acknowledged, including grief related to a previous marriage he had chosen to leave decades earlier, and grief for earlier versions of himself that no longer exist.
In the interview, Jason reflects on how surprising this was. He had believed that because he chose certain endings, he did not have the right to grieve them. The experience showed him otherwise. Loss, he realized, is still loss, regardless of how it comes to be.
The wolf in the clouds
One of the most striking moments Jason shares happens later, while he is sitting outside and looking up at the sky. As he watches the clouds move, they begin to form shapes. One of them becomes a wolf’s head.
Marcus, Jason explains, used to call him his lone wolf.
He does not describe the moment as frightening or confusing. Instead, it felt like recognition. The wolf seemed to remind him that he did not have to remain completely closed off, that he could allow others to care for him, and that connection was still possible even in his grief.
This image stayed with him and became one of the most meaningful moments of the retreat.
DMT, Japanese abstract art, and what it represented
Later in the week, Jason participated in several DMT sessions. In his first experience, he describes vivid visuals that reminded him of Japanese abstract art, flowing, patterned, and beautiful rather than literal.
In the interview, Jason explains why this imagery mattered so deeply. Japan was the last place he and Marcus traveled together. That trip was meant to be a turning point in their lives, the beginning of slowing down, enjoying retirement, and finally having time to be present with each other after years of building and striving.
It was also during that trip that they first noticed signs that something was wrong. What they thought might be exhaustion or stress would later become the beginning of Marcus’s cancer diagnosis.
So when Jason found himself immersed in Japanese abstract visuals during his DMT experience, it was not random. It felt like being returned to a moment that held both innocence and fracture, hope and the first quiet unraveling. A place where the future still felt open, even as it was already beginning to change.
When the experience ended, Jason did not feel euphoric. Instead, he began sobbing. He was wrapped in a blanket and held while the grief moved through him. In the interview, he says he realized how deeply he needed to be held after a year of carrying everything alone.
Seeing Marcus and being asked to stay
In a later DMT session, Jason describes seeing Marcus again in an abstract but unmistakable way. Marcus gestured for him to come with him, and Jason felt a strong desire to stop breathing so he could follow.
He was gently reminded to breathe and to stay.
The experience mirrored the final moments of Marcus’s life, when Jason held him as he died. The grief returned with full force, and again Jason was held as it moved through him.
Embodying Marcus’s final day
This theme returned during Jason’s second macrodose of psilocybin. He describes feeling unable to breathe and looking at his hands, only to see Marcus’s hands instead of his own.
In that moment, Jason realized he was embodying Marcus’s final day, experiencing the confusion and physical struggle Marcus had gone through.
During this experience, Jason heard Marcus tell him that he did him a favor by letting him go. Marcus did not want to die, but could not continue suffering. Jason realized he had been carrying Marcus’s pain for over a year, and that it was not his to bear.
He describes the release as visceral and profound. Love remained, but the suffering that belonged to Marcus did not.
Integration and life afterward
As the interview comes to a close, Jason is clear that he does not feel fixed or cured. Instead, he says he feels lighter. His fists are no longer clenched when he walks down the street. He smiles more easily. He feels more himself than he has in a long time.
Jason describes his experience as being led to the gates of healing, not pushed through them.
Listening to Jason’s full story
This episode is part of the Eleusinia podcast, an audio-only series of interviews with Eleusinia guests, recorded weeks or months after their retreat experiences. Guests often use pseudonyms out of respect for privacy, and interviews are never recorded on site.
Jason’s story offers a powerful exploration of psilocybin for grief, not as a way to escape loss, but as a way to sit with it, understand it, and release what was never meant to be carried.
If you are navigating grief and feel that it does not need fixing so much as witnessing, this episode offers a deeply human place to begin.
