A Biologist’s Journey Through Open-Brain Surgery and Psilocybin
A Biologist’s Journey Through Open-Brain Surgery and Psilocybin
My relationship with expanded consciousness did not start on an integration couch or inside the sterile silence of a clinical trial. It began forty years ago, in the mid-1980s, fueled by street LSD my brother bought on Shakedown Street and brought home, because as a goth, I avoided the sunlight and stayed far away from the Grateful Dead.
For decades, my relationship with psychedelics remained strictly light, peripheral, and recreational. The one time I dared to take a heroic dose of LSD at twenty years old, the chaotic velocity carried catastrophic consequences and sent me directly into a cold jail cell wrapped in nothing but a Star Wars sheet. Only my pristine 4.0 GPA persuaded a merciful judge to grant me grace and a second chance. After that, I took psychedelics casually over the years, but I never dipped into the profound, interdimensional depths.
I had no idea that four decades later, sacred plant chemistry would become the precise biochemical instrument required to rebuild a brain opened wide on a neurosurgeon’s table.
On October 14, 2023, under the alignment of an annular solar eclipse, my physical reality severed.
I was sitting on a patio at a bar after an outdoor festival when the heavy hip-hop beats vibrating through the air began to glitch into a terrifying, 1-bit monaural stutter. My brain dropped into raw Atari 2600 processing. Audio downsampled into digital pulses. Visuals crushed into 8-bit geometric rainbow fractals. And then, everything collapsed into pitch darkness.
I went completely blind to the physical world, suffered five distinct seizures, and entered The Void: a vast realm of infinite cosmos, timeless intelligence, and divine bliss.
Stills from The Psychedelic Biologist Folio 01 video journal notes (unreleased) © 2026 raRÉ
When I awoke in the emergency room, there was only terrifying blindness that held me in the dark until 1:30 AM. What followed was brutal medical gaslighting, months of physical decay where my right leg dragged like dead weight and my face drooped, and a desperate, isolated fight for my own survival.
I remembered reading Sharon Stone’s brain surgery story, how doctors initially accused her of faking her symptoms, and how she nearly died until Dr. Michael Lawton saved her life. Dr. Lawton became my fantasy pick. I took charge of my care, burned my brain MRIs onto a blank CD, and shipped them directly to Barrow Neurological Institute.
Dr. Lawton found two kissing aneurysms sitting right at my left M1 vascular bifurcation. They opened my skull, bypassed, and clipped those ticking time bombs in my brain.
Lately, I find myself wanting to ask Sharon Stone if she has ever explored sacred mycology to heal the deep nervous system after the trauma of brain surgery.
August 2026 marks two years since my craniotomy.
The first-year post-op was defined by a year of deep neurofatigue where my body slept constantly while my vascular tree settled into its titanium clips.
Western medicine and neurosurgical genius performed a miracle by keeping my blood vessels from bursting, but clinical neurology had no answers for the cognitive fog, the lingering neurofatigue, the incurable presence of Multiple Sclerosis, or the emotional weight of having faced my own mortality.
It was this past year where the true miracle took place. At the one-year mark, I stepped past casual recreation and began microdosing psilocybin. The dense neurofatigue began to break. And then came the turning point: a high-velocity experience that fundamentally rewrote my existence.
Stills from The Psychedelic Biologist Folio 01 video journal notes (unreleased) © 2026 raRÉ
The catalyst arrived through a new partner, another experienced journeyer who introduced me to Bluey Vuitton, a high-velocity cultivar testing far beyond standard alkaloid ceilings.
Though both of us were deeply experienced travelers, we approached the medicine with immense respect, measuring out a conservative single gram each.
If there is anything I can share about psychedelics, the most important truth is this: they are not a shortcut, an escape, or a party trick. They are a mirror and a biochemical catalyst that force us to confront our deepest truths, allowing the cellular architecture of the brain to unlearn years of trauma and forge genuine neuroplastic rebirth.
Nothing in my life prepared me for the sheer molecular velocity that followed. That single gram dose completely blew our faces off, plunging us into a breathtaking, nine-hour interdimensional vortex.
Outside, the physical world dissolved into rhythmic energy. Inside, the ancestral timeline opened wide. We entered a sacred, non-local realm, an overwhelming, ecstatic interdimensional union with ancestors, goddesses, deities, and ancient entities. Stripped down to total emotional bareness, our energy and trust locked together in absolute, unshakeable synergy.
Stills from The Psychedelic Biologist Folio 01 video journal notes (unreleased) © 2026 raRÉ
In that sacred space, trauma was brought forward, not with the crushing weight of past pain, but presented vividly, gently, and with infinite mercy.
Decades of heavy complex PTSD, survival armor, medical gaslighting, and the lingering terror of brain surgery were stripped clean in the light of the medicine.
The medicine demanded release:
“FEEL IT. Throw the bad away. You are not the bad. Throw. Out. That. Trash.”
And then, the heavy, dark residue of CPTSD simply faded. Things that had bound my nervous system for decades melted away.
When the deities and entities finally released us nine hours later, dropping us wet, exhausted, and completely renewed back into our physical flesh suits, we broke into pure, uncontrollable laughter, laughing with the unburdened, untainted innocence of small children.
I was home, and I was whole.
Over this past year of deep integration, the physical, neurological, and somatic evidence has become undeniable..
It has now been two full years since my craniotomy, and in this past year, I have suffered zero Multiple Sclerosis flare-ups. My immune system, once locked in chronic neuroinflammatory warfare against my central nervous system, has settled into complete, quiet peace.
Together, my partner and I have grown in ways that feel almost biologically impossible. The background noise of adrenaline and chronic anxiety has evaporated. Impulsivity has dissolved into a deep, grounded calm. We feel physically stronger, younger, and sharper, with minds exploding in creative clarity.
My mind did not merely recover; it upgraded.
Stills from The Psychedelic Biologist Folio 01 video journal notes (unreleased) © 2026 raRÉ
Today, I live my life as a storyteller. I am a lab-trained biologist carrying the legacy of the B2 mitochondrial haplogroup, standing on the other side of an M1 bifurcation repair, writing spoken word folios as the Psychedelic Biologist.
I am not sharing my voice for clicks, metrics, or views. I am stepping out to find my people: queer psychedelic friends, scientists, practitioners, researchers, artists, and poets who feel the pulse of this boundary-crossing work. I want to collaborate. I want to connect.
Dr. Lawton and Western medicine saved my physical life at the M1 bifurcation. But it was this past year with Teonanácatl, the high-velocity, sacred medicine of the earth, that gave me back my dreams, rewired my nervous system, washed away the CPTSD, and restored my capacity for pure uninhibited joy.
The single most important truth I can leave you with is this:
Neuroscience can clip an aneurysm and save a physical vessel, but sacred mycology is what teaches the brain how to truly live again.
You are not a broken diagnosis, a surgical scan, or the trauma carried in your nerves.
Your cellular architecture is sovereign, plastic, and waiting, and when the medicine calls you home, you realize you were whole all along.
raRÉ is The Psychedelic Biologist, a lab-trained scientist, brain aneurysm survivor, Multiple Sclerosis warrior, and queer spoken word artist. Having navigated congenital rubella, bacterial meningitis at age 15, and open-brain vascular surgery, raRÉ bridges biological neuroscience and sacred mycology to facilitate radical trauma integration, microdosing, and neuroplastic rebirth. Explore deep-dive essays and research breakdowns at The Psychedelic Biologist Journal or connect on all platforms at @psychedelicbiologist.
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