How AA and Plant Medicine Guided Me Through My Battle with Cancer

When I stumbled into AA 37 years ago, I arrived utterly broken by a compulsion to drink alcohol that was complete and without relief. That compulsion to drink alcohol can only be compared to the desire that I now have to breathe. I simply had to drink because I had no choice, but it was killing me, and I had no way of beating it.

My first AA meeting was on a Thursday evening in Berkeley, California, and very quickly after that meeting (certainly within just a few days), the compulsion to drink disappeared. It was mysteriously removed from my consciousness, and it has never returned. This profound experience forced me to consider, despite my deeply embedded materialistic cynicism, the odd and certainly unexpected possibility that there just might be a supernatural power out there that cared about my life. This experience, aside from keeping me off the bottle, made me interested in the question of whether there is a God.

So, back in 2019, as just one part of my journey to answer this question, I began to explore psychedelics. Then the pandemic happened, and it wasn’t until late 2021 that I was able to truly begin my journey with these medicines. However, in early 2021, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, which is a treatable but incurable type of blood cancer. I started the standard treatments immediately, which yielded an okay, but not great, response.  

When I eventually began my relationship with psychedelics in late 2021, I felt guided primarily by a deep love of and gratitude for God that had grown within me over the years of continuous sobriety through participation in AA and the practice of the 12 Steps.

My initial “trip” was 3.7 grams, plus an additional 2 grams by dried weight, of psilocybin mushrooms. During this first experience, the message I got from these remarkable compounds was loud and clear: There was “business to be attended to” before I could move on to other things. Namely, the lingering emotional wreckage that I still held on to from my childhood, as well as the cancer living in my body. And they both seemed to be connected, at least in part. 

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In this first experience, and in every experience I’ve had since, a primary message has also always been that I should stop worrying about my life because the Logos (there is no word that can even begin to describe these remarkable compounds except, maybe, Terrance McKenna’s term “Logos”) was taking care of everything, including the cancer.  And while sitting with Ayahuasca, I always had a powerful feeling of a deep body cleansing, sometimes painfully, by mysterious entities that seemed both animal and robotic, and I also experienced the inevitable purging, which the Logos explained was the remnants of my family of origin wreckage and the cancer.  

In every experience I’ve had, regardless of the type of compound (psilocybin mushrooms, Ayahuasca, or San Pedro cactus), I have always experienced the Logos by sustained “contact” with my ancestors, including my recently passed mother. This contact has always been very loving, and it has helped mend what remained of my family of origin's wreckage. And, although most of my family wreckage had already been addressed through the 12 Steps, these experiences continued to heal me by placing my past in a spiritual context that finally made my childhood make sense.

Given these astonishing experiences, during one Ayahuasca session in December 2023, I was moved to ask the Logos if it had cured the cancer specifically. The answer seemed to be an unequivocal yes. However, following that experience, all of the blood tests performed by my oncologist indicated that the cancer was getting worse — and quickly.

It triggered a deep and disturbing Dark Night of the Soul. It seemed that the promise of a cure was not true. And this could only mean that the Logos that I loved so much and that had consistently graced me with an ocean of illimitable love, kindness, and intelligence was lying to me. Or were my experiences just mere hallucinations?  Were they not veridical as I believed, but just juvenile wishful thinking on my part? Was I just like the boy whistling past the cemetery at midnight, desperately trying to buffer the fears? And what about my beloved ancestors? Were they also lying to me? It was very troubling, to put it mildly.

This experience also presented a serious theological problem because most established religions claim that the way you can tell the difference between an encounter with an angel and an encounter with a demon is that demons lie to you. Did this mean that in all of my experiences, I was dealing with demons? It never felt like that, but I still found myself facing this darkness. However, I took all these fears through the powerful AA Steps, and my fears were once again mysteriously removed, and I became indifferent to this quandary of an apparently broken promise — a quandary that I could never possibly resolve through my own understanding. I just continued with my journey regardless.  

During an experience with Ayahuasca in April 2025, I directly asked the Logos about its promise. I was told once again that it had cured the cancer (to the extent that they could in the dimension that we exist), and during the journey, I once again experienced another deep cleansing of my body and what appeared to be the washing away of the last remnants of my family of origin wreckage. And I distinctly remember one of the very strange animal/robot-like entities telling me that it found no family wreckage in my body and no cancer in my body. I was told that they were “preparing me.” 

About three weeks after this experience, my oncologist prescribed an experimental treatment (administered through UCSF) that is currently not approved by the FDA. Then, 10 days after starting the new treatment, my oncologist called me into his office to present the latest test results. The results showed that I was cancer-free and that the myeloma had disappeared.  

I’m still cancer-free.

Disclaimer: The views and experiences shared in this OpEd are those of the author and do not reflect the views of DoubleBlind. Psychedelics are not approved treatments for Multiple Myeloma or any other form of cancer, and there is currently no scientific evidence that they can cure cancer. This story is provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional about any medical condition or treatment.

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