Drugs Made Me Trans 🏳️‍⚧️

Growing up, while I knew there was something kind of off - unknown to me - about my gender, I didn’t exactly always feel like “not a boy.” I looked somewhat feminine before year six or seven, but never leaned into it. Between then and around year ten, I often dabbled with light makeup (only eyeliner and nail polish, though I dyed my hair frequently). I always attributed it to my alt aesthetic, even when it didn’t fully feel like it was just that.

Until my twenties, I may have only worn women’s clothing a handful of times - genuinely, fewer than ten. While I disliked each experience, it was usually because of why I was wearing them rather than wearing them themselves. I’ve never truly been comfortable in my body, although I nearly always attributed that to my weight and attractiveness. I stopped swimming shirtless when I was around thirteen and continued to swim with a shirt on even after I’d lost weight - displaying those parts of my body simply felt… wrong.

From around year seven onward, I began to notice I was naturally gravitating toward a lot of the queer people within my circles (most notably, tech circles) and seemed to garner a lot of interest in specifically trans individuals - how they felt being themselves, what their lives were like, what it meant to them, and so on. In fact, I owe a large part of my foundation in software and hardware knowledge to two specific trans people who I will remember for the rest of my life. I believe this era was the seedling that eventually grew into who I am today, because having grown up in a highly conservative area with strict values enforced on my life, I’d never truly understood what exploring one’s identity even meant. Thank you, Rachel, and thank you, Emily.

Once I graduated in 2016 (i was 17), I touched weed for the first time in my life and proceeded to be what I’d consider a fairly heavy stoner for the next five or so years, until I kinda got bored of it and it tapered down. I haven’t smoked since 2023 or so. While drugs had always been a passive interest of mine (more about learning than doing, I’d read both PiHKAL and TiHKAL by that point), I had never touched more than weed until around 2019. In 2019, my dealer hit me up with an offer I couldn’t refuse - free DMT.

When it was shipped to me, the cartridges had unfortunately busted, making them nonfunctional. I let him know with pictures, and being such a great guy, he sent me two more. I was still able to salvage the juice from the first carts; and in the end, I had four grams worth of DMT carts (which, in theory, would last a normal, sane, rational person over a year by themselves). They were gone in two months. I spent the next 60 days having two to three DMT breakthroughs a day, every single day.

Wake up? Meet God.
Ready for bed? Meet God.
Thirty-minute lunch break? I’m not hungry, let’s see how the machine elves are doing.

My general experiences during these trips involved being put into a realm that acted as, and/or was, the Akashic Library, with infinite expanses of books linining walls as far as the eye could see. I spent eternities upon eternities delving deeper into my psyche, learning all I could, only for it to fade like a dream an hour later (this is also what started me writing journals after each trip, to retain a memory of what I experienced). I have two primary experiences on DMT that will stick with me until the day I die. One was absolutely horrifying and brought on by a terrible trip sitter who decided it would be funny to play Stairway To Heaven backwards as I was drifting off to the abyss. While it’s the only bad trip I ever had on DMT, I honestly can’t imagine feeling a primal fear any deeper than what I felt during that eternity.

But this is about me being trans, one trip notably helped me understand that. As I exhaled my third breath, and the drums and vibrations took over my existence - swathing me in darkness and pulling me into the abyss - I saw a light. This light was not the library I was used to; it was not obscure scenery or unimaginable visions of eternity. It was a smile. A man’s face. As he held his young child, smiling down at him, I died and was reborn into a simpler time, a harsher time, a time long forgotten and never written down. 

I had siblings; I lost siblings; death was a sad but unfortunately normal part of life. I was sick, injured, experienced loss and love, but carried on. We lived off the land as I grew from a child to a young adult, and found a woman that I loved. We bonded together and had children, a boy and a girl. We raised them healthily and they persevered to adulthood. As I grew older in years, I lost my love. After that, I lost my children through nonsense disputes. I experienced the harshness of life, the wonder of life, and in the end, died completely alone, with no one by my side.

And then I fell.
And fell.
For an eternity, I fell.

I fell until time became meaningless, until falling became meaningless, until the memories of my recently departed life began to fade, and until I became nothing but the darkness I was surrounded by. I was no longer a man. No longer a human. No longer a being. No longer anything whatsoever. I simply was the void, without form, without meaning. I was the void, and the void became me.

Upon that realization - that I had been absorbed by everything, and in turn absorbed everything, that I and the universe were one - it exploded. I saw reality unfurl in front of, around, within, and outside of me. I felt all of time and space expand and contract, birth and die. I saw every life that was, would be, could have been, and the variants thereof. I experienced every life that was, would be, could have been, and acted upon the variations. For a brief moment, I became the universe, became a god, became all that was and ever would be. And I understood.

Through the innumerable lives I passed through, I understood who I was - where I felt comfortable internally. I began to recall who I was outside of this dream realm, and the eternally shifting universe slowly began to fade. Timelines narrowed; realities honed in; until eventually I was myself, once again falling through a near-eternal abyss, guiding myself home to where I knew I existed, with the knowledge of who I wanted to be.

The falling slowed as I narrowed in on my reality, until ever so gracefully my soul landed back in my body. I opened my eyes and cried - cried for the life I had lived, the children I no longer had; cried for the suffering of trillions and the hatred of trillions more; cried for the lives that would be lived never knowing themselves; cried for the lives that would be lived avoiding who they truly are; and cried for who I was. The tears faded into the bittersweetness of finally understanding why I felt the way I did about myself - why my body often felt like the wrong one.

I didn’t take immediate action. I spent the next few months mulling over that experience and sifting through what I could truly gain from it - what was the drugs, and what was truly the inner me? Over the next few years, I began experimenting with self-image and self-identifying. It was around that time that I considered myself nonbinary but didn’t know enough about trans identities or gender in general to truly understand what that meant to me. I made new friends, talked with old friends, and eventually came to the true realization of how I felt - and that is that I’m a woman. While I still feel the tug towards neutrality every now and then, I recognize it in part as dysphoria and a fear of passing. That tension is also a reminder that no matter who you are, you are not obligated to fit into any single box, and maybe a single label doesn't encapsulate who you are, or who I am.

I still, partially, identify as nonbinary. But at its core, I am a woman, I am transfeminine. And it’s thanks to the culmination of all these people, experiences, self-revelations, and psychedelics that I can comfortably say that today and truly understand what it means to me. In December of 2023, I began identifying as a woman, and in May of 2024, I began medically transitioning. Since then, I have felt more comfortable in my body than I have for the entirety of my life. I’ve lost friends; I’ve made amazing new ones. I’ve found amazing support networks, and while life is ungodly hard for so many reasons, at least this one aspect of it is good - makes me happy, fulfilled, and myself.

If you're reading this and struggling, you're always welcome to reach out to me, everyone deserves to feel at home in their own skin, to explore and understand themselves on their own terms, without pressure or judgment.