LOOK! This is the way it is

LOOK! This is the way it is is my life story being told casual, honest, and raw. My passion has always been people. I'm a lover of life. I live for the thrill. I always have and always will. However, that has not always been a good thing, especially in my early young adult years when I thought I was invincible and knew it all. Like every eighteen-year-old that leaves home and thinks they're ready for what the world has out there for them, yeah right, my biggest thrill that yet had not arrived in my early adulthood years happened in 1996, and I was moving out at the age of seventeen going on eighteen to attend San Diego State University. Leaving my sheltered Catholic and crazy Colombian upbringing (aka my bubble), I thought I was ready to attack the real world. It was thrilling, no doubt, but that thrill came to an end in January 1998 when after a night of shrooming (ingesting Psilocybin mushrooms), I was stuck on a trip/trance. I found myself stuck in a drug-induced psychotic state. My mother and father were devastated not knowing if their daughter was coming back. Medical professionals were unsure of how to treat me because they didn't have enough experience in the matter. For weeks, I wasn't okay. Inside, I was fighting my own spiritual battle to come back. My book shares on how all my anxieties came out on that trip. At the time, I was unaware that I even suffered from anxiety/depression to that degree. I actually must have. It didn't happen to anyone else the night I shroomed. It happened to me! So what did that mean? Surely, I was crazy! Right? In the literal sense, no. But in that moment and for a whole decade later, yes. My behavior went from doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, hence the definition of insanity. My mind had gone to one of the darkest places a mind can go to, yet I did come back. How? By God's grace. And to Him, I owe all the glory. I take no credit for being the strong one. It is only in His strength that I was given the strength to fight off those demons. He led me to Dr. Michael Lardon who writes the foreword of my book. He was the doctor that treated me twenty years ago. Today I am blessed to not only say he treated me but call him my friend. Dr. Michael Lardon, twenty years ago, was a young psychiatrist (I think thirty-seven years old, younger than my age today). He is a Stanford graduate and was in his early years of practicing. Without God sending me to him when no other medical professional knew how to treat me, I would not be the human being I am today. Frankly, who knows where I would be. Today, coincidentally, Dr. Michael Lardon is known around the world in the sports-medicine psychiatry field. He has treated many NFL, PGA, and Olympic athletes. He wrote the book Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life. In the last twenty years, this man has been more like a life coach to me. Only God could have orchestrated all this. Today I have no shame in sharing what happened to me because no label can define me. No false perception from family and friends hurts anymore because I have educated myself and know my why. And today I share my story in the hopes of having others have no shame to share theirs to seek help. Whether prayer is enough, whether holistic/natural methods are, or whether medical intervention is needed, you have to go to #Godfirst. Never be defined by what the outside world perceives you as. The Creator of the universe created you to be you and uniquely you! People's perceptions of you are theirs and not yours.