Peter's Story, Spring 2025

Peter reflects on how one impulsive choice in college spiraled into long‑lasting anxiety and phobias, but also made him realize how his experiences can help guide others.

Interviewer: What is one mistake that has shaped you as a person?

Peter: When I was a freshman in college, my cousin, who's a year older than me, knocked on my door at my dorm. We're at the same college, and he asked me if I wanted to get high, because he found a joint on a table, and so he, so we didn't know where it was from, or who brought it, or what was in it. And so at the time, you could actually go to jail for small amounts of marijuana. But we decided to go out in the woods behind the dorm and smoke it. And we lit it up and shared it. And we each had a couple puffs, and it was, it was quite enjoyable. And we went back to my dorm, and I kept getting higher and higher. I didn't want, you know, I was as high as I wanted to be, and I thought, maybe I should just go to bed. And so I got in bed, and I was wrestling with a giant bat. I had the bat's wings in my hands, and he had a human head, and he was kind of snapping at me, trying to bite me. And I thought, whoa, this is not, this is not enjoyable at all. And I had friends down in the floor below me, and I went to their room, and at one point, I told one of my friends, I said, “Would you watch me to make sure I don't jump out the window?” So I was terrified, and I went for a walk, and there was a green expanse where people played volleyball. So they'd worn grooves in the, in the sod, and they became this open field of graves. You know, so I basically was tripping, or hallucinating or something.

But so that experience of losing control was absolutely terrifying. And, of course, you think, okay, this is permanent. I just ruined my whole life forever. And then, and so I was kind of, for the next three days, kind of fighting to get back to it. So I'm on the lookout for any possible recurrences of this. Or, you know, any kind of circumstance in which it seemed like you would lose control of yourself, terrified me. And as a result, I panicked twice and developed phobias from these panics. A phobia is not a dislike, it is fear, and you wanna control it and fight it.

At one point, I was listening to an interview. There's a keyboard player for the Beatles, named Billy Preston, was talking on the radio about, um, how he stepped off the bus one day and felt filled with the spirit of the Lord and committed the rest of his life. And I, and I flipped out when I heard that radio interview. And I thought, I don't wanna be born again. I don't wanna be born again, I don’t wanna be born again. I wanna, I wanna keep my brain. I wanna be myself. I wanna, I wanna continue experiencing life the way I know. And so what that paranoia means, so you, you’re on the lookout, and you will see those threats where they don't exist. And, and so I was, I would drive down the highway, and I would notice that the telephone poles were all crosses. I thought, "Why are those telephone poles there? Who put them there to get me?” That's what a phobia is.

Like, these phobias took me a while. I didn't dare tell my parents. I started seeing a therapist, like, maybe five years later. And so this would be the biggest mistake I ever made. And you look at your mistakes, you know, on the one hand, I swore off all drugs. On the other hand, I gained a problem. I told myself, okay, just drink alcohol, that's safe, and ended up developing alcoholism, so I quit that in 1996. On the other hand, this propensity to overthink and to be paranoid and to study and look and think and analyze, developed a kind of habit of mine that I've benefited from in other ways.

I am who I am now because I have struggled with these things and I have overcome them. My son, I told him when he's going out to college, I warned, your psyche is a lot more fragile than you think. You know, because anxiety disorder is kind of what I had, I learned from my struggle, I should have gotten help. I told my son, there are medications that they can give you for anxiety. And I realized, your suffering has meaning, to you and to other people. And if you find the way to, to locate and take advantage of that, it will give your life meaning and make you a happier or more complete person.

Now I know why it happened to me, so I could tell my son how to avoid the 10 years of suffering, whatever it was, that it took me to get past that experience, you know. And as a writer, I write all the time about, you know, what I figured out, how to help people. You know, as I, when I teach writing, I teach people, tell the story you're afraid to tell. It shapes you, your mistakes that shape you.