When I was ten years old, I saved my father’s life. It was the school holidays, and I was staying with him in his tiny, two-storey house in Derbyshire. He would often leave me alone – my parents had separated when I was a baby – to go out drinking for the evening.
That night he had come back late and had fallen into a coma-like sleep, when a hot ember dropped from the open fire and caught on a rug. The room went up in flames, spreading quickly.
I woke in the early hours, roused by clouds of acrid smoke pouring in under my bedroom door. Switching on my bedside light, I was horrified to find I could barely see my toys and books on the other side of the room. I knew immediately I had to wake Dad in the bedroom opposite. I fought my way through the suffocating smoke, screaming for him at the top of my lungs.
Kate Ruby was traumatised as a child, and has dealt with the repercussions ever since
Luckily he woke up – he could so easily have been knocked out by the fumes – and quickly determined that the fire was raging too hard for us to escape down the narrow staircase. Instead, he shouldered open my stiff bedroom window and we clambered down a long drainpipe, me on his shoulders.
It was over Christmas, and even now I can almost feel the chilly shock of my bare feet hitting the freezing snow. Afterwards, when the street was full of fire engines and kind neighbours had taken us in, I started to gabble out the whole terrifying story to them.
’Don’t try and make yourself into some kind of hero,’ my father hissed under his breath. I wilted, as I so often did with him.
Instead of feeling anger or terror about the fact that he’d nearly killed us, I hated myself for 'showing off’, for saying the wrong thing, yet again.
I loved Dad more than anything, my devotion fuelled by his emotional unavailability. That meant it was safer to believe I was the problem than accept that he, the person I relied on to protect me, regularly posed a threat to my very existence.
This is a mental bargain that many trauma survivors make early on, with lifelong consequences. I learned to take the blame for my father’s failings, fatally undermining my confidence and self-belief. Years later, even as I carved out a successful career as an executive producer in the cut-throat world of television, I judged myself harshly, comparing myself unfavourably to colleagues. I lived in constant fear of saying the wrong thing or making a catastrophic mistake.
Then one day, I was working with a mercurial and demanding director who snapped at me while we looked at potential costumes for a lavish period drama, and I felt myself disappear down an all-too familiar mental rabbit hole. I wasn’t good enough to do my job, not authoritative or decisive enough. I was an imposter who’d got to this elevated position via some kind of heinous mistake.
This time, though, I realised with sudden clarity that my colleague’s harsh words echoed all the way back to those painful early years with my father.
And 20 years after Dad’s death, aged 48 from lung cancer, I knew it was finally time to let go of the destructive thinking that still had me in a choke hold.
I made contact with an expert on childhood trauma, who helped me understand how my difficult past was invading my present. And what I learned ultimately led me to a controversial new technique which involved taking psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to unravel early trauma.
This might sound risky, dangerous even: after all, magic mushrooms are a class A drug, the same category as heroin and crack cocaine (although it’s important to state that my treatment would be completely legal).
But there is extensive scientific research that shows psilocybin can be as powerful as extensive therapy or antidepressants.
In fact, this week new research from Imperial College London found that the psychedelic drug alleviated depression in some study participants as effectively as a conventional antidepressant and engendered a broader sense of well-being.
Not yet approved for general use, it is used in controlled environments; and although no serious adverse effects have been reported, experts warn psilocybin can trigger 'frightening experiences’.
I certainly wouldn’t have used it lightly. I’d never taken psychedelics recreationally, and am quite a controlled person in normal life, so I did so with trepidation.
And only because my early life had left me with complex trauma – or CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) – which occurs when someone is exposed to a series of traumatic events, often in childhood, over months or years.
As an only child of separated parents who lived far apart, I would spend the long school holidays with Dad, far away from Mum’s sight.
Clever and funny, Dad would focus on me in a way that my mother, a single parent with a busy job in the charity sector, found harder to do.
But he never worked, money was always in short supply and none of the 'normal’ family structures were in place.
Kate Ruby as a child. She learned to take the blame for her father’s failings, fatally undermining her confidence and self-belief
He’d leave me alone for long stretches, frequently at night, so that he could drink. At times I was so frightened that I would call the operator on the landline just to hear a grown-up’s voice. It was the 1980s, a time when child welfare was taken far less seriously – it seems extraordinary now that they didn’t call the police.
But my hero worship of Dad meant I never told Mum about his behaviour, for fear of losing that precious access to him. After the fire, there was no police or social services involvement; again, that just didn’t happen back then. But my father lost his home, and the contact between us became more sporadic.
Over the years, it dwindled further. By the time he died, when I was in my early 20s, I was forging my TV career and we were barely in touch.
But the truth was the influence of those early years was still running my life. Unavailable older men were like catnip to me, despite the pain they caused, and I suffered sudden dips in self-confidence that could floor me.
The trauma therapy that I eventually found was revolutionary – eight years on, I still see my therapist every month – but I also became interested in the burgeoning research around the ability of psychedelics to counteract depression and anxiety.
My work frequently takes me to LA, where – even though they’re also illegal – psychedelics are much more mainstream. I know successful writers for Netflix shows who grow mushrooms in their garage so they can micro-dose before they go to the writers’ room, anxiety tamed.
Keen to explore the benefits without breaking the law, I got in touch with Sarah Tilley, a British psychedelic therapist and the founder of Beautiful Space, a therapy centre in the Netherlands.
Although magic mushrooms are illegal, I’d be taking magic mushroom truffles – part of the fungus that is legal in the Netherlands but which still contains psilocybin.
Beautiful Space has worked with Imperial College on landmark studies, as well as running courses and retreats with a focus on women’s mental health.
With more than 20 years’ experience with plant medicine, Sarah has been using psychedelics with her clients for the last five years, and believes that the medicine can have a profound healing effect.
After an initial assessment call, where Sarah determined that I was psychologically robust enough for treatment, we embarked on a month-long period of Zoom therapy sessions to allow her to grasp my history.
Sarah explained that psilocybin has been used for centuries in spiritual and shamanic practices, and is known for its ability to induce profound changes in consciousness and perception. I would have a psychedelic experience, which could include hallucinations.
When I boarded a plane to her clinic, I was unsure what to expect and felt real trepidation.
However, Sarah is an incredibly warm and wise person, and the prep sessions meant that by then I felt very safe with her.
The treatment I had chosen would take place over three days. A 'heart-opening’ ceremony the evening before the medicine would help to prepare me. On medicine day, Sarah would guide me through taking a carefully controlled dose, facilitating 'a journey inwards’. After the 'trip’ came to an end, Sarah would help me explore what had come up.
The treatment room was warm and cosy with a couch for me to lie on. After sipping the hallucinogenic brew (it tasted pretty foul), I lay down on the couch with an eye mask and headphones on, playing a carefully curated playlist to take me through different moods.
Sarah was by my side as I waited nervously for the drug to take effect. I started to wonder if I’d been mad to embark on this expensive treatment (it costs around £3,000).
After half an hour, I experienced floaty feelings and my synapses started to fizz.
It frightened me at first and I began to panic, but Sarah encouraged me to let go of trying to 'manage’ the experience.
Soon strange shapes began to appear, and when I peeked out from beneath the eye mask, it was hard to focus. The pattern on the wallpaper appeared to be moving and changing.
Eventually the panic subsided, and I spent the next few hours trying to listen to a kind of wisdom that felt as if it was coming from somewhere else.
Not a voice inside my head, as such, more my own thoughts coming into view. A wiser part of me that I couldn’t usually access that had much more sense of perspective.
Though Sarah stayed with me throughout, she didn’t encourage me to talk.
Instead she wanted me to look within myself.
The music was key, taking me up into more light and joyous places before dipping down into pockets of darkness. My whole history rolled out in my mind and I found myself in tears as I recalled agonising incidents with Dad and that terrifying fire.
I didn’t hallucinate my way back into that awful experience – something I’m grateful for – but I did feel as if I was observing the feelings I’d had from a different vantage point and with a huge amount of compassion for my younger self. When you’re consumed by anxiety, it’s so all-encompassing it can feel like you are the anxiety. But lying there, I began to feel as if there was a separate, wiser part of me that could take care of the anxious part, instead of merging with it.
I also gained a sense of what I would call a spiritual realm. This helped me to feel a deep sense of compassion for my dad’s mental health struggles, which he never had the inner resources to address.
Kate Ruby found peace during her micro-dosing treatment involving psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms
Alongside that there was love for my younger self, who had endured so much. It gave me a new kind of peace with our painful history, and a belief that I could start to move forward.
After four hours of lying there, I started to feel the effects wearing off, my vision stabilising and the hallucinations fading away. And after six hours, I was sipping a cup of tea and eating some chocolate, chatting to Sarah like it was any other Saturday.
The next day I felt exhausted and emotional, grateful for the follow-up session where Sarah and I discussed the insights I’d had during the trip.
One of her key bits of advice was 'to find less validation from people who need you to rescue them’, which was literal in regard to the night of the fire, but also extended to my whole relationship with my father.
She also spoke about moving from being 'a survivor to a thriver’. She encouraged me to hold on to that glimpse of a higher perspective I’d been given. In finding compassion for my younger, terrified self, I saw how impossible my task had been back then. And how much bravery it had taken to come through it.
Sarah also advised that I could take this new empowerment into my work.
Back home, I certainly felt a shift. I was calmer and kinder, less prone to taking things personally. I felt like I became a better manager, too – you don’t realise until it stops, how easy it is to transmit anxiety to your team. I’ve dealt with any number of difficult professional situations since then, but when the inevitable conflicts flare up, it doesn’t send me into an inner spiral about my self-worth any more. I’m much more able to stand my ground without people-pleasing or falling over myself to be excessively nice.
Everything flows better for me now, including my love life and my friendships. Nothing matters quite so much, in the best possible way.
The new research has shown that psilocybin can help well-being within relationships, too. It certainly made me less prone to being attracted to men who were like living ghosts of my dad – charming but unreliable.
All of that said, I’m not suggesting that every woman battling anxiety should try to trip her way out of it. Psychedelics are not a magic bullet – the extensive therapy I’d had before treatment also made it much easier to reap the benefits.
Three years on, I haven’t done a second trip, but I feel like there’s probably another one in my future.
For now, I’m just grateful that the first one helped me escape my relentless inner critic, which took up residence during a difficult childhood and seemed like it would never move out.
- Kate Ruby’s thriller Everything You Have is available to buy now.
