Taking psychedelics with my brother helped us get over our dad's sudden death

• My dad died suddendly in his sleep when he was 60 years old.
• After his death, my brother and I took LSA and our bond was stronger than before.

When Prince Harry attested to how psychedelics had enabled him to finally process the grief and trauma which had accumulated from the high-profile death of his mother, Princess Diana, and was left stored, pent up, The Daily Mail dismissed his story as "flimsy."

Perhaps my tale is similarly lacking in scientific data and is undoubtedly subject to serious observation bias. But the sensible use of consciousness-expanding drugs has seemed to immensely help my brother and me following the sudden death, in December, of our 60-year-old father, Nick Busby.

They allowed our own emotions to flow more easily, thanks to a softening of the ego, which facilitated a greater connection between us that served as a vital first step on our grieving journeys.

We took LSA

Soon after Dad's death, we escaped from the home in which he died during his sleep to a rented cabin in the nearby southern England countryside. There, we consumed LSA, a natural psychedelic derived from Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds.

My brother Rory had the brainwave, and he supplied the drugs — purchased legally in Amsterdam a couple of months before. When he suggested we trip, it struck me as a rather good idea, certainly better than taking to the bottle. That is what sadly killed our father, after all.

Within a few hours of ingesting the psychedelic capsules, we were embracing and telling each other how much we loved each other as the heart-opening powers of the hallucinogen took effect. Tears came to our eyes as we hugged one another tightly. Of course, we had shared tender words and touch prior to that Sunday night, but not on that level, not with any true emotional release. More fist pumps than extended bear hugs.

We departed the next morning amidst the winter season's first snowfall as brothers in arms, the bonds underpinning our relationship ever stronger thanks to the profundity, and vulnerability, of the previous night.

More psychedelics helped me let go of everything

Several months later, I found myself at Tandava Retreats in Mexico to observe a retreat and work with 5-MeO-DMT, perhaps the most powerful of all psychedelics, certainly the most rapid-acting.

By May, half a year since Dad passed on, he was no longer at the forefront of my mind.

Still, when the toad venom-derived medicine subsumed my body, I felt like I let go of everything possibly described as negative that I still held from his life, our relationship, and his death, and I wept deep sobs before what can only be described as a cosmic orgasm then reverberated through my body. This was preceded by a brief period of intense fear as the sheer intensity of the experience dawned upon me.

To assess whether this psychedelic, the so-called God Molecule, can combat prolonged grief, researchers at the University of Texas' Dell Medical School launched a study in late 2022 in which 20 widows of veterans will trip — some with psilocybin, others with 5-MeO — and 10 will not.

"We think psychedelics disrupt those depressive patterns and allow the brain to operate in new ways that weren't otherwise possible before," said Greg Fonzo, co-director of the Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at Dell Medical School.

Prince Harry echoed this sentiment in an interview with "60 Minutes" — "If you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, these things have a way of working as a medicine," he said.

I don't think I've ever been so defenseless as when I smoked 5-MeO — on both a physical and emotional level. And when those tears streamed down my cheeks, I somehow arrived at a blissful state of surrender that has remained with me since.