I was walking through my neighborhood in Venice, California, while speaking to an investor on the phone. As I looked down, I noticed the grass pulsating and moving. I had been having these visual distortions for months at this point, and they seemed to be getting more frequent. I wasn’t sure whether these were lingering effects from the mushroom trip I led for my family a couple of months earlier, or if they were the intended effects of the meditation journey I was on. I was about fifty days into a meditation experience with no end date in mind, and it felt like my rational, discerning mind was slipping away. I was terrified; the goal of finding purpose, meaning, and enlightenment, or simply to beat my depression and anxiety, had led me to the brink of insanity.