SAD Again: How Long Does This Last For?
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illustration by lucinda calder for issue 37: time
What is it about time? For one, it never seems to pass at the rate we would prefer— always dragging on at the worst of times and racing past in those moments you reminisce about years later, reliving them in conversations with friends even as you feel them go stale at the tip of your tongue. But what if you could manipulate time? While you alone may not be able to, psilocybin sure can. For better…or worse. While I wouldn’t know what that’s like (wink, wink) writer and singer Emma Května gave us a taste of her own experience in her personal essay “How Long Does This Last For?”, detailing the feelings of existential dread and regression to a less than pleasant time in her past that ensued just because she said yes to a hike with an old flame. While some may see this as a clear warning against hiking— long overdue in the city of obsessive outdoor exercise— I was pleasantly surprised to uncover a deeper meaning in her piece. While SAD Magazine’s 37th Issue Time incited a multitude of interpretations, Května’s was one of those that stuck with me the most, the waves of post-ingestion paranoia jumping out at me through the page. The last thing most people want to do when starting a new year is regress to a past they strived to leave behind, but sometimes it’s good to sit in the past for a moment. If only to appreciate the present a little bit more.
While those mischievous little mushrooms are at the center of Května’s piece, upon reading it I was certain that many could connect with her writing. Particularly given the propensity of the human brain to stray into hostile territory, from which it may not return for hours, days, or even weeks. I loved the sheer viscerality of Května’s writing, wandering to unchartered territory without ever losing its razor-sharp edge. To that end, I am certain that many readers will enjoy her work just as much as I did…and ultimately relish in the comfort that time will always show you the truth, even if it takes a trip down psilocybin lane to get there.
How Long Does This Last For?
By Emma Května
Art by Lucinda Calder
photograph of emma Května
I knew something was wrong 20 minutes after ingesting the mushrooms. Space and time took on eerie qualities, like something in my periphery that crept nearer only to move out of sight when I looked. To quell the rising unease, I laid down on the bed at the back of the RV, the bed we’d had sex on many times before, and studied the grain in the wood of the cabinets above. I sensed the wood wasn’t really wood, and that it was trapping me there. This isn’t anything like acid. My ex watched me from the kitchen with quiet concern. Deep house music from our playlist trickled from the Bose.
“Are you having a good time, or a bad time?” he asked.
“I’m having a time,” was all I could reply. Even my voice didn’t feel like mine. Too thick. Monstrous.
The unease compounded as normality slipped away. Stimuli became sheer terror—cars arriving at the beach, my ex trying to make conversation, the meandering nature of my own thoughts. There was no controlling the irreversibility of digestion and that petrified me. I didn’t want to perceive. I wanted my life back. I don’t want to be this high.
I checked my phone: 8:29 p.m.
It was just supposed to be a hike along the cliffside trail to catch up, test the waters of being in each other’s lives, only as friends, now that some time had passed. I don’t know why I agreed to the mushrooms. I’d never done them before. Maybe I wanted to be adventurous. Maybe I was trying to prove something.
“How long does this last for?”
“Like, three to four hours.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
One of the horrors of being alive is not the realization that bad things can and do happen, but that they happen for durations of time.
The man with a rare disease that made him constipated—for 22 years. The paralyzed woman found dead, fused to her parent’s couch where she’d lain neglected for 12 years. The skydiver who forgot his parachute, falling instead with a video camera bag which he used to film his 60-second demise. We sentence people to prison for determined lengths of time. We give our children a timeout. Even the Ancient Greeks expressed the horror of duration through Sisyphus. And is it any coincidence that Saturn, the malefic planet of challenges, rigidity, constriction, and karma, is also astrologically the planet of time?
Time was an enigma that day on the beach. It simultaneously ceased and stretched on forever. I peered down at my dog. His fur both purple and green, tail wagging. Can he tell I’m not me? I ran my hand down his back but it felt strangely performative. Everywhere I looked in the RV had a deeper meaning; the propane fridge that broke in Calgary but didn’t get fixed till Ontario. Taped to the bathroom door, the picture of a green cartoon monster that looked like it had been drawn by an eighth grader. Next to the entrance, the mounted key hooks that he started utilizing only after I moved in. It was too familiar, all of it.
Then, the paranoia.
It’s still summer 2021…I never left the RV…We’re still together…I never bought my house. Never moved to Nova Scotia. All that stuff I did, putting the fence up, renovating my living room. Meeting Jasmine, Monica, Thekla…they don’t exist. I’m back in the RV. Even the music is the same. I don’t like him. I never really did. Why am I still here? This is my life forever now. I’ll never get that other life back. It never existed. This is all there is. I want so badly for things to be normal and boring again. It’s still 2021…still not happy…never left. I don’t like this guy at all. What the hell am I doing here? I fucked it all up. I don’t want to be in this RV. I just want to go home. Curl up in bed. My house…I never bought it. This can’t be happening. We just listened to this song yesterday. When will this end?
I checked my phone again: 9:29 p.m.
The evening became one of endurance. I oscillated between sitting in the RV dinette and on the beach by myself, running my fingers through the sand to stay grounded. The psilocybin worked in waves where the intense sensations of the highest peaks gushed through me like water from a burst pipe. I could only brace myself by breathing deeply through burst lips until it subsided. Through it all, I somehow remained aware of the fact that my warped reality was because of the mushrooms, and not because of my own mind. I clung to the logic that eventually—surely—they must wear off.
By the time the peaks had run their course, I was exhausted from being in a body that received data. Intuitively, I knew my subconscious could handle the rest of the way, so I lay down on the bed and shut my eyes, witnessing the most exquisite swirling colours of yellow, green, and red; a world painted in paisley patterns eddying over a field, a blanket, a morphing face, geometry. I found comfort in a single thought: Anything you see with your eyes closed can’t hurt you.
Time showed me the truth; we would never be friends.
illustration by lucinda calder for issue 37: time
Kirsten Danae: In reading your piece, I was immediately struck by the vivid way in which you captured the experience of using mushrooms for the first time and the realizations that came with it. What was the process of writing this piece? And why do you feel like readers will resonate with your experience?
Emma Května: Thank you so much! Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure that readers WOULD resonate with it because it was such an unparalleled experience, and trying to capture it on the page seemed improbable. But having the theme of “time” really helped to ground and guide me. Once I realized that “duration” had been a major contributing factor to the nightmare of it all, I recalled other stories I’d heard about where the horror of duration struck me (the skydiver’s fall, the paralyzed woman, the constipated man—those are all true stories). So the process involved some research to make sure I got the details of those accounts right. Then it simply became a matter of description and writing down what I remember thinking, seeing and feeling. But mushrooms or not, I think existential dread and questioning reality is something most people have contemplated at one time or another, because it’s just such a fundamental mystery for humans—personally and universally.
KD: Where were you at in your creative journey when you wrote this?
EK: I’ve been into creative writing since I was a kid, but wasn’t properly introduced to the world of literary magazines until 2019. Since then, I’ve been hugely inspired by the myriad of lit mags out there just within Canada, let alone the rest of the world. Reading other writer's poems, personal essays, experimental pieces and different themed issues opened up a whole world to me around the craft of writing and the potential for how I can develop my own craft on the page. I wrote this piece in 2024 and at the time, I wasn’t writing regularly very much, but when I saw SAD's themed call for “time”, I knew immediately I had to put something together as I find explorations of time, space, and the nature of reality utterly fascinating. I had been writing mostly in short form at the time and had gotten a few shorter works published, so the idea of submitting something under 1000 words appealed to me in terms of where I was at with my craft.
KD: Any advice for creatives seeking inspiration for their work?
EK: Inspiration can be everywhere, if you let it. But also, in my opinion, inspiration shouldn't feel forced. I think getting inspired is a combination of remaining open throughout your day, like an antenna ready to pick up a signal at any moment, following your intuition, and having good taste in what you consume. But even something that is in poor taste can inspire you to respond to it artistically! Two key practical things I would say though are to read a lot, read lit mags, read what’s out there. Find inspiration in art that already exists. And be curious, ask questions, and explore answers to them through your work.
KD: What has your professional journey looked like since? Anywhere else we can look for your work?
EK: Since then, my writing life has taken a backseat due to work, and I mostly switched to focusing on songwriting the past year or so. I do have older work published in a few places (filing station Issue 75, Bell Press “Framework of the Human Body anthology,” Planishphere Quarterly “Dreams” issue, FAYD Digital) but nothing new. However, this year I’m really feeling the itch to get back into writing again!
Emma Května is an artist, singer and songwriter whose work includes a novella called Her Sister’s Ghost, poetry published in magazines like Fayd Digital and an anthology published by Bell Press books. Also, of course, this personal essay published by our very own SAD Magazine. You may also enjoy her musical performances on her Instagram @emmakvetna .
