Although I can be impulsive, what led me here was far from a spur-of-the-moment act. It was a last-ditch attempt, after several years of struggling with negativity towards myself, mainly – and believe me, I understand how eye-rolling this may appear when there are larger issues happening in the world – towards my appearance.

I’d been brought up in the era of magazines heavily criticising even the figures of size 8 celebrities. I’d never felt a huge love for my appearance, but as I hit my mid-to-late 30s, I started to notice the wrinkles more and the layer of weight hanging around my waist.

It was in my late 30s when I met W, the man who was to become my partner for three years. He was funny and smart, and we shared many of the same values. We were both smitten. I thought I’d met my match and many of friends felt the same. But after some months, tiny comments about my appearance started coming through. He would pull my hairband out, telling me I didn’t suit having my hair up. “Don’t ever do that again,” I told him once, but while I fought back his comments, many of them hung over me. I thought I’d always suited my hair tied up. Now every time I looked in the mirror, I questioned it. Now and again he would comment on what I ate, and a couple of times he tried picking so-called blemishes from my face. “W,” I would say. “There’s nothing to pick at; it’s just my face.” Another time I remember him asking “Why don’t you look like that anymore?” when he saw a picture of me taken a couple of years earlier.

When W split up with me, he told me he had to be radically honest: it was down to not fancying me anymore, adding that he’d only fallen in a relationship with me as he was depressed following a previous breakup. This was a man who, at one point, was dizzyingly in love with me. Now he was explaining that what he saw as a lack of attractiveness was the reason he wanted to leave. I was mortified. If the person who had said they loved me was so repulsed by my looks, what did everyone else think of me, I thought. This became a train of thought I returned to constantly.

“I spent so long consumed by hating myself until a psilocybin retreat changed everything”