Patrick Mettes's decision to stop chemotherapy

Patrick Mettes’s decision to stop chemotherapy in March 2012 came after a psilocybin session had helped redirect his attention from the prospect of dying to the life still available to him. The treatment did not erase his illness or make him welcome death. Instead, his choice marked a change in how he understood the remaining time: he continued treatment and took pleasure in ordinary days, then decided that chemotherapy was no longer how he wanted to live. His wife, Lisa Callaghan, later understood the decision not as surrender but as a clear-eyed choice about the terms of his life.

Before the decision

Lisa had initially been wary of Patrick’s wish to take part in the New York University trial. To her, his willingness to participate seemed to mean that he had given up the fight. The experience changed that impression. Patrick returned convinced that he still had much to do, much love to give and receive, and was not yet ready to leave his wife. Rather than narrowing his attention to death, the session renewed his sense of purpose and shifted the question toward how best to use the time remaining.

That change was visible in the life they shared afterward, without turning their circumstances into a simple story of relief. Lisa recalled that they still argued and endured a calamitous apartment renovation in Brooklyn during a difficult summer. What seemed different was Patrick’s patience and his joy in being with her. He appeared less burdened by the details of daily life; a sandwich, a walk along the promenade, and time with other people could matter in themselves. Lisa described the year as feeling like a lifetime lived within it. The domestic irritations remained, but they no longer exhausted the meaning of their days together.

Treatment and ordinary life

Patrick continued chemotherapy after the session, and his spirits improved. Lisa persuaded herself that he might not die after all, though she later thought he had understood his prognosis very well. That difference between their understandings matters: hope for more time and recognition of impending death could coexist. The account does not present Patrick’s decision as a sudden rejection of life. He did not want to die; meanwhile, he continued to live as fully as his good days allowed.

While Lisa worked, Patrick spent those days walking through the city. He went everywhere he could, tried restaurants for lunch, and told her about the places he had discovered. This routine gave the interval after the session a concrete shape: not an abstract conversion, but movement through familiar streets and attention to meals, walks, and shared conversation. Yet the good days became fewer. The change in his condition set a limit on the life he was trying to inhabit, and in March 2012 he told Lisa he wanted to stop chemotherapy.

What the choice meant

Lisa’s account preserves the distinction at the heart of the decision. Patrick did not stop because he wanted death. As she put it, he had decided that this was not how he wanted to live. The choice was therefore neither a claim that the illness had been overcome nor evidence that he had ceased caring about life. He had recently felt renewed purpose and attachment; those things could be true even as he judged continued chemotherapy against the quality and shape of his remaining time.

The narrative gives the decision weight through its placement between renewed engagement and worsening illness. First came the return to everyday pleasures and a stronger sense of connection; then the good days dwindled, and Patrick chose to end treatment. The account does not specify the medical details behind that choice or describe it as a cure-producing consequence of the session. Its emphasis is on a change in perspective: his attention had moved from the fact of dying alone toward the question of how to spend the time he still had.

The ending of the interval

Patrick lived seventeen months after the psilocybin session. In the fall, his lungs began to fail and he was hospitalized. He gathered those around him, said goodbye, and explained that this was how he wanted to die. Lisa described his death as conscious. In the palliative care unit at Mount Sinai, his room became a gathering place for nurses and doctors, drawn to the conversation and affection he offered. Tony Bossis, who visited a week before Patrick died, was struck by the room’s mood and Patrick’s serenity.

Patrick comforted Lisa near the end. His greatest sadness, he told her, was leaving his wife, but he was not afraid. That ending does not make the decision to stop chemotherapy a wish for death; it completes the distinction the account has traced. Patrick’s changed perspective did not remove grief, attachment, or the physical progression of his illness. It allowed him to face the end without reducing the life before it to a failed attempt to avoid dying.