Reprogramming Myself Series
Do Psychoactive Drugs Really Do The Work of Healing They Say They Do?
Is this really what works to overcome PTSD?
PTSD is becoming an acronym that everyone can identify. We all know someone who has it. Or we have been diagnosed with it. It’s not the disorder of only war vets anymore. It plays no favorites. All are eligible and welcome to the trauma club.
I am not mocking. I have CPTSD and have lived with the symptoms for nearly 35 years. I was only diagnosed 10 years ago, but it took me being honest to get there. I thought I was dying and was too afraid to tell anyone about the symptoms I was having. Thanks to Google (I may never say that again), I noticed that every one of my symptoms was listed as PTSD. I called a therapist friend, got brutally honest with him, and let him find someone who could help me.
It saved my life but has been a long process. Healing isn’t a one-time-and-it’s-over-fix. The first two years were a little difficult, riding the roller coaster of emotions, and finding a new and improved place for them. Things then opened up, and I was healthier than I had ever been. Four years of minimal symptoms followed. For 25-plus years, I had lived with constant headaches, back pain, and more. I was in heaven. My energy was through the roof, and I thought I was safe from ever experiencing “that” again. No such luck.
My divorce kicked me back to the year 2012, into pre-EMDR conditions. The heart irregularities, pain, and migraines returned. They were accompanied by two ulcers and major issues with acid reflux as well. The ride continued…
I began therapy again, mid-divorce. The new trauma had found old neural pathways and grabbed hold with a death grip. Again, it is terrifying to live inside my mind.
My therapist does EMDR as well and we apply it as needed in our sessions. No, I’m not thrilled about it. But, it’s what I have to do, unless I want to suffer more, thus requiring the people in my life to suffer more, too. It’s not fair to do that to them, at the very least.
To make it very clear: I do not go to therapy just for me. I go for my children, my parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, friends, and my partner. They deserve a healthy me, just as I do.
Now to the topic at hand…
A few years ago, I spent some time on an island off the coast of British Columbia, where there was a gathering of all of the “New Age” thinkers. They were doing workshops, addressing their up-and-coming books and their research. I attended quite a few. I watched the debut of Fantastic Fungi and heard the director speak. Cool movie…really cool guy. It was a neat week.
Because of my having PTSD, I had done some research into native people’s healing methods. Ethnobotany was a topic near and dear to my heart, one that I saw myself studying further in grad school. I honor and revere their ways of connecting with the earth and with each other, as tribal members and communities. Their relationships with the plants of their regions do not allow for plants to be resources. They are so much more than that. They have a spiritual connection with them.
Because I had studied this and loved it, I decided to go to the workshop on psilocybin, addressing healing and sex. It was interesting, to be sure. I know there are many pathways to healing. Some people need nothing but a placebo, and many things can work as placebos. I know that. Using mushrooms for healing just made sense. And it still does, to some extent.
Side note: (And I’m sure the sex is great. They said it was better than sex on weed and that interested me. Who’s not up for that?)
Healing trauma with mushrooms makes as much sense as anything else. It makes as much sense as a peyote ceremony, a sweat lodge, or an ayahuasca ceremony. These are about purging and seeing things differently. So is psilocybin…without the purging. All gain without the pain?
My concern is this:
- The people who often promote them are at least semi-educated white people.
- They have no connection with the plants as the shamanic healers once did.
- They are using these plants (and fungi) as resources, not first building a relationship with them.
- They were not grounded but kinda stuck in their 7th chakra, like my lovely ex-husband. It’s not a place to live, people.
5. I am not talking about going on dates and having conversations with them. I am talking about a long-term way of knowing these beings. We have no generations before us with a connection with them. We are not grounded in the same way as traditional healers are.
6. Often, these are almost an eco-tourism experience for people. Not that it is a bad thing, but ethical? I don’t know. Going to hang out with people who have hard-earned their knowledge, paying them to have “an experience”, and then going home, often carrying it like a badge…is that ethical? I mean…
“Let’s got to Belize, drink some nasty stuff, sit for a while, puke, sit as our heads swirl, see Jesus, and go home, changed forever!”
Sound like fun? Yes, we can do this. We, as privileged (mostly) white people can do it. So why not?
One major reason is this: We cannot change if our environments do not change. My friend, Parveen Farhoody, a behavioral psychologist, taught me about this, in-depth.
We can do the hard work, whether it be a traditional ceremony, mushrooms, EMDR, or CBT. They all “work”. But nothing really sticks unless there are other changes made as well. Our environments must change.
When we go through EMDR or CBT, we are usually living at home. It is done over several weeks or months. We go to our session, we go home, we sleep, eat, work, and live with the same people during this time. But, also, during this time, we make little changes. Unconsciously, we switch things up. We recognize things that are not helpful, or don’t fit into our lives anymore, and change them. We get up a little earlier, we take more walks in the woods, we feed ourselves better, and we spend more time with our friends. It’s incremental, and it works.
When we go the psychoactive route, they are a “fast fix”. They are often a one-time deal, and often, far away from home. There are no incremental shifts in our everyday choices. There are no little adjustments. We cannot know how things will be when we get home. Will our family be okay with the changes we make? Will it be destabilizing for them? Will they even know the “new” me? We are changed. They…they have been living our old lives the weeks or months we have been gone. This isn’t just about you, you know? And how do you plan to maintain your changes?
You and I both know that it is hard to maintain change if they are made in too big of chunks. Habits are hard to break, fast fixes, or slow.
Whether we go through more “western” treatments or more “traditional” treatments to treat our trauma, there is one thing we MUST take into consideration.
How are we going to maintain this? If we went south and saw Jesus, came home and our family doesn’t know what to do with the new and improved you, what do we do? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
We need a trusted therapist when we get home. Or, if we are home, we need to continue to go to therapy. A therapist is not a friend. They are non-biased and objective. They will help you to see things as they actually are…not as you are perceiving them.
Your perceptions are exhausting to people around you. Whether you are thinking from a place of trauma or are recovering, you don’t have your shit together. None of us do. Some of us just fake it better than others.
How you see your reality and what it truly is, needs to come together, unite, and be your forcefield of power, moving forward. Everyone will thank you. And you cannot do it alone.
I know many of you know you are badass tough guys. But, this is not an area of your life to mess around with. You cannot will it into healing. You cannot think it into healing. Logic won’t save you here, sorry.
What will save you is making incremental shifts, with the assistance of a knowledgeable and trusted therapist. No matter the route to healing you choose, you still need support all along the way.
