The #1 Mistake People Make During Psychedelic Journeys
Myself included, but I’ve learned my lesson.
Most people who haven’t experienced psychedelics are scared of them.
You should be, and you also absolutely shouldn’t be.
You should be because, if approached with intention, they have the potential to change your life, if you let them. Change is scary.
Yet, you also shouldn’t be, because they are among the least harmful substances. The “bad trip” is mostly misleading anti-drug propaganda.
There are risks, as there are risks with everything in life, but they are minuscule compared to the potential benefits.
Culture has deeply ingrained fear and sceptisim into how you view drugs, specifically psychedelics, which might make you “crazy”. This has a direct impact on how you navigate psychedelic experiences, especially challenging ones.
If you’re curious about exploring your inner landscape, read on to learn about the biggest mistake people make when journeying with psychedelics, and learn what to do instead. You’ll be well prepared for your first exploration.
What I’m offering is not a map, but a compass.
Psychedelics Act As A Mirror
The term psychedelic comes from Greek and means “mind-manifesting”.
Psychedelic substances work in magical ways. They manipulate your brain chemistry and show you visions or trigger thoughts or emotions that are uniquely relevant to you.
What manifests is not something contained in the substance itself, but something in your own mind.
Psychedelics act in many different ways. They show you patterns in your life. They help you process memories and traumas of the past. They disable your ego momentarily. They invite you to experience the reality of consciousness.
They also act as mirrors.
Sometimes, they show you what you don’t want to see.
They show you the parts within yourself that you’re afraid or ashamed of.
That’s not a pleasant experience. You don’t want to see those parts because they're emotionally charged, they cause you pain.
Yet, as psychonauts learn quickly, the pain they cause in your subconscious, often over years, far outweighs the momentary discomfort of facing them.
Sometimes, You Won’t Like What Psychedelics Show You
I’ve had beautiful journeys where psychedelics revealed the true nature of myself and the universe to me.
There was an abundance of bliss, love, joy, and warmth.
I’ve also had many, many journeys where psychedelics showed me the ugliest parts within myself and the universe. Greed, insecurity, shame, abuse.
If you’re a committed psychonaut, you give up blissful neglect.
You realize you’re not the mask you’re wearing. No, you’re the full complexity of both wonderful and terrifying qualities.
It’s understandable that you want to look away when these things come up.
The universe, the puppet master behind psychedelic drugs, is sneaky though.
It sometimes will reflect back things in coded language. It isn’t always obvious that what you’re seeing relates back to you.
So, when you don’t like what you see, it’s tempting to dismiss it as some external evil, something the drug created, a bad trip.
Here’s the Worst Thing You Can Do When You’re Scared During a Trip
Psychedelics need to be approached with respect because, while they don’t produce bad trips, they can produce challenging trips.
It can get scary, dark, or painful.
My worst journey was a six-hour death loop Ayahuasca once put me in. For hours, I cycled through all the ways one can die. Sheer psychological terror.
When you encounter a challenging experience, the worst thing you can do is to try to run away from it.
Resisting will, with absolute certainty, prolong your suffering. Everything is coming up to teach you something, and if you look away, you won’t be able to receive your lesson. Psychedelics are stubborn in that way. They will continue to push and push until you get it.
Before I was drowning, suffocating, and burning, I simply felt some mild physical discomfort. I was hesitant to ask for help. Even when I involuntarily got help because I was screaming in pain, I resisted hardcore. As a result, things got even worse. I couldn’t stop for a second to learn the lesson that all I needed was to let myself be held. I learned it the next day when the physical discomfort came back, and in response, I asked a helper to hold me. What followed was a beautiful night of reconnection.
As they say in Buddhism, pain multiplied by resistance equals suffering.
What To Do Instead When You Face Challenges
So, if you’re not supposed to be afraid when scary things show up, what then?
First of all, you need to accept that everything that’s coming up is coming up in your favor.
The monster’s purpose is not to torment but to teach, as veteran psychedelic therapist William Richards says.
In his book, he cites the example of a woman who, during an LSD-assisted therapy session, suddenly jumps up because she sees a snake in an empty seat across from her.
Her instinct is to run.
Richard, instead, tells her to stay put and look the snake into the eyes.
As the patient does as instructed, the snake transforms into her mother.
This is a perfect example of how psychedelics work and how to navigate them.
When scary shit comes up, the only thing to do is to go deeper into it.
You do so by facing what’s coming up with curiosity and judgment.
It’s Normal That This Takes Some Time To Adjust To
Trust is, for most of us, not in our nature.
Culture raises us to be afraid and skeptical.
Psychedelics require you to be trusting and curious.
It’s understandable that this can take some time to adjust to.
As Richards argues, however, navigating psychedelic journeys is a skill that can be practiced.
Anyone can do that if they have the correct information about what to do.
To some people, surrender may come naturally, but I certainly wasn’t one of them. Yet, I learned.
Over new year’s eve, I hosted a mushroom ceremony with two close friends. At one point, one of my friends wanted to change the music because she felt it was too sad. We ended up sticking with it. An hour later, she had a big release when she finally let herself be witnessed in her grief that, since losing her parent earlier in the year, she’d held so privately. I held her as she cried and released her pain. Afterward, she felt so much lighter.
This wouldn’t have happened if we had changed the music from classical nostalgia to more upbeat tunes. Also, to me and the other friend, the music wasn’t sad but beautiful. It triggered her for a reason.
In my opinion, the more triggering, the better.
Every trigger is an invitation to grow and evolve.
During journeys, as in life, we always have a choice, evolve or repeat.
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