Using Psychedelics
Grounded advice for personal exploration.
I work with people interested in exploring who they are and what they are capable of. This work often intersects with the world of psychedelics, a world filled with many myths, bad advice, and unhelpful perspectives on what consciousness-expanding tools can do. I’m writing this primer on taking psychedelics because I believe in them, because I believe in the power of people.
Mushrooms, acid, mdma, dmt and on do not transform you or give you special powers, they help you see what is capable within yourself. They’re not aids for being a better CEO, they are not the cure for medically resistant depression, nor do their effects last a lifetime.
They open a door they show you a way- a door, a way that you can follow soberly after they‘ve worn off.
Before and After are just as important as during
What you do to prepare and how you integrate what you’ve experienced are just as important- equal- as the psychedelic experience itself.
Start Slow
You want to avoid blasting off on psychedelics and taking too much too soon. It’s not necessary to treat any opportunity to take psychedelics as your first and only opportunity. Even experienced psychedelic-doers follow the adage “you can always take more, you can never take less”.
Space and Safety
Festivals like Outside Lands or Electric Forest and Burning Man are challenging environments when sober and can be really disorienting when taking psychdelics. The openness, creativity, personal expansion thats possible in expanded states of conciousness is in part attributed to these substances being “non-specific amplifiers.” They turn things up, tune you in- but to what can be greatlly affected by your environement. If you are reading this, and have gotten this far you’ve heard before of the importance of Set and Setting.- this is why that is important. I emphasize to those I work with that a Set and Setting most conducive for a trip are places that are clearly safe and non-confining.
Safety means you aren’t worried about your physical, relational and emotional well being. You don’t want to be fearful and thus on high alert. This means taking psychedelics somewhere where you’re not worried about cops, judgement from someone you’re in a relationship with (mom, boss, partner, sibiling, new friend etc). It also means opening yourself up to yourself somewhere thats not going to be so stimulating you can not find peace, or ground yourself. Being confused or scared, or lost or worried in states of expanded openness is really challenging. thats why organizations like Zendo offer psychdelic support at festivals, for experienced and brand new psychdelic explorers who’ve been rocked by whats happening around them and gotten overwhelmed.
Space determines your experiences as much as safety. Being able to move easily and freely, breath clean air, get into the sun or move into the shade are all critical pieces of having a nice experience, on psychedelics or sober. So be mindful of where you are taking. Psychedelics for the first time at a music festival is not the move. Mushrooms are not like pot. Strength and effect can vary from mushroom to mushroom in the same bag. And if you’ve never tried a drug before, it takes time and experience to understand how it will affect YOU personally. It makes little difference if you are bigger or smaller than someone else taking a similar dose. Psychedelics are not like beer.
Give Yourself Grace
You will think and experience things that you weren’t expecting. You may not make any headway on whatever you took psychedelics to work with. We have a limited perspective, inherently. It is part of being human. Expanding your consciousness is opening yourself to what lives inside of you. Your true self. Every exploration of who you are is worthwhile, even if it means you didn’t figure what job you are supposed to take next, what your purpose is or why you are depressed. The very nature of the psychedelic experience is to explore, to watch, to wait and see what your higher self wants to share- don’t white knuckle it trying to solve a “problem”.
Avoid Distractions
Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you ~ Kabir
Another way to say it is reject modernity. Phones, televisions, computers these are modern tools based on modern constructs that exist completely OUTSIDE of your body. There is nothing natural about our phones, we were not born with them. Save some playlists of music you like, avoid stuff with words, gentle easy stuff like this and put your phone on do not disturb. Movies and television shows were made to entertain you, not support your awakening so avoid the tube while you’re altered, theres nothing there worth your time in this open state.
Altar Of Now, based in San Francisco, is the work and calling of Bholenath.