An older male psychedelic and MDMA therapist
I’m a Caucasian male in my mid-60s. i’ve been interested in psychedelics for about five years and have been pretty involved in them during that time and have found them very much enriching in my life, in my personal life.
Well, what got you interested in experimenting with psychedelics, and then you can go into what was it like for you and what did you gain from it?
Yeah. So I’m a psychotherapist, and also a longtime meditation practitioner. I’ve had some profound experiences, often in meditation retreats. I would call them mystical experiences that have been life-changing. Then as this psychedelic renaissance began to become more public, I was reading stories of people having similar life-changing experiences without having to go to meditation retreats for five or ten years. I thought that that could be really helpful to my clients when it became legal and be really helpful to the general population. So I got interested, read about them a lot, and then started experimenting with them. I’ve done more than experimenting. I have worked with a pretty wide variety of psychedelic substances and found them really, really profoundly helpful. I’ve found that with other psychonauts we can develop really really close intimate authentic relationships that I really value.
My first my first experiences were with psilocybin. And I’ve had some profound experiences. There’s one in particular I want to talk about. I have done psilocybin in a variety of settings, but mostly listening to music with headphones, sometimes with a guide, but then later on as I’ve gotten more comfortable with the medicine, on my own with just family members at home in case I needed something. Several times I did heroic doses of psilocybin while listening to the Johns Hopkins playlist that they put together. And you may be familiar with that playlist. It’s got a lot of classical music in it. It’s got some Eastern music in it. I did that a couple of times. And each of those times, I had a struggle when the playlist got to Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. I don’t remember the number. it’s a very intense piece of music that I like when I’m not on psilocybin. It’s very intense emotionally. There’s a lot of grief in the music. On psilocybin it sounded to me like the voice of doom. And I would always, you know, I’d listen through the whole thing, and it would be sort of a rough ride. and then back to the more pleasant, enjoyable, other classical pieces.
Anyway, so the third time I did it, I’m still kind of trying to master this, the playlist. And this time when I got to Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, it didn’t put me off at all. It just felt like energy. It just felt like a different kind of energy. As in, it didn’t feel negative. It felt intense. But it just felt like a different flavor of energy. and a flavor that was interesting that I could just listen to with curiosity. And that was a significant shift and really interesting. And then shortly after it was over, and before I knew it, I think it was a Brahms choral piece, all of a sudden I sort of vanished all of a sudden I was the music and I was every single note in the music in this really joyful beautiful dance. I was all the notes produced by the instruments, all of the male voices, all of the female voices in this just wonderful dance and just so joyful is actually one of the most joyful experiences I’ve had in my life, if not possibly the most joyful experience I’ve had in my life. It felt like I was everything nothing was left out. I enjoy dancing but I’m a terrible dancer but I was just the most graceful dancer in this as I became these notes and then basically listened to and enjoyed the rest of the playlist until the playlist was over and the psilocybin started to wear off.
It was just an amazing experience that brought a lot of joy into my life. I would definitely call it an experience of ego dissolution. I wasn’t there but something was there, awareness was there. But the unitary solid thing that I tend to experience myself as wasn’t there. I was all of the pieces in this wonderful beautiful dance.
So were you physically moving?
No I was not moving at all. I was flying. I was dancing even though my body wasn’t moving. what did it feel like in your body did you feel energy moving through your body did you have any physical sensation?
Yes I felt my body felt very open. And there was joy, especially in my heart area and my solar plexus, but just kind of throughout my whole body. And I would say a piece of it was the joy of openness. I often, I like bodywork. I like receiving bodywork. And I will, I try to do some kind of bod work before I do a trip. I’d had Reiki not long before the experience, maybe the day before the experience and that had I think helped open my body I also meditated beforehand
So your energy centers were open?
Yeah my energy centers were open right and I think there’s a wonderful synergy between bodywork or energy work and psychedelics, that you know the combination of them can really open up and a lot of this what I consider spiritual work, is about opening, just opening up to everything and so my energy centers were pretty open
So you were set up to receive? Yes Have you ever gotten body work afterwards and not that I can think of I mean by afterwards you mean how long afterwards well like the next day or you know a couple of days within the week I guess the question is what does your does your body get more relaxed during these experiences or and when you come out of it is is there tension out of the muscle that was like chronically there before you know would massage be helpful afterwards that’s kind of like i’m wondering
Yeah okay. I come out of these experiences very relaxed and feeling very open and so i don’t really feel the need for body work it’d be interesting to see what body work would do with that level of openness but I’ve not really I’ve not thought of that and not tried that and I had a question about the music um that playlist is that playlist put together intentionally to evoke certain emotions? Yeah. The playlist is put together by Johns Hopkins researchers for research with psilocybin, and they use it with the people. And basically, they’re doing a couple of things. So most of the research they’ve been doing is on depression and on people who are terminally ill. and what I understand about how they put the playlist together it’s mostly music that is beautiful or uplifting or both and it also has some music in it aimed at bringing up anxiety and things like sorrow or grief and one of the purposes for that is When people are depressed, not only is their mood down, but their range of emotional experience is more narrow. S
So they’re trying to combine the music with the psilocybin to open people up to a wider range of experience. And partly their experience is probably more narrow because they’re depressed and they’re avoiding things that are painful. and paradoxically it’s considered healing to open up to all of it maybe not so paradoxically and then the playlist ends on very positive songs. All of the music except a few of the songs at the end don’t have singing in English so as not to distract you. So it’s a really, it’s a very carefully and intentionally constructed playlist. You can find it on Spotify very easily if you want to check it out.
Okay. And you listened to this three different experiences? Yes, I did. And the first time when it went through that, you know, the music that was evoking more depth of sorrow or so forth. why how do you think what changed for you between the between the the first time that you went through it with that music on and then the the other time where you didn’t have that same you know that Yeah it was the third time. I’m sure why it changed but I was. What was different was I wasn’t getting caught up in the despair and so-called negative emotions. I had more distance from it, and in a sense, I was closer to it. It’s kind of paradoxical, but… So, instead of having an aversive response to it, I was able to just open up to it that third time. And then I just experienced it as energy that was interesting.
That’s what some sages say about our so-called negative emotions. They’re just energy. They’re just that we get too caught up in and too identified with. Yes. I think with the Gorecki I was able to hear the music without pulling away from it you know hear it without contracting and then that set the stage for me being blown open by one of the next pieces so it got by the third time you had the experience it was quite profound it was it was very profound like i said maybe possibly the most joyful experience of my life So how did that change did that change you afterwards coming back to your daily life how did you feel like before and then afterwards did you notice a difference could you anything different
Yeah well afterwards I felt lighter, more relaxed, more comfortable in my body. mI experienced the healing effect of intense joy and the, um, the, uh, enlivening effect of intense joy. And, and I would say since then, joy has been more accessible to me. Yes. That’s what I was wondering. Like, how did that, how did that experience shift you in your regular day to day life afterwards? you know a week later a month later you know that kind of thing
I would say it was part of a process that had been already going on with the meditation retreats where like at one point in my life, not only did I not experience joy, but I didn’t even really know what joy was. I knew what happiness was. I knew what contentment was. I also knew what unhappiness was and tension and anxiety. But I didn’t really know joy. And I had an experience at a meditation retreat where joy just came bubbling up. And it was confusing to me because it felt good. It felt great, but I felt like I was losing my bearings because I thought of myself as someone who’s just serious and puts one foot in front of the other. And then these journeys continued that process. So, um, opened me up to joy and, and helped dissolve my identity as someone for whom life was difficult and who had to hard at it. I would say this was maybe the culmination of moving out of that and moving into a world life that’s joyful.
What does joy feel like in your body? What does it feel like in your heart? Do you feel like a bounce in your step or do you want to giggle?
My heart feels like it’s singing. Another way I feel joy is it feels like champagne bubbles in my body, it’s almost like a giggle, sometimes you can’t hold the back. It just kind of bubbles up for no reason. it feels like uncaused joy, like you have no reason not to feel joy. It’s not necessarily to have a reason to feel joy. It’s just there in my life. I feel more connected when I see my wife and feel joy when I see my it’s a great way to be.
Okay, so you’re a therapist and you deal with a lot of people with trauma and so forth. Do you have that own your own personal background?
I don’t have anything like big T trauma in my life, so I don’t feel like I’m taking these things because of trauma. These medicines are remarkably helpful for people with trauma, have you personally worked with people who really have trauma, maybe are stuck in it, but have experienced psychedelics that have changed their lives and have helped them heal from it?
Yes I have. I work with clients with ketamine and have seen that to be really helpful for some of them. I would love to be working with psilocybin and MDMA, but I’m not going to take that legal risk. I’m not going to, but I have had clients come to me, and in the course of our work together, they go off and do psychedelics, and then come back and talk to me about it. I’m not recommending these to them because of the legal risks, et cetera. But I’ve had some people do that, and it’s been really rich work. I’ve seen a couple of people get better from things that I’ve never seen people get better from before.
So it would be great for them being that you’re the therapist and you’ve had your own experiences with that, so you can relate to what they’re talking about and the fact that you’ve been with them before and after to help them you know connect everything and smooth it through to help them look at what their process what happened.
Yeah, and keep myself out of trouble. I’ve got to be careful You know what I doing is really harm reduction and then helping them make the most of an experience they had, but yes, it’s certainly been helpful to them to have me. I think it’s been actually indispensable for them to have me or someone like me helping with it.
Exactly what I was thinking. You have also worked with MDMA. Anything that stands out?
My first experience with MDMA was really profound. I basically felt my heart was opening and full of love, and then my whole body was opening, and my whole body was full of love, and then the room was full of love, and then there was so much love in the room there was no room for fear. I specifically noticed that. There’s just no room for fear here. And I spent maybe 30 minutes fantasizing about all the people I wanted to share this with. But of course that’s complicated. But then I got to thinking about my marriage, and about the places where my wife and I have issues, and my ability to empathize with her. I’m a therapist. I think my ability to empathize is really good. Also, as a therapist, I think I know how to conduct myself in a marriage in a mentally healthy way. But under the influence of MDMA I could see I could empathize with my wife much more strongly, and it was so obvious to me. It was like right in my face that I had a lot more to do with the issues that we have when we have them than I thought.
And I did not feel like judging myself. I didn’t feel defensive. I didn’t feel bad about it. It was just a loving realization. And that has had a significant effect on our marriage for the better. Actually, when I got home, when I got back home and saw her, sat down and talked to her, I cried and I said, I’m sorry. It was real beautiful. She loved it like ‘oh thank you’. It’s was like ‘well it took you long enough but thank you’. Sounds like gratitude for your partner during that experience.
Yeah, and of course, the acute experience ends, and you’re not walking around with that. But some of it, a significant amount of it has stayed with me. I recognize more fully some of my contributions to our issues ,and i’m more appreciative of her and more able to understand her.
Nice yeah when you say the room filled with love what does that feel like what does love filling the room feeling the room feel like is it a physical is it a physical sensation is it just is it it’s a physical and a mental thing? and it was
I was feeling it in my body but it was as if I could feel the whole room. It was not just in my body. I could feel the blood in the air. it’s hard to describe like in your body, on your body, as your body and all around your body, like the entire space. yeah Yeah. So any fear that might have been there just got pushed right out of the space.
In The Course of Miracles, it says the opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite of love is actually fear. And I think I, for the first time in my life, understood that. and so with all that love there. It was just fear that could not let it enter the space. The Course says when there isn’t any fear there’s love, or fear isn’t real. Not only is it not real but it makes us contract while love opens us up. it’s the one thing that opens us. I mean it opens and closes depending on what’s going on around me. Now I have a lot more awareness of the openness of my heart. Actually, I’ve developed this subtle ability. I can turn my heart into a lantern. And it affects the energy of the room and seems to affect the people around me. it’s like I just let it open, and it just glows like a lantern, only it’s not light, it’s love. I forget. I still don’t remember to do that as much as would be helpful. It’s like a lighthouse that’s on the corner by the ocean and it has this really strong light thaty goes around in a circle.
I’m seeing you as you’re saying that it’s just radiating out this frequency.
Yes. People are feeling it, and it’s actually affecting change everywhere. They don’t know where exactly they can’t describe it because it’s just a radiance that comes out at them and it radiates out 360 degrees.
So it is kind of like, it is like a lighthouse, only instead of going in a circle, it just stays that way. Have you ever tried it where you’re around somebody and they need they need some love and without touching them you just turn on that that heart center and radiate it out to them and see what happens?
I have, and never say anything about it. Sometimes I can see the effect on them, or what seems to be the effect.
So you’ve got to get up in the morning and turn on your heart radiator. Yeah. first thing in the morning. That way when you’re looking in the mirror, it’s radiating to the mirror and bouncing back to you. Yeah. Good idea. Thank you. So is there any other experience that you would like to, that speaks to you that you would like to share? I think that’s enough for now. There are other experiences but I probably should get home to my wife now.
A middle-aged male’s intro to this area
I battled alcoholism and drug addiction for 26 years of my life, and I’ve been sober from alcohol and drugs since February 8th of 2017. And I thought that getting sober from alcohol and drugs would kind of really help me to become more whole from a lot of childhood trauma that I grew up with. Having experienced, having witnessed an alcoholic father, you know, as a child, and also having experienced a lot of verbal and emotional, and physical abuse growing up. I grew up with this low self-esteem as a result of being beaten as a child. So whenever I did something wrong, that was the punishment I got: beaten. I had my first drink of alcohol at the age of 12, and my addiction took off full steam from 16 through the age of about 40 years old.
I’m almost 50 now, and in 2020, I went through a divorce. At the time, I started meeting with a therapist, and now that I had been sober from alcohol and drugs, I realized that I was abstaining from substances, and that was great, but I felt a massive disconnect emotionally and internally, and I didn’t know it. When I started meeting with my current therapist, we were working together for about maybe three years. And it was a struggle because I just was blocked off and didn’t really realize it. I didn’t really, I didn’t see it. But I would go into his office every single week. We would meet weekly, you know, for about three or four years. And often, I was just stuck. I’m like, it was a great session. He’s an excellent therapist with the modality of internal family systems. But I just was stuck no matter what. I’d have a great session, maybe, maybe not.
But then it’s like I couldn’t shake a lot of guilt from growing up. I couldn’t shake the guilt of having never fought for my ex-wife and just let my marriage go. I was dealing with the guilt of that and immediately got into another relationship right after. thinking that relationships would really solve that internal disconnect that I had my whole life. And all I did was struggle in my marriage. I struggled in the relationship after my marriage, struggling in therapy. My therapist introduced me to the idea of MDMA therapy in a very controlled environment. Initially, I was opposed to it because I was afraid. I was afraid of here I am in recovery, and now I’m going to be ingesting a mind-altering drug. I thought about it for several months.
The reason for MDMA was my therapist saw I was struggling with self-love, struggling to love myself, and I was. I got to a point. It was January of 2022, a point where I wanted to die. I hated myself. I just couldn’t deal with this anymore. I started taking anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications. I wanted to end my life, and at that point, it dawned on me that maybe I should give MDMA a try. So I connected with my therapist and said, “You know what, I’m willing to give it a try. I’m scared.”
There was a lot of preparation that went into it. There was a lot of intentionality that went into it. I mean, it was very, very well thought out. And the first thing that I would try was MDMA. It was an extremely powerful experience because what MDMA did was, I’m a big thinker. I think a lot. I get paid to think at work, and MDMA kind of disconnected the ability of me being able to think, to reconnect me to only feel while I was on that medicine, which lasted about six or seven hours. I had some of the most profound, most beautiful experiences that I’ve ever had in my life.
To take a step back, in order for me to have done that, I had to get off of anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication, and I did. I haven’t been back on any anti-depression or anti-anxiety medication since. That experience on MDMA took me into places that I had never experienced before. It brought me to places where I reconnected with my father, who had passed away from the disease of alcoholism. Not that he took his life, but the disease took his life. And I had such profound experiences while on MDMA that I was able to feel and experience my dad my parents in the most loving, caring way, as if MDMA took me back to help me relive what childhood would have been like.
In a way it was replacing a lot of the painful memories of what it was, to what it should have been, to give me a different perspective, that started to really heal a lot of parts of me. I remember just spending, I don’t even know how much time, but probably hours just sitting in an open green field on a beautiful sunny day, playing with my father. You know things that I never did with my dad, but I was able to experience enjoying him and enjoying my parents at times. I was able to experience being my father through the lens of my mom and vice versa. I just felt like I grew up during that experience in such a different household. I felt like the medicine was helping me kind of recreate new experiences in my life.
It started me on a healing journey. It was hard because once you come off the medicine, you’re open. Your emotions are open. You’re just wide open. My therapist told me not to make any big life-changing decisions over the next couple of weeks because you’re going to be in a very vulnerable state. So I didn’t. We continued in therapy, and it kind of took on a different twist. It just felt different all around. and but I still was struggling, just not as much. I definitely felt like I had broken through and was finally getting somewhere.
We decided to do a second session of MDMA about two months later. It just continued down this healing path of experiencing life very, very, very differently. That same year, the third experience would be with psilocybin. What it did for me was unlike MDMA, which really brought in this immense love. Psilocybin was much different in that it caused me to experience life from multiple dimensions where I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much as I cried on psilocybin. But I just cried and cried and cried for hours because it was as if I was experiencing life in the most painful to the most loving ways in waves. You know, there were good experiences, There were hard experiences, painful experiences, happy experiences. Psilocybin was basically just taking me and giving me a tour of my life from every and every angle that I didn’t even know existed. That year I ended up doing four to five journeys combined. Not together, of course, but between MDMA and psilocybin, I did multiple journeys with some of the most unbelievable and amazing experiences.
When I look back, I haven’t been on anti-depression medication, haven’t been on anti-anxiety medication. I haven’t been on sleep medication, something I’ve depended on my whole life. It also helped me to begin to accept some things in life that were hard for me. Things like bringing closure to my marriage and forgiving myself. I had never been able to do that. I was finally able to start to forgive and love myself and find self-worth. I was able to walk away from this toxic relationship that I got into after my marriage because I finally found myself. I finally had arrived. I finally knew who the man in the mirror was. It was almost as if I finally had identified myself versus the lifelong journey of lacking identity. I felt like I finally was starting to identify myself and identify who I was, and love myself, and realize that I do deserve good things in life.
There was closure to a lot of painful times in life. The divorce, several separate relationships. several close friends that just left my life after years of friendships that otherwise would have brought me down. I was able to just start to reconcile much better than ever before. I became more in tune with myself. And finally, the modality of internal family systems started to make sense. I started to really live life and work in harmony with all of the various parts inside of me, where before, there was constant inner turmoil and inner wars happening.
To this day, life is just very different for me, where even during my most difficult times and experiences, even this last year that is the first time in two decades that I’m alone and not in a relationship. I’m okay with that, and I love myself for that. Last year I was able to take a vacation out of the country for a whole month alone. I just don’t think that any of that would have been possible without the help of the help of these medicines along with therapy. I’ve never done one of these medicines not accompanied by a therapist. I’ve always done it in a controlled environment and it’s just been some of the most beautiful and amazing experiences for me that have helped bring a lot of healing into my life. That’s all I can think of.
Do you have plans to continue with this type of therapy?
I do. I do. I didn’t this year. The only reason for that was because I was on a very big million project at work that really needed my undivided attention. And the one thing when I am on MDMA or psilocybin, it does strain me for several days and it takes me several days to recover. And this year was a year that I just didn’t have that type of time to be down. The start of next year I am going to be going on another spiritual journey consisting of the use of psychedelics which I’m excited to get back to because the experiences that I have of psychedelics are some that I couldn’t even in my best intentions of trying to describe I fail at it because the experiences are just out of this world.
I can imagine it would be pretty hard to describe to somebody who hasn’t had any experience with it. When you say it drains you, is this your body physically drained?
Yeah, your body is physically drained, and mentally and emotionally too. You know, when you’re on MDMA, what it does is it depletes you of your serotonin levels. And that’s why it’s important to take 5-HTP afterward and vitamin C for the next two weeks to help replenish that. So it leaves you in a very somber feeling state. and you know with psilocybin for me, it feels like I’ve been in and out of a washer and dryer all day. It does take a couple of days to really recover physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Then you have to process, don’t you? Take a minute to process everything from the before, the during, and how you feel after.
Yeah, and that’s part of the reason why I’ve always done it with my therapists. Because as you’re coming off the medicine, even while you’re on it, they get to journal for you. Um, and, and it’s important, really important to at least how I was taught to really work with your therapist afterward. Like, you know, I’m talking about if I did a journey, a medicinal journey, uh, today, I’d be meeting with my therapist by no later than next week, if not a couple of these after, because it’s important to process. I’ve been journaling ever since. And then I have an opportunity to meet with him and kind of just work through it because you can’t do one without the other, in my opinion.
These medicine journeys are amazing for me while accompanied by therapy. I haven’t spoken about this in a while, and just talking through this takes me back to some of the experiences that I had while on psychedelics. And I’m like, wow, that’s all I can say. Being with a therapist helped ground me, and they do teach you how to ground yourself so that when you’re going through that, they do teach you how to ground yourself, but if you’re struggling, which I have at times, and my therapist was there to kind of help walk me through that part of the journey that I was stuck in, that I was having a hard time navigating. The therapist really was there at times; at times, it was even just simply having your therapist, just like you know, put their hand on your shoulder.
He would write down things that I would say that he felt were important to kind of cover afterwards that would bring back whatever was going on at that time right correct and that because otherwise it could just like just all go by like a train absolutely but then when you when you have someone there with you and then even you know in times that you’re talking later on in sessions you have reference points too that can come you can come back to that’s correct that’s correct it’s almost like it’s almost like putting like a pin on the map that’ll allow for you to be able to go back to remember that place so you’re yeah you can hold your place but you don’t personally have to hold the place you have a place there you have the person holding space for you and can and can just jot down the highlights or some really pivotal places that you can go back and talk later and also having them there like just putting hand on the shoulder sounds like you’re kind of in between different realities you know the reality that actually happened and the reality that you can imagine that would be a better reality and all these different you know different perspectives and so if you can kind of if you get lost in that just having someone there to touch you brings you back in a place where you can then move forward from.
Is that what you mean by grounding?
Um, when we talk about grounding, there are times that the medicine may want to take you into a direction that could be painful, and you’re struggling with that pain but it’s something that you need to visit that you’re struggling with it grounding yourself is more in the lines of going back to your intention.
One of the things that we’ve always worked on is what is your intention behind this? And going back there when you’re struggling, that’s really grounding yourself. It’s really about I am going through a lot of pain right now, and I am struggling right now. But going back to that intention that I wrote out helps ground me to why I’m doing what I’m doing that will help me best navigate the painful journey or experience that I’m going through right now through that valley. And being grounded helps you get through the valley. But it helps you get through the valley with the purpose or with a purpose. Which helps surround you because then the feeling of, oh my God, this is overbearing and too painful isn’t as overbearing and painful because you’re going through it. But you’re going through it understanding the purpose of why I’m doing this and the need of having to get to the other side that I’ve been resisting and fighting my whole life. and the medicine creates a pathway for me to walk through there finally if that makes sense,
Yes, it does, and you do. You set an intention before each journey, whether you’re taking what are either of the substances, so it could be different for each one, but there is an intention.
It’s like it’s the purpose of why I’m doing it, but also to be open-minded. If the medicine has a different agenda, be okay to submit to it. If you’re in a spin, let’s say, and you’re like, all right, where am I, what am I doing, what is happening here, my intention helps remind me of why I’m doing this to begin and move forward with it instead of getting stuck in the eddy swirling around you. If I’m in the middle of nowhere and I don’t know what direction to go in next, then before me is that intention that I see when I’m ready to turn. At the same time, you’ll get whatever you need from each journey.
Here’s the amazing thing about these journeys. The beautiful thing about with psilocybin is that no matter what, if you could imagine closing your fist and like holding it really tight to prevent somebody else from opening it. Well, you might prevail. That person may not be able to open that fist, not with psilocybin. Psilocybin will peel back onion upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. Fighting it will do you no good. Getting into it is what’s going to help. That’s what I mean about also preparing before these journeys. I just don’t understand how people do this alone or they do this recreationally. I couldn’t even imagine doing this alone or recreationally, not with the experiences that I’ve had. I needed somebody there with me, and you know psilocybin may have an agenda. It’s great for you to come with your intention and your purpose, but just be willing to submit to the agenda that psilocybin has while you’re on it because it will more than likely differ from what you think you’re there to do. It feels like there’s a connection with the divine spiritual connection. You’re opening yourself up to God. In my case. and the experiences that I’ve had with God have been unbelievable. They’ve been amazing. I mean, you’re talking about experiencing healing on some of these journeys that I couldn’t even fathom experiencing while trying to do all sorts of things, attending church and everything my whole life, and never experiencing a breakthrough even close to this.
Why do you think that is?
I think that MDMA does a really good job of getting me to feel. It helps me shut everything out around me in my mind, and it brings me to this place in my heart that I feel God has found. And it helps me. I think one of the challenges in life in general is oftentimes, we live life from the mind downward and throughout the body, where life is best lived and experienced when experienced from the heart out. And MDMA has done that for me where it will shut everything else down that I can’t really think my way out of it, but I can certainly feel the world like I’ve never felt before. Those six or seven hours that I’m on there are equivalent to, I don’t know, 20, 30 years. Wow.
And psilocybin is the same. Because, I mean, you’re going through – psilocybin has taken me through not just my life but generations of my genealogy. In some instances, dating back to experiencing times from my father’s side of the family that has experienced a lot of death, a lot of suicide, a very dark family. You’ve never, you just can’t get there on your own.
So would you highly recommend this type of therapy for people?
Absolutely. I would only recommend this kind of therapy for people working in conjunction with a therapist, not alone. I was told once that I should watch the documentary on Netflix called How to Change Your Mind. I’m glad I watched it after my first psychedelic journey because when I watched it, I said, oh my God, this is exactly what I experienced. The experiences that I’ve had on those medicines are, I just can’t even, just the simple fact that I’d do it again. And basically, the best work that I’ve ever done on myself, the absolute best work that I’ve ever done on myself has been under the use of psychedelics. And I mean, the absolute most intense work has been under psychedelic. It’s not even an hour-long therapy session with my therapist, who I love that guy. But it been they say that one psychedelic session can equate to months or years of therapy. I believe that because of what I experienced on these psychedelic. Because the mind has all the preconceived, the perceptions and the judgments and everything else. Then to just go in there and have the experience. Albert Einstein said it best. You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it. Yeah. You know, and just the spiritual experiences alone that I have experienced, that I have felt unbelievable. Just the fact that I love myself. It’s changed my relationships with my friends and with my loved ones. Even you know my boss at work, so I’m a senior director of technology, and my boss, a couple of weeks back, said to me you know something in you is different that has changed because even under the highest amount of stress that you’re under. You’re different in the way you handle it. You used to fold very quickly. You used to get aggravated and frustrated, and now you’re just cool, calm, and collected, and you see the good of everything. And I attribute a lot of that to a lot of the medicine work. You know, it just changed my life, and it just continues because I think they say that when you go on one psychedelic journey, it can go on for, you know, forget they say, maybe about six months to a year where you’re still experiencing a lot of the change. And I believe that to be true. it seemed like you would continue as things drop down or come back into your recollection that you would just get one more aha because if you got that much information so fast in such a short period of time. It’s like a strobe, you know it’d take a minute for everything to catch up to what you actually experienced. So I could see where it could extend a while afterward. Absolutely. Absolutely. And coming across, say, an experience that you’ve had in the past that you’re re-experiencing, but now you’re experiencing it from a completely different point of view.
Uh-huh. So you’re not having the somatic experience that would have been triggered. I’m imagining that when you said you cried and cried and cried, that’s releasing a lot of that memory out of the body so that you’re less triggered that way physically as well.
I agree, and not just that, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and all that other side.
So, your body is going to react differently or not in situations where people could have predicted your behavior in the past. Correct? And maybe even in the same experience or same situation you could have, you would appear to be different in it, right?
Yeah. I mean, there are situations that I have found myself in that I would have felt in the past. I would have grown frustrated. I just would have caved. I would have been overwhelmed. Just don’t overwhelm me like that anymore.
So the biggest thing that I’ve heard you say and repeat is that you love yourself and when saying you love yourself, that is your first and prime primary relationship. So you have less dependency upon all other relationships to give you something that that seems to be needed or missing. It sounds like you can give yourself what you need now.
Yes yes yes. I used to be very codependent. I really needed somebody else to really validate me, to reassure me. The use of MDMA and psilocybin have helped me arrive at a place where I used to be very good. I used to, without realizing it, if someone talked to me about their problems, I would walk away, and their problems became my problems. I could have been having a great day and, after having a conversation with someone, walked away and down and depressed. Now, when I start to think to myself, and I drop into the process I’m feeling. What are my problems, or am I feeling somebody else’s? I used to never be able to set the two apart.
That’s a lot of freedom right there, isn’t it? Because everybody’s got something.
Yeah, even recently, I’ve had some friends that have had some issues in their lives, and I’ll be there for them, and I’ll empathize with them, and I’ll support them and help them out, but I don’t make their problems my problems anymore.
And they’re not triggering your problems because they’re no longer your problems. Correct? So without having a charge there, because you have discharged it through your medicine journeys, you can hear them, you can empathize with them, but it’s not stirring up a past that now you have to do something. Correct? So, that’s the beauty of being able to hold space for somebody else and not needing anything because you don’t at that point.
Absolutely. A beautiful thing. It really is freedom at its best that I’ve never ever experienced before until I started to journey on these medicines.
Is there anything else you would like to add to this? I mean you’ve given a lot as a contribution to others, how it contributed to your life, the value of it to you. Is there anything remaining that you’d like to say?
No. I think, wow. I’m thinking about the fact that I’m no longer on the anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications that I was on for many years. The fact that I love myself and I continue to love myself. The fact that I’ve been able to exponentially grow since going on psychedelic journeys and the fact that my life is more full and more meaningful today, and I feel purposeful. I just, anything else is, I don’t know. I mean, I mean, this is still a process for me, and I’m still looking forward to more, more spiritual encounters as I continue my journey with MDMA and psychedelics, which is far from over. So I’m just excited. I’m excited, and I used to never be excited about life.
So you’ve had a physical healing by being able to sleep better and not take the medications. You’ve had a physical healing as well as mental, emotional, and spiritual ones. That’s correct?
Yeah. I can’t think of anything else. I owe the world to my therapist, who saw me in a really, really dark place, and he took a risk introducing these illegal drugs as a possible solution. But I think he cared enough. And, you know, having gone through his own journeys, realized that maybe this might help me too. I was in bad shape. I mean, to get to the point where you want to die, you don’t want to live anymore. And to get to where I’m at today where I’m like, I enjoy life. Even in the most difficult times, life is still enjoyable. Life is still, it’s still good. it’s still better than it ever was before.
How does it get any better? And how can it keep getting better and better and better and better? So that’s the question. How can it just keep getting better?
Well, thank you so much for spending this time sharing your experience and passing it on to other people who could experience the same breakthroughs and healing you’ve had.
Awesome. My absolute pleasure. It’s great connecting with you too.
Great connecting with you, too
A 39 y/o woman with a toddler child
I always had this idea that psychedelics wasn’t something that I would ever want to do, because I didn’t want to see things that weren’t there, because that was what you see in the media and what you think it’s going to be like. It wasn’t until I met my husband that I kind of opened my willingness to use psychedelics. The first thing I ever tried was mushrooms, and that really helped me feel safe with it, because, again, I just had this idea that I would, like, freak out on it, or the world would change, and I’d see things that weren’t there.
My husband had taken some mushrooms and didn’t mention that he had, and I was talking to him, and I realized how normal he was acting. Oh, so you’re not just crazy, and your eyes aren’t popping out your head and stuff like that. So we did some, I guess low doses of mushrooms and acid. I just opened up to it, and was using it in a recreational sense. It was a time for us to connect as a couple. We weren’t married yet at the time, but it was just something we would do. Then I experimented with DMT, and that was my foray until we spent some time in Ecuador.
When COVID happened, my husband I both left our jobs and kind of opted out on this crazy adventure. We went and hiked half of the Appalachian Trail. We had no experience whatsoever had never camped or anything before. We met these really amazing people. One of the people we met was a friend of mine. She was going to Ecuador, and asked if we wanted to come. While down there, we participate in a mushroom ceremony. That was my first time doing psilocybin in a medicinal sense, and it was so impactful. Prior to the session, I had gotten some Rolfing done in my hips. And I’ve always heard and believed that you store a lot of trauma in your hips. It was a beautiful ceremonial setting with smooth music. It was so intense, and it hit me so hard. It felt like the medicine was speaking to me. I don’t know if that sounds crazy. It’s what my experience was. I had been storing all this trauma from men in my life who had hurt me. like my
I didn’t know my father growing up. I was 22 when I met him. I found him on the internet. And just like men that I dated I just felt myself releasing them to the fire that was in the center of the maloca. It was just a very intense feeling, and I found myself curled up in a ball. A lot of crying, trying to just release the old trauma. From there, my husband and I started venturing more into plant medicine, using it as a medicine, instead of just in the recreational sense. My husband spent some time traveling to Ecuador to learn how to cook ayahuasca and other plant medicines. We tried or sat with or experienced a couple of different ones, like Changa, Bucha combo, just all kinds of plant medicines. A lot of what I felt was similar to really powerful mushroom experiences. It was a connectedness and a sense that I don’t know, like if just everything that we’re stressing out and fussing over and all of that. It’s just kind of bullshit, you know, like, it doesn’t fit in the grand scheme of it all, it really just doesn’t matter. And it’s really just your own experience and kind of controlling that to the extent of how you react to things and believe in, like, power manifestation and stuff like that. I feel like you are able to create your own reality. And I feel like these experiences have really helped me dive and dial into that more and open my eyes to it a lot of the connectedness of people and things and places. It’s like you’re looking at something, you know when you’re on a mushroom trip and it’s breathing, like you’re looking at a wood grain, and it’s moving, and it’s not in the sense of like, Oh, I feel like I’m going crazy, but you just realize how everything is alive and connected. And
I know that feels and sounds really Woo, but that’s kind of the biggest impact I that it had on me. Since then, I’ve done a couple of other mushroom ceremonies, sat with Ayahuasca, and done just lots of different psychedelics. These days, one of the things that I always find when I’m doing these psychedelics is that it’s a journey into yourself, and a lot of times I find that I’m thinking about things or things just surface for me that I probably haven’t thought about in 20 years. But apparently, it was something that was in my subconscious, or something that I hadn’t let go of, or was eating at me, whether I was aware of it or not. An
I always feel that these psychedelics are a type of medicine. And I feel like it allows you to kind of pull back layers and see more of your true self, and allows you to get more of that. Yeah, because I think the craziest thing is just the things that do come up during these psychedelic trips, the things that you’re thinking about, the experiences that you’re having, the things that just pop into your mind and you find yourself sitting with and thinking over. It’s like the things that pop up in my mind have always been things that I’ve probably needed to work on, and it’s helped me work on myself and being more in line with the person that I’d like to see myself As, versus being a little bit more in the dark about what’s really going on with me.
So I don’t know if that was a long ramble, if any of that made sense?
Yes, yes, it did. So is this something you would recommend for somebody else?
Oh, yeah. The thing is, you have to get over the fear of the unknown. It’s helped me to feel more comfortable in the unknown, because that’s the scary part. It’s getting over that hurdle of what’s going to happen? What if, I don’t come back? What if I just get too far out there, and it’s just like getting over that hump of what you think it’s going to be like, and just allowing that experience to happen. Then I feel like you can learn so much about yourself that you never even knew, and you would be surprised of the things that come up and the things that you find yourself working through during a trip, whether it’s for recreation or in a ceremonial setting, I always find that stuff comes up and I’m thinking about things. I’ll be at various levels of intensity, but I do feel like stuff always comes up, and I’m thinking of things, and it’s just helping me see a better version and be a better version of myself. And I feel like it’s a very powerful tool for that
Have these experiences shaped your reality in interacting with other people, who haven’t had any of this type of work?
It’s hard to because it’s not something you can just walk up to anybody and talk about, because some people are kind of freaked out by it. My mom is a really good example. I think that these, especially microdosing mushrooms, has such powerful effects on you and my mom is not open to the idea of that, because of this idea that, “Oh, I don’t want to take things, I don’t want to see things that aren’t there, similar to kind of how I am.”
The best way that I can explain this is I feel like these, particularly psychedelics, because of what they do. Like they have a way of finding you when you’re ready. And so I feel like, anytime I’ve approached this conversation with maybe friends, because I have a lot of friends who’ve never done anything like this, or wouldn’t even think about doing anything like that, and when I approach those conversations in a way being like you should do this, this is a great idea. I feel like they’re less receptive, compared to someone who’s more curious, and maybe even coming to me to ask me questions about it. I feel like they’re a lot more open to the experience. And yeah, I feel like these kind of medicines have a way of finding you in that way. And when you’re ready, it’s like, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. It’s almost in that sense. And so I feel like it’s shaped how I talk with people who have no experience with them, in the sense of understanding where they’re coming from. So maybe dropping some comments of just like if you’re ever interested, I’m willing to talk to you about it, or, you know, maybe there something to look into, but I try not to push it too hard, unless they’re asking questions to me.
Would you give them another resource to look up, to study, or a book?
I don’t know. There’re a coupleof books I’ve read. I have one on my Kindle, but some of them are kind of hard to read and follow. It’s not an easy read. I would love to give them a resource, something that they might find easily digestible and would provide valuable information. My other resource that I share with people is just other people, like I have other friends who have plenty of friends who have no experience in anything like this and probably never would, and I have a lot of friends that do have experience with it, and that would probably usually be my other resource, because I think those first-hand accounts have a good way of kind of easing, as I mentioned, when I saw my husband on a trip, and he just looked totally normal to me.
So this book that is being put together talking about this, listing other people’s experiences as an example, would be a good resource for other people to say, oh, so that’s what happened with them, so it’s not just stepping off into the abyss.
Did you have any trauma from the past that needed this type of deep work? Or is this just generally you would recommend for anybody?
So I will say yes to both. So yes, I would recommend this to anybody. And again, it’s more like you have to get over yourself and over what you think it could be, or what you what you’re afraid of, in order to get that healing. Healing is the best way to describe it. I mean, we’ve all lived lives. I didn’t have the best childhood growing up, and I’m sure I still probably have a lot of unresolved trauma that I’m not even aware of, and I feel like these have been incredible tools for bringing some of those up to the surface.
If someone was interested and they’re just thinking they wanted a recreational experience, right? Would you have a different conversation with them, as opposed to someone that really wants to have clarity and healing. They’ve heard about these experiences and have heard how they’ve really changed people’s lives. Would you have different conversations with those two types of what people looking for?
Oh, yeah, totally. I feel like someone who’s looking to do it recreationally. I think there’s maybe a surgeon’s general warning of a few of like, you know, you might, don’t be surprised if you may find yourself a bit emotional, or if something comes up and you’re like, damn, I haven’t thought about that in years. And maybe you know that could happen, you could find yourself crying because of a song. So kind of preparing them for maybe roller coaster emotions they ight have.
But for someone looking to do it medicinally, there’s two things I would say. The first is, everyone’s experience is their experience, and you’re going to have your own, so it might not be the same. And if you come out of there and you don’t feel this profound awakening, and you’re changed and different, these are just tools. They aren’t a fix-all. You’re not going to do mushrooms and you’re healed. That’s not how it works. It’s a tool to help you discover the things you need to do, work on. I don’t want you to think this is going to heal you, and now you’re done. It’s just a tool. The other end of that is just understanding that their experience is going to be unique to them, and it might not be the same as whoever else they’re with or someone else that they speak with.
Would you recommend that people have someone there, a facilitator or someone to sit with them, or a guide?
I would say yes again, depending on the situation, like if you’re doing it in a recreational space, I would maybe recommend doing it in a place you feel comfortable. Set and setting are a big thing people talk about with psychedelics. So being in a place you feel very comfortable with, people you feel comfortable with, because you could get emotional, or, you know, whatever, and then you just want to be in a place where you feel very comfortable.
Then on the other end of the spectrum, if they’re going for deep work, and they’re going for a stronger psychedelic experience, having a facilitator, a trained facilitator there that’s monitoring the music and monitoring their ups and downs and making sure they feel safe is very important.
So would you recommend having a facilitator?
Yeah, I’ve been in Ayahuasca ceremonies, where people have kind of gone out there, out there, out there and need help coming back. I feel like when you’re doing that kind of deep work in such an unknown realm like the mind, you have a lot of times you’re not sure how deep it can take you and how far it can take you. And it is, I think, very valuable to have someone there to kind of keep the flow of energy moving.
Okay, thank you. Do you have plans to continue doing this work as layers come up, or for you personally, if on a spiritual level, or a healing level, or a recreational level.
Oh, yeah, for sure, I don’t at this time because of having a baby. I enjoy psychedelics, I enjoy the experience of learning about myself. I enjoy, you know, fun, recreational setting. I enjoy the long nights of the soul that you get when you’re in a ceremonial setting.
After the fact,
say, the next day or the next week. Does do Do you ever have things come back to you from the previous session, the experience that you were in?
Yeah, definitely. And that you and your things start to make a little more sense, right? Because when you’re in it sometimes, especially if it’s something like ayahuasca, can teach us so much information and stuff coming at you where you’re not it might not make sense in the moment, and it can be so intense in the physicalness of it. And so it is usually like in the time after you’re supposed to journal and reflect. And it’s in that time after where the dust settles and you can kind of start to make sense of the things that you experienced. And so, yeah, I do. I feel like I get a little bit more clarity. Because, again, like I was saying earlier, feel like this is just a tool where there’s ayahuasca, mushrooms, whatever you’re doing, it’s just a tool. So it’s going to surface a lot, it’s going to get it, there’s going to rumble a bunch of stuff, bring a bunch of stuff up to the surface, and it’s up to you to kind of deal with that, with what’s come back to the surface, and
that usually happens in the time after,
okay, thank you. And do you have any nurturing things that you do for yourself after the ceremony or that evening, the next day, for your physical body or your mind or your emotions? Yeah, so a
lot of times after these I’m almost always with my husband, and so a lot of times it’s just us kind of connecting, talking about our experience, just cuddling, snuggling, just like sharing space with each other, and then taking some time over the next, you know, kind of couple days to talk,
because he’s on his own journey, just like I’m on mine.
And is there anything else you would like to add? I
I think that the biggest thing is just like releasing, releasing the fear of what could happen for Type A people you know, releasing control because you’re, you know, whether it’s like mushrooms or I was for whatever you’re like, at some point you you’re not driving that ship. More or less, it’s driving itself. And to be able to be okay with that, that’s the it’s just like, the thing that I would offer anyone who might even be remotely interested in it is just like, do it and get over that fear of what it could be, because even even if you end up in a ball crying all night, that it’s always like just what I needed when I come out of it, no matter what the experience is like when I’m having it, I always come out of it feeling like that’s exactly what I needed. So whether it’s me, my husband, sitting on the couch laughing, watching the Trolls movie, or I’m in a ball crying all night because I’m processing something else. It’s, it’s always something that I needed and to not be afraid of, like, what, what comes up, because it’s probably what you need to
Yes, is that fear of the unknown. I was very
and one other question, would you,
would you recommend someone starting with something smaller first, like mushrooms, rather than going straight for like the Ayahuasca? Yes, I
would, and that’s something I usually tell people, because Ayahuasca can be very physically demanding, like it’d be purging, it’s it’s not comfortable, and the experience is so different for each person. So it could be five people sitting in a circle drinking medicine, and for those people are having the most intense experience, someone might not be having any loose visual psychedelic experience, and they’ve all had the same thing, but someone could be like puking their cuts out while someone’s crying and someone’s laughing. It’s just like such a wild array. And it’s it’s very, not only intense, like as a medicine, but it’s very intense physically. And mushrooms is not like that. And I feel like if you have some poke mushrooms, everyone’s going to have an experience. And it’s a lot more of a gentle handhold than ayahuasca, which is often referred to as grandmother. So it, my husband describes it as like feeling a scolding from your grandmother, and like, that’s how it can feel in a physical sense.
So starting with something that’s lighter and easier on the psyche, kind of and the physical body would kind of give someone an introduction to to that, to the psychedelic world, rather than jumping in full with the mother load, so to speak, of experiences, yes, 100%
Yeah. It’s I would Yeah. And anyone that’s asked, I’ve always been like, I would definitely start with mushrooms if you’re interested, because it’s just a much more gentle handhold into the psychedelic world.
And you had mentioned, did you want to speak at all of what you said that you’ve you have witnessed someone else’s experience? Yeah.
So I have a girlfriend who is open to talk with you, and I kind of told Randy her story, and if you want to speak with her, she’s open to talking about her experience. But the I’ll give you the long and short of it. So we met her on the Appalachian Trail. This is the girl we went to Ecuador. And her sister had just died, and her boyfriend and her broke up. And then while she was on the trail, her dad had a heart attack. It was just a lot going on, and she had her chit about her dog down, just a very intense year for her. And so she invited me, my husband, to Ecuador with her, and we did a mushroom ceremony. And in that, she’s a very type a person, and she felt like she only did, like she did a much lower dose, because she just, you know, didn’t want to trip out. And her and I went back to Ecuador, like, six months later for yoga training, and her and I did a mushroom ceremony there, and I told her, I just was like, Look, if you want to have an experience and you want to let go, you’re gonna have to take a little bit more than you think you can. And we did, and she took a higher dose, I think, like three grams or 3.5 grams, and she had an experience. She said her sister, she had been holding all this guilt about her sister’s death and how I don’t feel like I should be happy because my sister died, and it feels like her death means nothing. She said, her sister came to her and was just talking to her. I was like, you have to let me know. And she’s like, they were these like tendons that I had that was attached to my sister. And she’s like, You have to let me go. You have to let me go. You can’t keep holding on to me. And she talks about how she felt her sister like, give her a hug, and she could feel all the love her sister felt for her, like in her body, and I feel like the next day
she wasn’t maybe two days later, she
ended up going on a date with a guy that she met down there in Ecuador. Now here we are, a couple years later. They’re engaged, living in Colorado, they have a baby girl who’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s just like, I feel like that mushroom trip for her just opened her up and just really allowed her to release her sister in a healthy way that didn’t feel like I was forgetting her without forgetting her.
Very good. So at the very least, it could be just a mile of fun experience, and at the other end, it could be completely life changing, as you described for this woman, that’s pretty that’s well worth the experience, isn’t it? Oh, yeah,
if you can just be like, if it just turned you into even just a little bit of a better person, because you’ve discovered something about yourself that’s Wow.
And has it helped your relationship with your husband? Oh,
definitely. Sometimes I feel like, um, I don’t know if you’re married or in a long term partnership, or even sometimes you get in, like, what I call roommate mode, and so you’re just kind of going about the day like, Okay, you got this. I’m going to go to grocery shopping, blah, blah, blah. And I feel like sometimes when we take, well, a lot of times, really, pretty much, when we’re doing psychedelics together, it just gives us a chance to like, release all the weight of like, the to do list and the groceries, and then did we do this and make sure you pick up that and blah, blah, blah. And just allows us to enjoy each other. And it gives us a chance to like what I feel like, really connect again, and kind of refill that love tank, you know, get us out of roommate mode and just really allow us to connect.
And it probably helps when you get closer to yourself, to allow someone else to get closer.
Yeah, and my husband himself has had incredible, amazing experiences on the psychedelics as well. And so as he’s learning about himself, I’m learning about myself. And yeah, it does allow us to get closer together as well. Excellent.
All right, if you, if you have, if you want to end there, we can end there. If you have anything