Podcast Interview - The Serenity Brault Podcast

I was recently interviewed on the Serenity Brault Podcast where I answered questions about ayahuasca healing practices.

Interview - Inside Out Health Podcast

I was recently on the Inside Out Health podcast where I was interviewed on plant medicine practices and psychedelic integration.

Why Digital Hygiene Is Important For Your Mental Health

In the past 30 years consumption of digital content and interactions with digital devices has becomes a central feature of the contemporary modern lifestyle. Many people spend more time during the day with their screens than with another person. Our screen life has expanded and expanded to the point where it has overtaken our entire lives. The average American now spends between an estimated 10 and 12 hours per day consuming consuming media of all kinds (including broadcast TV and radio). Now that may sound incredible, but reflect on your own media habits for a moment.

2018 Nielson Total Audience Report

What do you do when you are at work?

People who work in an office spent most of their working day on a computer, which means that in addition to the screen time numbers listed above they spend an additional average of 6 hours a day in front of their computers screens.

What do you during your leisure time?

Again, for most people leisure time is spent watching Netflix or TV on some kind of digital screen or surfing social media apps on their phone or tablet.

What do you do during the times in-between being at work and being at home?

If you are like most people, it is engaging with your smartphone in one form or another. We are on our smartphones while driving, while riding the bus, while waiting in line at the super market, and even while we are eating.

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Because we live in a pervasive state of digital informational content and media exposure, it is important for us to be intentional about managing the information we are exposed to and limiting the time we spend in these states.

Why is this important? Because our brains and our attention are constantly being bombarded by incoming short-term informational signals.

Processing all that information is cognitively taxing and physiologically stressful. It leaves us mentally depleted and in a state of perpetual information brain fog. And our bodies respond to this chronic over-stimulation with a chronic stress response. The chronic activation of our stress-response system is one of the “silent killers” of our day. It is implicated in everything from obesity to addiction, depression, anxiety, and heart disease.

And the short-term nature of this information leads our attention span to adjust to high-frequency short-term content. So our attention span shrinks and our ability to deeply think through complex ideas diminishes. Furthermore, the more we are engaged with this kind of content the harder it is to turn it off, in a cycle that often bears a striking resemblance to an addictive process.

Finally, much of the content we are being exposed to is negative in nature. It is primed to trigger strongly activating negative emotions, such as fear, anger, envy, outrage, or feelings of inferiority and superiority. Emotionally charged content hijacks our attention system, making it very hard to ignore. We are wired to care about emotionally charged things. These emotions also prime us for action, and importantly for advertisers, prime us to purchase and consume. And chronically stimulated negative emotions are stressful for our bodies and lead our bodies to chronically secrete low-levels of stress hormones day-in and day-out.

Emotionally charged content hijacks our attention system, making it very hard to ignore.

For all these reasons, we need to apply the model of hygiene to our digital lives. And we need to take our digital hygiene as seriously as we do our physical hygiene and self-care. Over-consuming media, spending too much time glued to screens, and consuming large amounts of negative content are detrimental to our wellbeing in very similar ways that poor nutrition, poor sleep hygiene, and sedentary lifestyles are. We need good digital hygiene practices that help us reclaim our attention and keep our minds and our bodies in a more balanced state.

Over-consuming media, spending too much time glued to screens, and consuming large amounts of negative content are detrimental to our wellbeing in very similar ways that poor nutrition, poor sleep hygiene, and sedentary lifestyles are

Most people living in the contemporary urbanized world cannot or will not live without digital content, so total abstinence is not a realistic solution for most people. However, a harm-reduction approach can minimize the negative effects of digital content while allowing us to get the benefits that our smartphones, computers, and the internet offer. Below are some basic principles for digital hygiene designed to address and reverse the adverse affects described above. I recommend it to many of my clients dealing with chronic stress and over-work.

BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR DIGITAL HYGIENE

Reduce Aggregate Screen Time

Start by tracking how much time you are spending in front of all screens over the course of a day. Screens include the television, the computer, the smartphone, the tablet, and video-gaming consoles. The goal is to get a realistic assessment of your total screen time and to change how you view and think about your media consumption from one based on a notion of discreet devices and individual activities into a global viewpoint that looks at all digital media in aggregate. Thinking about your aggregate screen time will help keep you from cutting-out one type of content only to replace it with another (i.e. cutting back on TV but spending more time on Youtube on your phone instead). People who do this exercise are often amazed at how much time they spent in front of a screen during the day. Once you’ve assessed your total screen time, cut back in areas that are optional. The goal of this process is to reduce the total amount of time you spend in front of any electronic screen consuming any digital media.

Remove Addictive Gaming and Social Media Apps From Smartphone

One of the simplest ways to cut back on screen time is to eliminate the highly addictive applications that travel with you everywhere you go and prove an irresistible temptation. This is like having a sweet tooth and stuffing your backpack full of donuts, candies, and chocolates when you leave the house. Of course you’re going to over-indulge! The highly addictive apps mainly consist of social media apps, gaming apps, and some endless scrolling news apps. Delete them from your smart-phone and access them only via computer. This alone can dramatically cut down on your screen time.

Replace Digital Content With Non-Digital Content

Read physical books rather than reading books on a smartphone or tablet. E-book readers with e-ink lie somewhere in-between, they are definitely preferable to reading on a smartphone but a physical book would be better. Other examples are playing physical games (board games, puzzles, etc.) instead of computer games and reading physical magazines and newspapers instead of digital ones.

Severely Limit Negative Content

Negative content is content that is designed to stimulate emotions such as anger, outrage, fear, shame, disgust, and inferiority and/or superiority in relation to others. Negative content is much worse for our mental and emotional health than more neutral forms of media and digital content. Unfortunately due to our current political and economic landscape, negative content is found everywhere. Negative content includes fear-mongering news that emphasizes war, catastrophe, violent crime, and political fighting; articles and videos that highlight outrageous but trivial events to capture your attention (i.e. click-bait, gotcha journalism, social diatribes, etc.); shows or programming that highlight or emphasize human violence, people treating others inhumanely, or any kind of content that portrays one group of people as inferior or despicable. This also includes social media call-outs and shaming and exposure to so-called online “flame-wars,” comment-section fights, and all forms of trolling. This kind of content is a dead-weight loss for your wellbeing.

Prioritize Outputs Over Inputs

Time spent creating content is preferable to time spent consuming content. When you are creating content it is like you are turning your brain from receive mode to transmit mode. The brain and the mind operates very differently when they are trying to express, create or formulate something than when they are receiving or consuming an incoming signal. By putting something out in the world you are switching from passive recipient to active participant. The brain and the body feel the difference because they no longer feel helpless and instead feel empowered by expressing will into the world. This helps to counter the chronic stress from being bombarded by negative content. And if you can, create analogue content (playing an instrument, singing, painting, writing by hand) as it involves less screen time as well.

Avoid Devices Upon Waking And When Going To Bed

The best times to cut-back on digital screen time are upon waking and when going to bed. If you can cut digital media out of the first 60 minutes of your day, you are much more likely to be judicious about it the rest of the day and many people feel the difference right away. Cutting digital media out during the last 60 minutes of the day will help your mind to relax and give you a much better chance of getting a restful night’s sleep. And poor sleep quality is one of the major effects of night-time screen usage.

Stop Distracting On Your Phone During “In Between” Times

Many people have become habituated to using their phones as a time-killer when they are doing boring tasks, errands, or chores. For example, people waiting in line alone are very likely to be using their phones to distract or be productive rather than face the tedium of waiting. Make it a habit of using these times to simply be present. Look around, look at the people around you, see what’s going on. Keep your attention focused on the physical world around you. This is the essence of Mindfulness, which makes a great ally in good digital hygiene.

Avoid Digital Multitasking

Much of digital media consumption these days is spent multi-tasking. This is cognitively taxing and has been shown to reduce focus, memory recall and attention span and to increase distractibility. It is literally the opposite of being Mindful. If you are going to consume digital media, focus solely on one at a time and avoid things like mindlessly scrolling through your phone when watching a movie.

Spend More Time Outside and In Nature

One the hallmarks of digital screen time is that it often occurs indoors. This means that by definition it reduces time spent outside. Time spent outside is associated with many beneficial health outcomes, especially time spent in nature. Reduce your screen time and replace it with time spent in nature, in parks, or walking around outside.

Spend More Time Physically Active

In the vast majority of cases digital media consumption is a physically sedentary activity. We sit and watch or interact with a screen. Replace some of your screen time with physical activity, such as walking, running, hiking, biking, anything that gets your body moving. Physical exercise has obvious and well known health benefits and it provides an excellent antidote to the physical passivity of digital media consumption.

Spend More Time With People

Screen time often, but not always, is time spent alone. This is one of the problems with a digital-first lifestyle; it tends to displace things most people need to be happy. Replace some amount of time spent on a screen with a non-screen social activity with a friend or a group. Communicating via txt-message does not count in this approach. A phone call is highly preferable to messaging in terms of creating human or social connection and also helps to displace screen time. But in-person human experiences are best. Take a class, start a new hobby, or volunteer in something interesting or meaningful to you. These are all ways of creating a non-screen-time structure in your life.

Do a Digital Detox

Take a 1-day break from all digital content and see how you feel as a result. This is obviously best done on a weekend when you don’t have work demands. More and more yoga and wellness retreat are offering digital detox as part of their retreat experience and there are even dedicated digital detox retreats now being offered whose primary purpose is to create a digital-free space. One easy way to do a 1-day detox and put many of these habits into practice is to organize an all-day hike with a friend or group of friends. By doing this, you will be spending an entire day outside, in nature, moving your body, and socializing. Notice how you feel afterwards and how it differs from a typical day spent in front of screens.

Plant Spirit Medicine Versus Psychedelics As Medicine

During the final panel with all the speakers at the Queering Psychedelics conference held in June of this year, a participant asked why we use the term medicine to refer to the substances (i.e. plant medicine) and not to the practices associated with their use.

I think it’s an excellent question and one worth exploring because it says a lot about the differences between the approach being taken in the current “psychedelic renaissance” and traditional plant medicine work.

Medicine has two very different meanings when it comes to psychedelics. One meaning is based in the traditional western model of allopathic medical practice. In this biomedical definition of medicine, psychedelics are no more than pharmaceutical agents. They are molecular compounds that when ingested have specific pharmokinetic effects that lead to changes in neurochemistry that lead to medicinal benefits such as enhanced mood, reduced anxiety, increased sense of wellbeing. The understanding here is based in neurobiology and neurochemistry. The manner in which it is administered matters only for the purposes of safety.

From this point of view, psychedelics are no different than SSRIs or any other class of medications that operate on serotonin receptors other than that they have these pesky “side-effects” such as visual hallucinations, cognitive distortions and other terms that medical research uses to describe the subjective effects of psychedelics.

Plant Medicine alludes to something very very different. The term plant medicine when applied to substances such as psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and peyote is derived from the indigenous traditions and healing practices from which their modern use originates.

Medicine here refers to the healing and beneficial effects of the material substance itself but also the beneficial spirits of the plants and the power they hold, as well as the practices for working with both the substances and the spirits in a healing or beneficial way.

Each of the indigenous traditions that use plant medicines have a history of using them for healing purposes. They have their own indigenous words to describe this but due to the impact of Spanish colonization of the Americas these many different indigenous cultures learned the Spanish word “medicina” to describe both the material itself and the practices. From some indigenous points of view, these plants are medicines and they are part of a rich medicinal tradition of indigenous healers/doctors.

Psychedelic-Assisted psychotherapies occupy a space somewhere between these two understandings. On one hand, in the FDA-approved therapy models being researched, the psychedelic substance used is treated as as a bio-molecular compound completely disconnected from its traditional uses and traditional practices. Here the plant has been discarded completely and the synthetic version of what is considered in the biomedical model to be the “active ingredient” is administered (eg psilocybin).

However, the therapeutic framework used in these trials draws from historical research on psychedelics which have certainly been influenced by indigenous practices and some may argue are fundamentally based in them. One cannot even say this is purely a biomedical model. After all, there is a therapeutic container, there is music being played and there are facilitators available to guide the client, all elements that can be found in traditional “medicine” practices.

Additionally, we also have a very diverse array of underground psychedelic therapy models some of which draw directly from indigenous lineages to greater or lesser degrees. There may even be overtly spiritual themes as part of the facilitation of the experience and some resemble what would traditionally be called a ceremony.

My personal understanding comes from the traditional ayahuasca practices I learned during my apprenticeship as an ayahuasquero in the Peruvian Amazon. I learned from a mestizo medicine man from the Ucayali river region in the northern Peruvian Amazon. His tradition, taught to him by his grandparents, sees ayahuasca as a medicine and the practice of working with ayahuasca for healing as a medicine path. Both the medicine and the path are inseparable from Spirit, a word you will not hear used in the biomedical model.

Ayahuasca is seen as a spirit (or spirits more accurately) and the practices of working with ayahuasca are fundamentally about connecting with healing spirits and medicine spirits for the purpose of addressing the complaint of the client. All the practices, from the way the cook is prepared, to how dosing is determined, to how the ceremony is guided, to how the individual healings are conducted are based in spirit medicine. From this perspective, plant medicine is fundamentally plant spirit medicine. My understanding of Mazatec practiced with psilocybin mushrooms and the Wixáritari practices with Peyote are also fundamentally spirit-based.

So the fundamental different between “medicine” from the pharmaceutical medical model and traditional indigenous models is that of spirit. One has spirit. One does not.

3 Things You can Do Today to Cope Better

Self care has become a hot mainstream topic, probably because of the skyrocketing levels of depression, addiction, obesity and other lifestyle-related problems.

Because of the commercial nature of American culture, a lot of ideas around self-care are being co-opted and packaged as products/services to be purchased and consumed. But the reality is that the most fundamental and essential aspects of self-care cost nothing.

Physical Movement

Your body is designed to move. It is optimally healthy having plenty of physical motion. Unfortunately modern life involves very little of it. And we know now that this is unhealthy. The designs of our systems of living have not evolved yet to address this so we have to address it ourselves. The #1 thing you can do to take care of yourself is to move your body intentionally every single day. The bulk of this movement really should be walking. It is what our bodies are designed to do and, unlike running, the physical impact of walking is very low. You can do it for hours without stressing your body. Walking is restorative.

But your body also needs some brief physical intensity on a regular basis. These kinds of brief stresses are actually health-promoting in the long run because they push your body to adapt without overwhelming it. Short runs, sprints, bike rides, fast walks up hill, etc. are beneficial for many aspects of the body, including the muscles, tendons, the heart and the lungs.

Just as importantly, brief intense exercise offers huge benefits to our minds and our moods. One of my favorite hand-outs is this brilliant compilation from a literature review done at the NYU Center for Neural Science. This one page shows all the different findings of how exercise effects our brains and our moods, including which neurotransmitters and brain regions experience increased activation.

Exercise is care for your brain and your body.

J.C. Basso and W.A Suzuki / The Effects of Acute Exercise on Mood

Creating Internal Space

Due to the miracle of information technology, we are bombarded with messages, ideas, and information as never before. Between our phones, computers, and television, we are chronically exposed to other people’s messages. Many of these messages are designed to get you to do something or buy something: they have an agenda. This mental load is toxic to the psyche. Not only can it lead to mental overwhelm, but we are literally receiving drip after drip of programming designed to manipulate us into feeling a certain way (usually insecure, fearful, or greedy/hungry/lusty). None of this is designed for our wellbeing, so we have to make space for this ourselves.

Creating internal space means tuning out the outside world and all its messages and experiencing your mind and your consciousness in an internally directed way. This can be in the form of prayer, meditation, contemplation, day-dreaming, or imagining. It doesn’t really matter the form. You don’t have to sit in full lotus position and chant ‘ohm’ reverently to experience yourself. The point is not to perform what you think spirituality or peace looks like, but to create an experience where the external stimulus is tuned way down and give your mind (and body) a break from the onslaught of the high-paced external world.

It’s also ok to use external stimulation here, such as gentle music, guided meditations, or perfumes/incense. Some people find being quiet or spending time with themselves very challenging. If so, having some gentle guided intentional stimulus can be very helpful. The point is that you are creating your own space and determining what goes in it, and just as importantly, what doesn't go in it.

Tuning In To Nature

Few things are more pronounced in our modern urban environment than our disconnect from nature. Unless you are living in a rural environment, the entirety of everything you come into contact with during a given day is human created or designed. This leads to a disconnect from what is our natural environment. The natural world is what we are evolutionarily adapted to and lack of exposure to it is alienating on a deep level. Usually we don’t notice this until we’ve spent some time in the country, the mountains, or the forests and get a direct experience of relaxation that comes from resonating at the level of the natural environment. It is almost always experienced as slower and more still than our frenetic modern lifestyle. Often there is a feeling of peace and tranquility.

This is something that urban life denies us. Slowness and stillness themselves are often missing ingredients in our lives and experiencing the natural form of them is inherently restorative. This is the wisdom behind the Japanese concept of Shinrin Yoku or forest bathing.

Putting All Together

In my personal experience combining some or all of these elements is incredibly beneficial. Meditating at the beach, walking in the forest, or biking through the mountains are all ways of combining different approaches to self-care in a holistic experience that is better than the sum of its parts. One of my favorite activities is short solo backpacking trips in the mountains because it allows me to connect to nature, to my body and to my self in a quiet and intentional way. And for someone living in the fast-paced urban hustle, this truly is medicine.

How to Deal with A Troubling Psychedelic Experience

Plant medicines and psychedelics, used in thoughtful and intentional ways, can be incredibly life changing and transformative. They offer the potential for profound spiritual experiences and deep healing.

But these experiences can also be very challenging, difficult, dark, or painful. This is especially true when the person is unprepared for the magnitude of what they experience. Even people going through positive transformative journeys with psychedelics can find themselves struggling to come to terms with what happened or return to a balanced state. It is not always a smooth process.

There are a variety of experiences that can be particularly troubling for someone journeying with psychedelics or planet medicines. Based on my experience working with hundreds of people before, during, and after psychedelic and plant medicine journeys, I have identified the following common themes. I would also add that I have personally experienced just about all of these at one point or another:

• The Bad Trip / Dark Night of The Soul

• Tour Through The Hell Realms

• Unexpected Revelations

• Rocky Return

• Spiritual Crisis

• Psychotic Break

The Bad Trip / Dark Night Of The Soul

Some people have really rough, nightmarish experiences. These usually involve a significant amount of fear or terror. The participant can feel persecuted or tormented by what is happening. This almost always occurs at a very high intensity for that person and they experience an intensity that overwhelms their capacity to cope. Frequently they reach a point where the self or the ego begins to dissolve or fragment and is struggling to hold on. The person may feel that they are actually dying or going insane. This can be very terrifying and as a result the person may go into a state of panic.

The irony is that these experiences, by bringing the person to the cusp of total ego dissolution, offer the potential to experience a true mystical experience, total unity with the universe, and the experience of pure consciousness. But to get there, the self has to temporarily go away. These mystical experiences are almost always characterized by an experience of universal love and awe and most people consider them to be one of the if not the most important experiences of their lives.

To get there, however, one has to surrender, and this is usually the sticking point. People experiencing tremendous fear at this point will contract, resist, and try to hold on in any way they can. This creates a tremendous amount of anguish, friction, and turbulence. It is almost the archetypal definition of suffering: there is both holding on and resisting occurring simultaneously.

The best thing to do here is to relax, surrender, and allow oneself to “die.” In many ways, these experiences are good practice for actual death since eventually we all have to give everything in our lives back. The phrase “you can’t take it with you” is true on the deepest of levels: you can’t even take your “self” with you. And the experience can illuminate what your biggest attachments and fears are, which can then become the focus of deep spiritual or personal work.

A Tour Through The Hell Realms

Another type of “bad trip” is what I call the tour through the hell realms. These are very dark experiences where the visions or feelings are characterized by dread, fear, human suffering, and encounters with what feels like evil or evil beings, demons, etc.

While the hellish realms share a very common set of elements, there are many different reasons why these can occur. Sometimes the experience can relate to the current state of suffering or unhappiness that someone is living in. Other times they may relate to the ways in which the person is creating suffering for others. A hell realm experience can also be a result of mixing different substances together (e.g. alcohol and psychedelics) or a poor setting (e.g. a party setting, urban environment, etc.) that creates the conditions for such an encounter.

The best prophylactic for these experiences is being in a positive emotional state, having a positive intention for the experience and having a safe, peaceful and appropriate setting. This is where the concept of “set and setting” came from.

While the experience is often of an absence of love, love is the best antidote to the hell realms. Focusing on the feeling of love, the heart, loved ones, divine love, can result in a significant shift into a better place. No matter what the hellish experience, eventually it ends and there is usually a huge relief of having survived it. In the moment it may feel eternal, but reminding oneself that this is a temporary visit can really help. Relaxing oneself, slowing down, and breathing deeply, if possible, is helpful as well (assuming one is still in touch with their body during the experience.)

Integrating a hellish experience offers particular challenges. Often there is a strong desire to make sense of it, why it happened, and what it means. Exploring this can be helpful. However, one doesn’t always get immediate clarity on what the purpose of that experience was. These are experiences that can take a long time to digest and clarity may not come right away.

In my experience, at a minimum a hellish psychedelic experience offers some increased understanding of our own darkness or shadow-nature (i.e. the capacity for negative intent that we all have within us) and as a result increase empathy and compassion. It can also illuminate the nature of suffering which can be a very meaningful and important life lesson. In addition, it serves as a reminder to treat these substances with reverence and respect as they offer the potential for great highs and great lows.

Unexpected Revelations

These occur when people are shown things they didn’t want to see or know. Often time there is a painful realization that something in their life isn’t working. This could be a relationship, a job, or something very important to them.

Other times repressed issues and themes can surface, including inner conflicts and old traumas that the person may have buried. These can be very challenging to deal with especially as they seem to come out of nowhere.

No matter what the revelation, it is unsettling and destabilizes the person’s homeostasis. This leads to both turbulence and volatility after the psychedelic experience but also leaves the person sitting with a dilemma or an open question that needs to be answered or resolved.

What is typically needed here is patient reflection and examination on what was illuminated. If some deep wound was revealed, there may be a need for healing or therapeutic work. If some unsustainable life situation or pattern was highlighted, the person may need to examine what about this pattern isn’t working, how they got into it in the first place, and what the options are to change it.

In none of these cases is the person served by impulsive or reactionary action. Often something does need to be done to address the situation but that doesn’t need to be done immediately and in fact they won’t be in a good place to do something about it until they have truly digested and integrated the revelation or insight. This takes time and work.

The Rocky Return

A rocky return occurs when someone’s consciousness is still flying high and their energy still quite open even after the effects of the psychedelic or plant medicine have worn off. This occurs even if they’ve had a very positive experience. In fact, the biggest predictor of this occurring isn’t whether it was a “good” or “bad” trip, it is the intensity of the experience they went through. They may feel “high” walking on a cloud, or conversely may feel caught in darkness, for days after. Often times the person may be quite emotional or labile, with a rapid succession of alternating feelings and racing thoughts. Or they may feel tuned into spirits, higher levels of consciousness, or find that they are easily accessing non-ordinary awareness.

What is needed here is grounding and balancing of their energy. The person’s mind, body, and overall energy needs to be grounded back to earth. Grounding exercises can be helpful for this. So can physical self soothing, such as a nice comforting heavy meal or a gentle massage. Anything that helps anchor the person back in their body can be helpful. I find that spending time in nature, especially in the mountains, by the ocean, or in a forest can really help to ground someone and balance their energy.

Talking to someone about the experience and what they are going through and processing can also be very helpful here, as long as it is someone who will listen non-judgmentally and be supportive.

It is important that the person not open up their energy or consciousness any further until they have truly come back and integrated the experience. This means no psychedelics or other altered state work (hypnosis, shamanic journeys, trances, etc.) Even regular meditation can be too much for some people, although a gentle guided visualization focused on grounding can be of help. The point is the direction of attention should be back into the body, back to the earth, and back to the present until the person has stabilized and fully integrated what they experienced.

The Spiritual Crisis

Sometimes people can experience such a powerful spiritual opening or awakening that they are left not only fundamentally altered but stunned or shocked as well. Their entire understanding of reality has fundamentally shifted and they struggle to fit this new understanding into their existing cosmology or worldview. Frequently it doesn’t fit, and integrating the experience involves expanding their cosmology to incorporate the new experiences and understandings.

They may return to their regular life but feel very differently about it. Life may take on an unreal quality. Similar to the Rocky Return scenario, they may have trouble coming back and grounding into their new reality. They may be dazed or in a state of semi-shock for days or weeks after.

The person may also be dealing with deep questions about who they are, the meaning of life, what life is about and other existential issues. As a result, every day activities may seem unimportant and meaningless.

The combination of all of these aspects (i.e. the change in worldview, existential dilemmas, and the ungroundedness) make the Spiritual Crisis very challenging territory to navigate and frequently help is needed. More often than not what is helpful here is working through the new understandings and the questions it has brought up in a spiritual framework.

Working with a spiritual teacher or psycho-spiritual guide is usually a better fit than seeing a traditional psychotherapist. Regardless of the approach taken, the difference aspects that have shown up will all need to be addressed, including grounding practices, exploration of the experience, and fitting the new understandings into a coherent worldview. The end-result of this kind of work is often significant changes in terms of how the person is living their life, what their life compass is, and how they relate to the experience of life. As such the spiritual crisis, when worked-with purposefully can lead to major positive life transformation.

Psychotic Break

In very rare cases, certain people can begin experience psychotic symptoms where there was no history of this before. These include easily getting lost in thought and appearing “spaced out”, odd thinking, difficulty relating to others, persistent audio or visual hallucinations, delusions of all kinds, and increasing mental disorganization preventing them from navigating basic activities. Often, but not always, there is a family history of psychosis, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

These are very serious cases and someone going through this absolutely needs to stop doing psychedelics, even though they often feel pulled to do more. Similar to the Rocky Return, they should refrain from all kinds of altered states (including mindfulness) until more grounded. And they should really consult a psychotherapist or psychiatrist as soon as possible. Depending on how far out the person is, psychiatric medication may be needed.

These situations, while very rare, are very serious and need to be treated as such. Psychotic-spectrum experiences from a one-time use of psychedelics, if handled skillfully by a professional, can often be resolved. However, if the person continues to work with psychedelics and experiences or shows increasing psychosis symptoms, it becomes much harder to help them stabilize, which is why refraining from further psychedelics is a key step.

Getting Help

No matter what type of troubling psychedelic experience one may have, getting help with it is important. Depending on the nature of the experience, different kinds of help may be needed. Sometimes a professional psychotherapist is needed, other times a spiritual teacher or guide may be more helpful. In general, it is important that the person be familiar with and understand psychedelics and the territory of altered states of consciousness. With the right help, even these troubling experiences with psychedelics can become springboards for healing and personal transformation. More often than not, I find that people who proactively engage with their difficult psychedelic experience and work with what it brought-up end up benefiting greatly on psychological, emotional, and spiritual levels.

Why Pursuing Happiness Doesn’t Work

It’s ironic, isn’t it? The more obsessed we are with “just being happy” the more miserable we become. There is a good reason for that.

The seeds of our unhappiness are built into the very structure of seeking happiness.

Who is doing the seeking? The Self, the “I,” the Ego. The self is seeking something outside itself to feel better. Perfectly understandable. However the more pre-occupied the self becomes with getting that, the more self-absorbed it becomes. And self-absorption is one of the most direct paths to misery and unhappiness available to us.

The relentless focus on how I feel, how I am doing, what I am getting, what’s in it for me, how I stack up, how I compare with others, how successful I am is guaranteed to make “I” unhappy.

The reason is that it is self-perpetuating and never-ending. The more focused on itself the self becomes the more aware of dissatisfaction it becomes.

This is because at the core of “the self” is dissatisfaction.

As long as your awareness is pointed at it, more disatisfaction will be revealed. There is quite literally no “enough” for the self.

The very nature of the self is to keep striving. That is part of the self survival mechanism. It is chronically dissatisfied which keeps it seeking. Survival of the human organism (and all living organisms) is predicated on just this pursuit (i.e. seeking food, sex, etc. and avoiding things that hurt, that are painful and that can kill it).

Think about it. If you are perfectly content and at peace you would sit where you are and do absolutely nothing. There would be nothing to do. No reason to move. No reason to do anything.

Eventually your body would die of thirst or starvation. The body needs constant inputs and adjustments for it to survive (food, water, oxygen, the right temperature and environmental conditions, etc.). And the self is what organizes all the different sensory signals from the body and translates them into a felt experience or sense of dis-satisfaction. That felt experience of dissatisfaction is what motivates us to take action.

But there is a beautiful golden lining to this predicament.

I used to work at a healing arts retreat center in the Peruvian Amazon. We worked very hard for weeks at a time, operating on little sleep and almost no personal time. Our needs were always subsidiary to the needs of our guests coming to us for help. The work was hard, intense, and exhausting on physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels.

Yet I regularly experienced what I would call a “vacation from the self:” the sense of peace and release that comes when you completely stop worrying about what you want and need and focus 100% on something or someone outside yourself.

For that brief period, all of my attention, awareness, and focus, all the finely honed skills of my mind and body, were focused on how to help others. And not only was it a break from my self, but it engaged me in work that felt deeply meaningful to me. Over time, it also changed my relationship to myself and made me a less self-centered person.

Focusing on serving others can flip this endelessly dissatisfying self-absorption completely on its head. It’s like a “get out of jail free” card.

I am talking about true service here, a complete dedication to another or to helping others without regard for self (as opposed to say co-dependent gratification-seeking through others, which is fundamentally about getting one’s own needs met and is just another slippery way the self operates). The key is to focus 100% of your attention on helping others or dedicating yourself to something beyond your self.

Now of course it is possible, like everything in life, to over-do it. And some people use a focus on others in an avoidant or escapist way with self-destructive tendencies that end-up looking very similar to addiction. But in our highly individualized culture, it is much more common to be out of balance in the opposite direction, leading to a soul-crushing preoccupation with the self’s wants and needs.

This is a relatively modern phenomenon because in traditional tribal societies the focus on the self’s needs was balanced by the focus on the tribe’s and the community’s needs and goals. This is one reason why existential angst, despondency, and the kinds of depression and chronic anxiety so prevalent today are rarely found in truly traditional tribal cultures. However, the more integrated these cultures become into modern styles of living the more these problems appear.

The Self Needs a Real Job

So if you find yourself reading every book on how to be happy or the latest blog entries with titles like “10 things that happy people do differently,” stop, and realize that the very act of doing this is contributing to your unhappiness. You are literally walking in the opposite direction of where you want to go.

Instead, focus relentlessly on helping someone else or on something outside of yourself that isn’t about personal gain. Volunteer. Get involved in a political movement. Engage in service work. Help others in some way.

I have a friend who is a very gifted man with deep empathy, sensitivity and awareness. People from literally around the world would seek him out for guidance. But he was also troubled by these same gifts. His extreme sensitivity became a burden to him.

A few years ago he began cooking food at home and feeding the street kids in his neighborhood. I visited him recently, after not seeing him for several years, and frankly he never looked so good. He told me he had found true joy for the first time in his life (he’s in his late 50s) by the simple act of cooking food for these kids and feeding them every day.

I accompanied him one day and it struck me how much these street kids loved him. And these are not people that open their hearts easily. These are abused, neglected and abandoned street kids, highly vigilant and very guarded. But everybody knew him, they looked out for him, and he was basically part of their community.

Community is the natural outcome of dedicating yourself unselfishly to something beyond the self. Which is why giving is actually receiving.

And this truly is the secret to happiness.

Why Psychedelics Are Suddenly Receiving Massive Mainstream Attention

Google Search Trends just posted its highest score ever for the search term “psychedelics.” I’m flooded with emails from people interested in psychedelic therapy. Suddenly psychedelics are on the tips of everbody’s tongues. What is going on?

Michael Pollan is going on. The best-selling author just released his latest book: “How To Change Your Mind.” In it, he chronicles both the history and science of psychedelics and psychedelic therapies as well as his own personal experiences immersing himself in the underground psychedelic therapy world. It’s a fascinating read, and, as always with Michael Pollan, very well researched and very well written.

Now much of this has been chronicled before, repeatedly, ad-nauseum even. However, not by such a mainstream and widely-influential author. Since releasing the book last month, Michael has been on Fresh Air with Terry Grossand has published articles on the topic in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic. In fact its pretty hard not to come-across his thoughts on the subjects these days.

And Pollan’s background interest and fascination with plants, which he explored in The Botany of Desire, and the human relationship with the natural world, which he covered in Omnivore’s Dilemma, give his book a unique take on the subject. He explores and makes the case for plant consciousness and intelligence as well as the benefits psychedelic use can have on environmental awareness and consciousness of our inseparable relationship with nature.

But fundamentally the book is about psychedelic therapy and medicine. His timing could not be better: MDMA-assisted psychedelic therapy may be on the cusp of regulatory approval and research on therapeutic uses of psychedelics are booming at major universities around the country and world.

What I find most interesting about Michael Pollan’s book is its impact on readers. I’ve had so many conversations with people whose only previous experience with psychedelics was recreational, maybe in college or maybe at Burning Man. The idea that you can use psychedelics in an intentional way for therapeutic or medicinal purposes is a novel idea for them and they are curious about it. Suddenly Pollan is shining a very bright spotlight on the incredible transformative power of the therapeutic use of psychedelics and entheogens to a mainstream audience that may still associate these substances with “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

In a country that is awash in depression, addiction, and anxiety, its ironic that the most cutting edge tool shown to address these very issues is something that culturally-speaking has been sitting around the attic for the past 40 years. Perhaps we are now ready to dust it off and put it to some much needed use.

Psychedelic Therapy: The State Of The Art In 2018

With the incredible amount of public attention being showered upon psychedelic research, and a growing acceptance in mainstream psychiatry, it is a good time to take a step-back and examine the current state of the clinical research as 2018 gets underway. 

Much has been made of the so-called “psychedelic renaissance,” which has emerged following a 30-year drought in psychedelics research and above-board therapeutic uses. Coupled with a surge in interest in plant medicines like ayahuasca and the recent popularization of micro-dosing psychedelics for both mental health and productivity, its safe to say that psychedelics have again penetrated mainstream consciousness. 

Its easy to get overly-excited about the current level of awareness and attention on this subject given how taboo it has been in professional and research settings. I remember encountering some of the the negative attitudes about psychedelic therapy when I worked in UCSF’s Psychiatry Department. They varied from “that’s a relic of the past” to “its reckless and dangerous.” Now, 10 years later, UCSF researchers are actually studying psilocybin. Its amazing how shifts in the cultural zeitgeist can radically change how a particular topic is viewed, and even how mainstream science looks at it. 

However, due to its controversial history and the now 50-year old “war on drugs,” evidence for psychedelic medicine needs to be substantial and impeccable. 

Promising But Preliminary

So where are we today in practical terms? What do we know and what can we prove in terms of psychedelics as therapies for mental health conditions? Based on the current clinical trials of psychedelics and humans with mental health diagnosis, one can really only say two things: its promising and its preliminary. 

As you can see in the table below every single study has shown significant benefits, and studies have been conducted on problems as varied as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Alcoholism. There have been exceedingly few serious adverse outcomes (ibogaine being the exception) and some really significant responses in the hardest to treat areas of mental health, such as treatment-resistant depression and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

However, preliminary is the key word here. In most cases, these are small pilot studies with fewer than 20 participants receiving active treatment. And most of the studies were conducted too recently to demonstrate long-term benefits.

Clinical Trials on Psychedelics for Mental Health Conditions — As Of Q1 2018

Some Studies Further Along Than Others

However, there are some lines of inquiry that are further along than others. The Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies’ (MAPS) herculean effort with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD is finally reaching Phase III, with large-scale nationwide multi-site trials beginning this year. 

That is a significant accomplishment that is based on the back of 17 years of human trials and dedicated work by a crew of committed researchers and organizers, including study leads Michael and Annie Mithoefer and MAPS executive director Rick Doblin.

The results from the recently completed 107-participant Phase II trials show that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is safe and can be a highly effective treatment for chronic and treatment-resistant PTSD. 68% of participants no longer had PTSD at their 12 month follow-up. Follow-up studies showed that these results persisted 4 years later. 

These results are truly incredible as PTSD is notoriously difficult to treat and there are very few current therapeutic treatments that work. Many people are stuck with debilitating PTSD symptoms their entire lives. 

The FDA even awarded the MAPS protocol for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD the Breakthrough Therapy Designation in August of 2017, which is given when preliminary clinical evidence suggests that it may provide a “substantial improvement over existing therapies.” 

Psilocybin

The other line of research that has completed FDA-approved Phase II trials is the study of psilocybin as a treatment for cancer-related anxiety and depression conducted at Johns Hopkins and NYU. In both Phase II trials, one with 51 participants and the other with 29, subjects experiencing depression and anxiety related to diagnosis with a life-threatening form of cancer received psilocybin in conjunction with psychotherapy. The results for both studies were quite strong, showing rapid and substantial declines in subjective reports of anxiety and depression as well as improvements in mood and outlook on life and death. 

This is especially significant since there aren’t any good therapies addressing existential end-of-life-related distress, anxiety, and depression, conditions which are experienced by up to 40% of cancer patients. 

The incredible documentary, A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin, chronicles the personal stories of people with terminal illnesses experiencing profound healing through the use of psilocybin. 

Are These Treatments Safe? 

With the big exception of ibogaine, the studies show pretty clearly that, yes, administering psychedelic substances in a well-monitored psychotherapeutic context is safe. Hundreds of administrations of MDMA and psilocybin have been conducted in rigorously monitored studies in the last 10 years and there have been no reported serious adverse outcomes. Experiences of anxiety or increases in blood pressure that can come-up in the midst of the experience tend to be transitory. Participants also have trained experienced therapists sittings with them during their journeys. These are therapists who have worked closely with the participants and have established trust and a working relationship. 

The MDMA being used is also not your typical adulterated street Ecstasy. They use pharmaceutical-grade pure MDMA. These studies also rigorously screen-out people with histories of or at high risk for manic episodes or psychosis.

The model has been proven: MDMA and psilocybin in conjunction with psychotherapy can be administered safely and the current evidence suggests that they are very effective therapies. None the less, more study is needed.

How To Participate

There are two trials ongoing in the US that are currently recruiting new research participants and may be of wide interest. The first is Johns’ Hopkins study on the effects of psilocybin for major depressive disorder. It is a 24-participant study and is currently underway.  

The second is MAPS’ Phase III trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. This is a multi-site study being conducted at locations across the US from New York to California. They are looking to recruit between 200 and 300 participants with severe PTSD. 

If you live in Europe, Helsinki University is about to start a 60-person study on psilocybin for major depressive disorder. The study is projected to start in September 2018 so they will likely begin recruiting shortly.

How To Support The Research

It is an exciting time for psychedelic research and soon may be an exciting time for legalized psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Rick Doblin at MAPS has talked extensively about MAPS’ vision for a network of legal MDMA clinics across the US where clients could receive MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a safe therapeutic setting. That’s a vision worth supporting.

The first step is FDA approval for MDMA as a prescription medicine. He believes that this is possible by 2021. Conducting large-scale clinical trials without corporate funding is expensive. MAPS needs $25 Million to complete the Phase III trials and this is being funded 100% by donation, an unheard of phenomenon in pharmaceutical research. 

The best way to support psychedelic research and the legalization of psychedelic-assisted therapy is by making a donation to MAPS. 

How To Integrate A Psychedelic Experience

Integration is a much talked-about term among users of psychedelics these days, but I have found that for many it is still an abstract or vague concept. It can be hard to wrap one’s head around a process that is multi-dimensional and so deeply personal.

What exactly is meant by “integration” ?

What does integration really mean in practical and tangible terms? From my experience guiding people before, during, and after intensive, week-long ayahuasca retreats, integration is the process by which the experiences that occurred during ceremony, or during a psychedelic experience, translate into actual changes in your life.

Whether you had a profound mystical experience, deep lessons and new insights, a harrowing night of gripping fear, or just a lot of releasing and purging, something powerful happened and your consciousness shifted in some way. You’ve experienced a break with your ordinary understanding of reality. And as a result you’re differnt. You’ve changed, but it is not always clear exactly how or, more importantly, what that change might mean for your life.

Perhaps your worldview expanded, or your orientation towards life. Or maybe you experienced a change in your preferences, your feelings about things, or in your understanding of yourself. But the bottom line is something has unequivocally shifted.

Integration is the process of digesting that change and manifesting its fullest expression.

Anyone who has backpacked around the world or done extensive traveling knows that returning home can be a shock to the system. It can take months for you to adjust to being “back home.” You’ve had all these incredible experiences in that time and its changed you, but the life, the people, and the circumstances you’re returning to appear to be basically the same. They’ve been simply living out their regular lives. It takes time to adjust both the “new you” to your life and your life to the “new you.”

It is similar with psychedelic experiences. You’ve gone on a consciousness world-tour or experienced eternity in a night, and now you’re expected to go back to the office on Monday and make small talk with co-workers? This can be very jarring to the psyche and sometimes results in quite a bit of emotional turbulence. Making your integration process a priority will help you to smooth your experience and integrate in a more conscious and intentional manner.

What does integration look like?

There is no formula for integration because it is truly unique to the individual, their particular psychedelic experience, and their intentions. Each person has different reasons for engaging in intentional entheogenic work. For some, the focus is healing trauma or recovering from addiction. For others its about spiritual awakening and expansion. And for others its about growing and learning and experiencing the world differently. Whatever your intention is for engaging with psychedelics in the first place, will have a big impact on what your integration process looks like.

Generally, I find that integration is a gradually unfolding journey that for many people can take months to complete. For some people doing deep and ongoing plant medicine work, their entire life becomes all about integration for a couple of years. For others, particularly if they have experienced deep mystical states, it can be essentially a life-long journey. It really depends on the person and the nature of their experience.

Regardless of what your particular integration journey looks like, there are some practices I recommend that can help you make the most of your enthoegenic or plant medicine experience.

Recommended Practices

First, approach integration intentionally. If you engage with the process as an active participant, you are much more likely to realize the transformational potential of the plant medicines or psychedelics. This means really reflecting on what happened, what it means for your life, what messages and guidance were received and exploring how to put them into practice in your life.

• Give yourself time and space. If possible, do not return to your routine life right away. It can be helpful to have some time off between your entheogenic experience and your normal routine. Even a day of unscheduled time to yourself can be very helpful. Some time alone is very helpful here. Once you start talking about your experience with others, you are altering your relationship to it in some way. This is fine and normal but you will get more out of your experience if you have alone time to truly reflect on it and allow further insights to bubble up before switching to explanatory mode with friends and family.

• Spend some time in nature. Some quiet time in a natural setting, connecting to the world around you, can be very helpful. It can be helpful for grounding and stabilizing your energy. Natural settings are also good at helping put things in perspective.

• Allow yourself to learn how you’ve changed. Many people find they are drawn to different things or organically have different preferences. Your diet may change, what kind of substances you engage with can change, the kinds of people you are drawn to may change. Give yourself time to find out. Your body often knows before your conscious mind does so before engaging in your regular habitual patterns, check-in with your body and see if this still feels right for you. In some cases, you may find that it doesn’t.

• Pay attention to your intuition. After a profound psychedelic experience you may find that you are more aware of your intuition. You got out of your ordinary linear mindset for a while, which helps you to tune-in to intuitive and unconscious communication. There may be a lot of wisdom and additional insights from your intuition so pay attention. Don’t just ignore it. You may find that as you are going about your day-to-day life, certain experiences are highlighted somehow. They stick out as if something beyond conscious awareness is drawing your attention to it. Pay attention and explore these.

• Pay attention to and work actively with your dreams. Dreams are a great channel for tapping into the unlimited creativity and intuition of the unconscious mind and beyond. They are psychedelic in their own right! You may find that there is a lot of processing of the psychedelic experience that happens in your dreams. You can work with your dreams intentionally as well. Before you go to bed put some intentions into your dreams regarding your integration. If there is a lack of clarity regarding something that happened during your ceremony or psychedelic experience, ask for guidance. If you need helping grounding and balancing, ask for help with that. In the morning as soon as you wake up, try to recall your dreams and spend a little bit of time reflecting on them. Writing them down in a journal is really helpful to get the most of working with your dreams.

• Keep a journal . An integration journal can really help you to get a handle on the process and work through things as they come up. This doesn’t have to be a linear recounting of events. You can creatively express what is happening, how you are feeling, how your world is shifting. This is helpful in terms of integrating these shifts at a conscious mental level. Some people also find that artistic and musical creative expression is really helpful. This allows the non-linear aspects of your mind to process and express what’s happening as well.

• Talk to people you can trust. Verbally processing what happened with a trusted confidant can also be very helpful. But make sure its someone that is open to hearing about it and will not respond with judgment or close-mindedness. Obviously its more helpful to share your experience with other people who have gone through it.

• Start new practices. Because of the disruption of your ordinary state of consciousness, psychedelic and ceremonial experiences offer an incredible opportunity to make lasting practical and behavioral changes. There is a window of opportunity, before your brain gets back into automatic living mode, during which you can more easily institute new practices. These can be health practices, such as eating a healthier diet or starting a regular exercise practice, or be spiritual in nature, such as creating a routine for meditation, yoga, prayer, intention setting, etc.

• Throw out old practices. Similarly it is much easier to get rid of old unhealthful behaviors and practices that no longer serve you immediately after a psychedelic experience. Everything is more malleable so make changes before things start solidifying back into a regular routine.

• Get help if you need it. Integration can sometimes be turbulent. It may feel like your life has been turned upside down. If you are having trouble navigating the new you and your new world or find yourself unable to ground, reach out and get some help with what you are going through. If your ceremony or psychedelic experiences was facilitated, reach out to the facilitator for guidance. Or get help from a psychotherapist, a healer, or a spiritual teacher, ideally ones that are familiar with non-ordinary states of consciousness. There are also integration circles in some cities that are peer-facilitated meetings where people share their experiences with psychedelics. You don’t have to work through it alone.

Some Practices I Do Not Recommend

• Taking every vision you have in ceremony or in a psychedelic experience literally. It is best to treat them more like dreams in that they are providing symbols and communication that carry meaning but not necessarily the literal meaning that we think. It is best to explore these over time without attaching to your initial reaction. Often what that visionary experience means to you evolves over time. Don’t get attached to your initial reactions reached in the height of ecstasy.

• Returning home and making dramatic life changes immediately following a ceremony. Give yourself time to put the psychedelic experience in its proper place in your life. Maybe big dramatic changes are needed, but give yourself time to stabilize emotionally and energetically first. And even then, give it some time. Your understanding of what needs to happen may change over time. Give it the space to do that.

• Telling everybody you meet that they must take LSD or drink ayahuasca. This is a common impulse for people who had incredible life changing experiences. But remember, these practices aren’t for everybody. Some people have really hard times with psychedelics, even dark terrifying experiences. For others, such as those with serious psychiatric conditions, it can be dangerous. Recommending that everybody engage with psychedelics is reckless. Practice discernment in terms of who you talk about it with and how you talk about it.

In many ways the integration process is the most important part of working with plant medicines or other entheogens. It is where most of the work is done and where true transformation is manifested. To quote Jack Kornfield, after the ecstasy, the laundry.