Oh man I’ve been bad about writing lately. It’s an unfortunate irony that that tends to happen when more exciting write-worthy events are happening in my life.
Four write-worthy events have come up since I last posted, all of which I started drafts for but haven’t gotten to finishing and posting yet. So this feels a bit like a skip given that it’s the most recent, but it’s time-relevant so I’m prioritizing it’s posting.
The second write-worthy event of this year—I joined Field Trip full-time in February. Never thought I’d work for someone again, but for reasons that I thought were true then and know are true now, Field Trip is where I’m supposed to be today. Looking back on the past few years—maybe it’s the pattern-matching glasses that us humans wear, maybe it’s reality, not sure it matters—my experiences and work seem to have culminated to exactly what I’m doing now. And I’m loving every minute.
Much more to dig into on the journey to and journey thus far as head of product at the leading consumer psychedelics company, but that’s for another post.
Today, I want to share what I’ve been focused on deeply enough that I’ve neglected my passion/hobby for writing for a bit. This, among other endeavors we’re working on, is a project I’ve been sufficiently immersed in that I’ve felt too creatively fulfilled, sometimes spent, to crave my usual few hours of writing a week.
And today we both soft launched and got featured in the top technology media platform, Wired!
Trip. The first app for having and growing from psychedelic experiences. Just 6 months ago, this was an idea, now we are releasing to the App Store and have a growing waitlist of eager psychonauts, meditators, and consciousness expanders itching to begin using it for their journeys.
What is it? Trip takes you on a self-guided journey to help you make the most of your consciousness-expanding experiences. Designed in collaboration with our team of scientists, physicians, integration therapists, and fellow trippers, Trip blends the wisdom of traditional psychology with modern understandings of consciousness-expanding experiences to enhance and deepen your journeys with intention setting, mood tracking, guided journaling, personalized music, and more.
Why does this matter? Because people are tripping at home, maybe more so now than ever, with little to no preparation, guidance, reflection, or record keeping. If you want more background on the crucial importance for approaching psychedelics from an informed, intentional, and mindful place, that I write about here.
This matters because many of us aren’t doing that, and what we’ve found from our research is that it isn’t because people don’t want to, it’s because they don’t know how or don’t have the tools. We created Trip to help with both.
When I started experimenting with psychedelics, I began as many people do. Taking an ambiguous handful from a bag or bottle at Burning Man, going somewhere with music and people, facing an emotional rollercoaster that would twist and turn depending on externals, then coming out of it in a state of confusion, sometimes distress or terror, that I’d write off as a bad trip or a come-down and move on with my life.
Granted, I only had a couple of those experiences before I was introduced to the informed psychedelic realm—the research, what they can do, and how to best practice with them. I can thank the nerding Tim Ferriss fangirl inside me for that, I haven’t missed one podcast episode of his and he was on this stuff before How to Change Your Mind came out.
But many people are continuously having these ‘bad trips’ or using psychedelics for what the media or their peers call them—party drugs. And I’ve never cared more about something as much as I do about changing that. About showing people the healing, growth, and transcendence they have access to if they approach psychedelics in a new way.
I’ve learned a lot since I realized that myself, both because it’s now my work and because I’m endlessly fascinated by it. I’ve always been introspective, entranced by the mind and how to dig deeper into my own. Understand it, open it, expand it. Psychedelics can take you further and deeper than years of meditation, silent retreats, or therapy ever can. It’s the application of the 80/20 rule for mental health…naturally I was on board.
And it’s changed my life. Cliches are that for a reason, they’re true and important. What I’ve learned in this space has changed my life. Not psychedelics alone, if I kept doing the hand in bag to mouth to fist bumping with rainbow beads bouncing on my arms and fixating on someone dancing LED lights in front of my eyes I wouldn’t be writing about how formative these substances are.
No, psychedelics + everything around the psychedelics have changed my life. The scaffolding that gave the internal chaos and emotions a place to sit, be known, to be internalized and applied to life when I return from a mind-bending journey into unexplored consciousness.
The preparation before. The meditation and mindfulness work, the fasting, the knowing what I’m taking and how much, the intention setting, the timing, the journaling and record keeping. Optimizing for a feeling of safety, calm, and comfort in where I am and who I’m with. The music I choose and schedule for the duration (few things can trigger a bad trip faster than jarring or misaligned music at the peak of a psychedelic experience).
The trip itself. Committing to complete surrender, going where it takes me. Capturing insights to later reflect on through voice recording, doodling, or writing.
The reflection after. The brain dump journaling. Trips can be dream-like, it’s easy to forget and lose the key insights our unconscious tried to tell us unless we record it while they’re fresh. I immediately write visions and imagery and feelings that come up during, in no formatted way, to use for a more guided reflection with integration questions a day or two later.
This ‘scaffolding’ I want to bring to the people who’ve been crouching in the corner of Zendo Project at a festival, to those who go through a bad trip on their own at home without any support or prior context of how to handle it, to those offered mushrooms for the first time at a party and respond with a shrug and assumption it’s just another substance to keep the night rolling.
We designed Trip to be the scaffolding, the guide, the hand. Our goal is to offer a tool and resource that supports any and all looking to explore and grow from these experiences, but we have a lot to learn in the meantime from those that will ultimately benefit. If that’s you, sign up for our waitlist here.