I remember my first psychedelic experience. I was at Burning Man, my first one. I thought I knew what the week would be like. I knew people did drugs, wore minimal clothing and returned with an insatiable desire to hug everything in sight and tell others they wouldn’t understand, they had to be there. They were right.
At the time, drugs to me was an umbrella term—heroine, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, acid—they all sat in one place in my brain. Right next to convicts, addicts, and burnouts.
To be clear, I was by no means an angel child. I started smoking weed and drinking at 15, partied plenty in high school, mostly got it out of my system then but continued a bit in college, even dabbled cluelessly with Molly when EDM became a thing in DC. But I was very close-minded to what my brain considered ‘hard drugs’. Psychedelics, for whatever reason, fell in that category.
I remember my first experience. It started sitting with a guy in my camp, a new friend through an old friend. I didn’t know him but I trusted him. I remember my muscles relaxing in his presence, like I didn’t know they were tense until I sat with him, saw the ease in his slow careful movements between stillness and felt my body try to mirror it.
He wore a shawl, tan with holes that showed his sunburnt skin, a ridiculously large sombrero drew a shadow over his eyes I remember seeing only a slight smile on chapped lips as he motioned to a ziplock bag in his hands, a question. I nodded, he pulled the beige caps out and handed them to me. I put them on my tongue, slowly, watching his chapped smile. Chewed, swallowed. Dry and grainy, exactly how I’d imagine a tree root would taste.
We ventured out, danced and danced the build up was slow then fast my chin tilted up to the sky, arms wide open I spun and danced felt so happy and full, connected and free. It was intense but familiar in that it was emotions I knew, just stronger. I expected hallucinations and kaleidoscope vision. Instead I felt an openness, like my conscious was de-robed, bare and accessible, boundless. With it came a sense of connection to myself and every living thing, like nothing stood between us. I felt a shedding, melting of walls that shielded vulnerabilities. Walls that were so molded into me I didn’t know they were there until I was free of them, I felt light. For the first time since I was a child, I wasn’t thinking about who I was, I just was.
After, we biked back to camp for dinner. I slowly came back to earth, back to my baseline. Again, it was an ease then a jolt. My body and mind and heart calibrated, then went the other direction. Plummeted. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness, anxiety, I ran from the group like they were suddenly a threat. I hid in isolation, hid my tears, hid my feelings. At the time I wasn’t good at feeling feelings, was worse at showing them, an act of protection I’ve since learned to soften. Emotions were for me and me alone, my self narrative was strong everyone needed to know me as strong. I felt very not strong in that moment, so I hid and waited in the plummeting darkness that was confusing and unsettling after the utter contrast an hour before.
That was my first psychedelic experience. Thankfully, it didn’t deter me from trying again later (multiple months later) and having experiences that would teach me more than all my meditation, therapy, stoicism, books, etc combined had tried to teach me for years.
Psychedelics can be powerful. They can rip you open in a way you’ve never imagined possible. They can show you what you won’t allow yourself to see, or don’t know how to see. They’re honest but ruthless, you don’t always choose the doors that they open. And when they open, there’s often no closing them.
Psychedelics melt rigidities, crumble concrete walls in our minds that our thoughts and actions move through. Walls that were built overtime, walls that provide certainty, comfort, they protect us from what’s beyond. What’s beyond is what gave reason for the walls—darkness, pain, fear, trauma, loss. Things we learned to quiet, smother, or ignore.
The walls are built to help us, but they limit us. They constrict us, keep us in place. They separate us, people only get as close as our walls let them. They’re created from fear, with it they bring more fear.
I was surrounded with walls. Layers and layers of walls. I lived by the directions paved from a walled mind. Psychedelics ended that for me. At first it was painful. All the vulnerabilities, fears, anxieties flowed, tension familiar in my body loosened to show me its origin. Released after years of confinement.
My first psychedelic experience was the gate, all that hidden stuff flooded out for air. It took time, processing, more experiences, more processing, it slowly started to feel good. Like a release. Like a weight was let go. Like I was becoming more of myself as pieces of a false me that I gripped so tightly were let go. They didn’t serve me, they weren’t me.
It took time to process on my own, trying to make sense of the flood, to understand it, accept it, integrate it. I’m overly introspective so this felt natural, thinking about thinking. What was difficult was understanding the wordless sensations and emotions. Those I just had to feel and invite in.
What I learned from two years of discovery in this world, from that day of plummeting darkness to a transcendent depth that’s redirected my life and how I live in it, was the importance of guidance in psychedelics. Guidance from yourself, your environment, and another person before, during, and after an experience.
Getting the most out of a psychedelic experience, without having to spiral into plunging terror and confusion alone, starts with having an appreciation for the power of the medicine and not treating it as a party drug, especially not at high doses and double especially if you’ve never tried them before.
Preparation. Create a space between your world and the experience you’re about to have. Educate yourself, meditate, fast, write. Seek a calm open blank slate state of mind and being. Work with someone who’s experienced, someone you trust to help with this.
Environment. Where you are, what you see hear taste, who you’re with—this may matter more than anything else.
Intention. Set an intention for what you hope to learn. I promise you’ll likely learn more than you asked for, but an intention can act as a guiding light in the darkness when you’re deep in an experience.
Reflection. As you ease out, acknowledge every emotion you’re feeling and feel it, lean into it, meditate on it, write about it. I write right after and then days later. Release what you wish to release to your sitter, feel, share, record. Know that realizations may continue to flow for days even months.
Integration. This is where you take what you learned and apply it to your daily life. Psychedelic experiences are an anomaly, an enigma. They take your consciousness to a place so foreign to your day-to-day mindset that it can be off-balancing. Entering a new dimension then being expected to return and live the mundane low-level realities of life like taking out the trash can feel super weird and unnerving. It’s important to acknowledge that the experience is just that, an experience you had like a fabulous vacation or rollercoaster ride, time to get back to ground. The fleeting nature of it doesn’t make it any less powerful, what we learn can often change us forever. That’s why it’s imperative to take time to both ground yourself after a trip and integrate what you’ve learned. The best way to do this is to work with an experienced sitter or therapist.
I don’t regret the path I took to get here but I want to take what I learned to help others still at the beginning. There are ways to do this that lead to lasting growth and fulfillment, sooner than later.
Thankfully, there is an increasing number of options to help you do so. Ketamine centers in the US and Canada legally provide high-dose experiences in a controlled environment, and in our case in combination with psychotherapy to help you fully prepare for and integrate the experience.
While Ketamine isn’t well-known as a psychedelic, at a certain dose the experience is very much a psychedelic one, often described as an out-of-body, dreamlike sensation. Ketamine’s been used in clinical trials for treating depression and PTSD with phenomenal results. And it’s the only legal psychedelic to date, so it’s a good place to start if you don’t have access to experienced underground contacts.
Although other psychedelics are still Schedule 1, clinical trials from organizations like Johns Hopkins, MAPS and Compass Pathways are in progress to study the effect of psychedelics on mental illnesses and overall wellbeing. Last year, the FDA granted ‘breakthrough therapy’ status for psilocybin in studying its effect on treatment-resistant depression. An action meant to accelerate the process of drug approval for public use.
Exciting times, I just hope that when they become more accessible, the startups that inevitably arise to seize the opportunity will include the support and guidance we need to truly benefit.