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Psychedelics in Mental Health: Friend of Foe? Part 1
120 Plays9 months ago
In this two-part season finale, get ready to dive into the intriguing and often debated realm of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Whether you're a skeptic or curious explorer, this is an episode you won't want to miss! Julie sits down with Laura Mullis to discuss her professional encounters with plant-based medicines like psilocybin and Ayahuasca. Together, they explore the potential benefits and ethical considerations surrounding this unconventional therapeutic approach.
About today's guest:
Laura Mullis has been working in the healing profession for 15 years. For the past 10 years she has been on a quest to find the fastest way to help people heal with the least amount of suffering. In recent years this quest has brought her into the field of psychedelics. In this podcast she shares her knowledge, experience and sometimes personal opinion in her role as a psychedelic coach on the topic of psychedelics in mental health
Resources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VNzkOqRlnuL8WDRlRPeIxQaymOuviKoEraB332GvEaw/edit?usp=sharing
Get in touch with Laura:
https://www.triumph-center.net/
Information on Laura's New Course: Psiologistics: Blueprint for a Therapeutic Mushroom Journey
Recommended
Transcript
Season Two Introduction
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to season two of Outside of Session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker, and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. This season, I'm interviewing some incredible guests who also happen to be experts in their fields. Mental health, motherhood, spirituality, and so much more, I can't wait for their stories to be told. These are all the conversations I'm having outside of session.
Season Two Finale: Psychedelics in Mental Health
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey everyone and welcome back to outside of session and I can't believe it but we are actually getting ready to wrap up season two of outside of session. I feel like this one has just gone by so fast but I hope you have enjoyed all of the guests that I've had on this season and all of the information that they have shared.
00:01:05
Speaker
But for the finale, I have a final two-part episode that is going to be a doozy. This week and next week, we are going to be talking about a somewhat controversial topic in mental health, and that is the use of psychedelics in the healing space.
Guest Introduction: Laura Mullis
00:01:23
Speaker
And I cannot wait for you to meet my guest this week, Laura Mullis, who happens to also be a longtime friend of mine.
00:01:30
Speaker
A little bit more about Laura, she has been working in the healing profession for over 15 years now. And for the past 10 years, she has been on a quest to find the fastest way to help people heal with the least amount of suffering. In recent years, this quest has brought her into the field of psychedelics. So in this podcast episode, she shares her knowledge, experience, and sometimes her personal opinion of her role as a psychedelic coach and just on the topic of psychedelics and mental health in general.
Personal Story: Iceland Quarantine
00:02:00
Speaker
So I hope you are ready for this one. Here we go. Psychedelics and mental health friend or foe. Laura, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Julie, for having me. I'm so excited to be here and to be able to talk to your audience.
00:02:19
Speaker
I know. I'm so excited to have you here too. And for those of you who follow me on Instagram, you might recognize Laura because Laura is the one that two years ago I got quarantined in Iceland with.
00:02:35
Speaker
So Laura and I survived. Yeah, that was quite an experience. That was ridiculous. We survived 26 days in Iceland together. Half of it on vacation and half of it being quarantined in a COVID hotel because we tested positive for COVID. A hotel is a very gracious word for that place.
00:02:58
Speaker
So Laura and I, between going through grad school together and going through that together, I feel like we officially have like a trauma bond. Yes. We're forever best friends.
00:03:09
Speaker
We are. So Laura has such an interesting story and with some of these other episodes, I've had my questions lined up ahead of time. But for this one, I feel like I'm just going to turn it over to you because I don't even know where to start with this topic. I don't even know what questions to ask. I feel like they're going to come along the way. But I'm just going to hand it over to you because I know you know where to start. Okay.
00:03:34
Speaker
All right.
From Therapist to Psychedelic Coach
00:03:35
Speaker
Well, I want to first start off by saying that, yes, my name is Laura Mullis and to a lot of people, I am known as a therapist because I did go to school with Julie. I have my LCSW. However, for this episode, I am kind of taking off my therapist hat and I'm putting on my psychedelic coaching hat because that is a role that I have evolved
00:04:03
Speaker
to also play in my professional career. And what I want to talk about today is the kind of buzzword in the field of psychedelics in mental health. It's something that my mom called me the other day and was like, Hey, I was reading good housekeeping and in good housekeeping, they're saying that psilocybin is useful in mental health. And I'm like, yeah, I've been telling you that. So even people like my mom,
00:04:34
Speaker
who is 69, sorry mom, are hearing about psychedelics and mental health. And I'm sure that when you hear about it, it can rub you one of two ways. Like, oh, that makes perfect sense. And what are people thinking? Adding drugs, drugs into healing for mental health.
00:04:59
Speaker
And so when doing our- I think the average person would actually say, I don't know enough about it to have an opinion. Cause that's kind of where I am right now. Like I don't, and that's why I wanted to record this episode is because I think most people would say, I just don't know enough about it to even know why it would be useful or what some people are thinking. Um, so I don't think that some people would say it's either friend or foe. I think most people would say, I don't know. Yeah. And so that's why we labeled the episode friend or foe question mark.
00:05:28
Speaker
Right. Because people don't have enough. However, you're such a beautiful soldier. That's what makes you special is you can be that non biased person, but most people do have a gut reaction to something like what the society has told us are drugs. Like if I said, Hey, we're going to do cocaine in therapy. What would your reaction be?
00:05:54
Speaker
We're going to do some cocaine and you're going to heal. It's like, no, no, that doesn't sound like it goes together. You know? And, but I do feel like, uh, you know, because of backstory and all that with psychedelics, like how they were framed for many, many, many years. Uh, some people have this idea that this is a bridge too far. Mm.
00:06:23
Speaker
introducing this into mental health and with people who are using quote marks are vulnerable is just a bridge too far for the field.
Public Perception and Personal Skepticism
00:06:35
Speaker
And I'm going to be honest and say I was one of those people. Like when it first was introduced to me by one of my mentors, interestingly working in a substance abuse treatment program, one of my mentors was
00:06:49
Speaker
talking about psychedelics in the treatment of PTSD. And I would like nod my head because he signed off on my licensure hours and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds good. But in the mind, I was thinking, you're just going to let people use drugs to bypass their pain. That's what we're trying to do here is help people deal with their pain without drugs. And part of that was because from the age of 11 to 19, I myself was in addiction.
00:07:17
Speaker
So I understood what addiction does to people. And during that time, I had a period where I was into club drugs. So club drugs are your LSDs, your ecstasies, your ketamines, and which raves up in Atlanta. So like I was very versed in psychedelics. And so I thought they didn't ever help me. They didn't help me at all. I didn't ever have breakthroughs on them, you know? So I had this, this assumption
00:07:47
Speaker
this egotistical assumption that I approached it with that like my experience is going to be everybody else's experience. They're just a way to kind of like, like tamper down the real work and make healing numbing or fun or something like that. So I was very against it for many years and was thinking, shaking my head and judging the people who were pushing it. Like, what are y'all doing? Y'all are ruining the field. And then
00:08:20
Speaker
I had a client who showed up in my reality to teach me otherwise.
Transformative Client Experiences
00:08:24
Speaker
I had a person I was working with who nothing I did worked and this person would not go away. Like kept coming back like, no, you're the person who's going to help me. I know this. I know this. You're the person who's going to help me. Kept coming back, kept paying the money, kept coming to me for intensives, which I do intensive therapy. So I work with people for days at a time.
00:08:50
Speaker
And I mean, we would take one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back. It was just like, I mean, and honestly, if you looked at her life situation, I can understand it. She had a lot of external things in our life that felt insurmountable. And so that's going on over here. And at the same time, I'm working with a mentor who is helping me with some business stuff. And part of her business was doing psychedelic therapy with people.
00:09:20
Speaker
She would do plant medicine journeys. So I'm going to talk about, you know, what's the difference between plant medicine and psychedelics are later, but plant medicine journeys. So she's doing these plant medicine journeys and I know this, and she had been telling me, you really need to consider doing these in your business. And I would say to her, no, I'm an addict. I am not going to bring drugs into my work. That is not how it works for me. Well, one day I was just, I was like, I don't know what else to do. So I called her and I'm like, listen,
00:09:50
Speaker
Would you be willing to come down and do one of them plant medicine journeys with this person because I don't know what else to do. She's going to wind up killing herself. Literally like that's where we were. She's going to wind up kill herself and I'm going to be standing in front of a courtroom trying to tell them why I didn't put her in an institution when she had been institutionally like abused. So that, but of course don't care. So she said immediately, yes. And I'm coming for three days. And so I was like, okay.
00:10:19
Speaker
So organize all this, you know, I'm like, I'm just going to be the observer of what happens because I have no idea. I didn't even, I was like thinking she was going to bring some LSD or some ecstasy. I didn't know what she was, I didn't ask. I was just like, can you help me? And she was like, yes, I'm coming. And so I pick her up from the airport and she's like, we need to go by and get six gallons of water. And I'm like, what, what are you doing? She's like, I'm cooking ayahuasca. I'm like, what is ayahuasca?
00:10:50
Speaker
I didn't even know what ayahuasca was. So, you know, this is how desperate I was. And this is the kind of therapist I used to be. I'll do anything to help people get better. But anyway, I'm glad for it now, but I don't do that anymore. Anyway, so I pick her up from the airport. And so this three day journey happens where the person who I was working with, she facilitated them using ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms.
00:11:19
Speaker
And the transformation that happened at the end of that three days, I was like, what the fuck have I been doing? I have been working way too hard. I have been working way too hard. She, let me tell you about this person. She, at the end of it,
00:11:42
Speaker
had hope, had a vision for the future. It was like, I'm coming off all my antidepressants. I'm coming off, I'm coming off everything. This stuff is killing me. She was able to get in touch with the light of her soul and to see that she is good regardless of what happened to her. And it was like the catalyst she needed to get out of that depression.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I've seen this happen. That's a bold statement. It's a bold statement. And I'm not saying it happens with everybody. There are caveats. I can talk to you about the foe part of it. But it's not really a foe. It's just expectations. But I've had other people who came to me who were in the same space. And after sitting with Ayahuasca and psilocybin,
00:12:40
Speaker
We're like, no, I want to live. I want to live. I'm lovable dog on it. I know I deserve more and I'm going to go out and do more. So seeing that transformation, I said, well, they're okay. I think I might be wrong. There is something to this. Right. And so began my journey of starting to open my mind up to it being more of a friend than a foe. Yeah.
00:13:12
Speaker
And I can say now that it has a role to play for certain people in their human journey. I'm not saying everybody needs to run out and do psychedelics or to do, you know, it's not, it's not, it's almost like the soul calls you when you're ready.
00:13:38
Speaker
If there's a stirring inside you to do it, then it's probably something that is supposed to be a part of your healing journey, but it's not something that you should start with. It's not like, oh, I have never been to therapy. I'm just going to take these mushrooms and feel better. No, no, you're probably going to feel a lot worse.
00:13:59
Speaker
So how do you help people decide or how do you guide people on that journey of knowing when is the right time for who would it be friend to like, how do you help evaluate?
Guiding Clients in Psychedelic Use
00:14:11
Speaker
Okay. So I tell people when, when they're trying to decide this, how much conscious mind therapy have you done already? Okay. Because our dog barks at the creaky monster.
00:14:28
Speaker
When a person is trying to decide if they want to, or if plant medicines are the next step for them, I usually ask them, how much have you tried or done without plant medicines first? Have you done therapy? If they say no, I'm like, you need to just go do therapy first, right? Because for most people,
00:14:56
Speaker
there is a certain amount of information they can get to process and heal on a conscious level. And that needs to be done to me before you start unlocking deeper layers. Yeah. Right. So, but if they have tried therapy and they seem to be stumbling over the same stumbling blocks, which I can talk to you about what some of the common ones are.
00:15:26
Speaker
or they're just so rigid and they're thinking that they can't get inside to get to anything on a conscious level, then probably plant meds are their best secondary option. However, I also say to them that plant meds are not a one shot wonder, right? So it's not like you can just do these plant medicines
00:15:55
Speaker
get the insights and revelations and then all of a sudden you know you've ascended. That's not how it works. Like you do the plant medicines and it would be wise to have a therapist you're working with in conjunction to the plant medicine so that that knows what you're doing. Maybe not leading you in it or being there with you while you're doing it but
00:16:18
Speaker
can help you figure out what exactly was the journey telling me and oh this came up on my journey I need somebody to process it with you need that stuff in place. So afterwards you go back and you end up like processing through in the in the therapy space what came up what you learned what insights came up what was unlocked yes yes okay so I wouldn't like if people were coming to me to prepare
00:16:47
Speaker
for a psychedelic experience or planting a journey on their own, I would say, do you have a trauma therapist or do you have a therapist that you already have a rapport and a relationship with that can help you unpack what happened during the journey? And if they said no, I would say, well, let me help you find some people in your area that you can connect with so that you can have that in place.
00:17:12
Speaker
Well, and that makes me think about how sometimes the therapy are very containing.
00:17:19
Speaker
And some are very like opening, right? Yeah. And I'm not talking about, I'm talking about like types of therapy that we do. Like there are some types of therapy that help you contain. But when you start doing things like EMDR and hypnotherapy and stuff where you are moving further into what your body is holding on to, what your subconscious is holding on to, that is very opening. Yes. And having those kinds of experiences without a therapist there, a lot of times it's
00:17:47
Speaker
it's re-traumatizing because you don't have somebody there with you that's trained to walk that journey with you and to help you process through it and to feel safe and like you can like handle what's coming up, right? Yes. Yeah. And so I want to spend a minute saying this so that people understand what I'm talking about.
Plant vs. Synthetic Psychedelics
00:18:12
Speaker
To me, when it comes to the psychedelic field, there's there's like psychedelics, which are your LSD, your MDMA, your psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine, DMT, like all that stuff is all falls under the realm of psychedelics, right? But I'm not a person who really is a proponent of all psychedelics. I'm a proponent of plant medicines. So plant medicines are things that naturally grow on the earth.
00:18:40
Speaker
Right. So you're psilocybin in your ayahuasca, your ibogaine, that kind of stuff. All right. So just so people know from now on, when I say plant medicine, I'm talking about, uh, I've never done or letting buy an ibogaine. So I can't speak to ibogaine at all, but, uh, psilocybin in ayahuasca. So anyways, my point is if you, somebody, let me tell you about my, my experience, right? Cause when I was,
00:19:07
Speaker
out there ripping and running in my teenage years. I did a lot of psychedelics, but I never had any big revelations. So when this woman was trying to talk to me about the plant medicines, I said, I've done a lot of psychedelics. I never had breakthroughs. And she said, it's all about intention. So that's the first thing people kind of have to keep in mind, is that when you are using these sacred medicines, and they are sacred medicines, they came from, you know, indigenous tribes and
00:19:36
Speaker
long held histories and some people say that psilocybin's a part of human evolution. So when you are working with these sacred medicines, you go in with an intention. So there's something before a person takes a psychedelic, like a plant medicine, that one of the first things we talk to them about is what is your intention for the journey? What do you want them to show, reveal, or help you with?
00:20:07
Speaker
because they're an energy. Like if you're ingesting something that's natural, then it's an energetic being. And the first way that your energy and their energy come together is through intention. And so the intention, a lot of times, drives where the journey goes.
00:20:32
Speaker
And it's not necessarily like you make it happen, but when your energy and that energy combine in that intention space, in some way, shape or form, it's going to take you there. Not all the time, but most of the time. And what I say to people is when you take plant medicines with intentions, a lot of times what plant medicines are doing is unlocking the next layer that you need healed in your life. Yeah.
00:21:00
Speaker
So I use the metaphor of, you know, them Swanson frozen dinners. They're like in the black container with the cellophane on top. Like our mind is a bunch of those, right? So we have layers to our belief systems, our programmings, our pain, our wounds, all the things that make us think, make us who we think we are. There's layers to it, right? And so what plant meds do is they go in and take the cellophane off the next layer.
00:21:30
Speaker
And so then whatever's on that layer bubbles up and you kind of get some realizations about and you start to put it together and you start to realize, and sometimes it can be deeply painful because you realize, oh, there's this stuff that happened to me I didn't know about. And sometimes it can be like, oh, I'm in this thing that does not fit me and I don't want to be in.
00:21:53
Speaker
Oh wow, I can see how I'm causing most of my misery, pain and suffering. Like there's, there's layers. And so then when you come out of the journey, understanding what layer was revealed and then having somebody to help you unpack that layer is what the therapist is there for. So it's a long way of saying that the plant medicines are definitely an opener. Right. In fact, back when psychedelics came on the scene, you know, which they'd been around for Westerners.
00:22:23
Speaker
They'd been on the scene for a long time, but for Westerners, you know, an LSD was invented. They called it psychedelic because it means like opening of the psyche, the unconscious, opening of the soul. And so people, please listen, don't ingest plant medicines unless you are ready to unpack your next layer. And this is where people have bad trips.
00:22:52
Speaker
is they are taking it without intentionality. They're taking it without understanding what they are ingesting and the potential it has, you know, to show you things that you've repressed or forgotten or been misled on. And then they don't know how to, they weren't like ready for it. They weren't asking for it. It's just what the medicine does. And so then they spiral and they get stuck and they don't want to know this stuff.
00:23:23
Speaker
So for me, especially the plant medicines are sacred and they need to be taken sacredly and you have to honor the power of them. In fact, I've had people who I know who didn't know all this and who came to us in this place of wanting to do it sacredly, who had done it in the past in a way that was for fun. And then they were like, oh, I don't like mushrooms because
00:23:52
Speaker
I, they were fun. And then all of a sudden they turned on me. I'm like, no, they didn't turn on you. They started to show you things you needed to deal with. And you are in the place in your life where you are ready to deal with it. So they're definitely an opener. They open up things that are hidden in your psyche, you know, your soul, whatever you want to call it, your unconscious, whatever word you use for it. And you need somebody who can hold space for that and help you unpack it afterwards. And that's where like the therapist or the psychedelic coach
00:24:23
Speaker
come into the process. Yeah. Hey, everyone. I just wanted to pause for a quick moment to say thank you so much for all the love and support that you're showing outside of session. If you haven't already, do me a huge favor and hit the subscribe button. Give me a five star review and share this podcast with all of your friends. Help me take this show to another level. Now back to today's episode.
00:24:56
Speaker
So setting an intention going into it is so important. That's kind of the make or break to begin with, right? It really is. So what are some good intentions that you help people to be able to identify and name? What are some good intentions to have for doing this?
00:25:18
Speaker
One thing that, um, which I can talk to you about, like the process of getting ready, like the process of a journey. But when people come to me, we're in like the preparation stage when I'm helping them get ready for a plant, my journey. And one thing I always ask them before I agree to work with them is like, do you love yourself? And most of them, if they're at a point where they're wanting to ingest plant meds or saying, no, I can't, I don't know how I'm going to continue to exist with me. Yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, one of your intentions,
Importance of Intentions in Healing
00:25:53
Speaker
I don't usually tell people what to do, but I'm like, literally, if you and I want to work together, one of your baseline intentions needs to be self-love. Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about is self-love. Even if they don't know how to get there, they have to at least have the attention of the desire for self-love. Yes. Yes.
00:26:16
Speaker
like self-love, like I, cause ultimately that's what everybody wants, right? I want to be able to feel comfortable, mown skin. I want to be able to lay down at night and not replay my day in my head. I want to be able. I'm good enough that I'm loving. Good enough. I want to be able to take that opportunity and know that I'm worthy of it. I want to be able to stop having this inner war inside my head or this narrator that constantly tells me everything I'm doing wrong. Yeah. It all comes down to self-love, right? Like love, radical love and acceptance for self. So that's one of the baselines. The other things that people,
00:26:46
Speaker
are sometimes come to us with is like what's blocking me, show me what's blocking me, show me what my next steps are, show me kind of sometimes people have been in therapy before and it's almost like there's a part of them that they need to work with or it could be help me release the self-hatred
00:27:16
Speaker
helped me, um, remove my blocks to my creativity, just different things. So there's, but ultimately if you pulled all of it down, it's self-love. Self-love. Yeah. It's self-love because, um, can I tell you a little bit about how psychedelics, how they work? Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:43
Speaker
There's this thing in the brain, which MDR seems to overcome it too sometimes, not, not always effectively. There is this, this system in the brain called the default mode network. Have you ever heard of it? It's like, it's certain parts of the brain that run in a pattern. And if I had to put it in my layman's terms, it's our programming network. So it's, it's a very rigid neural network system that helps us survive life by taking mental shortcuts.
00:28:12
Speaker
by kind of funneling everything down through our belief systems, what we believe about us, what we believe about the world, what we believe that. So it's like this default mode network that we run in that's very rigid and a lot of times has been influenced by societal beliefs. You know, our parents wound, our wounding trauma, PTSD, like all of it influences default mode network. And the goal of this network is to kind of keep us safe. Yeah.
00:28:40
Speaker
And so people who are very rigid in their default mode network are often the perfectionists, the hypercriticals, the over-performers, your very kind of anxiety OCD, like they're really got a really rigid default mode network, right? Not that it's bad, it's how they've learned to keep themselves safe. What plant medicines seem to do is take that offline.
00:29:08
Speaker
So it's almost like if you take enough, now there's this point where like part of what people have to understand is you do have to take enough to get you out of the way, right? Because if you are still, you can take some, you will be in the way and then you're just irritated because it's like y'all are fighting with each other, you and the plant, the medicine. But if you take enough to get you out of the way, it starts to literally break down that default mode network so that the truth can come up.
00:29:36
Speaker
And I've never had somebody come out and say, well, I heard the truth and it's, I'm a, I'm a, you know, I'm a terrible person. I don't deserve to live. I'm like, no, once that network that decided all those things starts to turn off and the parts of your brain that hold the truth gets stronger, you start to see like, oh, we're all connected and oh, you know,
00:30:00
Speaker
I am like, I am lovable. There's nothing wrong with me. And oh, I can see why I started to believe this. And I can see that it was actually my momma's stuff, not mine. Like you see things that you just can't unsee. I mean, that makes me think of the question of like, who would have I, who would I have been or what would I have thought about myself if life hadn't happened to me? Like all, all the stuff that we go through that,
00:30:28
Speaker
that changes our belief system about ourself and all the stuff that we end up internalizing, whether it's happening to us or we're observing it happen to other people and it changes the way that we view ourself. That's kind of like saying, if I could take all of that out, what would I have thought if I hadn't had all of these experiences? Yeah. Which is kind of like, that's a, you use the word sacred and I like that. That's kind of like a sacred moment of thinking like at the core, what did I already know about myself? Yes.
00:30:57
Speaker
I have a process I say healing is a three-step process The first is you have to unbecome you have to unbecome all the bullshit people told you you were Then you have to remember who you truly are and then you got to step into your sovereignty Yeah So that's the process and so people get stuck on the unbecoming because they're so their default mode system is so rigid and they're so
00:31:23
Speaker
like identified with it. And then when you're so identified with it, unfortunately you create the reality that matches it. And so then it just reinforces it. And so it's this, it's kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy, circular reason, and people get into that they don't really have a pharmaceutical out on the market to stop that because it's powerful. That default mode network is powerful, which is why the plant medicines are powerful because they override.
00:31:54
Speaker
who we think we are to show us who we truly are. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that is powerful. This is why indigenous tribes used it, right? This is why the people who were more, you know, salt of the earth, uh, feeding the dirt, kind of living off the land use this stuff because they didn't have as much programming to overcome in the first place. So it was more of a enrichment process for them.
00:32:23
Speaker
We're just trying to use it to survive here in America. Yeah, we're just trying to survive. I can just survive me.
00:32:32
Speaker
Right? So I want to hear what an actual experience is like, but before we get there, before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about the new, like the way that you work with people and how you have kind of like a before and an after as part
Phases of a Psychedelic Journey
00:32:51
Speaker
of the journey. So before we get to the actual journey itself, do you want to share a little bit about that, of like what that work looks like leading up to?
00:33:03
Speaker
I guess, stuck point people get to when they hear about plant meds or psychedelics is they get excited like, oh, this is something that might work for me. And then they're like, but where do I go to get it? Where do I go to somebody who is actually credible trained can provide this experience for me. And so people stay stuck there, you know? And so there's different options for it. I mean,
00:33:32
Speaker
I could, I could say some like on here, but instead of saying the different options, what I will say is that if you're exploring different options, cause there's like underground ways to do this, look for some key components. Right. And so the first component, well, there's three components to a proper, I call them journey and the indigenous tribe, they call them ceremonies, but I like the word journey.
00:34:00
Speaker
to a journey, and it is a journey, is there is a preparation, there is the actual sitting with the medicine, and then there is the integration. And so a lot of times when people think about using this tool, they think of just the sitting with the medicine. That's just a small piece. The preparation and most importantly, the integration are kind of bookends
00:34:29
Speaker
to the journey. And so when people kind of come into my world and they want to try this as an option, the first thing I do is start with preparation. OK, so preparation, you know, we're in a very peculiar time in our life and in the world where psychedelics and the internet and all that is
00:34:59
Speaker
you know, internet is dispersing that information worldwide to everyone, people like my mom, you know, and we have people who have never really done any mood altering substances, maybe smoked a little weed in college and drink, drink, you know, socially, who are wanting to ingest a powerful mood altering substance. I guess I can, like, right. And
00:35:25
Speaker
That's not like for some people because some people are unfortunately control freaks. I'm one of them. So I can speak to them like the control freaks of the world. If they don't have some preparation, that's not going to go well.
00:35:39
Speaker
Because as soon as I start to feel like they're losing control, they're going to sling into an anxiety attack. They're going to, and then anxiety is going to bring on the, you know, cause once you ingest the medicine, you have no choice. You're going on the journey. There is no, there is no antidote. Okay. You're going on the journey. So, you know, once the, but if they don't have the preparation and understand what to expect and how to like work with the energy of the medicine and how to.
00:36:06
Speaker
overcome the initial come on, especially where I can talk to you about that if you want me to, but the initial come on was where most people can get stuck. Then, um, they have a bad trip. Is it a bad trip? I don't think there's ever bad trips. I think that there is just an ideal trips. And, but some, in some experience, and I say bad, I'm using bad trip as a, in quotes, they have a bad, what they call bad trip. And I'm like, I'm never doing that again. It was terrible. Well, you didn't really prepare. You just,
00:36:36
Speaker
But it's not their fault. They don't really know they're supposed to prepare. They just think, well, just take it and you get better. That's how it works. No, it's not. It's not like that. It's not a Tylenol. So, you know, so the preparation is about preparing the setting. Like, what do you need in your external reality to have a sense of felt safety? Like what, what do we need?
00:36:59
Speaker
Music's a big piece of that and deciding like am I gonna ask somebody to sit with me during this or am I gonna do it alone? How is it? Do I do I need a trained professional there? Like what do I need for me to feel safe? And then set. So set is how do I come into the journey? What things do I as a person need to come in on an energy plane and on a mental plane to be able to
00:37:28
Speaker
have maximum benefit from this. So setting, setting, set. And then in my work with people, we help them learn. It's almost like I see it as a synergistic process. When you ingest the medicine, your goal is to surrender to and allow the energy of the medicine to become the energy you live in during the experience, right?
00:37:58
Speaker
you surrender to the energy and then it takes you where it where it needs to take you right and you know that's not all like the whole time like you need to let you know bad stuff like this there's there's good like there's visuals and then there's this and then there's you can laugh but you know that's part of the journey right it's like a it's like it's just part of the journey probably to show you that um kind of like there is no good or bad it's it's all one fluid
00:38:28
Speaker
process but anyway my beliefs so the so part of what I teach people is how to become like one with the medicine and to allow the medicine to be the guide and to kind of maintain that objectivity of what's happening along with knowing when it's trying to tell you something because
00:38:53
Speaker
you know, there's different ways that the medicine speaks to people. Sometimes it's like visuals and you see it. My stuff comes always as a knowing. Like I get a knowing like this is something you need to look at work on. And then I go deeper into the knowing and then stuff happens. And then so the preparation, we're still in preparation. So then the last piece is like, how do you take that information? And well, then you have the whole like, uh, coming off the medicine in second, we call it left mind, right mind. So coming out of, out of,
00:39:23
Speaker
medicine mind, left mind, in your right brain. Because as soon as you come into right brain, right brain's like, oh, that was safe. And you were just high and nothing you heard was real. And you just need to just be the same. Be the same. And none is real. You tried it. It didn't work. You know, there's another time that you're just failing. So right brain will come online. Unfortunately, we can't get rid of right brain and right brain. We'll just start telling you all the ways that what you had was not real, not for everybody, but for quite a few people.
00:39:53
Speaker
So how do you deal with right brain the next day? Right. And that's all preparation. We're preparing you. What's it going to look like? Like, how do you even do this? How do you sit for six hours with the medicine and allow it to take you on a journey? How do you do that? Because most people can't sit still for one hour, much less six. So.
00:40:19
Speaker
Like all that is preparation, right? So by the time a person ingest the medicine, they kind of understand what am I supposed to be doing? And how can I like, okay, so this is the come on energy. It's not going to last forever. I just need to like do some things to work through it. Like they have an idea of how to sit with a therapeutic experience. It's like, um, plant medicine experience. And so the actual journey piece is different for different people, right? If they're doing it on their own, then I would do maybe one night.
00:40:50
Speaker
right? If you're doing it with a facilitator, then you can do multiple days in a row. Because the more you take, the more things are going to get opened up, you see what I'm saying? So if you do one night, you need to probably see what is open and then go work with that on your therapy with your therapist. And then maybe they're like, when when you and the therapist like, okay, we feel like we're ready for the next piece, you can do another night. But if you're like at a sacred healing space, and you've got a facilitator and someone who can help you with what opens up,
00:41:20
Speaker
you may do nights in a row, right? So it's about what's safe for you and making sure that you don't get so much opened up that it's like, oh my gosh, this is too much. And then the next piece after you do the journey piece, which is different for everybody is integration. So integration is about when you, most people when they ingest
00:41:49
Speaker
plant medicines will be different on the other side of it, right? And Joe Rogan said it best. So I'm going to quote him. He said, when you do plant meds, it's almost like someone, like pretend you're a computer, someone has just wiped the database clean. But there's this little file up there that says old shit. And our job is not to click that file, right?
00:42:19
Speaker
So integration is about like, how do I like know what I know now and then go into the world I had before I knew this? Cause that can be tough because everybody finds out something different, but, and how do I not, how do I keep my energy, my, my mentality? How do I build on the momentum of what I gained during this journey? And so for, for, for, for me, when I'm working with somebody, the preparation is four weeks, integration is six weeks.
00:42:49
Speaker
Okay. Right. So the journey is a mild part of the whole process. Right. Yeah. It's, it's like, that is the catalyst, but it is not, it's not the full picture. And so I would say to people, if you're trying to think about doing this, make sure your person has good bookends. I had a guy I worked with who did some psilocybin journeys with somebody in Oregon and
00:43:17
Speaker
He, well, he, he met him the day he did the journey. Oh, wow. Like he sat down with him right before the journey. I mean, I'm sure he had an intake call with him, but there was no prep. There was no, this is what to expect. This is how to, you know, he did say, you know, we need to set an intention for the journey. What would you like that to be? But there was, he didn't have any time to think about it. It's like, there's, people need the prep stage. Even if you've done psychedelics and plant psychedelics before.
00:43:47
Speaker
doing it therapeutically is different, you know? And so that's like the entire journey process. So if people are thinking about doing this, then I would definitely look for somebody who, or look for a way to have that entire process, the preparation, the sitting with the medicine, and then the integration.
00:44:13
Speaker
and the therapist afterwards if you're not doing it with a therapist. The therapist afterwards who can help you unpack the trauma if it comes up.
00:44:32
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.