Preparing for a Psychedelic Experience ($)

There is no one prescription for how to prepare in every circumstance.

“The vast majority of psychedelic use is non-clinical and non-medical. But when you look around the psychedelic space, almost nobody is talking about it.”
— Paul F. Austin, Third Wave, founder & CEO

La Medicina Is Not a Medicine

As psychedelics move into the therapeutic mainstream, they are being degraded to the level of a therapeutic tool. The government sees medicalization as the only justification for their use. Psychotherapists see them as furthering their scope of practice. Despite more people using psychedelics for non-therapeutic purposes, there is little advocacy for other uses. Other uses have been stigmatized and criminalized. Alternative discussions are trivialized and ignored.

There is no precedent for psychedelics in a medical context. The Spanish label of “la medicina,” assigned to mushrooms, peyote, and ayahuasca, is a misused term perpetuated by those who should know better. It’s applied by those in the Western medical establishment an insincere respect for traditional use. It’s insincere because the traditional use of these substances is not medical, it is sacramental.

Medical practitioners don’t understand the transcendent psychedelic experience because rational therapy conflicts with the non-rational psychedelic experience. As a result, the medicalization of psychedelics lacks direction and offers few indications of how one might prepare for such an experience.

Psychedelics offer different paths depending on whether one’s objectives are therapeutic, recreational, transformative, or inspirational. Their traditional sacramental roles offer some guidelines, but these guidelines are culturally specific and insufficient for us.

Gunpowder was invented in China in the search for immortality, used for amusement, motivated progress in chemistry, and later used in weaponry. The use of psychedelics was first developed by those cultures in contact with the plants that produce these chemicals. Their uses are related to the needs and opportunities of these cultures. These chemicals are now being applied by Western cultures to Western needs and opportunities, most of which involve money, safety, and normalized behavior. 

Traditional cultural use of psychedelics involves a good deal of preparation. Much of this appears primitive to Westerners. As a result, it’s misunderstood and ignored. If we can open ourselves to the larger Indigenous perspectives, then we can see a use for psychedelics that is greater than their application as antidotes for pathology.

My Experience With the Abnormal

My experience with psychedelics centers on personal growth. I have the unusual history of having psychedelic experiences with and without the use of chemicals. This gives me insights into their role in normal life that most others don’t have.

Psychedelics both precipitate and integrate altered state experiences, and these experiences are similar to experiences that don’t involve chemicals. It’s not the chemicals that have transformational power, it’s the experiences.

My first experience was with mescaline after returning from six days on El Capitan, a vertical wall in Yosemite Valley, California. Both being on the wall and being on mescaline were state-altering experiences, but it was the wall that was transformational. The mescaline merely provided a different mirror for reflection.

My dozens of experiences over subsequent decades involved extreme sensory or physical encounters. Rather than create new realities, my experiences with psychedelics allowed me to review my past and future. The same holds with rational therapy or dreamwork, both of which are tools for integrating ourselves. 

This applies to people working with trauma or illness who take psychedelics. The chemicals do not “cure” you, they put you in a state that provides a different perspective. What you stand to gain is the opportunity to assign a different meaning to your situation. This can change the balance of memories and emotions. It can change them, but there is no guarantee that it will. 

Events have different meanings when seen from different perspectives. When alternate perspectives have equal power, you may choose between them. Until then, you are stuck with the perspective that exerts the greatest power.

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