It has been about 6 years since clients began to show up in my office to unpack their experiences with ayahuasca, while others expressed curiosity about the antidepressant effects of ketamine and psilocybin. During this time, psychedelic medicine has moved from an underground practice to a well-researched and effective adjunct to psychotherapy. According to many advocates, it is psychiatry's most significant advancement in the past 50 years!
This came as a pleasant surprise for me personally, who began exploring psychedelics as early as my teen years (when I was already interested in the same themes around consciousness that capture my attention today). I’ll never forget my first acid trip, lying in a cemetery with several friends, watching the snow gently falling towards me, and realizing that I would never see the world in the same way ever again. In those special moments, I was overcome by feelings of hope and gratitude, a knowing that the universe was inherently good, and a belief that this life was much more extraordinary than I had ever imagined. My decade spent in Hebrew school and my parents’ practice of Judaism couldn't hold a flame to the sacredness of that night. And so began my lifelong search for the true self and the meaning of life.
Despite my beautiful and innocent beginning with psychedelics, the long journey of drug use that ensued was a meandering path of many unbelievably powerful moments peppered with confusion, various dependencies, poor decision-making, and struggles with my mind and emotions; by the time that I traded in my party card for a yogic lifestyle, I was pretty certain that this chapter had closed for good.
With the integration of psychedelic therapy into my professional work, I feel like I have come full circle. Given my ample personal experience coupled with professional training, I am now uniquely qualified to serve those who use plant medicines and other psychedelics. I have also bolstered my knowledge with the current science and prevailing views on how and why they work and can now draw from dozens of my own case studies from clients who have utilized ayahuasca, psilocybin, ketamine, and other medicines in their pursuit of good mental health and more transpersonal inquiries into the nature of the self and reality.
I believe there is a place for psychedelics in the practice of psychotherapy, and also that they are not the panacea that many of the startups and psychedelic juggernauts would have us believe. They appear to be best suited for those with a stable sense of the self who are eager to explore their subconscious in conjunction with regular psychotherapy and a real effort to make habit-based change. They are not suited for those who are just looking for the next entertaining “experience” or anyone who may have susceptibility towards mental health crises or psychosis.
There is much to consider regarding which psychedelic, the route of administration, the most appropriate setting, the dosage, and the length of treatment (for instance, I’m really not a fan of clients running off to places like Costa Rica for a casual psychedelic retreat). I have observed everything from their deleterious effects (with one client who stopped their use of anti-depressants under the medical guidance of a ketamine provider) to profound and lasting change in the population that I serve. From the list of the many positive outcomes, I can think of clients who have reduced (and even eliminated) anxiety, OCD, binge eating, depression, and other mental health imbalances (particularly for those that express a narrowed way of thinking about the self, other, and world). And while I could never say that the psychedelics were causative of such great improvements they were undoubtedly correlative.
It should also be noted that psychedelics can be very challenging due to their confrontative nature. When the medicines are properly dosed an expedited and magnified experience of the self’s pain and limitations can become glaringly obvious, and if a person is deeply identified with these mind-manifestations their journey and subsequent integration period will likely be quite tender. However, if enough psychotherapeutic work is done on either side of their use, psychedelics can also help one to depersonalize and relinquish harmful ideas about their ego-identity and clear the way for a more enjoyable and virtuous sense of self. Though this is much easier said than done, it is an extremely necessary part of any effective psychological healing with or without psychedelic medicine.
Since their renaissance, many of my clients have inquired about psychedelics, including the most surprising of those whom I never would have anticipated any appetite for such things. If you find yourself curious I implore you to make sure that you have the proper resources for this work, including adequate time and knowledge for preliminary exploration and preparation; the insurance that you are either under medical guidance or have well-sourced the medicine that you will be ingesting; and, proper support during your journey and after throughout the integration period when the majority of the benefit can be stabilized.
I am grateful for my experiences with psychedelics and the profundity of the lessons that they have taught me about my self, mind, and spiritual beliefs. I am also tickled-pink that I am now in a position to be able to use this knowledge to support others in their own exploration. I would however also like to state that I believe that psychedelics should be considered as a stage and not a stop along our path of psychospiritual development. I do not believe that they are useful as a lifelong practice (except possibly for the biochemical treatment of pain and/or depression, which is only necessary for a very small percentage of the population), and much prefer the path of meditation as a tool for our deepest inquiries into the nature of reality. Having said this, psychedelic medicine can be a truly profound and beneficial tool when used with the intelligence that they command. Should you have an interest in exploring this modality please don’t hesitate to reach out for a consultation and we can discuss the best path forward.