Integrating Psilocybin: A Personal Journey of Healing

I’d like to take you along with me as I integrate a recent psilocybin experience I shared with a group of dear ones.  With the help of an 8-step integration process called The Great Remembering, I’ll share, in the next weeks, what’s coming up for me.  My account is not a scholarly piece, so please hold it gently.  I do not claim to be right. 

First I’ll describe my experience:

We chose March 21, the Spring Equinox to gather in ceremony.  Now, almost 4 months later, I can recount the event, and begin to see the medicine it carries, not only as a reflection of the event itself, but for the way it mirrors so many important aspects of my life that I have been noticing and wanting to change in myself.

I agreed to do psilocybin in a circle after a few false starts.  I received the invitation from two individuals who have experience and sanction from the Native American Church to dispense various traditional medicines.  I have been cultivating friendship with these dear ones over the course of over a year, as we meet weekly for coffee.  Incidentally, this coffee group is evidence of my readiness for positive social interactions, though it is quite new for me.  Fridays at Dunn Brothers has become probably one of the best group experiences of my life so far.  I remember observing aloud, without fear of judgment (after attending for about 6 months) that the feeling was akin to what I’d imagine it would have been like to go to Kindergarten and be included among the kids who were just naturally playful, unencumbered, inquisitive, warm, and genuinely themselves. 

The ceremony itself took place in a forested area before the trees had enough foliage to shade us or offer protection from the sun, so we were dealing with sunny, high 80-degree weather at the beginning of the ceremony.  The sun quickly descended and before the medicine wore off, there was a need to make adjustments in clothing in order to feel comfortable.  This probably accounts for a premature shift into my regular mindset, and the need to access a blanket, jacket, socks.  

The “fireworks” and the literal chemical journey were not so novel as to seem transformative visually or kinesthetically.  I had chosen a space that had the shade of a couple cedars, away from the physical ceremonial circle.  Thinking about journeying with others was not appealing to me, and I had chosen to be alone, with nature.  At some point, I had to make my way back to the circle, with some dread, with all my belongings, since dusk was approaching, and I didn’t want to lose my possessions or have to go back into the woods to retrieve them after everything was dark.

Once I made it back to the circle, I was gently welcomed.  Each of the journeyers were in their own process of making their way back to post experience awareness.  I took some time to remember who was in the circle, and the safety I felt with them, feeling the space that my friends held and the fire that was built soon afterwards, which somehow invited me to use my embodied voice.  In the circle, I took every turn I was offered, and asked permission to speak again.  I noticed discomfort and at first judged it as inappropriate, as this was a safe group of friends, and judgment, dislike and anything negative did not seem appropriate.  Eventually, I was able to accept that this was happening, and spoke gently of noticing and of releasing what I affectionately referred to as “ick.” An ick which was very obviously a heavy residue of negativity that I had inadvertently received from my ancestors and my lineage about men.  I physically released these things into the fire.  Others in the circle followed by releasing other things into the fire, including what felt to me like masculine anger.  This nudged me, once again, to use my embodied voice and release the shame about being angry, the shame about being a man [that I’ve unknowingly carried for all of men and all of humanity].  And the pain I have carried and the self abandonment I’ve engaged in so as to protect men from pain.

In the ceremonial circle, once I found my way there, I allowed myself to feel and name the judgment, distaste, dislike, shock, disgust, revulsion.  I allowed myself to name the censorship I was experiencing, the reticence against having or naming or sharing any of these feelings.  In speaking in the circle and making offerings of tobacco and lavender to the fire, my revulsion and walls softened and my projections could be seen more clearly and I no longer felt so threatened by the placeholder (I bow to you, Dick) for my ire toward the masculine.  Ceremony closed and I allowed Dick to help me to my car and make my way home.  In the days that followed, I allowed myself to feel the profundity of what had happened and I felt driven to speak in depth with each of the other journeyers.  Part of this processing revealed an ease with men in the larger world, and a curiosity and even synchronistic set of opportunities to interact with several men in social settings that I would not have imagined myself doing before.  Though it was never my conscious intention, I had somehow built a life for myself that included only women friendships.

What seems to be enduring is an ease with and interest in interactions and friendships with other men and an allowing in of men in my life.  I continue to track and understand the trance I was under due to the lineage I carried along with my father’s shame and unprocessed trauma and grief.  Somehow I had unloaded that – with the help of the medicine, a group of trusted friends, an early spring forest, tobacco and lavender – in the ceremonial fire.