Intentions. One of the words that everyone mentions, but rarely has a deeper definition for when asked.
It’s a term anyone who has explored the psychedelic therapy space will be familiar with, whether hearing it from a friend, being asked for one from a Guide or Clinician, or reading about it on forums or social media.
“You need an intention.” “Set a strong intention.” “Hold your intention in your mind and heart.” “Be intentional with your use.”
Why are they important? What do intentions help you do? How do they contribute to the process of healing and assist psychedelic therapy protocols? What do “good intentions” look like?
This is an overview of the art and science of setting intentions for psychedelic therapy.
What is an intention?
Briefly defined, an intention is an aim or goal you are holding for the experience, for your healing, for yourself in your session, and for the treatment protocol overall.
An intention may be:
An outcome you want
An experience in the session you wish to have
Asking for insights or healing in certain areas of your life
Hoping to see or develop characteristics in yourself
Intention setting is the first step you take when showing up for the healing dialogue between you and the medicine, you and the experience, and/or you and your inner healing intelligence. It’s a demonstration that you’re taking the work seriously, that you have things you wish to work on, and an acknowledgment that you are up for doing the work within your control.
Everyone is unique, and the healing and outcomes that each person needs will be different. This applies to your intention as well.
What an Intention Shouldn’t Be
A few notes on what an intention shouldn’t be.
An intention isn’t a requirement for the experience: “Either I get this experience/sensation/insight or the session didn’t work.”
It’s also not an expectation for the experience: “This is going to come up!”
And it’s not a prescription for yourself: “I know this is exactly what I need.”
Once you set a firm intention, let go of it. You have done your part, and showed up for your end of the bargain. You put effort into the things you can control, and asked for what you would wish for.
It’s time to let go, trust the experience, and open yourself to what will arise.
What do Intentions Do?
There are a number of uses that intentions have before, during, and after your individual dosing sessions.
They help you to “show up”
As we mentioned, setting an intention is the first step in really “showing up” for this process.
Psychedelic medicine is not a “magic pill,” or a passive process. It is an active process that requires your involvement. Alongside setting up your set & setting, setting your intention is another example of this.
They inform the medicine / experience / subconscious
The medicine and experiences are on your side, everything that happens is happening for your benefit, for your healing and your wholeness.
Through your intention, you can further assist this process by telling the medicine, telling the experience, and telling your body and inner healing intelligence what you think is most important to focus on right now.
They ground and recenter you
If at any point throughout your session you feel challenged, unsure, or otherwise resistant to the content or nature of your experience, coming back to your intention can help to ground and recenter you in the experience.
It can help you make sense of the content of the experience in the moment, and it gives you an anchor, a point of rootedness to return to should you ever feel the need.
They help frame the experiences
Sometimes the experiences and insights you have in a session connect directly and obviously to your original intention. Other times the connection isn’t as clear, but in recalling your intention, you can use this as a framing to help further explore and understand the nature of your experience. Intentions help the integration process by giving you the starting frame of, “If this session was helping me enact and realize my intention, why did the experience unfold as it did? What is it trying to tell/show me?”
Given the wide range of utility and value that intentions bring, there is a good reason why they so frequently come up in conversations around psychedelic experiences and psychedelic therapy.
The psychedelic experience is good at highlighting to us what exactly we can and cannot control in our lives. When it comes down to it, we can really only control our thoughts and our actions. We can’t dictate how the experience will go, we can’t control how others will act, but we can control what we do.
And setting intentions is firmly within our control. It is an input variable that we have access to. And if we can, we will! Setting intentions, alongside cultivating a conducive Set & Setting, are powerful levers you have in your domain to help steward your psychedelic experience in the direction you would like to go.
What Are “Good” Intentions?
As is so often the case with psychedelic therapy, the answer here is “it depends.” It depends on who you are, and it depends on what you need as part of your healing journey and experiences.
To begin, it’s important to note that just the act of thoughtfully setting an intention for your psychedelic therapy program, and your individual sessions, is itself an extremely powerful act.
The simple act of setting an intention is just as good as the content and specifics of whatever intention you will set.
Though it is possible to get more specific (without being prescriptive) on how you can form conducive intentions for your experiences. There are 3 core factors to this process.
Present Positive
If you are setting an intention, consider how you can make it relate to the present moment, and make it positively-oriented.
Examples of this might be “show me my power,” or “help me see the happiness inside of me.”
Because it is possible to have very direct experiences of your intentions, it’s helpful to avoid more challenging intentions around negative emotions or experiences. If you have the choice —and you do, it’s your intention!— choose positively-oriented intentions.
Make a Specific Ask/Request
There are two important components here: specificity, and asking. Remember, an intention is not a requirement, guarantee, or expectation.
It’s about coming to your healing discussion and asking the medicine, “This is what I’d like to experience, heal, or work on — what do you think? Can you help with that?”
Making it as clear as possible, and phrasing it as a specific question can assist you in making clear, powerful intentions. Sentence stems such as “Show me…,” “Help me…,” are easy ways to get started.
Get to the Root
Addressing the root of the problem, confusion, or trauma is helpful, instead of the surface level manifestations. The medicine works on personal behaviors and ideas and blockages.
Instead of asking “Show me how to make more money…,” you might try something like “Show me the peace and acceptance I already have.”
These 3 factors, when taken and combined together, can help you create clear, powerful, and direct intentions for each of your sessions. The more focused you are, the more you show up for the things within your control.
You know what you want or would wish for. You may not always get something that relates directly to this, but that is an outcome out of your control. What’s important is the practice of investing in the things you can control, and clear, direct intentions are one of them.
What If My Intention Didn’t Happen?
It is possible that despite your best efforts to put together a clear and direct intention, the medicine and the experience may have some other ideas. The experience may not have apparently related to the intention at all! It could be something entirely different, and this can be off-putting or upsetting within the session and during the integration process afterwards.
There are a few ways to approach this if this does occur for you:
Explore Deeper
The way your mind and the medicine communicates experiences and insights to you is not always straightforward. It’s not always a linear answer in clear language.
Continue to reflect and explore the nature of your experience, look for creative, cheeky, or alternative ways of interpreting your experience.
As an example, if your intention was “Show me what I need to heal,” and nothing happened in the experience, instead of thinking it missed the mark, that can be a way the medicine tells you that there is nothing to heal or you are not broken. Keep exploring the experience deeper.
Stay the Course
If you set an intention, a potential destination like “show me my power,” and it doesn’t happen, it might be because there are other milestones, or destination points that you need to arrive at before you’re ready or able to see that one.
Said differently, the intention you set might be Point D and the medicine first needs to bring you to points A, B, and C first.
Trust in the experience, and try to unpack what the message/lesson of each session was, trusting that it is all helping move you in the direction of your original intention.
T.L.O In Practice
The medicine, in partnership with your inner healing intelligence, is deeply intelligent. This is the Trust, Let Go, and Be Open (T.L.O) mantra in practice: trusting the experience, letting go of your intention, and being open to the fact that the medicine and the experience know what you need and how to help you.
The experience might be entirely unrelated to the intention you set, and this is okay. It is still moving you, always, in the direction of your own healing and wholeness.
Can I Use the Same Intention More Than Once?
Yes and no.
To address the idea behind the “no,” you are constantly changing. The person you are now is different from the person you were a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, even a moment ago. As a result, it’s fitting that your intention should grow, shift, and evolve just as you grow, shift, and evolve moment to moment.
The idea behind the “yes” is that you can keep the same theme, or the same area of focus. It can be helpful to try your best to set a new intention, whether the particular focus, the emphasis, or the wording is different. Just as psychedelic medicine is not a magic pill, it is not a “set it and forget it” process. It requires active involvement throughout the entire protocol and process.
The intention you have for your first session can and should be different from the intention you have for your third and fourth sessions. Even if you are still working on the same core material, the same core theme — trying to adapt your intentions to get more specific, more pointed, is part of continuing to show up for the process.
Conclusion
Intentions and intention-setting deserve the importance and the praise that they receive throughout the psychedelic and psychedelic therapy worlds.
They are a critical part of the process that you have direct control over and influence in. They have value and benefit across all stages of the therapeutic program (pre-, during, and post-sessions), and they can be powerful drivers of your healing process.
As such, doing your best to show up and take this seriously, give it your time and energy is powerful and important. Direct, positive, clear requests addressing foundational areas of focus will take you far.
Here’s wishing your next sessions have strong intentions and positive outcomes.
As you approach your first session in any psychedelic therapy program, a lot of questions, comments, and concerns can arise: what will happen, how does it work, do other people feel like this the first time? The list can be vast.
And it’s completely normal to feel this way! These are big and beautiful investments in yourself and your health, and this decision deserves a level of respect, concern, and seriousness. The more you commit to the process, the more the process will give you in return.
This post serves as an overview of many of the common categories of questions we receive as someone is preparing to begin their Mindbloom journey:
How does the first session / subsequent sessions work?
What does the experience feel like?
Was this a “typical” session?
How Does the First Session Work?
At this stage in the process, you should have already had your initial consultation with your Clinician, been introduced to your Guide, have your Bloombox, and your medication has arrived or is on its way to your home. The first session has been booked, is on your calendar, and you’re in the preparation process now.
The sessions all follow a similar structure, however the first session does have some unique features to it to set you up for success throughout the rest of your program.
Guide preparation call – 30 minutes
To begin your session, you will join a Zoom call with your Guide to make sure everything is in place for a comfortable journey. They will ensure that your Peer Treatment Monitor is present and aware of their role, that you have your medication and supplies, they will take core vitals like heart rate and blood pressure, and help you clarify and refine your intention for the session.
This process typically takes between 20-30 minutes, and is built into the timing of your first session. Once this is complete, you will end the call, ready to begin your session at your own pace.
Session start – 10 minutes
Once you’re off the call with your Guide, you are able to start. Take time to:
Set up your music playlist and listening devices
Take a final trip to the washroom
Turn off device notifications, and remove any other distractions from the room
Get comfortable
Tell your Peer Treatment Monitor that you will begin
You will take your medication according to your Guide’s instructions, and start your playlist. After 7 minutes, you can spit out your medicine, put your eye mask on, and immerse yourself in the experience.
Session experience – 1 hour
The session experience is different for everyone —we’ll touch on this more below. It typically lasts around 60 minutes. Some sessions may be shorter, and others a bit longer. If you need any assistance during this time, like walking to the bathroom or a comforting presence, you can ask your Peer Treatment Monitor.
Return / journaling – 30 minutes
Once the session is complete, you will still be under the effects of the medicine. Take some time to slowly reconnect with your body, your room, and your waking state.
Be gentle with yourself initially and listen to your body as some physical effects may linger longer than an hour. If you experience any dizziness, difficulty walking, lightheadedness, or nausea, lay back down or sit still for a bit longer. This should pass shortly.
A light snack, some water, and intentional breathing can help ensure a smooth “landing.” At this time, it is very helpful to take some notes in your journal about the nature of the experience. Write down any major themes or insights that were present, as memories of the ketamine experience can fade quite quickly.
Guide post-session call – 30 minutes
As this is your first session, once your journaling is complete, you will return to a quick call with your Guide so that they can check in on you and your experience.
They will ask you to take your vitals, and also ask about the experience itself. If you have any questions, now is a wonderful time to bring them up.
Medical follow-up – 30 minutes
In the days after your session, you will also have a medical follow up with the clinician to further explore your experience.
Your clinician will ask about the medicine and the experience, make an assessment, and finalize your dosage for the program and submit the new prescription for delivery. It may decrease, increase, or stay the same. After this, you will wrap up the call and have the rest of the day to yourself.
Rest & recovery
While the effects of the medicine may still be mildly present, it’s helpful to use the rest of the day after your first session for rest and recovery.
Taking a walk, spending time in nature, taking a warm shower, or continuing to journal or reflect on your experience are all helpful ways to rest and integrate. You cannot drive or operate machinery at this time, so factor that into your planning. It’s also wise not to make any major life decisions during this time, it’s best to sleep on it for a day or two before taking any action.
At this point, you have completed your first session of your Mindbloom experience! You have taken a bold first step towards your own healing and wholeness. Take some time to congratulate yourself, to thank yourself and extend some gratitude for the steps you have taken here. They are filled with love, compassion, and courage — it’s worth recognizing that.
Note: The times above are estimated. You can expect the first session to last around two hours.
What Does the Experience Feel Like?
Many clients often ask what they might experience during their first session. As always, it’s difficult to provide a direct answer to this, as the nature of the experience is different for everyone based on what they need and who they are.
A few notes on the first session and the experiences that may arise.
Starting doses
As this may be your first time with psychedelics, ketamine, or with Mindbloom — our clinicians prescribe a weight based dose for the initial treatment. This dose is typically something in the mild to moderate range of our dosing spectrum for the majority of clients.
This is to ensure safety, and a gentle ease into an experience that can be challenging to some. For this process, it’s much better to build momentum and confidence than to jump into the deep end immediately.
As a result, the effects may be pronounced, but mild. Feelings of lightness, introspection, mild dissociation, euphoria, or presence in the body are common.
Conscious vs. subconscious effects
Psychedelic therapy works on the mind and the body. Sometimes the work does not make its way into conscious awareness. It can feel like nothing happened, however this is because the real work was unfolding in your subconscious and at the level of your body.
If anything, take this time to rest, relax, and come into deep awareness of your mind and body. You can always bring this up to your Guide after the session or with your clinician during your follow up appointment.
Novel states of being
You may also have novel experiences that you have not encountered before. Dissociation, out-of-body experiences, visions/visuals, and complex emotions are all possible within this experience. It depends on what you need for your healing at that time. If these do occur, simply stay with your breath, know that you are safe and supported, and express gratitude for the opportunity to heal.
Your first session may have very mild or very pronounced physical sensations, all of this is okay. You may feel your body very directly, or you may not feel your body at all.
What’s most important is to always come back to your T.L.O. framework: “Trust” the experience, “Let Go” of expectations, and “Be Open” to the healing the experience is giving you.
What Does a “Typical” Session Look Like?
The truth is, there’s no such thing as a “typical” or “normal” session. What happens in your experience is normal for you. It’s what was needed and what was necessary to take continued steps towards your healing and wholeness.
On the surface, it generally looks like you are lying down for a nap on your bed or couch for an hour. Psychedelic medicine is often an introspective experience, there’s not much to look at going on at the surface level. The first sessions tend to be a little lighter of an experience for a majority of clients with the weight based initial dose.. However, many individuals —particularly those working with ketamine for the first time— have significant or powerful experiences in the first session.
When questions like “Did I do this right?” or “Was this a normal experience?” arise, use this for your own healing and growth. If you did your best, you did it right. This is how the experience wanted to happen for you, so it was normal. Notice how quick we are to compare ourselves and our experiences, always wondering if we did it well enough, if we made a mistake somewhere along the way.
Begin to notice where those questions come from. Why do you think you did it wrong? Why do you think your experience isn’t normal? Investigating those questions and their origins, will help you along the way. Rest assured that you are doing an amazing job, that your healing process will unfold exactly as it needs to, and that you have taken another significant step along this path.
Conclusion
The healing process is rarely linear. It surfaces many complex and nuanced emotions, and brings our own concerns and confusions to the surface for us to address.
You are embarking on an amazing journey, and the fact that you’ve read this far shows how committed you are to your own process and your own healing. That intention and commitment will carry you far.
You have read about how the first session runs, what feelings might arise, and what a “normal” session is like. Now go experience it for yourself, with your head held high and your heart open. Enjoy!
You’ve made the decision to look into whether psychedelic therapy might be right for you. You’ve done some research, looked at some potential avenues, but keep seeing the stipulation that these treatments are available for “eligible candidates.”
What exactly does being a candidate for psychedelic therapy mean? This post explores the requirements of becoming a candidate, and what you can do if you find out that you are, or are not, a candidate for psychedelic therapy treatments.
Qualifying Psychedelic Therapy Candidates
There are a number of regulations, requirements, and eligibility criteria that go into determining whether or not someone is a candidate for a particular type of psychedelic medicine or a specific treatment protocol. Different medicines will have different criteria, as will the method of administration or treatment protocols that you may be interested in.teams
An important distinction to begin with is whether you are applying for candidacy with an organization or service such as Mindbloom or IV/IM ketamine clinics, or whether you are looking into clinical/scientific research studies.
As research studies are far more focused on their hypothesis and what they are seeking data for, they will often have more rigid candidacy requirements. These might include particular age ranges, particular conditions to work with, or other significant demographic/psychographic requirements. As such, it is often more difficult to be an eligible candidate for research studies, though it is not impossible.
For medically available psychedelic therapy protocols, such as ketamine treatment, there are a few broad categories that help determine whether someone is an eligible candidate or not.
Contraindications
The first category is the existence of any contraindications for the medicine or the treatment protocol. Contraindications are indications in the mind/body that demonstrate an individual would not be a fit for this particular treatment, or that the treatment itself presents potential safety concerns. This fit should only be determined by a licensed clinician.
Contraindications can include things like existing mental conditions, family history of certain illnesses, prescribed medications, or physical considerations such as resting heart rate, blood pressure, epilepsy, or other conditions. For a more comprehensive overview, see our full write-up on contradictions here.
Condition-specific Requirements
A variety of conditions, including treatment-resistant versions, such as anxiety, depression, treatment-resistant cases, PTSD, and others are available for treatment with ketamine therapy, while studies are underway to legalize additional psychedelic medicines. However, given that ketamine is a Schedule 3 compound by the DEA, clinicians must be able to support their diagnoses and prescriptions.
As a result, there are standardized assessments —such as the GAD-7 (anxiety), PHQ-9 (depression), and PROMIS Scores (depression & anxiety)— that clinicians will use to gauge whether someone fits the reported condition, and if ketamine treatment is the appropriate treatment protocol.
On many candidate surveys, you will see the systems of measurement used. These initial baseline tests provide clinicians a glimpse of what symptoms a candidate is dealing with and if they are potentially appropriate for treatment. In some cases, some people may be screened out based on these initial surveys. For those that do meet the pre-screening eligibility criteria, the clinician has final discretion to determine appropriateness of treatment which is usually after completing an evaluation.
Evaluation with the Clinician
The mental health assessments and questionnaires that are provided by clinicians aren’t the only qualifier. The prescriber ultimately determines whether or not they deem an individual as a potential candidate for psychedelic therapy. There will be an initial in-person or virtual consultation as part of this process. This gives the clinician more opportunity to meet the potential candidate, and make a more informed decision about their care.
If there are indications that this wouldn’t be the right fit, such as a more severe case than the initial notes indicated, or if there is a lack of confidence that the individual will adhere to the treatment protocol, the clinician may deem them ineligible for candidacy.
If they require additional support, or if they have a unique set of circumstances, the clinician may create stipulations for candidacy, such as an individual may be a candidate if they are also working alongside a licensed therapist for additional support, for example.
Ultimately, the decision to make someone a candidate comes down to the sole discretion and decision of the licensed clinician who will be prescribing the course of treatment.
What If I Am A Candidate?
If you have moved through the application and screening process, and your clinician has deemed you a candidate, you are now in the position to decide your next steps.
Being a candidate means that if you so choose, you are able to move forward with this particular treatment program and protocol.
Of course, this decision to move forward is yours, and yours alone. This is a decision for your healing and wholeness, and one that should be made with good intention and adequate information.
If you are an eligible candidate for treatment, you might take one of the following next steps.
Begin treatment
If you are confident in the clinician and the protocol, and understand the process, you can begin your treatment and move forward on your healing journey.
Ask questions
If you have any questions or concerns about the process or the protocol, now is a good time to ask. You want to make informed, safe decisions for yourself that you are comfortable with. If you have any questions, ask the clinician or the care team that will be working with you alongside your program.
Decline treatment
You are not required to begin a treatment if you are a candidate. Perhaps the timing isn’t right, or maybe you are unsure of the particular program. All of this is okay, if you have concerns, it’s best to be safe and make wise decisions. As always, being a candidate does not force you to move forward with the process, it simply means that you can if you so choose.
If you are a candidate for psychedelic therapy, it means that you do not have any contraindications for the treatment, and that the clinician feels you are a fit for the treatment, and that the treatment would be beneficial for you. At this point, if you wish to, you can move forward and begin your treatment program.
What If I’m Not A Candidate?
At some point throughout the application and screening process, you may be told that you are not a candidate for this treatment or for this medicine. Though this can be challenging or disappointing news to hear, it does not necessarily mean that your healing journey stops here.
There are a number of ways to move forward beyond this if you find out that you are not a candidate. You might consider one of the following actions.
Ask why
There may be a particular reason, such as an existing contraindication, that disqualified you. Asking why can help highlight other possible steps, such as finding a different medicine or protocol that has different eligibility requirements. There may be a stipulation, like lowering your blood pressure, that is the only thing that needs to be addressed. With a bit of time and effort, you can change that and become a candidate.
Look at options
Each medicine and program is unique, and as a result have different requirements. Just because you are not a candidate for one form of medicine or treatment does not mean there isn’t a potential option out there for you. Take a look at all of your options.
Other healing options
Though psychedelic medicine is one option for mental health, it is not the only one. There are many available healing modalities: psychotherapy, pharmaceuticals, natural remedies, lifestyle changes, and different health decisions that may be just as effective on your healing journey. When one door closes, another one opens, and there is something out there for everyone.
If you are not a candidate for psychedelic therapy, you have options available. Understanding why is the first step, and then looking for potential avenues forward beyond that brings this process back into your control. Finally, if psychedelic therapy isn’t the right fit at this time, you have many other healing options and treatments available to you.
Find out if you’re a candidate today
Being a candidate for psychedelic therapy is just the first step on your healing journey. It lets you know that you are able to move forward with the treatment process if you choose to. Though it is only the first step, it is an important first step nonetheless. A bold step towards your own healing, growth, and wholeness.
If you’re looking into psychedelic therapy and would like to know whether or not you are a candidate for ketamine treatment, you can take Mindbloom’s candidate survey today.
Being a proponent of the use of psychedelics, especially for medicinal purposes doesn’t attract the stigma it once did.
When psychologist-turned-psychedelic guru Timothy Leary encouraged people to “turn on, tune in and drop out”, he inspired a counter-culture along with an iconic catchphrase —and also a tsunami of outrage and backlash.
Since then, the narrative and advocacy for the benefits and potential of psychedelic drugs is changing swiftly and drastically. A number of factors contribute to this shift: how they’re portrayed in pop culture, the increasing amount of promising scientific research, changes in local and federal policies, and on-going historic events unfolding in real time.
In the past few years, research —along with FDA-approval and fast-tracking— is showing that these psychedelics, along with others, can be useful therapeutically in the context of treating mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
In turn, policies are changing, making them easier to legally access for research and medical application, while changing the narrative and stigma around them too.
There’s Renewed Research
Research into the psychological effects of psychedelics like LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) was robust in the 1950s, where the drug was initially studied with alcoholic patients, and later, heroin addicts. Psilocin and psilocybin, psychedelic compounds found in the psilocybin group of mushrooms more commonly known as magic mushrooms, were eventually introduced into existing therapies too.
These studies and treatments came to a halt in the 1960s, when the compounds being used and examined were outlawed. By the 1970s, the Controlled Substances Act was introduced, which created a structure of five drug “schedules” that are still used today. Drugs classified under Schedules I and II must have a special license from the FDA to possess or use in experiment. There are major differences between the two schedules:
Schedule I means substances with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. They cannot be prescribed and are challenging to get approval for studies
Schedule II involves substances with a high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence. They can be prescribed, making them less challenging to study.
While there were many animal studies into psychedelics during the 70s and 80s —mostly looking into the toxicity of psychedelics— no human experiments took place.
In 1986, the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), was founded and has distributed millions of dollars towards research projects that examine the therapeutic benefit of drugs like ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine and LSD, as well as cannabis. In 1993, the Heffler Institute, another non-profit that funds scientific psychedelic research, was founded.
The reemergence of human trials involving psychedelics, and their promising findings, is helping to diminish the stigma around their use for therapeutic and medicinal purposes. This has inspired major changes in legislation in some parts of the U.S. and Canada. In 2019, Denver, Colorado, became the first city in the U.S. to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms have also been decriminalized in Oregon, and are also legal in controlled therapeutic settings in that state. MDMA is set to be FDA-approved for therapeutic use as early as 2023.
In Canada, certain patients with a terminal illness can receive access to psilocybin treatment for end-of-life anxiety and depression through an exemption from Health Canada.
Media is Helping to Rewrite the Narrative
Author Michael Pollan was once most recognized for his research and writing about the socio-cultural impacts of food.
His focus shifted, so to speak, in 2018 when he published How to Change Your Mind, a catalyst in the conversation around psychedelic drugs and their potential. The book explores what science is telling us about psychedelics and their impact on consciousness, dying, addiction, mental health conditions, and transcendence. Pollan’s work helped to reintroduce this concept to the mainstream, and further legitimized the current research being done by organizations like MAPS and independent researchers.
Additionally, podcasts with broad listenerships like The Joe Rogan Experience and The Tim Ferris Show have hosted the world’s foremost experts on psychedelics and psychedelic medicine. These constructive conversations about the potential of psychedelics as a therapeutic solution —including in their own personal experiences— have helped to move the psychedelic medicine conversation forward.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Changed How We Think About Mental Health Treatment
It’s an understatement to say that COVID-19 has changed life on so many levels. The restrictions and isolation of having to stay at home, combined with the anxiety of dodging a potentially fatal virus left many people in a challenging place.
One positive development that’s come from the global pandemic is that it’s encouraged many people to address and assess their mental health and wellbeing. As a result, there’s been more dialogue about different types of treatment options, including increased access to psychedelic therapy as an option. This is especially true for those with treatment-resistant depression, who found themselves affected by the increased disruption and isolation the pandemic added to their daily lives.
In 2020, Mindbloom began providing at-home access to psychedelic therapy with ketamine treatment for depression and anxiety. This made psychedelic therapy more accessible and convenient in a time when visits to an in-person clinic may have placed clients at risk for exposure to the virus.
Clients are Sharing Their Own Stories
Changing times reflect changing conversations. While there’s always been outspoken and famous proponents of psychedelics and the impacts it can have on the mind —from the Beatles to Ram Dass— the science to back it up wasn’t always readily available.
Now that the research is catching up after years of being put on pause, it’s encouraging people across all walks of society to speak openly about their profound experiences with psychedelics.
In March, popular chef Sohla El-Waylly spoke on the NPR program It’s Been a Minute about her life-changing evening with mushrooms.
“I decided to try mushrooms for the first time,” she told host Sam Sanders. “I felt this overwhelming sense of gratitude… it really opens up your mind.”
Also, former basketball player Lamar Odom has spoken openly about how ketamine therapy has helped him with his on-going struggle with addiction.
As more people learn about the growing psychedelic therapy sector, there will likely be more frank conversations about how impactful it can be. The more widespread this type of treatment becomes, the easier it will be to talk about it candidly.
When it comes to the future of psychedelic therapy and the research into its capabilities, there’s no going back. Like the issues psychedelic therapy addresses in patients, stigma around it will only continue to diminish.
Psychedelic therapy is getting some serious attention from the media, the public, academic institutions, investors, and the psychedelic community at large —and for good reason! Many studies being released, and that already exist, continue to point towards the power and potential of these experiences to facilitate important healing experiences for clients.
There are a few specific conditions, such as treatment-resistant depression (TRD), anxiety, and PTSD, that psychedelic therapy is currently an FDA-approved treatment for. However, these are not the only conditions that psychedelic therapy may be able to provide help with, these are just the only conditions that are currently FDA-approved for treatment using psychedelics.
What other conditions can psychedelic therapy help to address? There are many, and this article will explore some potential future treatments that psychedelic therapy may have a part to play in.
Current Conditions Treated by Psychedelic Therapy
Let’s start at the beginning —what conditions is psychedelic therapy already approved for and already treating people for?
To clarify, this is for treatments that are available to the public in the United States, or to specifically designated groups of individuals (such as army veterans or cancer patients). There are many more treatments for specific conditions being studied and that have great promise, but have not yet been approved by regulators and health authorities.
Depression
Ketamine treatment can currently be prescribed to individuals off-label to help address depressive disorders like major depression disorder (MDD) and bipolar depression and depression’s associated symptoms.
An individual can now ask for a recommendation to a ketamine clinic from their healthcare practitioner, or reach out directly to a clinic or ketamine provider to check their eligibility for treatment and begin the program.
Anxiety
Similarly, ketamine treatment is available for off-label use in individuals with anxiety disorders or acute anxiety and its symptoms. You can begin a conversation with your care team, or reach out directly to a clinician or clinic to begin the process of enrolling in a ketamine treatment program.
Treatment-Resistant Depression
This is listed separately from depression as it’s a notable case in and of itself. We’ve written about psychedelic therapy’s potential to help with treatment-resistant depression before.
What’s notable here is that by definition, treatment-resistant means that other therapeutic interventions haven’t been successful. Psychedelic therapy presents an option to those who currently do not have any, and this is worth recognizing.
Currently, there is an FDA-approved medication for TRD, Spravato, which is an esketamine intranasal spray, and is the ONLY FDA approved psychedelic therapy for mental health at this time. Additionally it is approved for major depressive disorder (MDD) WITH suicidal ideation.
PTSD
There are currently significant studies underway for MDMA therapy to treat PTSD and complex-PTSD sponsored by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).
The results have been promising, and it has received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the FDA. While this treatment isn’t available to military veterans through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), some MAPS studies are focusing on veterans specifically.
Currently moving through Stage 3 trials, as long as outcomes data and safety profile remain consistent, it is likely that MDMA-assisted therapy will become an approved treatment in the next few years.
At the time of this writing, ketamine for major depression, treatment-resistant depression, and anxiety are the only available treatments for the public given a clinical intake process, diagnosis, and approval.
However, there are a number of additional studies and reviews, at various stages of the approval process, currently underway, with promising results. With continued study and investment in the regulatory process, far more psychedelic therapy treatments may be available in the coming years.
Actively Studied Conditions for Potentially Psychedelic Therapy Treatment
There are 3 major FDA-approval phases, appropriately titled Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3, that a new treatment and compound must move through before being approved and scheduled as an available medical treatment.
There are a number of conditions and use-cases that psychedelic medicine and psychedelic therapy protocols are currently being studied for. Some have a history of scientific research done dating back several decades, while others are emerging or are demonstrating potential as a treatment option.
Suicidal Ideation
The psychedelic experience often brings an individual to confront topics such as meaning, engagement in life, purpose, and passion. These explorations, paired with neurobiological effects that assist with treating and managing depression, making psychedelic therapy a promising candidate for addressing suicidality and suicidal ideation.
Although active suicidal ideation or a history of attempts is a contraindication for many studies or existing psychedelic therapy programs, with refined protocols, appropriate dosing, and ongoing support, psychedelic therapy may prove to be an asset in helping individuals to deal with suicidal ideation.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is another field that psychedelic therapy is currently being studied. OCD patterns are often driven by rigid behavioral patterns and high levels of control, something psychedelic therapy helps individuals to confront directly.
There have been some studies in this area, and it is a field that certainly warrants future study and research within. OCD can be quite challenging or debilitating for individuals, and treating OCD and its symptoms through traditional psychotherapeutic or pharmacological methods can be hit or miss. Psychedelic therapy may present a new option for the treatment of OCD.
End-of-Life Anxiety / Depression
End-of-life anxiety or depression in terminally ill patients has been one of the longest studied potential use-cases for psychedelic therapy, particularly with psilocybin as the active compound used.
Given the results of previous trials, and the great service that this experience can serve for these individuals, moving psychedelic therapy for end-of-life anxiety along the approval and regulatory process seems like a wise decision.
Smoking Cessation
There are fewer studies around the role of psychedelic therapy in smoking cessation, however the initial results have been extremely promising.
Given that the best currently available solution has a success rate of around 17%, and the early trials with psychedelic therapy provided nearly 80% success, the initial results are significant enough to warrant much further study and research. The results will need to be replicated and tested further, but psychedelic therapy may prove to be a powerful asset for those trying to quit smoking or nicotine addictions.
Alcohol/Substance Dependence
Building on the above, psychedelic therapy seems to be uniquely suited to assist with addictive patterns and substance dependence overall.
Initial studies and results seem to show great potential for helping individuals manage addictive patterns of behavior, navigate or mitigate the tapering or withdrawal period, and stay abstinent afterwards. Substance and alcohol addiction affects many members of society quite drastically, and psychedelic therapy is uniquely suited to help manage this.
All of these potential treatment areas have had at least some research and study put into them, but have not completed the approval and regulatory process required to make them fully available treatments to the public.
Given the initial promise of these early studies, and the benefit and healing they could bring to the affected populations of individuals, it seems like further study is warranted and it would be powerful to start moving these treatments through the regulatory process.
Potential/Speculative Conditions for Psychedelic Therapy Treatment
In previous resources, we have covered the neurobiological and phenomenological benefits and effects of psychedelic therapy treatments. Given their ability to act on the physical, mental, emotional, and at times spiritual levels, psychedelic therapy and psychedelic medicines hold an immense potential to bring healing and wholeness to modern culture.
There are a number of fields where these effects and experiences may be extremely beneficial, in many kinds of individuals. Early study and research into these areas must be done to confirm these hypotheses, but there are several areas where it seems that safe and effective psychedelic therapy programs would be highly effective and greatly healing.
Trauma Healing
Nearly everyone has experienced trauma in their lifetime, and each person responds to these traumas differently.
Psychedelic therapy presents a powerful option to assist in the psychotherapeutic healing of trauma. It helps to reconcile the past, help you manage and understand your emotions, and help create a bold vision of a positive future for yourself.
The field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, where traditional therapeutic techniques are used in conjunction with psychedelic medicines, has great potential to create a whole and healed society. Exploring the use of medicines like ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, and perhaps other compounds may bring great benefits to future generations.
Personality & Mood Disorders
Personality or mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder), borderline personality disorder, and others are often a contraindication for many existing programs.
However, it is possible that a psychedelic therapy protocol can be developed that would be uniquely suited to assist this population. With the right Set and Setting, preparation and integration, ongoing support, and effective medicine and dosing protocols, psychedelic medicines may be helpful in the treatment and management of personality disorders.
Personal Growth
One of the most exciting potential areas of future application for psychedelic medicines isn’t in the healing space, but in the personal growth and development field.
Most traditional medicines move through this availability arc:
Available to highly specific populations and situations via controlled clinical trials
As a publicly available, FDA-approved medicine with a specific application
General medical availability (like off-label prescription)
Psychedelic therapy has immense potential for healing, but also for personal growth. It can help individuals become more themselves, helps them love more, clears up challenging experiences and emotions, and helps them rise to new levels of satisfaction and engagement with their lives.
This may be down the line, but the study of psychedelic therapy in the “neurotypical” population may hold great promise.
Couples Therapy
Psychedelic therapy, particularly MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, also has immense potential in the field of couples therapy, family therapy, and relationship-specific counseling, and was actually used in couples therapy prior to the FDA making it a Schedule I substances.
Psychedelic medicines can radically increase empathy, sympathetic joy, open-mindedness, and assist in reconciling the past and previous emotions Because of this, there is immense potential for psychedelic therapy to assist in interpersonal relationships. It can bring families closer together, facilitate a deeper love with each other in couples, and create a more compassionate society, which can have major ripple effects for the quality of life of everyone in that culture. It warrants at least initial research and study, to kick things off.
There are many more areas that may hold great potential when combined with psychedelic therapy programs and protocols. While we are still at the stage of making these treatments available for those in need of deep healing, it is always beautiful to look towards what the future may hold as general awareness and medical acceptance of psychedelic therapy continues to grow.
Conclusion
Psychedelic therapy is still in its nascent stages, where the medical and clinical worlds are working to align themselves with the emerging scientific data around the safety and efficacy of these programs.
Across many areas, from end-of-life anxiety, to substance use disorders, to treatment-resistant depression, psychedelic medicines are demonstrating their power and potential as safe and effective treatments for a variety of mental health conditions.
Moving through the approval and regulatory process is an expensive and time-consuming process, but when the potential for healing and wholeness on the other side is this great, it’s worth the investment. It’s an investment in people’s lives, in their quality of life, and in the stewardship of a healthy society.
As more scientific data arises, as the awareness and acceptance continues to grow, it is likely we will see many more use-cases and treatment options available and approved. Then we can continue to look into the far future, at the role psychedelic therapy can play in moving everyone towards the healing and wholeness that is their human right.
Psychedelic therapy is an investment. It’s an investment of time, attention, energy, finances, resources, and more. Ultimately, It’s an investment in yourself. And as with any serious investment, you’d like to receive positive outcomes from the work that you’ve put in.
But in the context of psychedelic therapy, individual healing, and personal growth what is a “successful outcome?” How do you define them, how do you measure them, and most importantly, how do you know if you’re moving in the right direction?
Everyone’s experience is unique, and your personal experience throughout this healing journey will be no different. This makes it hard to make direct comparisons, and in fact directly comparing your experience to others can be counterproductive. The act of trying to fit your journey onto someone else’s path can lead to demotivation, distraction, and unnecessary suffering.
This piece will explore some helpful frameworks and metrics that you can use when defining what your own version of progress and success looks like in the context of your healing journey.
Defining Successful Outcomes
If you’ve found yourself moving through a psychedelic therapy program, there’s likely a level of personal healing or a sense of wholeness that you don’t currently feel. Something is missing. This is a helpful place to start when creating the “North Star,” your primary aim, for your healing journey.
As psychedelic therapy has become synonymous with treating mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression, your healing journey aim may be to alleviate or eliminate those symptoms. It may also be tied to your intentions around self-improvement, self-satisfaction, or a more growth-related aim.
If anything, your psychedelic therapy programs and protocols should help you become more of yourself, help you accept and embrace all of yourself, and move closer and closer towards a sense of wholeness and completeness within yourself.
Now the experiences, the specific healings, and the resolutions that are required to help you move in this direction will be unique to you — but if we are to define any level of successful outcome to aim at, an increasing level of health and wholeness within yourself is a good place to start.
Subjective/Objective Progress Markers
Immediately after aiming at this end goal of increased wholeness, you are tasked with determining how to measure this. How do you know that you’re making progress towards this aim?
Therapeutic experiences and psychedelic therapy in particular largely deal with your lived experience —the subjective experience of what it’s like to be you. Given the beauty and complexity of being human, this is inherently difficult to put into simple metrics or measurements. You can assist this process by looking through an objective measurement sense, and a subjective experiential sense.
Objective progress markers
When you begin working with a new therapist, psychologist, or with a psychedelic therapy clinician, you will often be asked to complete a series of mental health surveys or questionnaires. These surveys are scored on a point-based system, measuring the levels of anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD, etc. that you experience on a daily basis.
This is one way to measure progress or outcomes along your journey. By actively reducing the overall scores for anxiety or depression through these programs, you can mark your own progress in healing from these conditions, moving closer and closer towards wholeness and deep acceptance of yourself and your unique life circumstances.
This is one of the ways that your care team will work alongside you to help measure your progress: through regular check-ins against these scorecards. If you want to help yourself and your care team in this process, it’s very important to complete these surveys as they arise throughout your psychedelic therapy programs.
There are also secondary (downstream) physiological markers that you can measure against.
These are not always directly related, but can help to ground your journey in some quantifiable metrics. Measurements such as resting heart rate or blood pressure can be useful in this process.
For example, many highly anxious people can have higher blood pressure or resting heart rates, and in resolving some of the latent anxiety, you can start to see lower HR/BP readings. Of course, this is a secondary marker, and you may see lowered readings without an associated reduction in anxiety symptoms. However, in attempting to translate the highly subjective in the objective, these physiological markers can be another tool you use alongside your care team to track progress.
Subjective progress markers
There are also a number of subjective progress markers or check-ins that you can use throughout your program to track and measure progress.
During your integration periods, you can help track this yourself by taking the time to reflect or journal on questions such as:
Am I as reactive as I used to be?
Am I more or less present in the moment?
Do I automatically assume the worst in new situations?
Am I still experiencing physical pain/discomfort like headaches, pain intensity, tension, or similar?
Do I feel as anxious/depressed as I normally do?
Is there more space between my thoughts and my actions?
Do I feel like I have more control over my emotional state?
What is my average mood now?
These guiding questions can help you check-in with yourself along the way, and highlight some areas that are going very well, and others that may need some additional time or attention to keep working on. This is also helpful because if you identify any areas that aren’t making much progress, these can become your intentions for the subsequent dosing sessions.
Overall, the best results will be when you combine the objective and subjective progress markers together. And remember, healing is not a linear path, there are some times where you may make exceptional progress very quickly, and other times when the process takes longer to complete and you may have periods where you feel stagnant or stuck. This is okay, use these as opportunities for care and compassion, and recommit to the process, setting up your space, setting your intentions clearly, using the resources and support you have available to you.
Outcomes vs. Intentions
The journey towards healing and wholeness is an ongoing, perpetual progress. Each time you heal and take more ownership of yourself and your experience, new depths are revealed which bring up new material for future sessions. As a result, it’s hard to draw a firm line in the sand somewhere that says, “Now I am healed!”
Indeed, one of the things that you may need to address on this journey is the very state of mind that seeks for such clear-cut simple answers to highly complex and evolving situations and scenarios.
Similarly, just because your mood has increased throughout treatment does not guarantee that it will stay there forever. This is where integration work and ongoing self-care practices become incredibly important. It’s important to stay with your practice and your intentions to maintain the benefits that you do realize throughout your healing journey.
This presents you with another way to view your healing journey: focused on your commitment to your intentions, rather than an ambiguous “final outcome” for your program. To demonstrate this point: if you are focused solely on the final outcome of your program, you may get to that point where you still feel like there is some work to be done, and immediately overlook the incredible progress that you did make throughout the program —still marking it as a failure.
Instead, it can be helpful to frame this as: “One of my intentions was to connect more deeply with my family, and I’ve noticed progress in this area and I’ve done the work to help that —this is a success.”
There may still be other things you wish to work on, and those will be addressed in time. But part of a successful outcome is recognizing the progress you have made, the commitment you have shown, and the desire you have to continue this process.
Refocusing on your intentions and choosing to put your attention on the progress you do make are powerful ways to build positive momentum throughout your therapeutic programs and protocols.
Engaging With the External World
If you want to see the changes unfolding within yourself, the greatest playground to do that is engaging with the external world. It’s difficult to see internal changes when you are only focused on the internal.
Put yourself into the world. Dive back into your work projects, deepen your relationships and have more conversations, push your growth edges and see what happens. Are you as reactive or scared as you were before? Do you have more confidence than before? Are you better able to handle difficult or challenging events now?
One of the easiest ways to measure and see your own progress is to find yourself in similar situations as before, and notice if you react or feel any different.
As always, it’s important to remember that although this is a journey you are taking for yourself, it is not one that must be taken alone. You have resources and support around you: your Guides, Clinicians, friends & family are all able to help you on this path.
It is hard to be objective about yourself and your growth. One of the greatest ways to view your progress and get feedback is to ask those around you!
Ask questions such as:
Have you noticed any changes in my mood or personality recently?
I’ve been doing this program, is there anything that you’ve seen come from this?
What do you think about my energy/mood/attention these days?
This feedback from others who care about you can be invaluable. They may highlight major progress that you have overlooked, present new information that you can work with, or highlight new ideas that you can use in your other dosing sessions to go even deeper into this healing process.
Moving On to More Sessions?
As mentioned at the beginning, everyone’s healing journey is unique. This includes the timing, the level of medicine work required, and the particular feelings or insights that arise throughout the process.
Some individuals may have highly intellectual experience, filled with insights about their past or present circumstances. Others may have highly embodied experiences of strong emotions or trauma release. All of this is okay, and whatever experience you have is also okay. This also means that some of the things you want to work on may simply take more time and energy to work through!
There is always the possibility of continuing your sessions —in coordination with your care team— to give yourself the time and space and experiences to help you work through whatever you need, and continue your journey towards healing and wholeness. If this is something that might feel like it is appropriate for you, you can surface this with your Guides and Clinicians and begin that conversation.
Conclusion
Healing is not a linear part, and it’s not always clear cut. It’s complex, evolving, and at times challenging, while at other times extremely beautiful.
It’s important to welcome all of yourself and this is how you can measure success in your outcomes and your experiences:
Monitoring objective/subjective progress markers
Attach success to your intentions, not final outcomes
Engage with the world and notice any differences
Work with care team to customize treatment plans
In doing these steps, you will begin to create the exact circumstances and experiences that are needed for your healing, and continue walking your path towards increasing health, wellness, and wholeness. And that is true success: showing up for yourself and the world, doing the beautiful challenge of healing, and enjoying the process along the way.
You’ve just come out of a significant experience in your psychedelic therapy program. It’s important to you and you don’t want to lose the effects, or skip over or miss out on some of the healing benefits. You want this to have long-lasting positive effects in your life.
We have spoken about the importance and significance of effective psychedelic integration work to compliment and solidify the lessons and insights you experience within sessions. With a foundational understanding of what psychedelic integration is, why it’s important, ways to frame and approach the integration process and period, it’s time to get down to the specifics.
The following techniques, tactics, tools, framings, and understandings will help you unlock the most from your experiences, and help these lessons settle deep down into new ways of being and relating in your day-to-day life.
This process is broken down into 2 steps: understanding the nature of your experience, and taking the appropriate actions based on that.
Understanding Your Experience to Help Integrate It
The first step is to understand the nature of your experience. Another way to say this is:
“What was the dominant theme or core message that the medicine was trying to tell you with this session?”
It may be related to the intention that you set, or it may be directly pointing to something outside of your intention.
You can draw 3 broad categories for the theme:
Self (Physical, Mental, Emotional)
Others (Relationships)
World (Meaning, Life)
You can, and often will, have experiences that blend across different categories. That is why the first step of your integration process is to continue reflecting on the nature of your experience and see if you can find the “center of gravity” that your experience had —whether it was rooted in yourself, in others, or in the world.
To be clear, no one type of experience is better than the other, these come up for us for a reason, at the right time. All you’re doing is assisting the process by helping identify the nature of your experience so you can take complimentary integration steps.
Self: The physical, mental, or emotional
There are a few signals you can use to determine if your experience was centered mostly in yourself. The Self typically surfaces through physical sensations, mental thoughts, or emotional experiences.
Some specific characteristics can manifest as:
Overall numbness
Crying or cathartic/emotional release
Increase in physical/mental energy
Insights into personality or life history
Connections with emotions or with Self
Revisiting childhood memories/stories
Visions of yourself, your future, etc.
If the main thread of your experience was relating to your sense of Self, your physical sensations, your emotions, or your thoughts/beliefs/ideas, it’s safe to say that the nature of this experience was Self-focused.
Other: Relationships and connection to humanity
Similarly, there are some classic signs that you can look for when reflecting on your experience to see if it was rooted in connection to others, to humanity, or to the relationships in your life.
Some signs that your session was largely focused on your relationships are:
Looking back on your own isolation or feelings of loneliness
Healing or addressing specific relationships in your life
Feeling deep connection to others, to humanity, to existence
Coming alive to being part of a collective/community
If it seems like your experience was focused outside of yourself, on how you fit into bigger networks of relationships —family, friends, colleagues, your community, country, or the entire web of humanity at large— it’s likely that the dominant nature of your experience was rooted in others/relationships.
World: Meaning, being, and transcendence
Finally, another major aspect of the experience can be focused and rooted within the world, or life itself. This goes beyond your individual Self or the relationships that you have within the world.
There are a number of hallmarks that can point in this direction:
Loss of meaning of life
Connection to greater source, to web of life
Having a highly spiritual or transcendent experience/feeling
Feelings of unity, of interconnectedness to all things
Loss/dissolution of Ego
Out of body experiences
Experiences that are focused on the level of meaning and being are harder to put language to. However, they have a sense of being beyond the scope of yourself or the relationships you have in your life. At times it’s beyond the scope of humanity itself, looking at something larger, more removed, or more fundamental than human life.
As always, if you ever have any questions or would like to explore these experiences further, reach out to your support network, continue journaling on the experience and how you relate to it, and check in with your care team for ongoing discussion and support. Integration is not a process that has to be done alone.
Taking the Appropriate Actions
With a bit of reflection and perhaps some conversations with those around you, you’ve identified the nature or theme of your recent session.
The next step along your path of integration is to match the integration actions you take to the nature of the experience that you had. This helps the lessons deepen themselves, settle down into your life and take firm rooting. This helps you grow into the person you are becoming and assists you on your journey to healing and wholeness.
Of course, you should always try to find the activities that work best for you. Doing the things that come naturally to you, and give you the strongest results, will always be the most helpful steps to take. The suggestions below are merely starting points to get you on your way. It’s up to you to pick the ones that work the best and resonate most for you.
Actions for the Self
If you identify that the nature of your experience was largely focused on yourself, it can be helpful from this point to continue exploring the nature of the experience and the lessons/sensations that arose within it to see if you can point to whether it was largely physical, mental, or emotional in nature.
With this identification in place, you can try some of the following activities below to begin and assist the integration process.
Physical
If the experience was largely physical, you can assist the process by matching this energy and taking care and giving love to your physical body:
Clean up your diet, stay hydrated
Get adequate sleep
Continue or begin a movement/exercise practice
Get outside for fresh air, sunlight, and time in nature
Take time to rest, meditate, find stillness
Get a massage, cold showers, sauna sessions
Mental
If the experience was highly mental (cognitive) or insight/lesson-based, you can augment this by cultivating passions, interests, and areas of study:
Cultivate a meditation practice
Dive into learning some new idea or skill
Read books (any kind)
Make time for creative, artistic expression
Continue journalling, writing, storytelling
Make your physical environments beautiful/comfortable to live in
Emotional
If your experience was emotionally dominant, you can be an ally here by ensuring the process is resolved, and honoring the sensitivity of your work:
Start a daily gratitude practice
Journal about your experience and allow for any further release
Express yourself and your feelings, privately or in relationship
Write a letter to yourself or to others
Practice compassion-based meditations
Do something nice for yourself or for loved ones
Return to the soundtracks or music you listened to
Actions for the Other
If your experience was largely relationship-focused, there are a number of practices that you can do both privately and with others to assist in this process.
It is helpful to note that it is wise to take some time to let things settle after an experience. “Sleeping on it” for a day or two before taking action is a good rule of thumb here.
If your experience was relationship-based, consider trying the following:
Schedule time for deeper check-ins with friends and family
Reach out to old connections you haven’t heard from in a while
Send gratitude letters to friends, family, colleagues, etc.
Go out (or online) and spark new connections and new friendships
Find communities that share your interests/passions and join them
Clean up your existing relationship, close any open loops and address anything that is still unresolved
Actions for the World
There is a class of experience that is rooted beyond yourself, your relationships, and your connection to humanity. It can point to much larger topics, such as the nature of being, the meaning of life, or provide glimpses of transcendent experiences beyond your individual sense of self.
While there are common suggestions and starting points to kick this off in your integration process, this is an area that is largely up to you. This is about your connection to life, and is a very different process for each person.
With that said, some starting points along this path include:
Continue to study/explore any visions/lessons/teachings you received in your sessions
Begin to cultivate (or deepen) a personal spiritual practice
Study or review existing sacred texts and teachings
Listen to or watch spiritual material/media
Begin journaling your views on topics such as the nature of life, meaning of life, your role in the world/existence, etc.
Find a teacher/mentor/guide who can help in this process
Join communities of other individuals also moving along this path
Integration Timelines
As you begin to enter your integration period and continue your process of bringing these experiences and insights deeply into your life, it’s again helpful to have a reminder that there is no deadline to this work.
There is no final exam to pass at the end of this. No penalty for late submissions. This is about your own personal process, and your connection to your own healing and journey to wholeness.
Some of the experiences and insights you have throughout your sessions may be quick and easy to set up —scheduling a monthly family Zoom call, for example. Others are more nuanced and less obvious, like cultivating a personal spiritual practice for the first time. What matters most is honoring where you are in the process, what you feel called to focus on, and showing up as best you can for each step along the way.
Taking integration actions that match the nature of your experience can augment and assist the process, and as mentioned earlier, these suggestions are merely starting points. With time and experience you will land on the activities that are most beneficial to you and provide the greatest results. Whatever that ends up looking like is okay, and it’s important to trust yourself and your inner guidance throughout this journey.
Continue On and Enjoy Your Journey
The opportunity to continue your journey towards healing, growth, and wholeness is a beautiful gift and opportunity. Thank yourself for making this decision, for demonstrating this great act of self-love and compassion by embarking on this journey.
The path is not always straightforward for this work, and that’s okay. Remember that you have support in community, relationships, and your care team should you need it. You are not alone on this path, and this is the journey of a lifetime. Enjoy this work while you do it, and walk boldly towards your future.
A crucial part of the psychedelic therapy experience is trusting the professional(s) you’re working with. If the trust isn’t there, it will prove to be a major obstacle when doing the work.
While each professional may come to their practice with a different training background or approach, they all ultimately have the same intention: to help the client on the right path to self discovery and healing.
Just as there are a number of ways to experience psychedelic therapy, there are a range of professionals to help you through your journey. Some of these include clinicians, licensed therapists who leverage psychedelics, guides, and shamans.
A Guide’s Experience is Paramount
Set and setting —your mind-frame, and held space or location— are important factors to consider when engaging with psychedelic therapy, and in all cases, guidance is equally paramount. Journeying into this type of therapy requires the direction of someone with experience, otherwise there’s high potential for things to go sideways, fast.
Dr. Leonard Vando is a New York-based board certified psychiatrist, addiction psychiatrist, and Medical Director at Mindbloom.
He says that an experienced guide can help determine the direction in which the medication is going to evolve and unfold within the patient.
“When a person with experience in this area has more tools, they’ll help you develop your intentions,” he says. “That’s super useful because like everything else, where the intention is and how you come into this experience will make all the difference in what you get out of it.”
At Mindbloom, experienced guides are able to give a client the support and direction needed throughout their ketamine therapy experience, should challenging emotions or insights come out of their sessions, which sometimes happens.
“If you run into some emotional difficulty, an experienced guide who has helped people in a situation like this before will make a difference between a healing session and a terrible session,” Dr. Vando says.
Retreating and Treating
Outside of Mindbloom’s at-home treatment, there are many options to experience guided psychedelic therapy at alternative medicine retreats. They’re found all over the world, but are particularly abundant in countries like Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica.
The facilities can vary when it comes to environments and resources. Some are resort-like settings that offer all-inclusive amenities while others are rustic, no-frills facilities with only the bare minimum provisions on hand. What these resorts have in common is access to a variety of spiritual healing practices, like “magic” mushrooms, ayahuasca and ibogaine.
Depending where you go, the person leading these sessions can be referred to by different monikers. Some common ones are curandero, healer, shaman or guide.
Guided ayahuasca retreats
With ayahuasca, the therapeutic work takes place during a formal ceremony —usually amongst a group— where guests ingest the medicine and wait for the effects to kick in. This is where an experienced guide is crucial, as they will help the guest navigate the effects of the medicine. The experience often brings various psychological and emotional insights and challenges to the surface.
The experience is intense and long lasting: Ayahuasca can last up to six hours. A skilled guide will know how to help anyone having a distressing experience steer through unearthed fears so that they can take away meaningful connections and revelations.
Guided ibogaine retreats
Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid found in the root bark of the Iboga shrub, which is native to central Africa. It’s been used in rituals by native populations and passed on through the Bwiti tradition for centuries.
Ibogaine retreats can be found across North America, Central America and Europe. Some position themselves as detox centers, while others offer more of a getaway experience.
Ibogaine ceremonies are often focused on helping the patient with addiction issues. Mental and physical health conditions, medications they’re on, and use of recreational drugs may factor into whether a patient is qualified to take part in this treatment.
As ibogaine is considered a spiritual plant medicine, facilitators who are guiding the ceremony should be experienced and properly trained in the Bwiti tradition.
Doing the Work
Justin Townsend is the CEO and head facilitator of MycoMeditations, a psilocybin mushrooms retreat based in Treasure Bay, Jamaica. His retreat staffs licensed therapist facilitators, clinical psychologists, a nurse, and a social worker. He says having trained professionals on hand during treatment is essential.
“In the same way a commercial pilot needs hours of experience under their belt before they can fly people around in the plane, the same can be said for anyone working as a facilitator, guide, and therapist in the dosing space,” he says.
The people who come to the facilities typically are there to treat issues like depression, childhood trauma, PTSD and/or anxiety. Over the course of a week, and three formal group dosing sessions, they work with the professionals at the center.
He admits that someone who isn’t properly trained to navigate the unknown and chaos that’s unearthed after dosing can end up intimidated, fearful, and even judgmental if they don’t trust the process or understand the experience.
“If they bring that to the equation, it can send the whole experience for the guests sideways,” he says. “As facilitators and therapists, we can often end up being a lightning rod for people’s repressed anger, so another key facility for the professionals is to not take things personally.
The professionals who work at the retreat also dose regularly, as an opportunity to ‘clear out’ their own basement.”
“We’re constantly working on ourselves so we can be very present for our guests as well,” Townsend says.
The Future of Facilitated Dosing
Psychedelic therapy involving psilocybin may not be exclusive to foreign retreats for much longer.
In Canada, a non-profit coalition helps offer psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for patients with terminal illnesses. Dr. Bruce Tobin, a registered clinical counselor with Victoria B.C.-based TheraPsil, explains in one of the facility’s YouTube videos the importance of trust between a guide and a patient.
“You can’t open up inside very much further than you can trust the person who’s next to you,” he says.
He goes on to explain that there’s opportunity for this trust to be built in preparation sessions prior to dosing. First the patient is encouraged to examine what they want from the sessions and what areas they want to explore in their life. Then, there is the medicine session, when the patient doses and is monitored by a registered professional. That session is followed by at least three integration sessions, where the patient is helped to understand the nature of their experience with psilocybin and how it relates to their personal challenges. It’s meant to help the patient reflect on the therapeutic content of their psychedelic therapy experience and weave it into the context of everyday life.
Finding the Right Source
Finding the right treatment, facility and facilitator may take some time.
Go about it as you would when you’re looking for other medical services – through recommendations and reviews. Be wary of services, retreats, or guides who offer suspect pricing, as it’s often the sign of a cash grab. When doing the research, look for platforms or facilities with positive reviews and ones that have come from recommendations.
Venturing into psychedelics for therapeutic use is an intense process that shouldn’t be done alone. Just like any kind of therapy, it takes guidance and trust to start to feel an impact on your life.
Psychedelic therapy is entering a renaissance period. A time of renewed interest, scientific vigor, and newfound potential to help and assist those in need of health and healing.
Research and clinical studies being done on psychedelic medicines and therapeutic modalities are reaffirming and demonstrating the safety, efficacy, and profound potential of these healing experiences. When administered safely and properly, psychedelic medicines help treat a range of physical and mental health conditions.
But what exactly is meant by psychedelic therapy? What do the experiences look like? How are they done properly according to current science and collective understanding? This resource will provide some much needed clarity around the key mechanisms and protocols of psychedelic therapy, taking a look at its profile to date, what science is currently underway, and where psychedelic therapy is heading.
With a number of different experiences, practitioners, and modes of administration, the world of psychedelic therapy is nuanced. Understanding these nuances is of the utmost importance to help further collective understanding on how to best serve the communities that benefit from these experiences, and how to truly unlock the healing potential granted by psychedelic compounds, the associated experiences, and the wealth and wisdom of the practitioners who facilitate and administrate them.
Definition of Psychedelic Therapy
At its core, psychedelic therapy is a combination of therapeutic techniques with experiences through psychedelic compounds. These psychedelic compounds induce novel states of consciousness and emotion that assist and augment the therapeutic “containers” they are experienced within.
Let’s begin by looking at the two core terms involved: psychedelic, and therapy.
Psychedelic
Psychedelic refers to a specific class of compounds that are proven to reliably and effectively induce certain non ordinary states of consciousness. There are classic characteristics of a psychedelic experience, including experiences and/or states such as:
Richness of phenomenological experience
An experience of selflessness or altered experience of Self
Timelessness, or a distorted/altered sense of linear time
New or novel ways of thinking/feeling
A feeling of unity or connectedness to others and to the world
Each individual’s experience will vary. Some, all, or none of these experiences may happen in an individual psychedelic therapy session. These are generally accepted as notable characteristics of the psychedelic experience and the compounds that reliably induce some or all of these states.
Therapy
Psychedelic “therapy” draws largely on the frameworks of traditional or classic therapy programs and protocols such as psychotherapy, talk therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and similar modalities.
Traditionally a client will enroll with a licensed practitioner and move through a series of sessions with the aim of unpacking, understanding, and healing any unresolved traumas or conditions.
Outside of working with a licensed therapist, there are other examples of “therapeutic experiences” which can provide similar experiences of personal healing and wholeness. One example is Somatic Experience techniques. This, and other novel conversational modalities, can be extended to specific experiences or programs that help individuals work through specific areas of themselves and their lives.
In combining psychedelics and therapeutic frameworks together, we can begin to see a larger picture of what psychedelic therapy currently is, and what it can become. By combining the rich experiences that psychedelic compounds provide —allowing safe access to novel experiences, feelings, and states of consciousness— with the rigor, expertise, and structure of therapeutic programs and protocols, a synergistic realm of healing opens up. This combination has been demonstrated to help previously treatment-resistant cases , and to accelerate and augment the progress and promise of existing therapeutic experiences.
Psychedelic Therapy Modalities
There are a number of different psychedelic therapy modalities, including but not limited to: psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, psychedelic therapy experiences and programs, and individualized psychedelic use with the intention of returning to healing, health, and wholeness.
Though all of these terms do involve the aforementioned combination of a psychedelic compound and a therapeutic structure, the specifics of administration —dosing, frequency of experience, practitioners involved, and supporting variables— vary between each of them.
Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
Refers specifically to the use of a psychedelic compound either immediately preceding, or during, a classic psychotherapy talk session with a licensed therapist. Through the emotional opening and novel states of consciousness provided by the compound and experience, practitioners and clients are often able to reach new depths in understanding, or cover ground that may have taken longer to arrive at in traditional talk therapy, or that was previously inaccessible to the client.
Psychedelic Therapy Programs
Whether through different therapeutic experiences such as at-home sessions, curated and personalized programming, or orchestrated by the recommendation of an experienced practitioner, psychedelic therapy programs are similar to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. They do not include psychotherapy sessions specifically, and may not involve a licensed psychotherapist. There is often supporting integration work to help understand the experience, it is an important distinction to make that these programs and protocols do not involve licensed psychotherapists.
Individual Psychedelic Therapy Experiences
These can take the form of healing retreats, personal or recreational individual undertakings, or participation in ongoing clinical research studies. This is a category of experiences that may include only individual sessions, exist outside of a clinical environment, or be part of an on-going study to research and validate safety or efficacy profiles for new compounds or techniques that are actively being researched.
If you are considering embarking on a psychedelic therapy program, it is important to know what you are signing up for, the scope and support involved, and to be clear on your own intentions and capacities for the experience. The more clear you are on what is involved, the more personalized the programs become, and the greater potential you have to achieve the results and healing that you wish to experience.
History of Psychedelic Therapy
The history of psychedelic therapy begins in the 1950’s, with the original coining of the term by Canadian psychiatric researchers, including pioneer Humphrey Osmond. Much like our earlier definition, it involved the application of a single high-dose of a psychedelic after a series of psychotherapeutic preparation sessions in the treatment of substance abuse disorders, largely related to alcohol in the early days.
Throughout the 40’s and 50’s a number of psychedelic compounds were being synthesized, or introduced in larger scales to the scientific and “psychonautic” communities. As these were introduced, a series of clinical and scientific study trials inevitably followed. The potential and promise of these substances was not ignored by the academic community in any way.
Despite the closing off of access and study in the 60’s and 70’s, psychedelic therapy and the potential of psychedelic compounds were favorably received and welcomed by the clinical and scientific community in the early days. Some researchers, such as psychedelic psychotherapeutic legend Stanislov Grof, came out with the statement:
“In one of my early books I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology or the telescope has for astronomy.”
In other words, an important tool with the potential to significantly accelerate and move the entire psychiatric and psychedelic field forward.
Studies began and were completed across a variety of fields and factors: everything from addiction recovery, treating depression/anxiety, inducing mystical experiences, managing substance abuse, and mitigating end-of-life anxiety. Numerous sanctioned studies were done across the globe during these decades. In the process, a number of best practices, protocols, and programs were developed to help systematize and contain what has the potential to be an intense or provocative experience for the client. These studies are the birthplace of “Set & Setting”, a hallmark concept in psychedelic therapy today.
LSD was a focal point for many studies across North America and Europe during this time. This compound was a major focus, given the potency, the ability to synthesize easily in a controlled environment, and the reliability of the method of administration. It also proliferated into the public through illicit channels and became a central piece in the countercultural movements throughout the 60’s, influencing many major figures, and creating ripples in cultural consciousness that would last for decades to come.
After these ripples came large-scale lockdowns and bans against psychedelic compounds and associated research and studies. Alongside this “war on drugs” came sweeping laws and regulations preventing the access, possession, and study of these compounds. The scientific and clinical communities working in psychedelic therapy would enter a dark period for research that would last for over two decades across the majority of the world.
Then, beginning with Dr. Rick Strassman’s work to investigate the effects of N,N–DMT (DMT) in the 1990’s, the academic and scientific communities have increasingly been able to work more and more with these compounds and experiences in controlled studies with FDA oversight. Many have coined this period, leading up to the present day, a “psychedelic renaissance.” Researchers and organizations were able to pick up where the research last left off,and continue exploring the profound potential of psychedelic compounds and therapies in service of helping and healing those who are in need of it.
At present, there are many funded studies underway across private organizations, research institutes, and universities. These institutions are looking at a variety of conditions —such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD— and finding the compounds, protocols, dosages, and experiences that will help alleviate their symptoms.
Funding and public attention is flowing into the space faster than ever before, more favorable legal and regulatory environments are taking shape, and the momentum for increasing access and awareness is gaining momentum.
Safety of Psychedelic Therapy
On the whole, psychedelic compounds are noted to be safe, both to the individual and the societies that they are taken within.
Visual depiction of the harm to self/society of specific drug classes. The Lancet.
Published by the Lancet, a pioneering journal in the UK, both LSD and psilocybin come in as some of the lowest risk endogenous compounds commonly consumed in modern society. When compared to tobacco/nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine, classic psychedelic compounds have a remarkable safety profile for the individual ingesting them for the experience.
That is not to say that these are panaceas or can be taken by just about anyone. On the contrary, some compounds do have a powerful body load, or direct impact on the body’s natural systems, to contend with. As is the nature of psychedelics, these are extremely potent compounds for the psyche to handle, and must be taken with care and respect to avoid doing more harm than good for the client.
Beyond the general safety profile, the biggest mark and way to ensure client and practitioner safety in psychedelic therapy is honoring and respecting the contraindications of the particular medicine or compound. Contraindications are physical or mental indicators that mean this medicine is not appropriate for the individual.
Each medicine and compound will come with its own list of specific contraindications, so it is important to review these, and to be honest with the practitioner during the intake/screening process.
Some broad contraindications for general psychedelic use include:
Personal medical history of heart problems
Personal history of high/low blood pressure
Personal history of brain or eye pressure
Family/personal history of manic or psychotic episodes
Actively working with major/significant depression, suicidal ideation, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia
Active use of SSRI, MAOI, or other pharmaceutical medications (compound specific)
This list is by no means exhaustive, and does not address specific contraindications for particular compounds, but can provide a general overview as there is a body load from psychedelic compounds (heart rate, blood pressure), and a psychic load from the psychedelic experience. These compounds temporarily alter neurochemistry, so one must be very careful when they are actively taking other medications that work on similar pathways or with similar neurotransmitters.
When taken within a safe and conducive environment with trained and licensed practitioners, psychedelic compounds and psychedelic therapies can be physically and psychically safe.
This is also an entire field of ongoing study, and the first stage of testing for public approval through the FDA — looking at the safety, dosages, quality, and best methods of administration for certain compounds and experiences. As more research is done, these safety precautions and knowledge will expand, continuing to further the efficacy of treatments and ensure the safety of clients and practitioners.
Legality of Psychedelic Therapy
Around the world, the legal environment for psychedelic therapy is starting to open up after widespread bans across the public and private sectors for the past few decades. Fortunately, legal access is emerging for both clients who wish to work with psychedelic therapies personally, and for academics and researchers who wish to use these compounds for studies to expand the scope of scientific knowledge around these medicines and experiences.
Currently, ketamine treatment is the only legal, clinician-prescribed psychedelic therapy option available to the public.
There are legal avenues to work with other compounds in the context of clinical research studies, but there are nuances to research studies that you should be aware of before signing up.
As for the academic and research worlds, legal access has been steadily opening up for study of the compounds themselves, and to conduct clinical research trials for their safety and efficacy in the treatment of different conditions or ailments.
All of the “classic” psychedelic compounds —psilocybin (Mushrooms), LSD, and MDMA for example— currently are labelled as Schedule 1 Controlled Substances by the DEA, meaning they have no currently accepted medical value and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision. Other compounds with psychedelic properties are available for licensed practitioners to prescribe only, as is the case with ketamine.
There are organizations like MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), who are pushing towards the reclassification, decriminalization, or legalization for medical use of these different compounds. A number of these compounds are moving through the FDA approval process now, and more on this is covered below in the “Compounds” section.
In the United States, there are local initiatives underway pushing psychedelic legalization movements forward, as well. The recent decriminalization of psilocybin in Denver, CO, as well as Oregon state, and the decriminalization of all entheogenic plants in Oakland, CA, are significant first dominoes to fall in the movement towards increasing accessibility and awareness of the potential of psychedelic compounds and psychedelic therapy programs.
What’s Involved in a Psychedelic Therapy Protocol
Given the different modalities and methods of psychedelic therapy, whether that be psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, or individual psychedelic therapy sessions, the exact programs and protocols may vary considerably. It would be a disservice to present a single, unified picture of a psychedelic therapy protocol, though that does not mean that these programs and protocols do not follow a broad experiential arc from beginning to end. It is this experiential arc that will be explored and outlined below.
Intake/Eligibility
Any psychedelic therapy program or experience will begin with an intake and eligibility process. There are a number of contraindications for each compound, as well as eligibility criteria on top of this. This is to ensure the safety of the client and that they are receiving the right treatment for their specific area of focus. These initial meetings and conversations will be done with a licensed practitioner who will review medical history, discuss intentions and aims, and help provide an overview of the experience and the specific program that the client would be embarking on. If a fit is determined by the clinician, the individual can sign up for the program and begin moving through the experience.
Preparation
A core component of a beneficial psychedelic therapy session and program is the preparation. Psychedelic therapy is not a magic pill, it requires a level of energetic investment from the client as well as the practitioner to ensure safety, comfort, and positive short and long-term outcomes as part of these powerful experiences.
Preparation can include:
Ensuring a conducive Set and Setting —the physical space and the individual mindset when entering a session/experience
Clarifying intentions and areas of focus for the individual session and the overall experience
Taking action on outstanding items in personal life
Preparing the mind/body for the experiences
Sessions
Depending on the scope of the psychedelic therapy protocol the client is embarking on, the sessions can be anywhere from a single experience to several sessions spaced out over a number of weeks.
This is dependent on:
The individual
The medicine being used
Aims of the program
Specifics of the protocol/program
Clinician’s discretion
Each session involves preparation, the experience itself, and integration. Integration can be done individually, with a Guide or support, or with the practitioner/clinician themselves.
Again, this is dependent on the specific program and will vary based on the individual.
Integration
Integration is the process of beginning to explore the insights, experiences, or feelings that arose during the session, and determining how to bring those lessons back into day-to-day life. This is done in the service of personal healing, transformation, and growth.
There will be space for integration after each session, but also at the end of the program’s final session, to begin integrating the entire experience and program as a whole.
Clinical Check-In
Once the client has arrived at the end of the final session or integration phase, it is highly contextual to the individual as to what happens next.
Working with the clinician, the client can determine the next appropriate course of action, which is often one of the following:
Continuing on with a new program/treatment
Embarking on a different healing modality such as talk therapy to assist with the integration process
if the psychedelic therapy protocol feels complete, and they return to life potentially healed or renewed
As this is highly dependent on the individual, their results during the course of treatment, their intentions for the program, and the discretion of the clinician, this step will look different for each individual.
This is a high-level overview of a classic psychedelic therapy program. As new science is introduced, new best practices are established, and this experiential arc continues to evolve and adapt. It also leaves room for personalization, as some individuals may require or want additional integration in-between sessions, for example.
Much like traditional therapeutic contexts, the exact shape and scope of the program will depend on what the practitioner and the client agree upon together, but this provides a generalized insight into an experience with psychedelic therapy in safe and legal contexts.
Neuroscience of Psychedelic Therapy
The neuroscience of psychedelic therapy —what is actually going on in the brain during a psychedelic therapy session— is one of the most actively researched and exciting fields in psychedelic science today.
Some of the fundamental mechanisms are known, but this is still largely an ongoing area of exploration as scientists and academics continue to further our understanding of psychology, biology, phenomenology, neurology, and consciousness itself. The vast expanse of the psychedelic experience touches on all of these major areas, and though science has explored many channels in the caverns of consciousness, there are still areas waiting to be explored and understood.
The first distinction to make is that not all psychedelics work on the same areas of the brain, though many do.
Many psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, work on the 5HT2 receptors of the serotonin systems. By selectively binding to these receptor sites, they increase the amount and reuptake of serotonin primarily, but also including other neurotransmitters. This induces many of the common hallmarks of the psychedelic experience.
Default Mode Network
One of the most notable by-products of psychedelic medicine is a decrease in blood flow and overall activity from a part of the brain known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). This is a network largely responsible for normal consciousness — it’s operational when you aren’t doing very much.
The DMN seems to be involved in maintaining the perceived boundaries of your sense of self, orientation to the progression of time, and other “self-regulating” systems that are largely responsible for the feeling of you being you. With the downregulation of this network, some of the experiences of timelessness, feelings of unity or connection with everything, and distortions in perception and feelings tend to come in.
The more research and studies that are done, the better understanding of the exact mechanisms, impacts, and effects of the psychedelic experience there will be. Continued studies on the neuroscience of psychedelic therapy will help to increase the overall safety profiles of these experiences. This helps create the best possible outcomes for clients, and determines how best to curate therapeutic experiences, and includes the considerations that need to be made.
Subjective Healing Effects or Benefits of Psychedelic Therapy
Everyone’s experience of psychedelic therapy and the results that they see by the end of the programs will be different. They are not guaranteed and the compounds themselves are not magic pills.
The therapeutic container that is established, the level of trust, safety, and readiness the client feels when going into the experience, and the level of preparation, intention-setting, and integration afterwards all play a significant role in driving enduring results to the program.
There are a number of subjective effects or benefits that are being studied as powerful agents for change in the world of managing mental health, which psychedelic therapy can reliably help facilitate in individuals.
Here are some of the positive phenomenological healing effects that can come through psychedelic therapy:
Emotional Regulation: An increased ability to understand and interact with emotions.
Cognitive Distance: Feeling more “space” or “distance” between external events and an individual’s reaction to them. This allows for more intentional behavioral responses, the rewriting of automatic triggers, and deeper introspection.
Embodied Feelings: Visceral emotions and feelings returning to the body, potentially some that may have been discarded or forgotten (joy in a depressed person, for example).
Novel Insights: Ketamine can facilitate crucial insights that when integrated, can provide powerful and significant changes to how the individual views themselves and the world around them.
New Experiences: New experiences or states of consciousness can provide motivation, inspiration, or understanding of the next steps. This helps to clarify meaning and purpose and catalyze improvements to mood, emotions, and physical experience.
These effects, when paired with a safe and effective therapeutic container, can provide a powerful catalyst for personal transformation and healing.
When combined together, clients can see small and reliable progress, or sometimes have profound experiences that serve as definitive moments in their healing journeys. Part of the continued research and study into psychedelic therapy is establishing the best practices and approaches that reliably and responsibly bring about the greatest experience and outcomes for each individual.
Psychedelic Compounds
There are a number of psychedelic medicines and compounds actively moving through various stages of FDA and global approval pipelines to become validated and widely accessible treatments for individuals.
This list is not exhaustive, and only includes compounds that can be considered classically psychedelic, given our definitions at the beginning of this article. Active studies, research, and legal approval varies between the various compounds, some are further along and being actively supported by the FDA, while others are in the very early stages of initial safety and efficacy research.
In North America and across the world, ketamine treatment and therapy programs are the only current clinician-prescribed psychedelic medicine option available to the general public. It’s used primarily as an off-label treatment for conditions like anxiety and depression, though it’s shown promising results for conditions and scenarios such as OCD, smoking-cessation, suicidal ideation, and others.
There are a number of ketamine therapy programs (Mindbloom included), and ketamine clinics that provide safe and legal access to ketamine treatment.
MDMA
There is some debate as to whether MDMA qualifies as a classic psychedelic, as it is often referred to more as an “empathogen” than a “psychedelic” in some circles. However, for the purposes of this resource we feel it deserves to be included. MDMA has shown promising results in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular.
With research and legal approval stewarded largely by MAPS, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD has been given “Fast-Track” designation by the FDA, and is currently undergoing Stage 3 clinical trials. This is the final and most exhaustive testing stage before a medicine can become legally available for use by licensed practitioners.
Psilocybin
Psilocybin is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms (psilocybe cubensis), and is increasingly synthesized by scientists and organizations for research and treatment application.
Depending on the condition the study is researching, psilocybin is currently at various stages of the FDA approval process. Some conditions such as end-of-life anxiety or depression, are in Stage 2, while other applications are being actively researched.
Canada has recently granted groundbreaking access for end-of-life cancer patients to use psilocybin. It’s also granted access to some licensed clinicians for personal use, to better understand how to work with this experience in the service of their clients. Some conditions and potential use-cases actively being studied include: end-of-life anxiety, depression, smoking cessation, eating disorders, and generalized anxiety.
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly referred to as LSD, is a synthesized compound that gained notoriety in public consciousness during its mainstream prominence during the 1960’s.
Despite the subsequent legal and scientific restrictions surrounding LSD, many of the early studies during the 1950’s and 1960’s show promise and potential of LSD to help manage and mitigate conditions such as generalized anxiety, depression, eating disorders, dissociative or personality disorders, among others. There are also early results from studies that have begun again after decades-long restrictions.
While there are studies currently being done to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of LSD, there are few initiatives currently underway to move LSD through the FDA approval process.
Ibogaine
Ibogaine is the active compound found in Iboga, a root bark from the Iboga tree native to Africa. In early studies, and through iboga clinics around the world, this compound has demonstrated promise around addiction recovery, specifically managing opiate addictions and the subsequent withdrawals that come from cessation.
It is one of the only compounds that has shown to facilitate opiate cessation with little to no adverse withdrawal effects or events. Though some clinics in Mexico and Africa have seen promising results with clients who have sought treatment for addiction recovery, there is more research to be done before this begins moving through official approval processes.
DMT
DMT has a smaller body of scientific work and surrounding research, despite its recognition as the first legally sanctioned research study conducted after the widespread research bans in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Similarly to other compounds, it has promising potential for managing and mitigating symptoms of mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and OCD, among others.
Collectively, psychedelic compounds are still in the early stages of researching and validating their broad range of potential use-cases and methods of administration. It is expected that more avenues and options will open up as good science continues to unfold in this space.
With new methods of synthesis and research, other lesser-known compounds —potentially as much viable as the ones mentioned above— may come into the scientific view for study. These potential compounds include 2CB, MDA, and other derivatives of LSD or psilocybin.
Where to Find Psychedelic Therapy Treatment
If you are interested in embarking on an experience with psychedelic therapy, there are two legal avenues you can currently take in North America and abroad: registering for a clinical trial/study, or to enroll in a ketamine therapy/treatment protocol.
For an overview to help you determine if the time is right to move forward with a psychedelic therapy program or experience, consider this resource with six guiding questions around readiness.
There are a number of options available to enroll in ketamine programs.
The first step should be to determine which method of administration is right for you. Please consult a licensed clinician and your primary care provider before making this decision. This is for your health, safety, and overall wellness.
Ketamine has multiple methods of administration: intravenous (IV) or intramuscular (IM) injection, intranasal spray, or sublingual tablets — Mindbloom’s method of administration. For more on these differences, consult our resource on these differences here.
Based on your options, you may be able to find a provider in your town, or a nearby state, if you live in North America. Accessibility and availability will vary based on your country of residence. If you feel called to work with us here at Mindbloom, you can begin by confirming your candidacy through our quick assessment.
These are the current avenues available at the time of publication. As more science is completed, and more compounds approved, it is expected that far more psychedelic therapy services, programs, and outlets will be available moving forward.
The Future of Psychedelic Therapy
Despite all of the activity, potential, and research currently underway and outlined above, we’re still in the early days of the psychedelic therapy renaissance.
With more favorable regulatory environments, renewed academic and scientific interest in psychedelic compounds, and a growing need to return to individual healing and wholeness, the future of psychedelic therapy has a lot of open room to explore further. Given this, there are a few things one can expect to see in the future.
New Compounds Available
With a number of psychedelic compounds moving through various stages of the regulatory approval process, in the coming years and decades there will likely be more compounds and types of experiences available and accessible to the public.
This allows more personalized programming options, allows new or previously underserved conditions to be treated with psychedelic therapy, and expands the scope and scale of the science of psychedelic therapy overall.
Refined Client Experiences
With the onset of new science and studies, the therapeutic space will begin to refine best practices, hone in on qualifications and skill sets for practitioners, and determine ways to maximize the efficacy of psychedelic therapy programs.
This is all in service of driving exceptional client outcomes and returning more people to health and wholeness faster, more reliably. Alongside this lives the possibility for new experiences altogether, more personalized programming options, and creation of opportunities to merge solid clinical outcomes with artful, human-centred experiences.
Personalized Healing Journeys
All of the psychedelic compounds and therapeutic experiences come with their own unique strengths and areas of best applications.
In the future, clients and practitioners may be able to work together to curate a truly personalized healing journey, working with the best modalities and the best compounds to drive safe, reliable results for clients that are truly life and world-changing.
These touch on but a fragment of the potential that renewed interest and study of psychedelic therapy can bring to the public moving forward. We’re excited to play a part in that journey, and walk towards a bright future together.
You’ve made the decision to embark on the process of psychedelic therapy, and want to honor this commitment to yourself. Part of honoring this commitment is deciding to be fully present for the experience, doing your best to prepare and get the most out of the experience.
But how does one go about preparing for a psychedelic experience, particularly if you’ve never had a psychedelic experience before? There are a number of ways you can prepare for psychedelic experiences without using psychedelics.
This resource explores the process of preparing for psychedelic experiences and psychedelic therapy without the use of psychedelics.
What Does “Preparation” Mean?
Psychedelic therapy and psychedelic experiences can be profound, challenging, healing, and exciting experiences. They can surface novel states of emotion, facilitate the release of deeply held emotional wounds, and bring about new ways of looking at yourself and the world you are in. Overall, this is no small feat. This is the journey of a lifetime, the first day of the rest of your life —and honoring this experience and showing it the respect it deserves is extremely helpful.
Fortunately, the process of preparing for psychedelic therapy and experiences doesn’t need to be a chore or heavy burden. The process of preparation is an entire journey in itself, and this work greatly assists the experiences and the overall outcomes of the program you are embarking on.
Preparation can address and assist two core areas of the experience.
Creating a receptive state
The preparatory process puts you into a highly receptive state for the medicine, and helps to give you a safe, effective, and powerful experience. By preparing the mind and body to be as open and strong as possible, you are in the best possible state to receive the experiences, emotions, and insights from the medicine.
Kickstarting the process
Your healing process doesn’t begin at your first dosing session, it begins much earlier than that. It’s the moment you first heard about the opportunity, or when you decided to move forward with this program/experience.
There are a host of emotions, challenges, and opportunities that arise throughout this beginning process that can be just as important and essential to the process as the medicine sessions themselves.
Noticing the level of effort you put in, how you respond to anticipation, setbacks, or nervousness can be powerful material to work with and explore throughout a psychedelic therapy program. Some of the habits or behaviors you explore during the preparation process may become lifelong rituals and practices afterwards.
The preparation process is a major catalyst and critical part of the process, and should be treated like such. It has the potential to be life-changing. Let’s take a closer look at the practices and processes that can help you prepare for a psychedelic therapy program and an individual psychedelic experience.
Physical Preparation Practices
Psychedelics work on the mind and body. There is a strong and influential connection between the mind and body. It is an integrated system, a complete whole.
If you’d like to influence the mind, you can go directly through the body. If you’d like to influence the body, you can go directly through the mind. This is an ancient connection, and something that is very helpful to work with when approaching your first psychedelic therapy experiences.
One of the hallmark qualities of the psychedelic experience is its ineffable quality —highly challenging to describe through language. As such, it’s difficult to plan on what to expect.
There will always be this “unknown element” as you approach the session, which can lead to nervousness, hesitation, or internal resistance. In response to this, you want to cultivate an internal state that is as open, flexible, and as confident as possible. This is where physical practices come in, there are a number of practices that can help you cultivate these internal emotional states fairly reliably.
Movement
Movement practices, such as taking a walk, doing a light yoga or stretching sequence, or soft exercise can all be helpful at both calming down the nervous system as you approach your session. The more you can deeply inhabit your body, the more receptive, trusting, and open you can be going into the experience. It helps reaffirm you have a reliable, capable body guiding you through the process.
Temperature modification
Working with changes in temperature can also help shift mental states. Whether it’s hot or cold, the after-effects of temperature change is an alert calmness to the body. Hot showers/baths are very effective at calming down the body, while cold showers/baths are effective at bringing steady alertness and strength to the body.
Nature immersion
Being in nature is an extremely centering and grounding practice, and can be an asset in the weeks and days leading up to your session. Taking time to disconnect digitally while experiencing nature is also a reliable method for instilling this open, trusting state which is highly beneficial to go into psychedelic work with. Nature is an ally for you throughout this process, both in the preparation and the integration stages of your journey.
Taking care of the basics
Of course, ensure that you are taking care of the basics for your body. Getting adequate and restful sleep in the days leading up, giving your body the hydration and nutrition it needs to thrive, and getting fresh air and sunlight (another hat tip to nature immersion!) will ensure you have a strong foundation to go into your experience with.
If you’re considering some physical practices to help with the preparation process, check in with yourself and your preferences. Choose activities that you can use that will help bring about these core emotional states: calmness, openness, confidence, and trust. Developing this calm, strong presence is a great way to go into your experiences, rooted in the present, and open to the future.
Contemplative Practices
Working with the body is a great step for preparation, but it’s not the only tool in your preparation kit. As the psychedelic experience is rooted deeply in your psyche and your psychology, there are many contemplative or reflective practices that are highly beneficial in preparing for your first experiences as well.
By contemplative practices we mean practices that are effective at helping you explore, reflect on, or think more deeply about certain topics or motivations within yourself. There are a number of time-tested contemplative practices that are very helpful in preparing for psychedelic experiences.
Meditation practice
Developing, or deepening, a personal meditation practice is a relatively easy first step. Psychedelic therapy experiences are like extended meditative sessions. They allow you to notice and witness with compassion and attention the different sensations that arise in your body, and in your awareness.
Having some familiarity in meditation, the act of simply noticing what arises without judgement, is a very powerful skill to have going into psychedelic experiences. If you already have a meditation practice, a commitment to continue with this, or perhaps explore it more deeply, is a nice way to assist your preparation process.
Open Journalling
Sitting down in front of a blank page, and writing about whatever comes into your mind, is a wonderful process for releasing or processing how you are feeling at the moment. The aim here is to simply express what is on your mind on the page in front of you.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it doesn’t have to be a certain length. Consider it like “spring cleaning” for your psyche, just letting go and giving voice to your inner world at that moment. This is a powerful practice to use if you are noticing any nervousness, hesitation, or resistance arise in you as you get closer to the sessions.
Professional Services
Having additional support throughout your psychedelic therapy program is an asset, and can greatly assist the process.
If you already see a therapist or someone similar, bringing this up with them and discussing it can surface many helpful insights or potential areas of focus for your sessions. If you are working with a care team or Guide for your psychedelic therapy program, asking them any questions you may have or best practices they recommend can also be a great help. Ultimately, you are supported in this process, and can lean on the help you have to prepare as best as you can.
Contemplative practices are geared around re-discovering yourself, or seeing what it’s like to be you at that moment. Without judgement or pressure to change, starting to notice these emotions and thought patterns can be beneficial in resolving some outstanding issues beforehand. This helps to provide clear material for your intentions, or to build the muscle of noticing your inner states. Both are benefits from contemplative practices in preparation for psychedelic experiences.
Intention Setting
Clarifying and arriving at a clear intention for your session is an essential and highly beneficial component of preparing for your psychedelic therapy sessions.
It’s a cardinal truth of the psychedelic experience that you can’t control the outcome, you can’t predict what will happen within the session. You do, however, have control over and can influence how you choose to prepare. This includes the level of effort you put into preparing and integrating what the experiences give you.
There is a time-tested mantra in this work that says “You might not always get what you want, but you will always get what you need.”
It’s nice to think of these experiences like a dialogue with the medicine/experience. You ask what you’d like to work on —often through an intention— and the medicine/experience will respond through the experience you receive. Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for, while other times the medicine might give you something else beforehand, a response of “Maybe you should look at this first.”
Both of these outcomes are welcomed, and powerful catalysts for change. But in both situations, there is still the first step of showing up to the proverbial table and to your experience with your own intention. Asking for positive outcomes, to see the best in yourself, to work on specific challenges or internal obstacles, all of these are powerful intentions.
With intentions, the most important step is putting in the work on one that you can influence. Intention setting is a critical and powerful component of preparing for your psychedelic therapy experiences.
Expectations & Environments
With all of this said, it’s important to draw the distinction between an intention and an expectation.
Part of effectively preparing for your psychedelic therapy experiences is letting go of your expectations. Let go of how you think the session needs to go, and the requirements you have for the experience. This allows you to be more open and receptive to what happens in your experience.
An intention is a conversation, or a request. It’s not a requirement.
An expectation is a requirement: “I want this to happen, otherwise I won’t be satisfied.”
It’s important that you do what you can to prepare, and then release expectations related to the final outcome. Attach yourself solely to your input, what you can bring to the table, and not to the outcome, or what transpires.
This is a powerful lesson to learn in life. You are presented with an opportunity to practice this at the very beginning of your process, by showing up for the preparation process fully and releasing expectations for the session experiences themselves.
A final note for preparation is setting up a conducive physical environment. Your practitioners and Guides should provide you with detailed steps on how to prepare effectively, but like we have mentioned before, taking steps that will help you show up more open, calm, confident, trusting, and aware are helpful. Dim lights, soft clothing, and clean spaces all help with this process.
Conclusion
You can’t control the future. And this is okay, because you don’t have to. When preparing for psychedelic experiences, all you are asked to do is to be present. Trust that the experience is working for you, and be open and willing to see and experience whatever the medicine thinks is most beneficial for you at that time.
These medicines and these experiences work with your inner healing intelligence. They work for you, and they are not against you. Sometimes the experiences can be challenging, but these things come up so you can be released from carrying them any longer.
With the preparation process, take the steps to honor the experience you’re about to have and the potential it holds for your life. Work on the things you can control: your physical space, setting your intentions, and preparing your mind/body to be open and alert.
Adequate preparation can go a long way toward creating safe, powerful, and healing experiences for you. You are being presented with an opportunity to be an active participant in your healing.
Psychedelic therapy is not a magic pill, it involves active participation on your end. This involvement starts at the very beginning with how you choose to prepare. Have a wonderful experience, and enjoy the preparation process!
