I am a Psychonaut

Hello. My name is John Robertson and I am a Psychonaut.

A psychonaut is someone who uses psychedelic substances as tools of exploration. Exploration of the mind, of reality, of the universe. Like cosmonauts, psychonauts willingly enter into the unknown on a mission of discovery. We are explorers.

This year marks 10 years of being a psychonaut with my first psychedelic experience in late 2011. My use of psychedelics has evolved over time and so has my relationship with them. In the name of openness, today I’ll share what my current use looks like, including styles, intentions, substances, and frequency.

Psychedelic Therapy Style Method

I use psychedelics in many different ways but of the classic psychedelics my most common use is that of a psychedelic therapy style.

This means taking a medium to high dose in a comfortable and controlled indoor environment. I use headphones and an eye mask, while listening to a preselected playlist of music from start to finish. The headphones to immerse me in the experience, with the music acting as a type of guide, and the eye mask helps to keep my attention directed inwards.

I sometimes do this with friends but more often I do this alone. I find doing it alone really allows me to let go: I can express myself freely without worry of disturbing someone else. This might be sobbing, weeping, laughing, talking to myself out loud, groaning, grunting or making other animalistic or primal expressions. It may also be moving my body in some way like shaking, pacing around the room or even beating my chest.

When working alone I have a set procedure that I follow and have built through practice. On the day, my ritual includes putting my phone on airplane mode, saying a prayer and giving thanks, and writing down my intention and saying it out loud before I consume the dose. I also close the ceremony by giving thanks and finally ringing a bell. It includes various preparation and integration practices, such as clearing in the days before, checking in with both of my parents, and journaling while listening to the playlist again on the day after the session.

I find this type of session to be the most useful thing I can do to gain access to the hidden realms of my psyche, to make the unconscious conscious, and to gain a better understanding and acceptance of myself. It helps to clarify things for me and I nearly always come out of a session with an extremely clear sense of where my heart wants to go and what I need to do next in my life.

I use this style of session as a tool for personal growth and view it as a foundational part of my spiritual practice.

These days I almost exclusively use psilocybin, though I have used LSD in the past and had great results.

Exploring for Fun

I also use psychedelics in more casual ways and often with the express intention of having fun with friends. This may be inside, it could also be outside. The one thing that is consistent is that I like to be well prepared in terms of equipment, such as basics like having some food, drinks or snacks ready, and comfortable spaces to lie down with blankets. I also, like in the psychedelic therapy style, always write down all the doses I take and the times I take them. If I’m out or at a friends’ place, I will do this in my pocket notebook which I take everywhere with me.

I also like to give some thought to the types of things we might want to do beforehand, and may prepare things to entertain or amuse myself or the group with. These may be things to look at, things to touch, ponder, or experience. For example, music videos, wikipedia articles, or pieces of visual art.

When exploring for fun it is usually with LSD or 2C-B and sometimes combined with MDMA. Nitrous oxide has also often been in the mix in the past, but that is less common and more reserved for special occasions these days. Still, hitting a gas on a candy flip is something that I think every psychonaut should try once in their lives 😉

Between Fun and Therapeutic

Though I place the highest value on the classic psychedelics, I also use non-classic psychedelics such as MDMA and ketamine for having a comfortable exploration at home. This is usually a mixture of growth oriented introspective style work and a fun exploration of ideas or themes. I sometimes also mix in 2C-B for this type of session and have enjoyed trying different combinations of these three substances. I also like to experiment with different types of ratios in terms of dose and timing of doses, and sometimes also blend in some marijuana to mix it up and increase entropy in my streams of thoughts and experience.

For introspective style work, I do journaling to explore my thoughts and feelings. Generally the content is often about my relationships with others, things I’d like to do such as lifestyle changes or experiments, and ideas around creative and professional projects.

For the fun exploration of ideas or themes I will also explore with certain materials like music or art and journal about them.

I also like to do things which are a little more creatively ambitious which may extend over the course of multiple sessions to create a deeper exploration and expression. For example, during lockdown this year I explored the theme of ‘the Loner’ and loneliness. This is something I identify with and, living with two couples and not being allowed contact with anyone else for 2 months, this came up strongly for me. I explored it by creating a playlist of songs on the theme, reading the wikipedia pages of loneliness and solitude, and gave myself expression by writing and recording a punk song: ‘Loner’. It was awesome.

On more casual sessions like this I will also often just have an open free association brainstorm kind of thing just using pen and paper to externalise thoughts and ideas so I can see them and more easily make new connections.

Normally sessions will not be either therapeutic or fun, but a mix of both, always with the therapeutic and more challenging content coming up at the start of the session before giving way to a more relaxed tone and sense of agency about where I want to put my attention.

Psycholytic Style

I also do this type of fun/therapy session occasionally with a good friend of mine. We use ketamine as it is his preferred substance. Likewise, the first section of the session we generally do more therapeutically oriented work, and we will go for a more psycholytic style approach, using our conversation and interaction as a means to to dig in to and look closely at perceptions and feelings, question beliefs, reach deeper levels of understanding, and ultimately find some resolution with current issues in our lives. We also sometimes do role plays, acting out interactions with different people in our lives who we currently have tension with, and look at quotes from our favourite philosophers.

Music

I am a huge fan of music in general and just love listening to music on all psychedelic substances. I also occasionally like going to concerts and taking something. For example, a couple years ago, I went with some friends to see one of my faves Kurt Vile at the Kulturastrahaus and for the whole show just danced my little heart out down front.

One of my more recent all time favorite life experiences was taking 2C-B with MDMA and seeing the-man-the-myth-the-legend, Ty Segall. Front row I got absolutely pounded in a tornado of thumping guitars that swept through the core of my being and left me mixed parts obliterated and exhilarated. Yeah, just awesome.

Nature Connection

Less often I take psychedelics out in nature so I guess I’m more of a city psychonaut. However, I think that is mostly due to the fact of psychedelics being illegal and my uncomfortable feelings of being outside and exposed in an uncontrolled environment. After all, psychedelics can and often do increase feelings of sensitivity and vulnerability. That is, however, something I would like to change because I would like to deepen my appreciation of the beauty of the natural world.

How often I take psychedelics

The frequency of my use really varies season-by-season and year-by-year. My practice and use, like life and myself, is a living, evolving thing. I do try to make time for psychedelic therapy style sessions at least a few times a year but there isn’t a set pattern that I stick to. Use of the non classics is more regular, even though I would say it is less beneficial. That is because my psychedelic therapy style sessions are a bigger deal, a 2-3 day affair, also with the added preparation time needed in the run up. They require more from me, in time and energy commitment, so it is harder to fit in. Still, I think I do a decent job.

For example, in 2019 I did around ten sessions with classic psychedelics, (about half in psychedelic therapy style), and ten-fifteen with non-classics. Last year, overall use increased with corona and I had around nine sessions with classics, and fifteen or so with non classics. So far in 2021, I have had two experiences with the classics, and a fair few of the non-classics to get me through a protracted lockdown.

I also sometimes microdose psilocybin or LSD but not often or with any kind of consistent frequency.

My Name is John Robertson

Up until now I have written and worked under the name John Andrew. Andrew is my middle name and I first used this name before I was working in the psychedelic field.

At the time I had just finished a stint of three years as an English teacher and I was taking something of a sabbatical to travel. I was hoping to make it as a blogger but I wasn’t sure if at some point I would need to go back to teaching English or find some other kind of more conventional job to give myself another injection of cash that would enable to go on doing the types of projects that were closer to my heart.

I was worried about potential employers googling me and finding my blog writing about all my crazy and illegal psychedelic adventures and ultimately limiting my options and ability to work. It is kind of sad that I felt I had to hide such a huge part of what I see as a beautiful and core part of my identity but such was my predicament.

I used the name John Andrew for jobs such as workshops and public talks and continued to use it as I entered more deeply into the wider psychedelic network. When finally committing to full-time psychedelic work some years later I thought that it would be kind of fun to continue using what had become my pen and now psychedelic name. After all, having a pen name is kind of cool, and I also wanted to build on the name I’d started to establish.

By this point it was not that I was really hiding it from anyone that was important to me. I revealed my psychedelic side to both of my parents at the time of their separation. With everything that was going on I felt the need to reach a much deeper level of openness and honesty with both of them. I wanted them to really know their son.

Initially my Dad was more accepting than my Mum and he was actually a huge support to me in the founding of the New Moon Psychedelic Retreat project which launched in 2019. He encouraged me to follow my heart and seeing that I had clarity on what I wanted to do, he pushed me to fully go for it. That is what I did and I committed myself to a project of a scope that I had never taken on before. I put a part of my heart and soul in to New Moon in a way that was a deeply meaningful and formative experience.

Since then it has then now come the point where people know me through my public psychedelic work and will actually call out to me as John Andrew. Or people closer to me know that my name is John Robertson, but they’ve also seen my name around as John Andrew and there is some kind of confusion. It’s not really that I was trying to keep those sides separate in recent years, it’s just that I had used that name for a while and just thought it would be more convenient to continue using it.

I now want to clear up this confusion and be called by my family name for my work. This is me taking one more step on my path of long term integration.

I am John Robertson.

And I fucking love psychedelics.

29/04/2021/by John Robertson

Blog

30 Day Writing Challenge Review pt. 2

This post is following on from 30 Day Writing Challenge Review.

Many things helped me to make it through my way of publishing 30 times in 30 days, and today I’ll continue to share a few more.

Connecting to something bigger

At times of difficulty when I encountered a resistance to hit publish I returned to my why. It was a personal challenge, but personal only in so far as that I want to improve my ability to write and put out content so that ultimately I am more able to spread knowledge and information about psychedelics and to share ideas that I believe can be useful to other people. So when I had doubts I returned to the thought of ‘this is about much more than you’. This helped me to get over myself and think about the people my writing could reach and help. My feelings about how I might come across or how nice my writing is to read took a back seat to the primary aim of getting that information and those ideas out there into the world. This made it a whole lot easier to not get overly concerned with editing.

Knowing that it’s about more than myself was very helpful as those difficult feelings that I encountered were in the end just my personal difficulties. If I want to actually play my part in something bigger and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then I’m gonna have to get over myself.

Before the month I made a small reminder card with an image of the world and a heart that I now keep over my desk. This was to connect to the bigger picture of love and all those lives of the people around the world to help drive me on in times of difficulty.

Inspiring Material

I read Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work before and during the month on a timely recommendation from a friend. I think I’ve blown Pressfield’s trumpet enough on this blog by now for you to get it that his work speaks to me. One thing that stuck out from this work was that doing research can become a form of Resistance and procrastination. So for this month I actually did zero research for any of the articles. I referenced other materials and websites, but only ones that I was already aware of or had in mind that I could use. Aside from being hugely practical in terms of saving time, this was nice in that it was a good chance to test myself and my knowledge of psychedelics and it felt really good to keep churning stuff out without looking at what others had to say on the topic. It has been a great confidence boost for me and I feel way more ready to embark on creative challenges without spending so much time doing prep and just coming up with things on the spot. This is something I’d like to explore more in the future with workshops and talks and have more confidence in myself to do this than before.

Rituals & Routines

I had a few rituals and routines which helped me throughout the month. Here are a few:

Waking up early

I am a fan of a strong morning routine. In July I would wake up around 6, drink a glass of hot lemon water and stretch, take a cold shower, meditate, walk once around the block and then eat breakfast before settling down to begin writing. Having such a consistent routine with an early start was definitely helpful.

The 6AM start did go out the window after my accident as I had difficulty sleeping due to the pain in my arm, but I did get back to early rising once I was able to sleep well.

Fiery Music

Music was a huge help on days when I felt tired or low on inspiration. On most mornings during my short morning walk I would listen to some slamming track which would get me fired up and generally ready to kick some ass. My go to anthem for the month was The Bronx’s cover of Black Night Crash, a punk track which opens up with a ‘yeah!’ that got me going on even my most sluggish of mornings. I would often bounce around the block and always returned home ready to face a new challenge.

Pre-Writing Statement

Once at my desk, immediately before beginning the first draft, I would read a short passage aloud:

“Anything and everything that arises today can be written down,
Anything and everything that arises is a gift from my basic wealth, is bringing me closer to the truth, could be part of the message I want to convey… even if it’s a poop joke”.

This was inspired by Stephen Pressfield who makes a prayer to the Muse every morning before he begins writing. I liked the idea of using the same one but it just didn’t quite feel right for me. I found the above one whilst searching for prayers/odes to read before writing. This one was simple and straightforward and felt right, reminding myself that whatever I put down would be OK. Having this in the forefront of my mind before writing helped to settle me and then to blast through doubting resistance and keep moving forward with my first draft.

I had these placed in front of me every day. On the right, my passage, plus a picture of my ‘muse’, and on the left, my mantra.

A Positive Mantra

The idea for this challenge came in the latter part of a magic truffle journey and both excited and scared me. It seemed like a pretty big ask but at the same time the belief came to my mind, and it came with two words: ‘I can’.

This served as a mantra for my month and I repeated it many times in the week before starting as a way to psych myself up. I even changed the password on my computer to ‘I can!’ before the month so that every time I logged in I would again put it out in to the world and internalize this belief. I believe there is a great power to this and developing a mantra for a challenge is something that I will probably do again in the future.

Final Thoughts

So those are a few things which supported and helped me through the process, to finish here are a couple of final thoughts from the challenge.

Creativity breeds creativity

Before going into the month I brainstormed a few article ideas and kept them in a list for my reference. Initially it was useful to have so I felt reassured that I wouldn’t draw a blank but as the month went on what happened was a surprise. Rather than the list getting shorter as I wrote different pieces, what I found was that the opposite actually happened, and the list of ideas for articles kept growing. As I wrote more articles, more ideas for other articles that I wanted to write just kept popping up. This was a great feeling as I find that moment when a new idea pops up in the mind to be quite satisfying. In a creative sense it feels great to have such an abundance of ideas out there. However, deciding to act on them or let them go is another step and definitely something for to me consider as I make decisions about how I will spend my time and what projects I want to devote my time and attention to.

Writing More

This was the first 30 day challenge I used for a creative project and I think that is what made it so rewarding. It forced me to engage my mind in a particular way every day that is different than other challenges I’ve done and I noticed my mind working in a new and novel way that I haven’t since I learned Spanish. That psychedelic (reality broadening) aspect was hugely interesting and definitely will push me to do more of these types of challenges in the future.

Also, just being that creative felt great in and of itself. I was away for work the two weeks immediately following the challenge and didn’t have an opportunity to blog. (I wrote How to Start a Meditation Circle on a double day during the 30 day challenge so I’d have something to publish whilst away on work). I have actually missed getting up and writing and publishing every day. I don’t really know how to describe the feeling other than totally agreeing with Seth Godin’s comment that ‘blogging is good for the soul’. Although I feel rusty coming back to it after a couple weeks out it feels good to write again. There is a new version of Maps of the Mind coming later this year and I will then settle in to a schedule of one to two articles every week. I noticed that I had more regular readers for the month of July and that also felt great to have new content for people coming back.

Finding Purpose

One of the most remarkable things I experienced was the sense of purpose I felt throughout the month. The daily challenge gave me a real raison d’être each day and I woke up each morning excited for the day and to see what it had in store.

So there’s my review for my 30 day writing challenge. Ultimately it was an incredible, magical, and especially empowering month. It has just further developed my love for the 30 day challenge and I am excited to throw myself in to many more. Taking a break for the month of August, I am already looking forward to embarking on a new one for September….

18/08/2020/by John Robertson

Blog

30 Day Writing Challenge Review

Last month I completed my most difficult 30 day challenge yet; publishing a new blog post about psychedelics every day for 30 days of July.

It was an incredible month packed with synchronicities and very meaningful to me in terms of challenging myself and cultivating a growth and exploratory mindset. I can say that it has been one of the most interesting months of my life and so many things occurred, not all clearly because of the challenge, but in ways that I don’t think were entirely coincidental.

The month also nicely coincided with two other milestones for Maps of the Mind, the most views and visitors the site has ever received in a month, and also during the month, 2020 became the year with the most views and visitors. With 5 months left this is very promising and by years end will set a nice new bar for me to reach in 2021.

I’d originally planned to do a review on the final day of the month but in the end needed the time to prepare for a work trip to the Netherlands. I just arrived back on Wednesday and today wanted to take the time to sit down and review the challenge and allow the lessons and all that passed to sink in a little deeper.

PSYJuly Review

Going into the challenge I was both excited and nervous. At the start of July I’d averaged around one post per month on the blog so this was effectively multiplying my output by a factor of 30 – no small amount. However, I knew that my slow rate was due largely to overthinking and perfectionism and the idea of making a jump that was so ridiculous in this regard was that I knew it would push me to overcome this resistance and through whatever was holding me back.

I learned an incredible amount about my writing process and was able to experiment with different ways of approaching writing articles, from structuring, drafting and also using different writing tools.

It was a challenging process and although letting go of those perfectionist tendencies was one of the main difficulties, there were were other hurdles such as days when I didn’t feel that motivated or inspired, and other days when I was tired and was still faced with the fact that I still had to crank out another piece. There were also some very personal things I wrote about which I’ve never shared in public and was nervous about posting online.

At those difficult moments, there were many things which helped. Here I will share a few of those things and I believe these will be most useful for me to remember going forward into new challenges.

Fully committing beforehand

Fully committing 100% to completing the challenge beforehand helped me to find ways and solutions through tight spots. The biggest example of this came on day 11 with an unexpected obstacle.

I was out on my skateboard early on the Sunday morning (I have found weekend mornings are the best times to skate as the city sleeps and you have the roads to yourself). One third in to the 30 days of publishing, I was feeling great about my creative output and in an excellent mood. The sun was shining, I had music playing in my headphones and, skating on some newly paved smooth ass roads, I felt on top of the world. I busted out a few new tricks that I haven’t in a while and was getting a little bit cocky. What happens when you get too cocky? You get a hard lesson.

Flying down the road on my way home from Alexanderplatz I attempted something I haven’t landed in years, and clipping the curb, fell hard. After lying on my back for around 15 minutes, making strange noises whilst I dealt with the pain, I picked myself off the tarmac and with a blood stained T-shirt, gingerly got myself home.

With my cuts and scrapes cleaned and bandaged up and an icepack applied to my right elbow, I was OK, but I’d totally lost the use of my right arm. No movement whatsoever, I couldn’t use my fingers, I couldn’t use my hand. The whole right arm was immobile and in a lot of pain.

At this point I might’ve thought that maybe I can’t go on with the challenge. After all, losing all use of your dominant arm is quite a setback if you are planning on writing. However by this stage I was so committed to the challenge that I knew I had to find a way.

Coincidentally, I had read article the day before called Setback or step up? about whether a change is a setback or an opportunity depends on your framing. It clicked in my mind that this is actually an opportunity for me rather than a hindrance. Thinking back to my original intentions, one of them was to force myself to think differently about how I create. If this wasn’t an opportunity for me to to think differently then what was?

I began dictating my first draft directly into Google Docs using voice typing and did my editing one-handed with my left hand. This editing process was tedious and time-consuming, but determination and resolve kept me going and I feel like I really strengthened these muscles through this trial. Fully committing to the decision to finish 30 days is something that ultimately pushed me through and kept me determined.

In this regard taking the time before hand to think about why I was doing it and having clear intentions very much helped me.

Revisiting Intentions

When stuck in some way, revisiting my original intentions helped a lot. I was able to remember why I was doing this and use it as a compass and impetus for action. There were many occasions when I started to get a little bit jammed or doubting and one of my intentions absolutely cleared up the issue for me and gave me a clear focus and direction to move forward.

Explorer’s Mindset

Seeing the month as an experiment very much helped to let go of perfectionism. I was able to tell myself that it was an experiment and that I would gain valuable data whatever happens and whatever I put out. This is one of the most useful mindsets I’ve found in terms of growing and something I wish to continue to cultivate.

Setting Limits

The first week was difficult and I had to overcome a lot of resistance to hitting the publish button when I was not happy with what I was putting out. Fortunately I had a very busy month outside of the writing challenge and though that might seem like the worst time to do such a challenge, it was actually a blessing. It pushed me to hit publish early in the day so that I could move on and get on with the rest of my day. It meant that I couldn’t afford to continually edit or try to refine the post.

I would set a deadline early in the day, do the piece to the best that I could by that time, publish it, and then move on. When my deadline came, usually around 10 or 11 am, I would remind myself that the point was to practice hitting publish even whilst not being satisfied with the final piece. Some days I really didn’t want to publish, but coming out the other side can say it was definitely worth it. I always have the opportunity to revisit and edit pieces in the future if I like.

More next time…

There is plenty more to this, but alas I am out of writing time and need to move on with the day. I’ll continue in a part two of this post soon… see you next week!

14/08/2020/by John Robertson

Blog, Psychedelics

My Psychedelic Story Pt. 3

My Psychedelic Story Part 1 | Part 2 After understanding that it is my path to be involved in some way with the psychedelic movement I began to be more active in the online community.

30/07/2020/by John Robertson

Blog, Media, Psychedelics

Let’s Take a Trip – Interview on Awaken Atlanta

Last week I was interviewed on Awaken Atlanta, a breakfast show in the US that covers topics that mainstream media don’t talk about. I was on to talk about, of course, psychedelics, and shared a bit of my experience and answered some of their questions. The show is now available online. You can watch my interview below or see the full show here. Enjoy!

Join Tim and Shannon as they discuss psychedelics. They will be delving into different types of hallucinogens, how they can benefit your mental health, and its long-term effects, as well as hallucinogen addiction. They will be speaking with Alice Smeets, a Trauma Integration Therapist and Kerrie O’Reilly, a Trauma Integration Therapist, and Holistic Health Practitioner. They’ll also interview their John Andrew, a Psychedelic Explorer & Guide.

29/07/2020/by John Robertson