Two weeks ago I published a piece subtitled The Only 3 Things You Need For Your Next Trip. I wanted to help explorers remove obstacles by identifying them, as I know how it is to be in the position of wanting to set up a session, but still somehow unable to make it happen.
I focused on the minimal logistics required, as those can often be the biggest barriers. I’ve since realised that I missed probably the most important thing. The thing without which nothing else matters:
Courage
I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that it takes no small amount of courage to put that dose in your mouth and embark on that journey into the unknown.
On a journey of psychedelic exploration, sooner or later, your ideas about the foundations of reality will be shaken. You will also have to face your shadow; the unknown dark side of your personality, the hidden parts that are deemed ‘unacceptable’, that bring rise to feelings of shame.
In those difficult moments, you will be forced to call upon all of your resources as a human being. It is truly challenging, but it is also extremely rewarding.
Nature loves courage, psychedelic bard Terence McKenna famously proclaimed in reference to psychedelic journey work. We might also say:
Life loves courage. The Universe loves courage.
In other words, we are rewarded by the universe when we face our fears, when we step into trust. It takes courage to hand over control, to let go, to face what emerges from the dark depths inside.
Embarking on your healing journey is no small undertaking. It takes greatness of heart to leave the known in search of something greater, and to willingly go towards those parts of yourself that you are most afraid of.
We must be brave, not only to face ourselves in psychedelic states, to really, honestly, look ourselves in the eye, but also to show up in the real world after the session has ended, to do the work the medicine has shown us we need to do. This is the challenge of integration.
But the effects of this work are not to be underestimated. When you heal yourself you heal a part of the larger whole. As you heal, and step out into the world, expressing who you are, the effects of your personal work ripple out to create wider social change.
“A sensitive and honest-minded man, if he’s concerned about evil and injustice in the world, will naturally begin his campaign against them by eliminating them at their nearest source: his own person.” ― Fernando Pessoa
If you have heard the psychedelic call, and it is not going away, the biggest obstacle between you and your experience could be the courage to take the plunge and commit to it. Once that commitment is made, there is no obstacle too great to overcome.
Maybe you have glimpsed the potential of psychedelics. Maybe you’ve had a casual trip with friends and got a taster of the mysteries they behold. Maybe you’ve already had powerful, even life-changing experiences, but they are long ago, now distant dreamlike memories. Though they are distant, somehow, some way, you know they are calling for a return, a revisit, a reunion. Maybe you know very well that you need to journey again, and life has been conveniently serving you all the excuses you need to justify your dance of avoidance. Maybe your reasons have been totally valid and your obstacles were legitimate, or your way was another for a while. Maybe your path was to step away, explore other modalities, tend to other responsibilities, integrate past experiences through other work and engagement in the world.
But if you are reading this, then I suspect something deep inside is calling you and telling you that the time is ripe.
If you are ready to step forward, be prepared to muster every ounce of courage you have. This path is not for the comfort seeker, it is not for the faint of heart. But if that call is there, persistently tugging at you, calling you again and again, you can only ignore it for so long. Sooner or later, you will have to answer it, and embark on the path you are here to take. I will be walking alongside you.
Setting an intention is something every serious psychonaut does as part of their session preparation. The process of creating and setting intentions not only helps to gain clarity on our motivations, but also allows us to take an active part in setting course for the journey ahead. But how to set an intention? And how specific should one be?
Keeping an Open Intention
What we think might be the highest priority when we’re heading into ceremony might not be what is truly needed for us to work on. The depths of the unconscious that emerge in the session reveal to us what really needs to be addressed. These inner depths are known as our inner healing wisdom. Each and every one of us holds this within us.
What needs to come up will come up. Leaning into that trust is an important part of psychedelic work.
Having thoughts like “this isn’t what I’m supposed to be thinking about” or “this session was not supposed to be about this, I wanted to work on x” are counterproductive. This is resisting the experience. This is not allowing, not being open, not letting go. It isn’t dropping into the flow of experience. It isn’t trusting our inner healer.
“Consider that it may be happening for an important reason.” – The Zendo project, on difficult experiences
Holding a more general and open intention allows space for a wider spectrum of experience to be fully embraced. It allows for a greater flexibility and a wider range of interpretation.
Sometimes the meaning of the content will be clear and obvious. Other times it is less straightforward. It can also be downright confusing. Unpacking and integrating afterwards is especially necessary for more opaque experiences.
Crafting An Intention
The process of creating an intention can be broken down into 3 steps:
Start with your honest why
To start, we can simply ask: ‘Why am I doing this?’
The simple act of taking a moment to answer this will reveal basic motivations.
Try not to pass any judgement on the answer that comes up. All is valid.
If the answer that comes up seems shallow, overly specific, or otherwise inappropriate, this is the opportunity to change course or reframe. This might be a process of refining the motivation, or just looking at it from a different angle.
Other useful questions to help formulate an intention are:
Why are you doing this?
What are you looking for?
What is working in your life? What isn’t? What would you like to change?
What are you curious about?
What would you like to learn about?
What would you like to understand more?
These questions can then be followed up with ‘why?’, until you reach a satisfactory point.
2. Use further whys to dig deeper
Maybe your intention is looking at a specific problem or area of your life where you would like some answers. When we start the process, it can be as specific as we like; continually asking more whys helps us get us to the root of it. The process here is digging deeper. Doing this, we uncover motivations that sound more and more general.
3. Refine into a single, simple sentence
Once we have dug deeper, we can collate and distill our answers to form a single pithy line.
To illustrate, here is a rough walkthrough of a previous process of mine, when I was using psilocybin to quit smoking.
Why am I doing this?
I want to quit smoking tobacco.
2. Why do I want to quit?
I am experiencing contradictory thoughts about my smoking habit. I feel guilty about smoking, but I still do it sometimes. There is a lack of clarity here. I want my mind to be clear.
Quitting smoking is the #1 obvious thing I can do for my health. I enjoy leading a healthy lifestyle and place high value on my health. I want to be healthy.
I’ve already quit twice in the past and the tobacco monster always finds a way to sneak his way back in. I’m tired of being on this merry go round and ending up back in a place where I’m doing something I don’t want to be doing. I experience a lack of self control and I feel ashamed of myself when I end up smoking in front of other people. I just want to be free from this addiction, once and for all.
3. Taking the key points from each of my reasons for wanting to quit, I ended up with my final intention:
‘I am clear, healthy and free’
My Experience
A few years ago when I was working at Myco Meditations psilocybin retreat in Jamaica, I remember a team member saying that he often heads into a session with the approach of: “show me what you got”. This is a casual way of putting it, but a general and open intention.
To give a final personal example, my intention for my most recent session was: to listen and learn. Setting such a broad intention meant that there was no real way to fight the experience or not accept difficult parts when this was brought to mind. Whatever was going on, there would always be an opportunity for me to listen. This could be interpreted in many ways: redirecting my attention to the music, tuning in and ‘listening’ to my inner voice, listening to my body and the physical sensations I was experiencing. Including ‘to learn’ gave me a good reason why I should listen carefully. It helped me to hold and steady my focus at various points on the journey.
Intentions For Integration
Intentions can also be useful in the integration stage. After reflecting on the experience and identifying key themes, it can be worthwhile to set an intention for the next phase of life. This might be for the following days, weeks, or even months.
Some examples:
If you have realised you would like to be less guarded, you might make an intention to be more open.
If you have been keeping things to yourself; it might be to share more.
If you’ve been giving too much of yourself; to practice saying no.
If you take up a lot of space; to listen.
An intention might even be just for the day after. ‘Self care’ or something thereabouts is one I always use on the integration day directly after a session. This allows me to be kind to myself and prioritise self care, but also to do integration work such as journaling, as making that investment of energy when the experience is still fresh helps me to gain the most benefit from my session and therefore caring for my future self.
These types of integration intentions help give us direction in our lives. Their looseness means they can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways and require us to use our intuition. They can be used as a compass for action in all kinds of situations throughout the days, weeks and months that make up our lives.
If I were forced to choose just one way of taking psychedelics for the rest of my life, I would think that was quite a cruel and torturous predicament to put a person in. However, after coming to terms with the fact, I would most likely choose a psychedelic therapy style session.
What is a Psychedelic Therapy Style Session?
What I call a psychedelic therapy style session basically borrows the session format from psychedelic therapy.
The core components of a session are:
Medium to high dose
Comfortable and controlled indoor setting
Preselected playlist of music that lasts the duration of the drug effect
Headphones and eye mask worn by the journeyer to help direct attention to the inner experience
This is broadly the method used to conduct the sessions in pretty much all of the groundbreaking psychedelic studies that you’ve probably heard about. It originated in the 50s with the pioneers of psychedelic therapy and is shared in influential books such as The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and The Secret Chief Revealed.
Differences Between Research Studies and Psychedelic Therapy Style Sessions
Taking psychedelics in this style is not the same as doing a course of psychedelic therapy. This is why I use the term psychedelic therapy style session to make the distinction. What differentiates a psychedelic therapy style session from psychedelic therapy is that the therapy-style session does not inherently include any type of therapy before or after the trip itself.
Though the actual session might look the same, the whole package it is not, because merely doing the session does not contain the reflective and introspective aspect of therapy. This includes exploring biographical content, much like traditional therapy, beforehand, and discussing the experience afterwards.
It also does not cover the extra preparation that is built into most of these studies. For example, the volunteers in them are given basic training in awareness through guided meditations in their lead-up to the session. They are also given some basic prep on the drug effects, including what to expect in terms of subjective effects, and guidelines for navigating the experience.
DIY Explorers
DIY psychonauts hoping to emulate the wonderful effects and benefits reported from the research may miss out on many of these extra aspects. They may simply create psychedelic therapy style sessions, but gloss over all the extra prep, integration, and interpersonal support that is included.
How can modern psychonauts build in these extra functions?
Preparation
I have written a post on how to prepare which includes awareness training and exploring biographical content which you can read here. What is not mentioned there is:
Researching the subjective effects of your chosen psychedelic
Beginning a course of therapy, ideally with a psychedelic-friendly therapist
Session
Psychedelic therapy sessions are always conducted with a trained guide or tripsitter, someone there to offer interpersonal support throughout for the journeyer. One can hire a tripsitter, or have a friend look after them. I would advise caution when tripsitting for friends though.
It is also possible to journey solo and without the support of a tripsitter. However, I would only recommend solo journeys to experienced explorers, and certainly not first timers. That said, I’ve had nearly all of my most transformational trips alone. You can read more about why in the post I am a psychonaut. If you are planning to go ahead alone, it can be beneficial to receive some coaching from an experienced explorer.
Integration
Having interpersonal support after a session can be especially important in navigating challenging emotions that may emerge, and implementing enduring positive changes. In lieu of a therapist, a counsellor, holistic practitioner, or integration coach can be helpful.
Having some kind of community or support group can be very beneficial in this process. This could be in the form of a psychedelic integration circle or other support group, it could also be a church; even just a good friend to talk to can make a big difference. What is important is to have this support in place before the session so they are there for you when you need them.
Final Thoughts
I organise and conduct psychedelic therapy style sessions for myself multiple times a year, and I would probably say it is the most useful resource in my toolbox for personal growth. Of course, they do not stand in isolation: they are deepened and enriched by others tools such as a regular meditation practice, participation in growth oriented courses, workshops, and retreats, and more recently, work with a holistic coach. That said, they are the turbo charger for other processes.
If like me, you are not going to sit around and wait for governments to base their policy on evidence and make rational drug laws, then do your homework, prep well, and journey in style!
We all know how beneficial psychedelic experiences can be when we make the time for them. So why don’t we do them more often? Well, we all have our own reasons, but quite often it falls down to very 3 simple things. Recently, asking the psychedelic twitter crowd what their excuses were, I noticed these all too familiar things coming up.
Substance
Of course it’s difficult because of drug laws. So this may take some initiative on your part. Some options:
Grow your own. Possibly the best option for the serious psychonaut if you are able to. DoubleBlind offer an online course to grow your own.
Deep web. Admittedly I haven’t used this in about a decade and is fiddly to set up with all the crypto stuff. It does work though. Just go for domestic shipping and have your story straight.
Order a legal analog. AKA research chemicals, these are kinda new and a little unknown, so approach with caution. I myself have used 1P LSD and 1B LSD and I couldn’t tell the difference from standard LSD. PsychonautWiki is a good place to find out more info.
Order magic truffles. Psilocybin truffles are legal in the Netherlands. Some vendors in the Netherlands ship outside their country.
It may also help to go to where psychonauts hang out to build connections and network. Public talks, workshops, integration circles, and conferences are all good places.
Private Space
Having a private space is key. If you live in a flatshare or other shared space this can be a big obstacle.
Some options:
Ask friends who have their own place if you might be able to use it sometime. If you aren’t comfortable with telling them you’re going to trip you can tell them you’d just like some time to yourself. Perhaps a practice of silence, or some other kinda home practice, such as a meditation retreat.
If you live with your parents, maybe catch a time they are on holiday or away for a couple days.
It really is as simple as that. Simple, not easy. Having a coach might be helpful, or planning to do a session with a friend. Organising with friends may take a bit more planning and coordination, but can help to stick to it as there’s social accountability. It’s also obviously a great way to deepen your connection.
I recommend taking 3 days. Day 1 to tie up loose ends (e.g. no urgent messages or emails hanging, all work and social commitments taken care of, letting anyone who needs to know that you’ll be offline). Day 2 to journey. Day 3 to integrate.
However, from my experience, a session squeezed in between work days is better than no session at all.
https://mapsofthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/3-things.jpeg10801920John Robertsonhttp://mapsofthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/MAPS-MIND-LOGO-29.pngJohn Robertson2021-05-09 00:11:232022-09-02 18:46:01Make It Happen: The Only 3 Things You Need For Your Next Trip
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.
https://mapsofthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/IMG_9717-e1619700488431.jpg11451605John Robertsonhttp://mapsofthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/MAPS-MIND-LOGO-29.pngJohn Robertson2021-04-29 14:56:252022-09-12 09:39:32I am a Psychonaut
