What is Psychedelic Integration: Part Deux

I know. I know. We’ve already talked about psychedelic integration. You’ve already rolled your eyes at my WHAM analogy (here) and yeah you’ve heard me yawp about its criticality. But after re-reading that initial dispatch, I realize I didn’t do enough to unmuddy the waters and here I am, pitchfork in hand, ready to put the hay where the goat can get at it.

I kinda hate the word integration; it sounds like it wants to be misunderstood. It sounds aspirational, a little random and a lot woo-woo. All that said, this third stage of psilocybin therapy needs a term, so I’m reluctantly embracing it with uncertain hands. If you hate the word too, just strike it out of every sentence and replace it with “your plan to take insight from your journey and apply it to your life.”

Rest First. Integrate Later.

After you journey on a large dose of mushrooms, you will be mentally and physically depleted for about 24 hours. You won’t feel icky—just a bit tired and a little estranged from reality. I tell my clients all the time. Don’t rush to integrate. You can connect the dots tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep. 

Once you do get some sleep, you should be able to step back from the experience and intuitively understand the two essential tenets of successful integration—we need to leverage your post-trip neuroplasticity AND indulge in practices that deliberately call us back to your psychedelic experience.

Neuroplastic Fantastic

The first step to successful integration is an easy one. It’s basically journaling or drawing. You want to recall as many aspects and motifs in your journey as possible and sometimes a long, sprawling journal entry that delivers a play-by-play of your 6 hour experience is a perfect place to start. This allows you, alongside your facilitator, to conjure up your intentions and see if they resonate with certain chapters of your journey. 

As you begin to identify and process insight—i.e I should appreciate my body more/ I want to express myself in a more loving manner—you’ll then scour your daily routine and habits for opportunities to translate these new truths into real tangible action. 

All of a sudden, I want to express myself in a more loving manner becomes I will call my mother twice a week and I will compliment my partner via text at least once a day. These minor changes may seem banal in isolation, but looking through the microscope at your entire life, you’ll see just how major these resolutions become. 

Body. Mind. Spirit. Lifestyle. Relationships. Nature.

These subcategories come from the MAPS guide to integration, and I think they’re super useful buckets in which to plunk our psychedelic resolutions. Keep in mind that this step is not possible without the initial work. You need to attempt to make sense out of your journey, analyze it in the light of your intentions and come away with a few comprehensible perspectives. 

Once we arrive here, I ask my clients to identify 2 specific ways they can modify their daily routine with respect to the categories. Let’s return to our example. This human who came away from the experience with an overwhelming message of self-love and a desire to express himself in a more loving manner might consider the body category, and he might write: I want to eat vegetarian 3x a week because I want to be more vigilant about what I put inside my body. Or he might land on, I want to meal plan with my partner every Sunday.  That same human—channeling the same insight—will put very different resolutions in the spirit bucket. Here, he might write, I want to sit under a tree once a week without my phone or I want to attend a social mediation twice a week.

Once we do that for all six categories, we’ll have 12 or so experimental tasks which, of course, is way too much. I tell my clients to fool around with it for a few weeks. Try two at a time, and after about 3 weeks, you might find the few things that stick. 

How is this Different from Drug Free Wellness?

It’s not really. The major thing is that psilocybin therapy tends to deliver its truths in such a profound manner they’re impossible to immediately ignore. In addition, during our journeys, we’ll often begin to decode our trauma and emerge from the experience with a better understanding of our selves and the self we want to become too. 

While the exercise above may seem rigid and basic, it allows us to leverage our neuroplasticity and enact change. At the same time, many of my clients don’t really adopt any of these super-specific resolutions. Often, they unconsciously adopt new ways of being, and simply find themselves outside more and engaged in activities that organically serve their freshly renovated selves.

Strike While the Insight is Hot

It’s no secret. Epiphanies don’t last forever and neuroplasticity eventually wanes. That said, there are a myriad of ways to support neuroplasticity in the aftermath of our journeys and no, they don’t involve taking another macro dose of mushrooms.

Brain teasers and puzzles are especially good for us. Trying to learn a language or new instrument is also great exercise for the brain. Creative pursuits like painting or journaling will nourish us in unexpected ways. Yoga and dance can unlock a soggy brain, and if you’re not inclined to roll around on a mat or swivel your hips, standard physical exercise will do the trick. 

I can tell you from personal experience that dancing badly and meditating are great ways to keep your brain in receiving mode. While we’re in that space, I find its important to keep my mushroom journey top-of-mind, too. I encourage clients to reserve a dark room in their own house on a weekly basis and listen intently to their playlist for an hour at a time and journal about whatever comes up. Even if people have never meditated before, I ask them to try it. Additionally, I beat the drum for mother nature too. Time spent outside cavorting with the universe will generally nourish us and motivate us to experiment with those resolutions we surfaced a few paragraphs ago.  

No Integration Without Community

So yeah, that’s my road map for integration, but there’s one super duper important thing that I’ve withheld for the dramatic conclusion. This integration plan only exists within community. Community doesn’t have resemble a zillion friends from all walks of life, knowing the intimate details of your mental health. It, should, however, contain a handful of folks who care about you and are actively involved in your life. If friends are hard to come by, maybe an alliance with a family member makes sense. If family is hard to interface with, maybe a therapist is a good first step. That said, a single therapist or a facilitator is not enough.

You can’t do this work in isolation. Without a supportive integration network, you could struggle to enact the learnings from your experience and familiar pangs of shame may sprout up out of nowhere. There are some people who can do this alone and seamlessly integrate their experience afterward; that said, most of us arrive to the session a little broken and require a helping hand or three while we plot our marvelous next move.