If you’re not in the psychedelic psychotherapy business, you might be wondering why there’s so much focus on psychedelics and psychotherapy these days. What’s the big deal? Is there something psychedelics can do that talk therapy can’t?
First, let’s talk about what psychedelics are. This is my own opinion, and since there is no universally agreed-upon definition, I feel entitled to add my voice to the chorus. I believe psychedelics are medicines that allow for a dissolution of the individual ego, the sense of “I.” This is the goal of most spiritual traditions, where we experience we are not individual islands living separate lives but smaller parts of a much greater whole. By this definition, the following would be psychedelics: LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), ketamine, 5-MEO DMT, and ayahuasca, amongst others. MDMA (Ecstasy) would not be a psychedelic under this definition.
Why does this matter, and how is it connected to psychotherapy? To begin with, let me say that as much as we may say we want to learn to let go of the ego, it can feel very threatening to experience it. That’s why we hold on so tenaciously to our sense of self: “I’m this and not that”—it gives us a handhold in an otherwise overwhelming and confusing world. While it may be positive to learn to let go, or at least loosen that sense of self, it is not easy. And psychedelics make it more challenging in some ways because they do the “work” for you to some extent. You just take the medicine and it happens, which is not the case when you take the slower route of decades of meditation or some other spiritual practice. So you might not be prepared for that letting go or loosening, and it can take some practice to learn to let go and experience the larger whole that is interpenetrating our reality all the time.
Next, let me state that the vast majority of therapy is talk therapy for a very good reason: it works for most people in most situations. But there are places that talk therapy can’t go, such as very early childhood wounding, which was laid down in the psyche before there were even words, or very deep trauma that is beyond the verbal reach. For example, many people who have been adopted have a primal wound of feeling unwanted at a very deep level. You can speak to them rationally about how they were loved by their adoptive parents, or how it wasn’t anything to do with them that their mother chose to give them up for adoption. It simply doesn’t matter, because the words don’t touch that primal wound.
Here is where psychedelics can go places that verbal therapy can’t. By opening a person up to a vastly broader and deeper experience of themselves in the universe, by connecting them to an experience of themselves as belonging deeply to the fabric of reality, something can shift in them that couldn’t happen with 30 years of therapy. It’s an experience they can have that is incontrovertible, not a mental concept they’re trying to believe in. This is invaluable, irreplaceable, and profoundly healing.
This doesn’t always happen, and having it happen once is not usually enough to “fix” the problem. But it is a pathway that, if walked consciously and responsibly, can yield fruit that is otherwise not available through ordinary means. How to do that will have to be the topic of another posting.
To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
Why Is Everyone Talking About Psychedelics?
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12.04.2024
If you’re not in the psychedelic psychotherapy business, you might be wondering why there’s so much focus on psychedelics and psychotherapy these days. What’s the big deal? Is there something psychedelics can do that talk therapy can’t?
First, let’s talk about what psychedelics are. This is my own opinion, and since there is no universally agreed-upon definition, I feel entitled to add my voice to the chorus. I believe psychedelics are medicines that allow for a dissolution of the individual ego, the sense of “I.” This is the goal of most spiritual traditions, where we experience we are not individual islands living separate lives but smaller parts of a much greater whole. By this definition, the following would be psychedelics: LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), ketamine, 5-MEO DMT, and ayahuasca, amongst others. MDMA (Ecstasy)........
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