Psychedelics Are Not Enough

All right, welcome back. And today I'm excited to talk about a really fascinating subject and a really important one, and that's psychedelics.

So, first, I'm a bit of a psychonaut myself. I've definitely done my share of medicines in my healing journey and consider them to be very sacred, very sacred medicines that can be used profoundly for healing and integrating and becoming more whole human beings. Now, having the right environment, having the right intentions, and having the right support structures and guidance around you is incredibly important when it comes to using these sacred medicines.

And the cool thing is we are in the midst of a renaissance right now. After the initial explosion in the late 50s and 60s, things were kind of clamped down upon, but now, sheer leave, through the force of will of some very devoted people and the sheer amount of research, we are seeing headlines every day about how effective psychedelics in altered state medicines can be for healing trauma, depression, addiction, creating a sense of well being, helping people through terminal illness and transition in their end of life.

And it's quite exciting. There's more and more research coming out every day and there's also more and more legislation that's changing every day. So one of the important things to know about psychedelics, though, which is something, again, that's been near and dear to my heart, is to know that psychedelics are not enough. So if you've been listening to this podcast, you've been getting to know a little bit of what it takes to change, right?

Waking up, growing up, showing up, cleaning up these things we've talked about before. Now, psychedelics, their power is in waking up, is in giving us direct access to our experience in the moment. So the way a lot of psychedelics work is they actually mute parts of the brain, mute parts of the brain in our mind that we use efficiently to just get through the world.

What they do by muting, that is give us an immediate in the body experience of oftentimes what we're feeling. Oneness, love, connection to nature, it's all about this waking up. It's often on psychedelics that people can have an expanded experience. And what do I mean by expanded? Something that goes stretches beyond the limits of their ordinary experience.

Now, this is incredibly impactful and important because for a lot of people, something like the spiritual mumbo jumbo. We're all one or it's all love. Those are just trite words, right, that we repeat in a lot of. In a lot of life and a lot of circles. We're all connected. Everything is together. Me and you are the same. Now, there's a conceptual way we can speak about that, but there's also the embodied experience of that of which psychedelics are profoundly good at giving people access to, right?

So they can actually make us feel and experience in the moment what love is, what connection is, what openness is, how beautiful the world is, how beautiful nature is, how much we love each other, how much we love our partners, how much we love our friends, how much we love ourselves. They can also, in that expanded state, give us a bit of a stretch to feel things we haven't always been feeling.

Another theme of this podcast. So, you know, they. They call them altered states. They actually kind of stretch and give us a peak experience of what's possible, not in a cognitive way, not in a theoretical way, but in our actual nervous system, in body and spirit and heart. Now, what's important about that is once we know it's possible and not just theoretical, it can change the way we live, right?

One of the first experiences I had on medicine, psilocybin, that was deeply impactful for me, involved being in nature and surrounded by friends and just hours of listening to the wind and looking at the sky and a lot of the cliches you would think about. But I do remember in my heart thinking, wow, I wish every person on the planet could have this experience, could have this experience of relaxedness, oneness, openness, and connectedness, because I think that would change a lot, and I do think it would change a lot.

And I think it's really powerful and important that these medicines are coming back as healing modalities to assist us in a time where there's never been more stress on us as human beings. So they give us that peak experience of what is possible. Now, the trick is these awakening experiences, waking up, these peak experiences, these states, all states of energy and consciousness pass, meaning they come and go.

They are not permanent. That's one of the things that differentiates a lot of waking up experiences from growing up experiences, right? We can be present one moment, we can be feeling love one moment, and then the next moment we might not be. And so, like the weather, a state experience of which psychedelics generate, these state experiences, they pass, meaning they will end, they do not last forever, and they're not supposed to Last forever.

You can kind of think them as a power up in a video game. If you played the whole game like that, there'd be no game. But it gives us an experience of what's possible, that's exciting and vital and thrilling and opening. Now the trick is psychedelics alone are not enough to transform again. I've been in the psychonaut world a lot. I've myself been on a number of journeys, guided people through journeys, and witnessed many others in community on journeys.

And here's the thing. State experiences themselves can become addictive. We can start chasing the thrill, the peak experience of psychedelics, and they themselves can become a bit of addiction. I mean, thankfully, they're rarely a harmful addiction in the way a lot of other addictions are. They're not actually causing distress on the body. But the problem is they can become another tool to just perpetuate more of the same.

The thrill of the chase, of trying to have this open, expansive oneness state that's not meant to last, but we want to keep making it last. What it's meant to do is stretch our nervous systems, our hearts, our spirits open and then vanish and fade, but leave us to actually learn how to practically live that way day to day.

And that's the thing psychedelics don't do. That's why psychedelics are not enough. They do not do the work of integration of how do I live this in my ordinary state, my sober state. One of the medicine healers I used to work with would talk about this idea of up and out. Oftentimes, psychedelics can help accelerate us getting things up in, in out of our nervous system. Sometimes literally, physically, when it comes to purging, other times just emotionally and spiritually.

Things that are stuck in our energetic system from our lineage, from karma, and from our traumatic experiences growing up. They can really help us bring that stuff up and let it out of our nervous system instead of being in the depths, in the shadows, in the parts of ourselves that we can't access. It's also what makes psychedelics scary for some people, is if you don't know that and someone doesn't prepare you for what you might experience and you resist that, it can be amongst the most challenging and frightening things that people go through, which is the source of a lot of what we call bad trips.

Resisting some of that unprocessed material coming up in the somewhat intense and hard sensations and feelings that can come along with them. Now the trick is not only do they help open us and bring things up and out, but there's a lot of research that shows they kind of re kickstart our brain and our chemistry and even our neuroplasticity. Meaning they can help our brain start to rewire and regrow new neuronal pathways.

Now that's awesome. The problem is if you're not prepared for what you want to put back in. So they help you bring stuff out and reboot the system, make it open for programming. But then it's up to you after that experience to rewire your brain and your nervous system and your heart and your spirit with what you want to put back in. And that's where a lot of psychedelic users miss out. They go on these incredible journeys.

They process this incredible stuff. And then I've seen it firsthand, the end of the ceremony, they are eating not so good food, repeating thought patterns, gossiping, whatever that might be. You know, again, not to be hard on these people, but it's just no one talks to them about, hey, on the other side of this, in your integration, you, you have to be really careful what foundation you want to lay moving forward. Because your brain is plastic and open and receptive right now.

And that's where all these structures of integration and practice become so important. What is it you're going to put back in? And so just doing ceremonies, just doing these medicines every couple months usually is just not enough to actually create significant changes. You gotta bring the lessons back into your life. You have to have a daily practice of presence and awareness and getting in your body and learning how to open your heart.

And you have to have a community that holds you accountable and supports you in that on a day to day way. That's where a lot of the psychedelic energy right now misses out. The medicine itself is not enough. The medicine must be met with an equal amount of practice or what we would call integration. Integration is, hey, how do these wild experiences that I had in these non ordinary states, how do I live them in my ordinary life, in my ordinary relationships, in my ordinary work, in my ordinary workouts, my ordinary health.

Without the discipline and the structure of that integration, we can often just keep having the fireworks. But not having the change inside. That's where these medicines are so much more powerful and useful when they're balanced by growing up work. The discipline, the structure of daily practice, of opening, of therapy, of men's group, of taking care of your physical health, your emotional health, your spiritual health, your financial health, your sexual health, your relational health, all of those pieces you still have to be putting in the work in between psychedelic journeys for this stuff to really stick.

I've been there myself. Oh my God, my life's going to be different now. I've totally changed. I've seen the Matrix and then boom, we slingshot back within days, weeks or months and we're like, oh, here I am again. Well, I know something else is possible when I did these medicines, so I better go do this medicine again. But I haven't necessarily done the work in between. So there's never been a better time, whether it's through traditional shamanic communities or the burgeoning new, well researched clinical world, to experiment with psychedelics and to use them to facilitate your healing journey.

The thing is, make sure to be doing the daily practice and integration work in between, otherwise it won't stick. The whole game with state experiences and waking up experiences is they don't stick. They have to pass. They are temporary. All states are temporary. Integration is when we lay down the structure, when we put in the practice that actually carries through over time, right?

This is when we've built the muscle memory in our body and there's no way to do that. You can have the perfect game, but if you don't keep practicing, your game could suck. Let's put it that way. You still gotta put in the reps in between. You still gotta build that muscle memory to make that more sustainable and repeatable. Now, if you've been listening to me, you know, I think you should be in a men's group if you're a man and if you're a woman, you should be in a woman's group or any kind of co ed group, no matter your gender identity, sexual identity, whatever that might be, should be in a group holding you accountable.

That is going to help you integrate and create long term structure where you can go off and have the powerful experiences and then be held accountable by your men for living it day to day when the fireworks and the magic have disappeared, because they will. At one point you'll be sober again. The same kinks in your nervous system will flare up and you'll be like, here I am now. The trick is, the beauty of stuff like psychedelics is, yeah, every time we stretch, we never quite stretch back, slingshot back to the same place.

We're always a little bit more expanded. But the practice is what keeps us expanded. Practice and integration in between, you have to have practice and integration. Can't say that enough. You got to be putting in the time every day to show up differently without the medicines. Here's the thing, if you do all that medicine, psychedelic Work will become even more powerful. In my experience, what's useful about them is not the fireworks anymore, not those huge wild experiences, but noticing my presence through them and how that has changed.

So for me, they become a little bit of a temperature check on myself because when we're doing the work daily, when we're going to men's group, when we're working out, when we're in therapy or counseling, we're. When we're doing our depth work for healing, it's not always immediate and obvious that we've changed because it's incremental, right? It's day by day. Something like psychedelics and medicine experiences are pretty useful in that they kind of give us a check in of like, wow, I'm actually not in the same place I was before.

I'm experiencing this differently, I'm experiencing myself differently. And in fact, you know, the ultimate way of being is just the noticing my presence and ability to be with whatever is. Whether that's the upper fireworks of a medicine experience and the powerful states that promotes or the soberness of daily living or hardship. There's a, ah, I'm just, I'm here, I'm here with whatever is.

And that's truly the ultimate awakening experience. I can just be here with whatever is. That's the stability we want to look for even more than chasing the peaks. So whether you've been thinking about a journey or not, definitely keep that in mind. They're pretty powerful, they're pretty incredible. They're literally a gift to the universe and our consciousness and healing. But they are not enough. You have to have structure, you have to have accountability, you have to have healing, you have to have practice, you have to have community woven into your daily life to make those powerful, altered experiences stay with you day by day, to make them part of your body mind and not just something that your body mind passes through.

If you want to get involved in some men's work, you can check out my monthly drop in groups at Evolutionary Men events. And if you want to join my deep dive coaching intensive men's group that I host with dating coach Melanie Curtin about all things dating and relationship and the masculine, check out our free training at Evolutionary Men webinar. Until next time.