How psychedelics help release traumatic residue has been the subject of many previous and ongoing research studies. Today, our co-founders will discuss the unique ways in which psychedelics promote emotional catharsis through somatic processes.
Through the lens of Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger, they’ll explore why trauma remains stagnant in the human body for so long, compared to wild animals. How have social constructs conditioned us to not only repress trauma, but to feel guilt and shame in its somatic release?
Jimmy and Nicholas talk about the noticeable ways in which trauma is carried in the body and address questions surrounding psychedelic retraumatization. How can this traumatic residue be released in and out of a psychedelic experience and what is the importance of these practices during psychedelic integration?
Our hosts will also discuss common barriers to traumatic release, in the context of both intentional and recreational psychedelic experiences. What can journeyers do to move through those obstacles with mindfulness and proper support? To finish off, they’ll offer tangible advice for navigating emotional catharsis and ensuring a fluid transition between altered states of consciousness.
Episode 19: How Psychedelics Help Release Traumatic Residue
Nick: Welcome to the Psychedelic Passage podcast. My name is Nick Levich, and I’m here with co-host Jimmy Nguyen. Thanks for joining us today. This week, we are going to be focusing on trauma, how trauma shows up in ceremony and how psychedelics can help us process and work through a lot of that trauma.
And I want to start with a big caveat that we are going to be approaching this from an anecdotal, very tangible perspective, based on what we see with clients as well as some of the approaches that we use.
We’re not claiming to be therapists here or trauma experts, what we’re really focusing on is the interplay between psychedelics and trauma and how psychedelics can be so helpful at helping us access that trauma that’s often carried in the body and in the nervous system.
It’s helpful to at least start by prefacing that my personal lens on trauma is really derived from Peter Levine, who wrote the book Waking the Tiger. And I think he does a really beautiful job of highlighting that there are a lot of different definitions of trauma.
Even clinicians disagree on what the definition is. What’s resonated with me the most as we approach this topic is just understanding a couple of different things. One is that we all have trauma, regardless of whether we were abused as a child or not, or went to war or not, like we often think about trauma as these like gross forms of abuse.
But in reality, trauma can be something as simple as not getting milk when you needed it as a child, or having a routine surgery, or being in a car crash, or falling down the stairs. Like all of that creates, what Peter Levine refers to as this “traumatic residue” that gets stored in the body.
One of the interesting things is that, essentially, the context for this book Waking the Tiger is that he looked at animals and said, “Okay, well, animals have these traumatic experiences all the time in nature, and they don’t walk around with PTSD. So, what’s the difference in humans?”
Essentially, what he’s highlighted is that animals listen to their instinctual need to discharge this excess energy from their nervous system and from their body. If you see an antelope after a cheetah chases it, what the first thing that it’ll do, once it escapes, is lie down on the ground, and oftentimes shake for an extended period of time before it gets back up and then goes out into the world.
We, as humans, typically don’t allow ourselves to do this. I always joke with clients that if you, in the middle of your workday, started shaking and convulsing at your desk, that would probably cause alarm and not be looked at as a healthy part of the healing process.
How Social Conditioning Inhibits Trauma Release
Jimmy: Yeah. There’s a part on what’s socially acceptable, there’s a part on what you think is okay and not okay, internally. And, yeah, I mean [chuckles] you let them know, Nick, by the way, because I think that that was like a really, really, great breakdown of all this.
I think in the beginning, you are denoting what some folks in the mental health world call like Big T trauma or Little T trauma. A Big T trauma relates to catastrophic events, life-threatening events, maybe it’s a car crash, or you had a near-death incident or even something like you said about surgery, whether it goes wrong or not.
And then there’s Little T trauma, which can be these accumulations. This accumulation of just these events causes some discord within us. So, like, a lot of my trauma as a childhood was social trauma and familial trauma.
It wasn’t always these big, acute things. But what I hear you saying is that in nature, there is this process of discharging, and maybe in our society and the way that we value things and what’s socially acceptable, there’s not a lot of pathways for that.
Nick: Yeah. What’s really interesting is fundamentally what separates us, humans, from animals is that we have this big fat frontal neocortex that can basically override our interest initial responses. The idea here is that our rational mind can override things, right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Nick: And so if our body naturally wants to discharge this energy and we start having hot and cold temperature fluctuations and our feet start shaking a little bit, the first thing most people think is, “Well, what’s wrong with me?” As opposed to, “Oh, that’s my nervous system helping me discharge this energy.” And you may not even know what it’s from.
Jimmy: Yeah, and I also will share that. And then we’ll dive into this a little bit more about some of the common ways that we see this in psychedelic experiences. But I also really want to hone in on what you’re talking about, which is what we allow us to do and what’s socially acceptable.
So, everybody, I hope, there’s also a lot of people who haven’t cried in decades, by the way, so I’m going talk about crying a little bit. Folks who have gone through something really challenging and traumatic, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, or I remember a friend telling me about a near-death rafting incident, and everybody came out.
One person was missing and so on and so forth. And the raft guide was like, “It’s okay to cry if you need to.” And then everybody started breaking down bawling, and all that stuff.
What I share here is that there’s a little bit of a social acceptability thing. I hope that many people have felt what it’s like to have an overwhelm of emotion, which is caused by this deep crying, and then that relief that comes from that, that catharsis that comes from that.
But if you’re crying, for no reason, in the middle of a workday, in public, that’s not as socially acceptable. But then if you’re crying after grieving the loss of a loved one, that is socially acceptable. What I’m just trying to frame up here is that there’s what society tells us that’s okay.
There’s what our families tell us that it’s okay. There’s what our friend groups and people in our lives tell us is okay or not okay. And then there’s what we believe is okay, and not okay. What I hear in what you’re sharing is that everything that I just described, those are constructs of the mind.
Those are constructs of the limits and parameters that we put on ourselves but what I hear you sharing is that this is a part of our natural being to have this discharge and stuff. I share with my clients that the psychedelic process is a process beyond the mind, like you’re not going to think your way through a psychedelic experience.
Nick: This touches on something, a lot of people may have heard the book or the term, The Body Keeps the Score. But from my perspective, this is absolutely true, both personally, professionally, and in my work with clients, like the body does not lie.
And mentally, we can convince ourselves that we’re fine and we’re okay, and it’s all good. But the body is the part of us that holds on to this traumatic residue that doesn’t get discharged. It’s the nervous system’s role to discharge that energy, and it naturally wants to do that, if we can create the space for it.
But for most of us, we don’t have the awareness or the ability to create that space consciously because without a framework, it’s pretty jarring to go through an experience where you just start shaking for no reason.
Jimmy: Yeah. And the body keeps score is a book by– I’m going to butcher this name, Bessel van der Kolk. It describes that trauma and challenging adverse things that happen to us in our lives are not only stored in the brain in the mind, it’s also stored in the body, which means that there is a nervous system tracking the body, and it makes sense. I always think about this analogy.
When I see a string on the ground, I get terrified that it’s a snake. I’ve not seen many snakes in my life. Where does that come from? There’s some type of a nervous system, something that’s trying to keep me from danger.
That’s trying to protect me from a future instance or a certain something where my life is a question and then. And then you also get to apply that to your emotional state, to your mental state, and all that too. I actually saw this really funny meme that said, “The Body Keeps the Score, can somebody tell the body that it’s not a competition?” [laughter]
“And then not rack up the score.” What we mean is that when we talk about the Body Keeps the Score or the worker Peter Levine is that you can fool your mind and you can change the narrative and the story around how you think about things and the emotions that you feel around it.
But you really can’t fool the body, you really, really can’t fool the body. And sometimes when these things happen to us. Regardless of whether it’s rejection, or heartbreak, or not getting that job, or a missed opportunity, or trauma, or abuse, and all of that, your body tracks all of that.
What I hear you saying is that there is a natural equilibrium that each of us probably has in the ways that we discharge that, and likely most of us are blocking that. Psychedelics can be a really, really interesting and tangible way for folks to kickstart that discharging process.
Psychedelics & Somatic Discharge of Repressed Emotions
Nick: Yeah, because, I think part of the challenge here is we always want to do something about our trauma or our discomfort, or whatever it is. We don’t actually have to do anything, it’s the allowance that allows the body to discharge this.
And so that to me is why psychedelics are such a powerful tool in this process is because they put us in this state of allowance. In other words, most of our defense mechanisms come from our default mode network, which is often what’s associated with this ego structure.
And psychedelics reduce or turn off altogether that part of our brain function. What that means is that our ability to override this stuff is greatly, greatly reduced when we’re in the psychedelic experience. What I see a lot of times with clients that I’m supporting during their journey is they have these very visceral somatic or bodily releases.
I guess it’s probably helpful if I talk about what I’m referring to here, but this is like trembling or shaking through the hands, feet, shoulders, chest limbs, temperature fluctuations from hot to cold, excessive yawning, crying, spitting–
Jimmy: Mucus, production, vocalizations.
Nick: Mumbling.
Jimmy: Mumbling, spontaneous movements in the body, feelings of tingling, feelings of almost like falling asleep feeling, a desire to get up and move or desire to lay down and curl up in the fetal position, I do a ton of just rocking back and forth, and things like that.
I like, can’t sit still, I cannot sit still, you’re a yawner. These are all things that are somewhat unexplainable but if you have a framework around the utility and value of this, as it relates to trauma, then you may allow yourself to go through this process.
I’ve seen people in psychedelic experiences where they’re like, “I just don’t want to look weird in front of you if I’m shaking and whatever.” I’m like, “You let me know what you need. If you need me to step and see out of the room, but I’m here for it.”
What I share with folks is giving themselves the full expression to move through the psychedelic experience, however they need to move through it. Sometimes that’s spontaneously crying. Some people are like, “I’m crying, and I have no idea why but this feels so good.” And I’m like, “Yes, keep going.” I’m cheering them on almost.
Nick: I think that’s the funny dynamic of the journeyer-facilitator relationship is that they’re worried about what I’m thinking. And what I’m thinking is, “Yes, let it out. Let it out,” because I know firsthand how relieving that process can be, even when at the time you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
Jimmy: Yeah, this can also fall to repetitive motions and sometimes some people also say looping is a part of this expression to whether you’re moving your hands or feet in a certain way that you’re like, “This just feels right for me, and I can’t explain it.”
I guess one of the things that I’ll share with folks is that you don’t need to explain it, you don’t need to have an answer for why. You just need to tune in to what feels right for you at the time, your intuition and then really getting an assessment or perspective on how you feel afterward.
So many folks that I work with are basically ready to go to war with themselves or ready to address the most challenging difficult parts like horrific stuff that’s happened to some of my clients.
I just want to share that reactivation, though it does exist. There can be reactivations for folks who deal with PTSD, there can be reactivations from certain psychedelic medicines, like 5-MeO-DMT has this kind of reactivation thing around it.
But that’s not the only pathway in addressing and releasing trauma. Talking is also not the only pathway, thinking is not the only pathway, reliving is not the only pathway.
I’ve seen many, many clients who cannot explain this process, but they go through this what I would frame as a somatic releasing process and they come out, they’re like, “I don’t know what shifted, but I feel lighter,” or, “I don’t know what’s shifted, but I feel something’s different within me.”
Nick: I see that a lot more than I see the conscious reliving of the actual event itself. I think that’s really cool because it debunks this whole notion of, “Oh, you have to relive your trauma to heal it.” I actually don’t think that that’s true, I think we have to be open to the possibility of reliving it.
But it’s not a requirement. And that’s very, very different than I think what most people think about their trauma and how they relate to it and commonly what’s preached in, in some of the western healthcare systems.
Jimmy: Yeah. There are some other interesting dynamics where I’ve really been fortunate to witness and support some clients through this, especially around the chest space and the heart space.
I have a lot of folks report things like, “Oh, there’s this tightness or this heaviness around my chest, or I just feel like there’s a weight on me or I feel like it’s either shoulder, chest,” something like that. And then whether it’s in support of me or not, or just spontaneous, a lot of folks go through a process of feeling their chest space opening up or feeling a release through there, and it’s hard to explain.
You may not be able to define things like, “Oh, this is my trauma from when I was five releasing.” You might not be able to put a finger on it, but there are different ways that we can discharge as I find that heart space releasing, that’s probably more of a common theme with the clients that I work with.
Another thing that I note is that in the female clients that I work with, regardless of whether it’s trauma-informed work or not, there’s often a lot of work in the throat space, I find that there’s some commonality there.
I can’t help but think, based on what you’re sharing, I was like, “Oh, is that maybe a release process? Through this framework as well.” I’m not saying that’s a must-have or a requirement. It’s just some things that I’ve noticed, I think, with some of my clients in the past. I don’t know if you have some stuff like that, too.
Nick: Yeah. I’ve definitely experienced both of those with clients. The most common stuff I see is involuntary muscle movements.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Nick: It’s almost always in the extremities. Sometimes it’s like teeth chatter and that kind of thing. But this to me is the active act of your nervous system reregulating. The nervous system goes, “Oh, okay, all your defense mechanisms are offline, I’m finally going to get a chance to re-regulate in the way that I’ve been wanting to, but haven’t had the space, the ability, the time or the permission to.”
Non-Psychedelic Ways to Release Trauma
Jimmy: Yep. And it’s important to say that it doesn’t all happen in one psychedelic experience or ceremony. So, if you got a little internal traffic jam going on, meaning that you have not allowed yourself to discharge or express or feel or move in a way that you can naturally discharge this. By the way, there are a lot of non-psychedelic ways to discharge trauma.
Nick: Yeah, 100%.
Jimmy: [crosstalk] -pursue. That’s a part of why people feel benefits and relief when they have a workout regimen in a way to address their anxiety, depression, mental health state, or whatever because that’s a way to discharge and activate the body.
Nick: You can get to the states through breathwork, there are whole somatic experiencing courses, you can do body scans, and so– [crosstalk]
Jimmy: Involuntary movement through meditation and obviously yoga. There’s so many– yeah, there’s a lot–[crosstalk]
Nick: And so that’s important because, for those who may not feel like they’re ready for a psychedelic journey, you can still harness exactly what we’re talking about your body’s instinctive ability to reregulate through these other techniques that don’t involve ingesting a psychoactive substance.
Jimmy: Yeah. By the way, we’re not saying that talk therapy isn’t effective. We’re not saying that it all has to be through psychedelic experiences. What we’re sharing is that this part of the body, as it relates to processing trauma, is often very overlooked in the public perception of how to go about healing from these things. All of these tools can be applicable, you decide what’s right for you.
And I often find that folks who start this process, it’s also important to find ways to continue to discharge in your integration practice because if you just are relying, again, on peak experiences that have this discharge, but then in your normal life, you don’t have any of that, well, it’s all going to traffic jam again in your body and your system.
I really share with folks that the integration process can be really dynamic. It involves the mind, it involves emotions, it involves personal growth, but it also involves the body. And it also involves creativity and it involves an expression of all of those things as well.
Nick: Yeah. I just want to, I guess, give an example for what you’re talking about, which is, through talk therapy, you may discover this traumatic event, and you may have lots of awareness around what happened, how you got there, all of the intimate details of what happened.
Jimmy: You may know all the reasons why is– [crosstalk]
Nick: Right. And yet, you still may not feel you’ve overcome it or healed from it or moved on from it. And that’s the bodily nervous system piece. The awareness is wonderful. We have to have the awareness. But we also have to accommodate the nervous system and the body in that healing process.
And that’s most often from my perspective what people describe when they describe the feeling of being stuck. They’re like, “I know all these things, conceptually, mentally, but I can’t seem to move past it or break the pattern or break the trigger, break the compulsion.”
And that is almost always the subconscious and the nervous system piece that’s hanging on. And that is where psychedelics helped give us access to that space, so that everything is operating in congruence.
Giving Yourself Permission to Relinquish Judgment
Jimmy: Yeah, and it’s important to share that intentional psychedelic use can be a momentum shifter, a catalyst for this. It can be very helpful for people to start to make up for lost time and opportunity as far as this natural releasing process.
But it’s also about finding your own ways to do this on your own time when you’re not hallucinating off of a psychedelic experience, and especially for folks who are doing psychedelics recreationally and for entertainment purposes, a part of this conversation just know that this is possible.
If you are out in public, where you’re supposed to behave in a certain way, where there are socially acceptable things to do or not do, but inside, you’re squirming for whatever reason or not. Then just know that there’s this potential.
And so, being in a safe, non-judgmental environment is so, so, so important here. I think that one of the biggest barriers to being in a safe and non-judgmental environment is the social aspect. I think about what’s acceptable or not acceptable. [crosstalk]
Nick: One of the things that I always share with my clients is that there’s nothing that you can do that’s going to offend me, embarrass me, weird me out, freak me out, and it’s clients like, “Well, what if I throw up on you?” I’m like, “It would be an honor, no problem.”
[Jimmy laughs] My whole thing is better out than in, let it out. Oftentimes just sharing that gives people the permission to go, “Okay, I can just let go of that.” And it’s amazing how much shame there is around these bodily functions.
“What if I pee myself?” “What if I throw up?” “What if I spit?” I’m like, “Okay, you have a bodily function. We all have it, we’re all humans, and it’s almost like we’re denying that a part of this is a normal human function.”
Jimmy: Well, I think this is really important what you bring up, because in my work with clients, again, very anecdotal, though I do try to take a trauma-informed approach here is that shame and guilt are huge, huge, huge barriers to this type of processing.
Some of us are embedded with shame around our bodily functions anyways. And our society values functionality, and our society values physical prowess and talent and some of those things. I’m just kind of going back to this thing, where we’re just not set up super well for this.
But your intuition really knows best. I do have some folks who go through an experience and they’re doing all the things that we have described to some degree or another and shaking, they’re hot and cold, maybe some folks are having a bowel movement, or maybe some folks are– and then afterwards, when they get out of the experience, it feels right in the moment.
And then afterwards they stack on all this shame, guilt, and judgment, which then blocks it all again, and then they start stacking up all this stuff again. Just know, this is a dynamic process.
It’s not like, “Oh, I somatically released all the trauma in my life, so I’m good now.” No, it’s this dance, it’s a little bit of this ebb and flow. What you’re talking about in this discharge process is that there are inputs and outputs, like, we will, as humans, continue to go through challenging difficult times that can show up as trauma in our lives.
There’s a lot in the world right now that people can be suffering from, and the trauma that ensues from that. What I hear you saying is, how do we create our own internal system, whereas we’re constantly being traumatized, regardless of whether it’s Big T or Little T, how do we just naturally release that as we go along? For many folks, you got some catching up to do.
And then once you get to a point where things are somewhat in equilibrium, “Oh, man, it’s such a cool process when you’re just real-time releasing stuff. As part of that, I think emotions are a part of this too.
And I share with folks to feel the emotion fully because if there’s any part of you that is trying to block yourself from feeling grief or anger, or frustration. All these things that society tells us, it’s not okay to feel.
Well, then you’re going to stack that sh** up and your body and your mind and all that. So, there’s also this emotional component around this to where in order to really let stuff go, you gotta feel it fully. In order to feel it fully, you have to feel safe and you have to feel like you’re in a container and around people who will hold that for you.
There’s nothing worse than somebody who will judge you in this process because, again, shame and guilt come into play, you then run a story that is like, “Oh, well, this is not acceptable. So, what can I do with this stuff?”
And then that’s where things get start ricocheting around in our being causing all of this damage, whether it’s physical damage, medical– I mean, look, how many people are stressed out in life and work, their cortisol is or spiked and then they start getting ulcers, they start getting GI issues, they start having mental health issues and things.
One of the most important things that you’re sharing, is that what you just said, like, “It all has to come into alignment,” like what’s going on in your mind, what’s going on in your emotions, what’s going on in your body, like it all has to sync up in order for this natural release process to happen.
Nick: And that requires this understanding that the body is a component here and the vast majority of us in America neglect our bodies, or at best treat it more like an amusement park than a temple. There [Jimmy laughs] has to be this acknowledgment of the bodily component here.
We live in a mentally dominant society where intelligence and productivity are the value of our most prioritized. And there’s much less credence given to the nervous system and the body, and how important it is to feel good in your body, to feel balanced, to feel neutral, to feel like you’re in this parasympathetic state where you can actually relax.
One of the things that I want to share that I see all the time is, I can literally see the difference in certain clients faces after they journey, because think about how many muscles we have in our face and how much tension you can carry in your face, the tightness. And this is subconscious. It’s not like someone’s walking around thinking I’m going to make my face really tight–
Jimmy: Grimacing, frowning.
Nick: But then you see this lightness, this levity, and they don’t even know why or how, but during the journey, there’s all these somatic processes happening, and then you see the relief visibly in the face. And I’ve had clients who were like– I’ve had people stop and ask me, like, “What am I doing because I look different?”
Jimmy: You look different. You’re lighter. Yeah, it’s such an interesting dynamic there. Again, all of these things are temporary. Even if you go through a very bewildering, somatic release, trauma release process, and you’re in the middle of your psychedelic experience, time is somewhat irrelevant.
There may be feelings that you are stuck there that you did something to your nervous system and whatnot, but just know that at some point, you will come back down into reality, you will come back down into sobriety. It also applies in the inverse, meaning that relief and that benefit that you feel, also may be temporary, if you don’t have–
Nick: And nurture it.
Jimmy: Right, exactly. If you don’t have a construct, to continue to flex that skill, that skill of releasing in real-time, essentially is what we’re talking about here. And so it’s different for every person, I really just want to express that.
Again, psychedelics are one of the real tangible ways that Nick and I have seen this. I think it is a really important part of our modalities and our work. We’re also not here to impress upon you that it’s the only way, like there are a lot of different ways that work for different folks.
But I do know that in our society right now, there’s this overwhelming feeling of stuckness, that there’s not a lot of options, not a lot of avenues, not a lot of outlets to do this. And it’s just important to frame up for folks that this can be a part of the trauma-releasing process, this can really, really, be a part of it.
Tangible Advice For Navigating Emotional Catharsis
Nick: Yeah, if I could leave listeners with one tangible piece of advice here, especially those who are considering navigating a journey or moving towards a psychedelic experience is just let your body do whatever it wants to do.
Withhold as much judgment as possible, and just let your body do, you may think it’s so weird and so bizarre and potentially uncomfortable. But the more you allow your body to do what it needs to do, the better you’re going to feel on the back end, it’s a direct correlation.
Jimmy: Get out of your own way, dammit is what [crosstalk] I can say.
[laughter]
Nick: Yeah, you said it a lot more straightforward than I did. Give yourself permission to let your body do what it needs to do. And you may not have to relive any of it or even consciously know what it is that you’re processing. It’s all just happening.
And that’s the beauty of this body, mind, spirit connection that we have is it naturally wants to heal. We just have to remove the roadblocks that are keeping us stuck. And that’s our whole healing philosophy is that the body and you know how to do this. It’s just about accessing that intuitive wisdom and allowing it the time and space and permission to naturally do what it wants to do.
Jimmy: Yeah. It’s tapping into your inner healer, which we talk about a lot, and how the psychedelic pathway can be one of those ways to let that inner healer do its thing. What I want to leave folks with is that you don’t need to make sense or analyze or come to some type of an answer around these things.
The fact of it is if you went through a psychedelic experience and you had some type of this trauma-releasing process, and you came out feeling different, well, that’s all the parameters that you need, you don’t need to understand why or how or analyze the mechanisms behind it, or maybe this, this trauma, maybe this or that trauma, that’s us trying to define this very natural process and put it in a box.
And just know that you came in, you had an experience, and you came out feeling different. And maybe a part of that feeling different is feeling lighter, and feeling more relieved or feeling like you do have more stress resilience or feeling like your perspective has shifted. You don’t have to put your finger on all that and like, figure out what all that is. Just know that it is, and maybe there’s some utility in that.
Nick: Yeah. And chances are, it’s probably totally in line with your intentions. And so be grateful for that. You don’t have to over-intellectualize this whole thing. You’ve literally got part of what you asked for. So, yeah, thanks for sharing that. Anything else that you want to leave folks with today?
Jimmy: Do integration, please, everybody. Just do integration, because I’ve had a lot of folks have these big trauma releasing processes, somatic releasing processes, and it just then stacks back up.
And then what they start to do is they start to lose faith in themselves, and they start to lose faith in medicine work, plant medicine work, whether that’s psychedelics or not, integrations, the real key there. And there are so many different ways to go about integration.
It can be a mental health professional, it can be a coach, it can be your facilitator. To a degree, it can be family and friends who can hold space for you, but just have some type of process of integration.
And just know that integration is dynamic, which is beyond the mind. It’s also body, it’s emotional integration, it’s perspective shifting. Integration is the real key in this equilibrium thing that Nick and I have been chatting about.
Nick: Yeah. For those that are willing to do the integration, well, the results can be extremely profound. I have a client that comes to mind who was diagnosed with CPTSD, very severe childhood abuse and trauma.
It basically overruled her whole life. We did a journey and she was deeply committed to the whole process, from prep to ceremony all the way through integration. She is literally a different person.
And people see it, she sees it, she’s eliminated the majority of her medication, like remarkable, remarkable shifts. But that’s only available if you honor the whole process. And what you’re talking about is what happens if you don’t.
I think it’s important that people have a model for just how important that is, and something a tangible example of what it looks like if you don’t follow and then if you do.
Jimmy: Yeah. What I really hear is that she did the work, she did her own internal work, which is different for each person. And she did it with support.
Nick: Yeah. It’s been an honor to witness her journey and she had tried it “everything else before.” And this was what allowed her to access a lot of what was inaccessible previously. So, this is available to all of us regardless of how we choose to move forward.
And that was one of the main things that I wanted to bring forward in today’s episode. That brings us to the end of our episode for today. You can download episodes of the Psychedelic Passage podcast, as well as find them on all major streaming platforms Apple Podcast, Amazon, Spotify, IHeartRadio, or wherever else you may stream.
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Public education on this topic is the number one way to engage social support for this psychedelic mental health movement. Thus, we invite you to head on over to our resources page for more informative articles like this one. As always, safe and mindful journeying, friends!
