What does it mean to have a relationship with a psychedelic substance and why does that framing matter more than any protocol, ceremony, or clinical trial?
In this conversation, Paige sits down with author, educator, and psilocybin advocate James W. Jesso to explore the philosophical, ethical, and psychological dimensions of working with psychedelics responsibly. This isn't about biohacking with microdoses or chasing ego-death status. It's about taking the intelligence of these substances seriously - and understanding what's at stake when you don't.
What we cover:
🩷 Why viewing psilocybin as a relationship changes everything about safety
🩷 The difference between internal and external safe containers and why most people skip the harder one
🩷 How psychedelics can surface deep trauma and how to avoid re-traumatization
🩷 Why your guide's personal experience matters more than their credentials
🩷 The heroic dosing trend and the real harm James sees it causing
🩷 How mainstream media is distorting psychedelic culture and expectations
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 — Introduction
02:40 — Psychedelics as a Relationship
07:40 — Internal vs External Safety
10:30 — Trauma & Psychedelic-Assisted Healing
11:30 — Why Your Sitter's Experience Is Non-Negotiable
28:35 — The Heroic Dose Myth
🔗 Connect with James W. Jesso: https://www.youtube.com/@AdventuresThroughTheMind
James' Books: https://www.jameswjesso.com/category/books/
More Links: https://linktr.ee/jameswjesso
YOUTUBE + TRANSCRIPT:
(00:00) I’m really excited to talk to you. I know that your books were written quite some time ago now. Um, but something that really stood out to me is just how thoughtful you are in your um, intention to talk about psychedelics. Something that you talk about a lot in your in your books and also in the conversations I’ve watched online is creating this relationship with psilocybin mushrooms and sort of facilitating more of like a long-term practice with engaging with these mushrooms.
(00:29) Um but who or what are you actually in a relationship with? >> Wow. Speaking of uh getting right into it, big questions. Yeah. So I do believe that um irrespective of the what we believe we’re interacting with, it does serve us to engage with it as a kind of relationship. And by that I mean it doesn’t necessarily matter if I believe that I’m in a relationship with my own inner healing intelligence through through the molecule psilocybin or if I believe I’m just navigating a dynamic of an experience or if I’m in communion with an other beyond me the spirit of
(01:09) the mushroom or if through the mushroom I’m in communion with larger patterns of energy a larger web of life each of those things have their quality and have their sort of pros and cons depending on how maybe overzealous we get with the assumptions of external authority that come with the the thing that we perceive ourselves as interacting with.
(01:30) But ultimately what matters is that we enter into a relationship with it. And the reason why I say that is because I have this terminology that I use that a relationship works it functions like a container and a conduit and a crucible for meaning. And so within the container of the relationship we have with psilocybin, it gives us an opportunity to build over time, for things to change over time, for things to evolve over time for us within it and for our perspective of that which we’re relating with and the relationship itself.
(01:58) Personal beliefs aside for a second, I think it’s fair to say that what we’re interacting with at least is experiential changes in our subjective awareness brought on by the catalyst of consuming an exogenous molecule. From there, we can ask, well, what is this thing that’s arising? What is it? A spirit of a thing? Is it just me? Is it me and another thing? Is it another thing through and as me? Is it multiple things? And that’s when we can get into the sort of richness of our sort of spiritual models or philosophical models
(02:33) for what we’re interacting with. For me personally, I feel that it works well to perceive as though I’m interacting with an entity that is the spirit of the mushroom or the mushrooms themselves, which I call them psilocybin or the mushroom. But not to believe that that is the case so strongly that I lose my capacity to recognize that anywhere from 1 to 99.
(03:01) 9% of what I see in that experience is reflections of my own mind. The reason why I think that balance is important is because it’s very easy to overly project like I said our our our internal authority onto this thing that we perceive as external or for myself I believe is external and then we start saying things like the mushroom told me this and so I’ll do that or the mushroom told me this so it must be true but actually did the mushroom tell you that or did you just tell that to yourself while I’m mushrooms or did the mushroom tell you
(03:29) that to show you that that’s what you think not to tell you that that’s what’s True, >> right? And so it’s impossible to tease these things out. And so in the navigation of the experience and in integrating that experience over time in our lives so that it’s not just these pockets of wow or w or whatever and then we move from pocket to pocket.
(03:49) It’s something that exists in our relationship over time and so that we can properly keep ourselves and our own autonomy and relationship with that thing. I think it’s important to stay in a relationship with a thing that we believe we’re interacting with and can develop a relationship with, but always with the mindfulness that yeah, and it’s possible that I could completely misunderstand what it’s saying and all of it could actually just be about me and myself, so I should at the very least act with as much integrity and
(04:14) ethics as possible in everything that I do out of my experiences. How’s that? That’s a bit of a start. We’ll see. You brought us in real real deep, real fast. Yeah. >> Yeah. I got to get the speaking of the algorithm, got to get people hooked straight away. Um, but it is the the most interesting part of your work for me is building this relationship because all kinds of relationships are complex and everything in life is just your relationship to it.
(04:38) So, kind of bringing that framing into using psilocybin for what you call um psychospiritual maturation. It’s kind of abstract, right? Because even relationships, human to human in real life are are complex and we don’t often know how to do them and they it hasn’t been modeled to us like how how best to do them. And when you when you meet someone that you really like or you’re engaged in a relationship that feels um initially really fulfilling, it’s so easy to overdose on that relationship and then end up causing resentment or they’re
(05:07) being um fractured. So how if if somebody was to take this um framework and run with it like how would they structure building a relationship with something like psilocybin? >> Yeah, you you bring up an interesting point or like that further sort of expands on what I was saying there which I think is great.
(05:28) Another reason why it’s important to think about this from the perspective of a relationship is that it’s easy to anthropomorphize a relationship and there’s there’s problem problems in anthropomorphizing things of course but in this instance it gives us an opportunity to consider like how am I treating this thing how am I showing up to this experience like how I show up to this experience has a huge impact on what I’m going to get out of it and what will be possible through it even just that language what am I going to get out
(05:57) of this, you know, if I show up to this and go like, what am I going to get out of you? I’m defining a kind of relationship. Or if I show up being like, well, what’s possible between you and I right now, right? Like, how much is available here? What is that thing that’s available if I show up with respect versus if I show up with this extractive mindset or if I show up with care and in particular to psilocybin I show up with a receptivity to learn recognizing I could get real intense and fullon and I won’t like any of it and I
(06:30) still ultimately probably want to just stay curious and open and let it all happen. what can I get out of that? As opposed to being like, I’m just trying to have a good time and if anything isn’t good, I’m going to distract myself as much as possible because I’m taking these mushrooms to have some fun.
(06:43) When we think about it in terms of relationship, we have an opportunity to think about how do I show up to this thing both in my behavior, my approach, and how I regard that thing and what’s possible in the relationship as a consequence of my choices. And so, how do we start with our relationship with mushrooms? I think that’s different for every single person, but I think the most basic ones is to when we’re taking mushrooms, we’re doing so because we want to.
(07:10) That it’s our choice and there’s no other reason. Like there can be lots of other reasons, but I’m not choosing to do it because I think I’m supposed to or my friends want me to or it’s there and I probably should, or it’s the only way that’s going to fix my depression, my anxiety, my trauma, my writer’s block, whatever it is. The number one way to start this relationship is to ensure that you’re starting it because you’re choosing to and that’s your decision.
(07:35) From there, I think it’s incredibly important to ensure that we do our due diligence that we are creating a safe context for our explorations with this mushroom or this molecule. And that looks different for every person, but it means creating an external safe context in terms of where we are and who we’re with.
(07:55) the presence of cues of safety. So, people that are there to like help us calm down or remind us to breathe or soft music or soft pillows or soft lighting. And then also the absence of danger. There’s no sharp pointy things. There isn’t traffic. There isn’t somebody that’s going to be screaming or whatever it is, right? And then we’re doing our best to also try to go in and create an internal safe context as much as possible, which has to do with are we able to be in the experience without freaking out? And if we are going to freak out, we have
(08:25) someone or something around us that can work as a sort of exogenous safe context that we can feel safe with them even while we’re freaking out in ourselves. On top of that is a consideration of also from from the sense of like where am I at in my life right now? What am I looking to achieve with this experience as well as what what is my family and genetic history? What is my past mental health history? that we consider all of those in terms of internally is it safe for me to consume this substance and given what the possible risks are do I
(08:57) have the internal or external stability to compensate for those risks if they go like if they go towards the worst sure that we have something to respond to the worst because if we have something to respond to the worst we likely can manage the rest pretty well and the last part of all of that is ensuring that the amount that we take for the first time is contextually appropriate to where we’re at.
(09:20) If it’s my first time, probably not the best choice to take five drive grams alone in silent darkness, right? Probably not the best call. Maybe maybe you’d be vibes. Maybe it’d be great. It’s probably not the best call. Maybe if you’re held in a container with another person, five dried grams works. You know, maybe you take just a half a gram and sit in the forest by yourself.
(09:42) Maybe you make sure there’s a friend there or a friend on call or you have a facilitator or so on and so forth. Again, the presence of internal and external safety cues and and the sort of contextual safety and stability will give us an understanding of to what degree on a dose level we would be able to go beyond our capacities and still remain within that safe context as much as possible.
(10:05) For most people that means start low, go slow, be with others, ideally skilled others >> as in experienced others. >> I think you’re kind of pointing at something uh throughout your answer to that question, but I just want to name it. Um, if somebody is looking to utilize these substances to resolve and alchemize trauma, how does that mean that their relationship with the mushrooms has to look different perhaps to somebody that is using um, psilocybin because they’re after some sort of self-nosis or um, they want to do I
(10:39) guess a a type of psychosspiritual maturation that is lighter than having to resolve horrific childhood trauma. sort of like what level of safety does somebody need um when they’re deciding to have a campfire in the backyard versus the kind of safety someone’s going to need to do a controlled burn, right? So, it’s like the likelihood of one going really bad compared to the other. It’s impossible to know.
(11:02) Maybe you’re going in and you’re like, I’m just going to have a gram and a half and dance with my friends at Rainbow Serpent or something. You’re in Australia, right? And then and then uh you end up having all this stuff coming up that you weren’t anticipating. This speaks to another thing is to educate yourself as much as possible before consuming mushrooms. Don’t go too much.
(11:21) That can be a little overbearing, but like really educate yourself. Right. In terms of going in for trauma, I think that it is absolutely essential that you have some other person with you that you feel safe with and ideally is skilled and experienced. And the reason I say that is because part of trauma most of the time is this profound sense of having lost your sense of safety.
(11:46) The likelihood that whatever it is that you’re most afraid of in all of that, whatever it is that you’re avoiding or trying to get away from or trying to force or whatever it might be, what whatever that intense thing is is likely going to come up again. And it’s going to come up in ways that are large, big, completely outside your control.
(12:05) And like a controlled burn, this can be incredibly powerful and positive if you don’t make it worse by then also freaking out, you know, by it also becoming another thing that is upsetting or traumatic such as, you know, entering into an experience of of dissociation or just a really huge scary experience. Even if you have safe people around you, you’re so far out that they can’t even bring you down into a queue of safety.
(12:31) Any kind of psychedelic molecules with trauma requires a very cautious approach and a really considerate approach to ensure that you have people there to help you feel safe to face what’s coming up and can also be there with you to process that afterwards or to help you recover if things go very poorly. Usually, this also means having that same person be somebody you’re working with beforehand, so you get a pretty clear sense of what it is that’s probably going to come up and how it might come up that it doesn’t come at
(13:00) you unexpectedly. >> Yeah, there’s there’s a few things that you touched on that kind of stood out to me. First of all, um what do you think that it means for someone to be skilled and experienced enough to guide someone else through a psychedelic process? And I I asked this in light of how um much media coverage there is at the moment for psychedelic assisted therapy.
(13:22) And um I’ve been trying to work this thing out in my head around like like I would obviously want someone who had taken the substances themselves before, but from what I hear from people undergoing the training is that that’s not always the case. >> First and foremost, when looking for someone, it has to be someone that you feel safe with, right? you feel safe with them and you feel a sense of trust with them.
(13:49) That said, that can also not go well. If, for example, you end up feeling safe and trustworthy with someone who turns out to be a total charlatan or a manipulator or an abuser, that’s also a thing. And it could even be a thing 5 10 15 sessions in with 5 10 15 sessions up to that point at all feeling positive. So there’s >> there’s something to be navigated there.
(14:07) Of course, certification and qualification are not the same things, right? You can meet someone who has no certifications. they’re absolutely qualified to help you and people who have all the certifications and they’re in no way qualified to help you. Uh you could have people that have I’ve been facilitating mushrooms for 20 years, but actually they’re kind of like a kook and they’re have no capacity to help you if anything goes terribly wrong.
(14:30) It’s really tough to find. Um the biggest thing is when you find people that have a lot of word of mouth from people that you trust that say, “I worked with this person and it went really well.” That is a super helpful thing. Some therapists are going to be providing psychedelic therapy and never have had the experience.
(14:47) They’re upscaling a huge industry right now and it’s technically still illegal to have the experience. If even if you’re a therapist, it’s changing in Canada. So, they’re not allowed to have it. Maybe they’ve got all the skills for trauma and that’s all you need, but maybe they don’t have the skills to know the value of holding your hand in a powerful moment.
(15:03) And maybe they actually have done psychedelics hundreds of times, but legally they’re not allowed to tell you. So, it’s it’s it’s a really tough landscape and ultimately it comes down to do you feel like you could trust this person, you feel safe with this person and ideally you’ve had multiple people who you trust who have also worked with this person and said positive things and you can look and see if there’s any weird stuff out there about them.
(15:26) If they’re registered through some sort of college, have they had any acts like any uh flags against their name or their practice or something? such a touchy situation that it’s really hard for me to say like these are the checkpoints and if these checkpoints are hit like then that’s the person you can trust because it also depends on what you’re looking for.
(15:44) >> If I’m just looking to have someone like I’m trying to try a little psychedelics for the first time, I could probably just have someone I know and trust who’s never really had psychedelics, but they’re down to just like hang out with me for the day. And that would be great. That could be the perfect support I need.
(15:58) But if I’m going in for some deep trauma, I might need somebody who’s got deep trauma work. I could go see someone who’s got a lot of psychedelic experience, but they have no trauma work experience. So everything’s going to be cleansing and cleaning and entities and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that might not land and support you in the way that you need to be supported for the journey that you’re on.
(16:15) Right? Similarly, you might be going in and the everything is going to be about trauma. It’s all it’s just traumadelic the whole way down by your facilitator, but actually there’s so much more to the experience than that. are actually overly psychologizing what could otherwise be a very spiritual experiences that transcend the very essence of what we believe to be our traumas.
(16:38) Ultimately ask around get good of word of mouth and make sure that you feel like you can trust this person. >> Yeah. Know sometimes I think with these really complex emerging things the the best advice is is just that other people are talking about it and other people are questioning it. And so, you know, I’m sure for people that are listening that are wanting to embark on this journey, just to know that even the the educators in the space are asking questions.
(17:01) Something else that I’ve been trying to work out, what is it that that’s actually happening between two people in a psychedelic experience? Because I know that boundaries, and you write about this in your book, the boundaries between um inner and outer really blend. And there’s there’s kind of this um feeling of you don’t really know where you finish.
(17:22) and something else or someone else begins. And so if you’re in a space with somebody else and that’s happening, that can kind of make things really complicated. I think there’s also an opportunity in there to to to see things as non-dual like what is that? >> There is default mode network. There is this uh on the on the cognitive neuroscience side of things, there is the dissolution of the sort of perceptual processes that establish like the the self versus the other and versus the what is transpiring.
(17:50) There’s communication between the um task positive network and the default mode network in ways that they’re normally not supposed to be co-activated. There’s like all sorts of things that are happening on that end. And subjectively, yeah, you have the experience of like I am this cup. I am the universe. I am also my feelings, right? Like I am fully immersed like normally I have a wall up against this particular thing.
(18:13) I relate with it objectively or whatever it is. I logically separate myself from these experiences and you’re immersed in them. You could be with another person and either because of part of this includes an increase in amplification of sensory experience as a consequence of how these perceptual processes are altered by psilocybin.
(18:33) You can might be on the nervous system level way more sensitive to the process of other people to the cues that we’re getting all the time but they’re normally filtered out. Cues of uh intonation and temperature and smell and movement and plus what does it all mean? in our whole systems of what how to make meaning, how to what’s called a process uh predictive processing, how to sort of generate a hypothesis which we sort of guess as to what we’re perceiving on reality and check that against errors to create a working model for what we’re interacting with. That’s
(19:03) all disrupted. So what does anything mean? New ideas come up. Again, there’s an opportunity there of like shared meaning. What uh Wade Richardson, I believe, wrote a book called um uh psychedelic mind melt. this opportunity to maybe have telepathic contact with each other >> for good or for ill.
(19:21) I think that’s one of the big power of um uh psychedelics and ceremony is like being in a large group process. What it is, I don’t know. I think we’re getting on the edge of mystery. I think one thing that’s for sure is we want to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation. Psychedelics, psilocybin does the molecule does this to the brain.
(19:40) And serotonin changes the blood flow and changes the salance versus the task positive versus the default mode network. And that that creates an experience of dissolution which creates the experience of telepathy or something. >> No, all of these things are arising simultaneously. Just everything we know about the brain is kind of like a picture of what that looks like neurologically with our explanations and then subjectively we have these experiences and in many ways we’re, you know, we’re trying to sort of forge the
(20:08) two and and figure out what’s going on. But I think ultimately it comes down to trusting the mystery of the thing and learning to navigate it with as much sort of like grace and moral, you know, ethical uh ethical behavior as possible. >> I’m still just thinking about picking a guide or picking someone to have the experience with and then the way that I’m reading uh about how psychedelic assisted therapy is being regulated and and how they’re trying to make it as safe as possible for everyone involved.
(20:34) Is there a a transference that’s that’s happening wherein there’s actually a lot of opportunity and and should that be something that is acknowledged and like worked towards rather than like completely trying to regulate that away like you would in conventional therapy keeping the boundaries you know in conventional therapy you keep the boundaries between patient and um therapist like very uh strict and clear.
(20:59) >> Okay. So if you’re talking about transference in the sense of psychological transference and counter transference um and not transference in the sense of like something passing between us. Is that what you mean? Are you talking about it from the psychological terms? >> Both really. both the psychological obviously that can’t be happening in any therapeutic setting and you would hope that it wouldn’t happen in a psychedelic one where somebody a therapist comes in and they have a need to be needed and if you don’t have the process they want you
(21:26) to have then that’s going to affect the whole thing because they’re um feeling of of not being fulfilled in their work with you is going to bleed into your into your journey like obviously that needs to be dealt with. I had a really powerful um psychedelic experience that healed something for me that I had been working on in therapy for 10 years on and off and just could never really shift the needle on.
(21:52) And I found out that later that the person that I sat with in the ceremony had actually transformed that experience for themselves. And it was very mysterious and fortuitous that we ended up sitting together. And so I’ve always had this question mark around was I able to work on that particular thing and it wasn’t even my intention to work on this particular um issue I was facing in my life in that ceremony. Yeah.
(22:18) And I guess I’m just wondering if there is there is something there if in your experience that that the possibility of somebody who’s transformed a particular experience sitting in a room with someone else that wants to transform them that themselves is possible through the use of psychedelics. Is it possible? For sure.
(22:36) You just told me it was possible. Yeah. I mean, is it happen? >> Yeah. And I I think it must be repeatable. It’s repeatable all the time. You’re not the only person to have this kind of experience. I think that’s part of the power of of sitting in groups, right? Part of the power of sitting in groups. >> Um, now, does that make it reasonable to try to like make sure that the other people around you are like trying to select people so that they’ve already done the work that you want to do? I don’t know.
(23:04) Maybe if that’s your goal or you’re trying to build a group of people and they all want to work on the same thing collectively as one group in their inner experiences and then the sort of interpersonal psychic field like that’s maybe possible as well. But I think we have to be careful in the sense of like trying to make the experience a particular thing by overly controlling it because it’s one of those things where like the real magic, pardon the terminology, but the magic of the thing can get lost the harder we grip for it.
(23:33) And it’s almost like we’re so focused on making sure it’s the thing we want. Like we’re so focused on finding the train, catching the train we want to catch that we don’t realize it was passing on the tracks behind us. So I think that there’s something to that in terms of transference in psychology like in a psychotherapist office that’s been a well observed phenomenon for a very long time.
(23:58) And and actually of course when you select a psychologist or psychotherapist you want someone who’s not using you for their own like their own [ __ ] you know, to process their own stuff. But that that’s what it is to find a skilled psych psychotherapist or psychologist. They’re supposed to go through training that helps them deal with that.
(24:15) I think this is even more important with psychedelic work because there’s so much opportunity for a psychedelic therapist to get a grandized and not realize that they’re projecting things into the client’s experience with their subtle cues. Like it’s so important for a psychedelic therapist to be doing their own work so that they don’t do that and they can recognize their own triggers and stuff.
(24:38) But the dynamic of transference and counter transference is well documented and well understood in any and every trained psychotherapist. And what the psychotherapist is trying to do is of course not transfer their inner process onto the other individual where I’ve got issues with my mom. And so I make you my client, my mom, and I’m processing that stuff out.
(25:01) Generally, that’s pretty well maintained. What the therapists are trying to avoid is what’s called counter transference. Because say you and my client, it’s totally normal, expected, and can be incredibly positive for you to undergo transference, to project onto me, the therapist, like you’re projecting your father onto me. When that happens, if that’s made conscious, you could relate with that.
(25:21) There’s an incredible opportunity there for you to do some work with whatever is lingering from your stuff with your dad through me. as long as I as a therapist don’t counter transfer and take on that role and make you my daughter. You see, like that’s when it gets really sticky. And that’s in any psychotherrapeutic dynamic.
(25:43) And it’s also the case in psychedelic therapy. And it can get more intense because when someone’s under the effects of psychedelics, they don’t necessarily have the ability to recognize like, oh, I’m perceiving you as my father right now. They might be just in it and they just are afraid of you or whatever it might be. or they like just want to hold you or they could project their own uh you know transfer their own sexual stuff onto you and that you know that those are really important places to maintain certain boundaries.
(26:10) The boundary isn’t to prevent the transference to happening. The boundary is set up to ensure that when it happens it remains beneficial for the client and doesn’t create a context where counter transference or other behaviors can harm the client intentionally or otherwise. When working with a therapist in psychedelic work, that’s just something to keep in mind and to talk with them about, ask them about.
(26:35) Any well-trained psychotherapist, psychedelic or otherwise, is going to be able to answer your questions about that. And if they can’t answer your questions about that, that’s a cue that you probably can’t trust them. In terms of being in a group or more ceremonial work, you could ask your facilitator about that too, right? But I think there’s something about kind of going in with particular set of intentions for yourself and in how you’re going to relate to the group and then being open to the mystery of what happens and then maybe maybe you happen
(27:04) to be in a scenario like you where somebody was doing some big processing work that felt like it opened up something for you. I’ve I’ve been in ceremonies. I I had the opportunity to sit in ceremony with the late Kindi who was a big proponent of doing large mushroom journeys like 40 plus grams and I sat >> 40 and I sat in a ceremony with him.
(27:29) He wasn’t leading. We were all just friends together journeying and I had the experience of just having a really difficult time. Now I didn’t have as much as him. I was in my still high but not that high for sure. And I experienced him purging, intense purging, like wa like and then as soon as he was finished, I felt relieved.
(27:49) I was like, “Oh, thank you, Kendi.” Like, he just like you let it out for me. You know, like that kind of stuff can happen, right? But I I think we want to be conscientious that it’s like if we’re trying too hard to make sure that we have everyone around us who’s going to help us do the processing and we are trying to specifically ensure that they’re doing different aspects, then that is actually maybe something to look at in ourselves that we should be working on rather than something we should be trying to actualize.
(28:12) >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Speaking of 40 g, uh that is the most amount of mushrooms I’ve ever heard of anyone ever taking. I know now from um your work that it’s not enough to kill you, but that just feels like beyond what the human mind could even handle.
(28:32) I do want to talk about this um this thing that’s kind of seems to be within the subculture. At least when I go on to Reddit, people talking about um their really big doses of psilocybin mushrooms, I’m talking about 5 plus grams. and um how we’ve kind of labeled that 5 plus grams as as being the heroic dose and then there’s people now like influencers like Ryan Johnson going and doing it and live streaming it on Twitter and it’s become this kind of thing.
(29:00) How do you feel about that as a the that being used as kind of like a status symbol? Does that bother you? >> Uh I mean it bothers me and it doesn’t bother me. It is what it is. Internet culture is going to do what internet culture does. You know, I if anything I I what bothers me is just the concern that people who are naive, not in a judgmental way, as in they’re new and they don’t understand, might be misled by these kinds of posts, to think that that’s what they’re supposed to do.
(29:23) That’s what they’re supposed to try. I mean, famously, I believe Terrence McKenna, who coined the term heroic dose, five dry grams, and silent darkness, he would say like that’s the way to do it. But he didn’t have like uh he didn’t have that kind of reach, you know, like he said some stuff, he made some really cool >> impact in the world and a lot of people followed his stuff more now because of the internet, but he didn’t get like 30 million views overnight telling people take five diagrams in Silent Darkness.
(29:52) So there’s concern there for just people getting hurt, either new people coming in or this kind of like hype culture that comes up and then people start trying these things and the reality is that a lot of people have these experiences and they don’t know what to do with them >> or maybe they went really well so they do more and they do more and they do more and they end up kind of becoming a weirdly detached you know like strange spiritual bypassing on the edge of almost like a psychotic episode where they’ve completely disentangled
(30:23) themselves or detached themselves from their personal life and everything is about spirituality and their journeys and they can’t get a they can’t focus on getting a job because they’re trying to focus on their evolution and like all this kind of stuff can happen if people are going in too high too intensely too often and so there’s that level of concern for sure but ultimately people are going to do what they’re going to do you know and and that’s this is a part of the what was it like uh the teething phase as well right
(30:50) >> I I refer to it in an interview with um oh my goodness, what is her name? She wrote Swimming in the S. Sacred Rachel Harris. Rachel Harris. >> Yeah. I I refer to it as competitive egoing. Everyone trying to like one up themselves on like the biggest mushroom doses they can take. And you know, all the power to them if they can do it.
(31:08) Like I’ve been in some big mushroom doses and I could tell you that I’m glad I went there and I’m not trying to compete with anyone else to try to go back there again because they weren’t easy. uh and they weren’t necessarily not only easy in the experience but easy to make sense of in my life afterwards. They didn’t always feel like they were adding to the value of my life.
(31:27) So uh there’s that concern and mostly it comes down to cautioning people to just be like don’t probably unless you’re looking for like you know what vacuum to buy for life, you probably shouldn’t trust Reddit as like the go-to for how you should conduct yourself and what you should do. >> That’s fair enough.
(31:47) Um, on that subject, with the bigger doses or I guess maybe with any um with any level of dosage of psilocybin mushrooms, the thing that comes up in the conversation is surrender. This idea of surrender. Yeah. I guess while we’re in the realm of talking about big doses, let’s talk about what surrender might actually be or how people could access that um when they are journeying on psilocybin.
(32:07) >> Well, I’m not certain surrender is something that you do. Um, I think I’ve previously described it as like the like walking the razor’s edge of constantly giving into surrender, like constantly showing the highest level of control, which is to absolutely release all control. But I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily something that you do.
(32:25) It’s just a disposition that you allow. I believe Robert Augustus Masters, who’s a wonderful author, he said something to the effect of surrender is totally allowing your heart to just swell and be in like all this pain and beauty without attempting to change it in any way. >> Uh, and I think there’s something there.
(32:46) It’s like just saying, “Okay, I don’t know.” Or yes, or sure. or I’m scared or whatever it is. It’s just this kind of allowance of whatever is arising, allowing it to be what it is. Usually that relates to a kind of trust. You know, you can trust that whatever is happening is what’s happening and I’m going to be okay or the fact that I don’t feel okay is part of me being okay.
(33:16) You know, there’s all sorts of like maybe layers of of psychological navigation that might be happening, but it’s ultimately just allowing whatever’s happening to happen. That’s that so much easier said than done cuz sometimes the very thing that is happening that we’re like one thing that I realized that I would face is realizing that I was struggling with surrender because I was trying to surrender, right? like I’m having this terribly difficult time and I’m just I’m like I’m just trying I’m trying so hard to let it happen. I’m trying so hard to
(33:47) surrender. And then it’s like, well, stop trying to surrender. And it’s like, oh, so now in terms of when things get really difficult, that’s hard. That’s really hard, right? That’s why when it can be helpful to have cues of safety around you, including another person, if I if what I if what it is that I need to surrender onto is the experience of being absolutely unsafe.
(34:12) It’s nice to be able to look over and see another person smiling and knowing that I created psychological I created context with them that I know that they feel safe and so I don’t have to feel safe cuz they feel safe and so I can trust and surrender into not feeling safe. Yeah, I guess that’s where that transfer does work.
(34:28) >> Another layer of that is is when things are too difficult to surrender to, we don’t get curious about them. >> It’s like I don’t I I don’t know how to allow this pain, this fear. Well, then another opportunity in that is to be like, okay, well, what is this fear? Like, what is it that I can’t surrender to? As soon as we make the switch of asking what it is, something changes.
(34:52) That’s why when you’re I doing the internal work of preparing or like being in relationship with the mushroom to do this kind of work solo where you’re working with a guide or a someone who’s helping you prepare. We set the kind of pattern of knowing what it is to be in curiosity versus what it is to be in surrender so that it’s not so difficult to allow those things to happen or to engage that sort of mindset when we’re in the journey.
(35:14) >> Yeah. I I think surrender can become this thing that you’re trying to figure out and it’s already hard to figure out what that might be in your normal waking sober life, let alone when like you know the walls are melting and the the time and space have ceased to exist anymore and you’re also trying to figure out like what the [ __ ] even happening in general like how >> and all that all that trying to figure it out is also just like grasping.
(35:38) It’s attempting to conquer something with you know sort of concept under the conceptual thumb of understanding which is so far beyond us that every effort we have to do only just burns us >> right and then it’s like I don’t know there so I don’t know is a verbal iteration of getting into this place of like oh there’s the surrender I don’t know I can’t figure this out I’m not going to figure this out I shouldn’t even try to figure this out at least not now I mean tomorrow then you could start figuring it out >> yeah yeah yeah after big glass of water
(36:05) and a shower >> what is a question that you have that you you don’t see asked very often in psychedelic culture >> over the last couple of years as I’ve focused more and more on writing a new book and also I went through a pretty difficult time a few years ago still working through it when I was in a car accident I got a head injury and that really changed the shape of my life and my mind and so on and so forth I am and also the explosion of psychedelics there’s just so much going on that to be entirely forthright I I don’t really
(36:37) feel like I’m paying attention to everything that’s happening in the culture because a lot of the things that are happening it’s like I don’t really want to be a part of that. >> There are certain things that will come up and be like now that’s interesting to talk about. Let’s let’s lean on that, right? Like that’s interesting to me.
(36:53) I that’s a important event. For example, when you know, Donald Trump, president of the United States, wrote that um sort of executive action to, you know, create more, I don’t know, like open legal pathways for psychedelics in the US and why he included Ibgainain explicitly on top of the psychedelics that already had breakthrough access.
(37:15) Like that’s important and interesting to talk about. Well, what is I gain? Like why why did I come up? Like this is the only one that has the legitimate risk of death. Why is it being included with these ones that are breakthrough therapy that are otherwise like perfectly safe? And how is that relating to the other people in the room? And how does that relate to sort of uh intersections of of um trying to create a perceived sense of supporting veterans while also making more trauma by sending soldiers to war? You know, like there’s there’s all sorts
(37:48) these are these are interesting questions, but there’s a bunch of other stuff that kind of comes up and comes down in psychedelic culture that in some ways I’m like, I don’t care. That’s not what I’m trying to focus on in the long run. Like, I’m really trying to focus on how do we work with these things in ways that we become better people.
(38:03) You know, it’s tough cuz I’m a content creator, so I kind of also have to try to stay on trend in some ways, but ultimately like I don’t really care about what’s trending. I care about like asking these deeper questions. >> Okay. I I surrender to the fact that I don’t know. >> Perfect. Um, well, I actually think that’s a nice place to wrap up this episode, but um, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and um, I am looking forward to jumping more into your personal experiences in the next the side.
