Episode 28: [Part 2] Sacred Plant Medicine - Cannabis & Psilocybin

Join me for Part 2 of my Sacred Medicine series. Today’s show focuses on Cannabis and Psilocybin (magic mushrooms). For those of you who are doing deep transformational healing work, the subject of using plant substances that have the potential of bringing one into heart-centered awareness as well as greater understanding of one’s internal and external world is bound to come up. Cannabis and psilocybin are often used in trauma therapy within a shamanic healing protocol and can be helpful to teach a person how to let go and release. But they can also be misused or leaned on too much. I’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these sacred plant medicines from my own personal experiences (including my former anti-cannabis stance) and my observations on who is likely to struggle the most with these powerful medicines. 

SHOW DISCLAIMER: The information on today’s show is for informational purposes only. I don’t endorse either of these substances that I will discuss for anyone under the age of twenty-one or anyone who has a predisposition to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychotic pathologies or any hardwired mental condition unless you are under the care of a highly qualified medical professional. This episode is NOT about the recreational or party use of either cannabis or psilocybin. In the context of this podcast, the use of any sacred plant medicine is for those of you who are consciously and purposely engaged in deeply transformative inner work and personal healing that is fueled with reverent intention as to the purpose of using these powerful medicines. Cannabis is still an illegal substance in some states under Federal law and certainly in many parts around the world. Psilocybin is also an illegal substance in many parts of the country and world. Today’s show should not be construed as an endorsement for you to use either cannabis or psilocybin. If you choose to use either one of these substances, you do so at your own risk and the outcome and experience with the substance is solely your responsibility. The use of these substances does not guarantee or promise any useful spiritual experience that you might be loo

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Transcript

            Welcome to Episode 28: [Part 2] Sacred Plant Medicine – Cannabis & Psilocybin

            Before I begin, I need to do a disclaimer for this episode. The information I’ll be discussing on today’s show is for informational purposes only. I don’t endorse any of these substances that I will discuss for anyone under the age of twenty-one or anyone who has a predisposition to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychotic pathologies or any hardwired mental condition unless you are under the care of a highly qualified medical professional. This episode is NOT about the recreational or party use of either cannabis or psilocybin. In the context of this podcast, the use of any sacred plant medicine is for those of you who are consciously and purposely engaged in deeply transformative inner work and personal healing that is fueled with reverent intention as to the purpose of using these powerful medicines. Cannabis is still an illegal substance in some states under Federal law and certainly in many parts around the world. Psilocybin is also an illegal substance in many parts of the country and world. Today’s show should not be construed as an endorsement for you to use either cannabis or psilocybin. If you choose to use either one of these substances, you so at your own risk and the outcome and experience with the substance is solely your responsibility. When I discuss cannabis and psilocybin in today’s show, it is for the express purpose of potentially deepening one’s alchemical personal transformation practice. However, the use of these substances is not guaranteed to provide you with any useful spiritual experience that you might be looking for. If you choose to use cannabis or psilocybin, I strongly advise you do so in a safe, monitored environment and with a qualified therapist or guide present.  

            If you have not listened to last week’s introduction and overview show in Part one of this series, I urge you to listen to it first to get a better understanding of why I’m doing this 4-part series and the essence of what sacred plant medicine is all about. 

            Alright, so let’s start with cannabis. I know there’s a lot of people listening who already use cannabis and are wondering why I’d be lumping it in with sacred plant medicine. Well, it is a sacred plant medicine even though it is not considered a psychedelic, it is classified as an hallucinogen and can generate visual distortions and loss of time if you ingest high dose THC edibles or concentrates or smoke or vape high THC concentrates. My own use of this plant, when I used it, was with organically grown, no pesticide, raw flower or microdoses to moderate THC edibles that I made myself. And I choose to learn how to do that because at that time, I didn’t like the crappy ingredients that were in so many edibles that were sold at Colorado dispensaries. That’s changed, thankfully, and there are great companies out there right now that focus on organically sourced cannabis as well the additional ingredients that are put into their edibles. But when I first got into this fourteen years ago, that was not the case. 

            Now I want to backtrack a second here and give you some context into my personal history with cannabis. Anyone who used to know me who is listening to this show right now, is probably stunned – and that’s putting it mildly - because they remember how I used to feel about cannabis and basically any mind-altering plant substance. I was not just against it, I was brutally against it. I mocked it. I mocked the people who used it. I attempted to educate them using studies that were fifty years old and had been debunked. But I didn’t know that because I didn’t take the time to research any of the studies I was using to prop up my strident beliefs. I just listened to what I was told and blindly repeated it. I was willfully ignorant because I chose to be ignorant. And when cannabis became medically legal in Colorado in 2000 with stipulations at first, by 2009, I got so damn tired of debating my anti-cannabis position that I decided to prove I was right. So I spent every spare moment I had doing deep dives into the subject of cannabis. I bought books on the pharmacalogical effects and the history of cannabis. I read hundreds of articles and studies on cannabis from the point of view of how it affects the brain, neurotransmitters and more. Many of these studies were done outside of the U.S., from Spain to Israel and elsewhere and that’s because it is still a Schedule 1 drug and that has prevented the study of it in the U.S. on any large scale. During that time in 2009, I also talked to dozens of medical users and growers of cannabis which I admit to having a major bias against at that time. I’m not proud of that but it’s a statement of fact because I want full transparency on this subject. So here I was dedicating a lot of time and resources during those six months and doing everything I could to prove I was right. And every time I thought I could defend my position on cannabis with a study that would support my belief, after taking apart that study and researching who funded it, I had to start realizing something and that was that I wasn’t just wrong, I was allowing propaganda and bad science and organizations that had major conflicting interests to determine my opinions. 

It must be noted that Cannabis was entered into the United States Pharmacopeia in 1850, as a treatment for neuralgia, tetanus, typhus, cholera, rabies, dysentery, alcoholism, opiate addiction, anthrax, leprosy, incontinence, snakebite, gout, convulsive disorders, tonsillitis, insanity, excessive menstrual bleeding, and uterine bleeding. And later it was also prescribed for nausea, menstrual cramping and headaches as well as migraines. Queen Victoria used compounded tinctures of cannabis indica for her menstrual cramps as well as nausea. However, cannabis was removed from the U.S. pharmacopeia in 1941 and characterized as having no therapeutic legitimacy. I don’t want to take up the time in this show to go into all the reasons why this happened and speculate on the many theories but there was certainly a concerted program to demonize cannabis and those who used it and the anti-drug campaigns that flourished whether it was the scare tactics of the Reefer Madness film in 1936 or the fervent anti-cannabis campaigns in the late 1960’s and on up, suffice to say that a lot of people were programmed to believe just like I did and accept without having any experience with the plant that cannabis was in fact, a gateway drug to heroin. Turns out, one thing I learned during my six-month deep dive, that alcohol and nicotine more likely act as gateways. However, the gateway theory is also up for debate as I was told by a fascinating medical researcher I talked to that the definition of a gateway drug is simply the first drug you used that gave you the effect you needed to dial down whatever you could not process at that time. So for a lot of people, that’s nicotine and booze. Nicotine for focus and booze to tamp down whatever you just can’t deal with. 

Booze is about checking out and cannabis is more about checking in. And perhaps that is the one of the reasons it was demonized back in the post-World War 2 era. We were all about building a country after a devastating World War and that meant building families, lots of new homes that were affordable with one income and churning out industry and what was looked at as progress. Characteristics such as self-reflection were not high on anyone’s list of useful personality traits. I can vouch for that. It was all about progress and to create that, we focused solely on productivity, work and sacrifice. Internal strife was suppressed or ignored in favor of carrying on and turning your life or your family’s life into something you could be proud of. And I don’t have a damn problem with progress. I don’t have a problem with working or having to sacrifice at times to get what I want or need. Not one bit! However, decade upon decade of that mindset with no attention to self-reflection or reflection on life in general creates, in my opinion, creates a dangerous vacuum that tends to get filled in with anything that drowns out one’s existential pain via the use of alcohol and illicit drugs. So when I say that cannabis is more about checking in, I can attest to that fact. Because when I finally agreed to try medical cannabis for the first time in 2010, I can tell you that both the need to let go and have the experience as well as allowing that experience to lead toward reflection of things I never reflected on before, was incredibly profound for me. As I mentioned on last week’s show, I did smoke some really bad weed when I was sixteen and it did nothing for me except make me cough. So in 2010 when I took three hits of organically grown medical grade cannabis, I was blown away at not just the effects but how it profoundly put me in a mental place that I’d never experienced before. I’d never been a drinker given the environment I grew up around I wasn’t interested in taking up drinking. That’s not to say I haven’t drunk alcohol or that I’ve never gotten tipsy. But I was never a regular, daily consumer of alcohol and I haven’t ingested any booze in over thirteen years. And I can personally vouch that I never experienced with alcohol the same introspective as well as creative thinking that low dose cannabis provided for me. That was my experience. And to that, I was talking to someone about ten years ago who had worked in a high security military position who told me that it was hard to control the mind of someone who used cannabis, even on an infrequent basis and I found that to be a very interesting observation. Is it true? I don’t know. I’m sure there are people who use cannabis who can be controlled. I think to generalize a statement like that is not wise. It’s like saying that anyone who uses psilocybin will become enlightened. And certainly that’s not the case! But I think it can be said that if you are able to use the experience of the mind opening potential and not get carried away with it if you choose to use cannabis, there is the possibility that you will question more things and certainly what the media tells you. And questioning is a good thing. I’m all about critical thinking. I prefer to blend the heart and the mind meaning using logical thinking as well as the intuitive mind which is often experienced as one’s heart centered mind. But that’s me and I just put that idea out there. 

So my emergence into using cannabis began in 2010 but my conscious decision to heal my trauma and completely deconstruct my entire life and everything began in 2016. And I will say this as an absolute truth for myself that my use of cannabis for those six years prior to diving into my hardcore healing was FOR ME a godsend. And I say that because when I had several injuries in 2013 and then reinjured myself in 2014 and did not take the time to get help or heal my body, by 2016 those injuries were now contributing to multiple restrictions in my body that were preventing me from moving without pain. Due to a muscle injury in my right calf and hamstring, I developed severe spasms that would become so debilitating that I could not get comfortable in bed or in a chair. Cannabis was incredibly helpful for those spasms. The use of low dose to moderate dosing of cannabis back then was a major game changer for me regarding both pain relief and getting a good solid night of sleep that I absolutely needed. 

In addition to that, and this is where cannabis was so profound when it came to my own alchemical transformation work, this plant taught my mind how to let go. And for me, that lesson was a gift. I can look back and realize that it was cannabis that taught me that first off, letting go was okay and secondly, that if I didn’t let go, I could not release the tension in my nervous system which was completely trashed in 2016. And there is no way to heal from trauma if you are incapable of calming or regulating your nervous system response. I was almost always in a state of fight or flight and then I went into the freeze response which is the third leg of the sympathetic nervous system reaction to stress. In so many words, cannabis helped me put things in perspective. I realized how I was getting in my own way and how many of the things I stressed out about were not worth the energy. And the cool part about it was that I could laugh at myself and how I believed that this thing or that thing was a “make or break” situation when it wasn’t. 

Cannabis also taught me how to just ‘be,’ something I had never been allowed to experience in my ruthless quest for constant productivity and success at all costs. And I think through all this nervous system regulation and gradually finding my center again, my ability to surrender to the process of deep and often painful healing was made easier. And it was because it was teaching me the process of surrender. And you cannot keep unpeeling that onion or diving into the darkest corners of your past or your mind if you cannot surrender and fall into it. If you are thinking about doing psilocybin or Ayahuasca or any therapeutic sacred plant medicine, I STRONGLY suggest that you begin with Cannabis. I can’t imagine going through the extensive preparation for an Ayahuasca trip and being confronted with the often-shattering effects of that trip that demand surrender on the deepest levels without having any muscle memory, so to speak, of how to surrender to that experience. 

Cannabis and psychedelics are spiritual tools used to reveal, uncover, bring to the surface aspects of yourself that you never encountered before. They say these substances allow you to “meet yourself for the first time.” And I absolutely agree with that. However, if you are someone who has lived their life carrying a façade or you have a need to control everything and everyone – which is an aspect of carrying a façade – or if you don’t have a spiritual connection in any shape or form or if you have a dogmatic, fear-driven religious belief system, these substances have the high potential to shock, disturb and terrify you. Control freaks have a really hard time with cannabis. By their nature, they are so freaked out about losing their situational awareness and maintaining a hypervigilant mindset that even small doses of 1 or 2 mg. of cannabis in an edible form can trigger a disorientation for them that truly induces a panic. I’ve seen this too many times and I can say that from what I’ve observed, the level of control the person requires in their daily life is equal to the amount of resistance they will feel when the cannabis kicks in. Even a microdose which is 1 to 2mg.  I understand why a person becomes a control freak and it often boils down to growing up in either an out-of-control home or a home that demanded extreme hypervigilance in order to protect themselves or it can come from growing up around a family that modeled this controlling behavior, and they believed that was a normal way to act and react. The suggestion for control freaks is that taking a micro dose of cannabis, 1 to 2mg, does offer an opportunity to experience the sensation of letting go. That dose is not going to get you high, but it is going to shift your mind temporarily on a subtle level. But control freaks that I’ve been around, invariably interpret that mind shift – that release and relaxation – as a dangerous or disorienting thing. I’ve been around it enough to really look at that because I think that’s telling. Perceiving relaxation or letting go as an uncomfortable or disorienting sensation is an indicator in my book, of suppressed trauma. The old ‘sleeping with one eye open’ mentality. Controlling people can’t let go because they interpret the feeling of letting go as something very dangerous that leads them into the unknown and it’s the unknown and how they are going to potentially react to the unknown that they are terrified of exploring. But that’s exactly what they are going to be required to do to learn how to let go and eventually to learn how to be present, sit in silence and be reflective without being reactive. You can’t do deep healing if you can’t let go and give your nervous system a chance to find balance.

Now one thing I was taught by a cannabis expert who really understood the chemistry of the plant was that combining 1 to 2 mg. of THC with 20 mg. of CBD produced a calm focus and no high whatsoever. That said, I would never drive or operate machinery while using THC. I know that tons of individuals use THC and do these things but I’m not advocating for that. This combination of low dose THC with high dose CBD can be incredibly useful for you if you have a controlling nature but still have a desire to train yourself to let go. I would personally choose an Indica strain (which is more body-centered) and 1 to 2 mg. of THC and as I said, the 20 mg. of CBD stacked on that dose. 

So I went from being completely against cannabis to becoming an advocate of its medical and spiritual use. I was even inspired to write a novel about it that was published back in 2012 called “Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden.” I used the herb for twelve years. During that time, I’d go for weeks at a time when I was traveling or working on a project where I would not use it. And I could quit it cold turkey and not have any issues. So why did I quit? Well, I think just like with many things, the plant had done its job and by the time I quit cannabis, I had thoroughly worked through the deepest and hardest parts of my emotional and mental issues. And the shock absorber effect that cannabis had provided for me in relationship to doing my trauma work was not necessary anymore. And for me, I didn’t want or need a barrier between myself and a difficult experience. I craved clarity. I think the good thing about cannabis is that the use of it allows you to be able to tolerate situations and people in your life who are intolerable for the most part. The bad thing about cannabis is that it allows you to be able to tolerate situations and people in your life who are intolerable for the most part. Stopping cannabis, even for a week which I did frequently, made this observation staggeringly obvious. Eventually, you have to have the wherewithal to wake up and realize that there are certain things in your life that you should not be tolerating. Would I use it again to address a temporary pain issue? Absolutely. But I don’t require it to be reflective or get into a meditative state. I’ve taught myself how to do that without the use of any substances. 

Also important to note is that if you have the MTHFR gene mutation like I do and that a large percentage of the population share, THC takes longer for those of us who have this mutation to transit the Phase 2 detox pathways in the liver. Thus, I started taking methylation supplements such as TMG, Methyl Folate, NAC and a B vitamin formula that was high in B12 and B6. And these have certainly made a difference in my overall health. 

I think if cannabis turns into a crutch, it’s by far a psychological and habitual crutch. You have to be open to the idea that it’s keeping you stuck in a place of non-action through the tolerating of behaviors or external situations in your life that truly need to either end or have a big shake up. Quitting it as I did cold turkey was absolutely necessary because I needed to emerge from that deeply reflective place and be completely present in the new reality I had built for myself after tremendously difficult and deep healing. It had done its work and I will forever be grateful to it for what it taught me.

Turning now to psilocybin, this is a substance that is definitely used a lot in many shamanic circles and gained a lot of traction from an ethnobiologist and self-proclaimed psychonaut named Terrance McKenna. I’ve posted a couple of his quotes in the past on my Instagram page. A psychonaut is someone who enjoys exploring altered states of their consciousness. McKenna wrote a lot about psilocybin and had what I call an extremely tight and almost romanticized relationship with magic mushrooms. I’ll come back to McKenna in a bit but he was credited with the term “heroic dose” when it came to doing mushrooms in a sacred ritualistic way. His advice was to take five grams of a strain (five grams being the dose to bust through the veil of one’s reality and really begin to heal), sit in a dark closet with eye shades and in total silence and wait for the trip to begin. My connection to psilocybin started in what I have called “the pre-awakening” stage of my alchemical transformation work. I mentioned this in a past show where there are points before the big healing crisis or dive into deep healing where you get glimpses into what is destined to come into your life. Back in 2013 and 2014 when I was still doing nutritional counseling, I had a client who had Stage 4 cancer but he got his diet dialed in and he took up meditating and so much more and while he wasn’t in remission, he kept chugging along and I asked him one day what he was doing because I was impressed. And this guy was in his early sixties. And he told me that he’d started working with a shamanic healer who specialized in end of life work and this healer had introduced him to psilocybin and he’d done several heroic doses and found great peace. It intrigued me and we had a good conversation about it. A few weeks later, I saw him for a session and right before he left, he handed an envelope and told me to open it up after he left the office. Inside the envelope was a card that was absolutely beautiful and it was basically a goodbye card. And tucked into the card in a shrink-wrapped baggie was psilocybin mushrooms. He told me it was the strain he was using to prepare him for death and that I should try it. I was a little confused and said, “Well, I’m not planning on dying yet.” And he looked at me and smiled and said, “There’s all kinds of death.” Within less than one month, he died and over the course of the next year which was 2015, every time I opened my desk drawer where I’d placed the plastic baggie of mushrooms, I’d think of him. One day when I was alone because my husband was away on a trip, I thought, “Sure. Let’s give it a shot. I have a few hours to spare.” The side of the baggie noted that it was 3.75 grams which meant absolutely nothing to me. I did not know at this time that five grams is ‘heroic’ and that 3.75 while not heroic, is considered a high dose. If I had known this, I would not have taken it. But I was alone and stupid and here we go. I ground it up and made it into a tea and chugged it down and I’m telling you it was incredibly gagging. And while I’m waiting for it to kick in as I had no clue how long that was going to take, I grab a blanket to lay on the grass and a camera to take photos of the flowers while I waited to feel something. Looking back, I cringe at the way I went about this and I’m blown away that I didn’t understand that I had just taken a substance that my client was using expressly for the purpose of learning how to die with grace. I was very cavalier about the whole thing. There was no ritual. There was no prayer. There was no intention set. About an hour in, I’m outside lying on the blanket and feeling something creep up around me. It’s nothing like what cannabis feels like. And it got my attention because psilocybin’s spirit energy, for me, is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It means business in the higher doses. I can tell you that. And within twenty minutes or so, I don’t know, I didn’t have a clock or a phone or a bottle of water or a pillow. I had a blanket and I had a Nikon camera and I had stupidly situated myself in an area that was a long way to crawl back to the house if I needed something. And then it hit. And I didn’t have to wonder if I was feeling anything. I was feeling everything. Including absolute terror. I did not know that one of the reasons people do higher doses at night or in the dark is because of the light sensitivity. So all I had was the blanket and that was the only saving grace I had to cover my eyes and literally endure what turned into six straight hours of unmitigated hell for me. Now, when I say hell, I don’t mean I saw demons or entities or anything like that. But while I won’t go into the personal details, I did get to have a long conversation with a dark, hooded being that looked like the angel of death without the sharp sickle. And he was not in a good mood that day. He proceeded to tell me that I was not on the right path, and that I was about to experience the darkest and most painful period in my life. I tried to negotiate with him and make deals and that just made it worse. He was having none of it. And I say, ‘he,’ because to me it was a male energy. By what I later realized was hour six of this unending lecture, I was a puddle of nothing. I also was severely dehydrated and hungry and extremely disoriented. The effects began to wear off to the point where I could stumble back to the house and get water and lie down. And I was never so happy to be back on the couch and drinking tap water. That was September of 2015 and almost exactly seven months later, my world fell apart physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and therein began my journey toward healing from that point on. 

I questioned sharing that story with all of you for a lot of reasons. But I figured it was a good example of the power that these sacred medicines have and the ideocracy of people like me back then who had no idea what she was doing and thought on a whim with zero preparation that I was going to take a very strong dose of magic mushrooms and lay in the grass and let the flowers and the sky speak to me. No. That didn’t happen. I got lectured by the angel of death for six straight hours. And he had a lot to say and a captive and very thirsty audience in me. And when I tried to negotiate a peace treaty between the two of us, he was not having it. That just seemed to rile him up more. So believe me, when my entire world fell apart seven months later, I remembered the warnings I was given on that September day. And I realized not just the power of this sacred medicine but the required reverence and deep respect you need to have when you use it. Not to mention the attention to the set and the setting, which I mentioned in last week’s episode. Close attention must be on the set and the setting. The environment in which these types of sacred ceremonies are performed is so incredibly vital. And obviously, having water or coconut water or some type of electrolyte beverage is mandatory. Finally, I would never do that high dose again without having somebody with me.

So did I use psilocybin mushroom again? Yes. Six years later, I attended a shamanic retreat and learned about the use of microdosing psilocybin for moving through trauma, anxiety, some depression and also as a heart opener. And that’s actually what my interest was at that time. So I went about researching the various strains of mushrooms and found a strain that really resonated with me called Golden Teacher. It’s considered milder than most strains which I was fine with. These strains, I learned, do all have a plant spirit teacher attached to them. To someone who has never done this, that sounds like mumbo jumbo. That’s been my experience. Each strain that I’ve used carries with it a unique imprint and that imprint seems to be the system in which the delivery of information is given to you. For me, it was akin to having different teachers in high school and some you liked and connected with better than others and some taught you information that you have never forgotten. Same idea with psilocybin as far as my experience went. So in 2021, I began to microdose about every three days with 0.2 to 0.3 grams of Golden Teacher. And I found it to be a really beautiful experience at that dose. Then I agreed to go deeper and over the course of four months, I worked with someone who helped me navigate each session and what I was able to understand and bring back. But for me, as insightful and life-affirming as these sessions were, they were also extremely mentally and emotionally exhausting to the point where I began to dread the next session. So I started spacing them out more and doing a lot more integration after each session. But eventually, I stopped the therapy completely. I felt I’d gotten everything I needed at that time with the intentions I’d set and for me, it had no longer become something I looked forward to but something I felt I was obligating myself to because of a need to speed up my process. And nobody was obligating me to any of it. That was all on me. I was the one who created the schedule. But after four months of really doing a lot of deep and very difficult trauma work, I started to wonder why was I putting myself through this often difficult landscape every ten days to two weeks? It was a good question for me and I now understand that I had to reach that point where I stood back it and asked that question and truly listened for the answer. And I did get the answer very quickly and for me, I was repeating a pattern of belief that to attain wisdom, one has to struggle and go through hell before it can be attained. Aha! That made sense and I gave myself permission to stop and when I agreed to that, I could feel my whole body relaxing and coming back into homeostasis. And that awareness alone was enough to make me realize right away that stopping the sessions was the right thing for me to do. And as the days progressed, I began to viscerally crave total physical awareness and mental clarity that I felt was somewhat lacking over the course of my many sessions. When you work with these medicines, they do linger within your psyche and that aspect has to be respected and acknowledged and you must pay attention to it. Because it’s very easy to fall into a lackadaisical approach and not have adequate self-awareness to know when it’s time to take a break or stop completely. I had to intervene with a friend of mine who was doing very small doses of psilocybin with a therapist but who was exhibiting signs of being in a dream state. And when you see that, you have to call it out because that’s not safe and that’s not the intention in my opinion. 

So I stopped the sessions and I also quit cannabis shortly after that. And my life didn’t get easier after that. It got incredibly difficult, and I had to use every single lesson I learned and apply them to what I was dealing with at that time. In fact, one person told me that I picked a helluva time to quit cannabis. But I had this strong need to be sober, not influenced by anything that would take me out of my mind, and thank God I listened to that intuitive guidance because what followed over the course of the next two years required me to be stone cold sober and wide awake as to what was happening in my life. I will say that for me, I think the use of the psilocybin during that time did allow me to face a lot of fears around surrender and letting go of what needed to die. Because in those two years, I had to do just that in the physical world. And I had to do it without a lot of heartache or lingering in self-doubt. As each ending would occur, I found myself over those two years facing each one and then turning around and moving on and facing another and moving on. I felt like I grew up a lot spiritually during that time. There was no fun whatsoever, but I learned to take each blessing that came along and be very grateful for it. And I remember someone saying to me at the time who had no idea I had done intense therapeutic psilocybin sessions that she couldn’t understand how I was able to go through what was happening at that time and not ‘lose my mind.’ And I wanted to say, but I didn’t of course, that I’d lost my mind in 2016 and nothing has been the same ever since. 

The two greatest lessons that psilocybin taught me was how to open my closed heart and how I didn't need the mushroom anymore. It showed me the road and then like any shamanic teacher, it left my side, so I could walk that road alone, carrying the tools I needed to navigate the path and circumvent all the pitfalls that had previously kept tripping me up. And while my heart did open, it didn’t stay open constantly. It was an ebb and flow for quite some time. I learned the nature of this reality we all live in and the illusionary aspect of it while we also have to collectively agree on some level to that illusion. And if you’ve never used sacred plant medicine, what I just said may sound completely off the reservation, so to speak. But if you have, you get it what I said. My experience with psilocybin is that whatever you go through on your trip, you become that self-propelled experience. And without having the doors opened and the pathways walked via these plant medicines, I would not have been able to understand that and live that reality today. Because you don't get to this point by enabling the same constructs that you were programmed to buy into when you were growing up. You don't get to this realization without being deeply humbled by the plant medicine and agreeing to let your Ego take a backseat and not run your programming. You still have an ego but it doesn’t dominate every thought or decision. It never entirely dissolves nor should it. But I think what most people experience if they are able to connect the stars during their trip is that the reality we all live within is a lot more layered and dimensional than we really understand. And that what you experience when you use sacred plant medicine is a very personal conversation between you and God or your Higher Self or however you choose to understand the Divine energy you inhabit. But that in many ways, what we are all experiencing is like a dream within a dream within a dream. And Bill Hicks, who was a stand up comic who died of cancer in 1994 at the age of thirty-three, used his many psychedelic experiences to riff during his stand up routines. And one of his famous quotes was, “We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death. Life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” 

If you are planning to use psilocybin and have access to a safe and reliable source that does not involve breaking the laws that govern where you live or if you are working with a shamanic therapist, I absolutely recommend that you start with micro dosing. Not only does this give you a sense of the energy of the mushroom, but it’s also a way to introduce that spirit energy within the mushroom into your body and mind. Again, always work with someone who is trained in this type of out-of-the-box therapy and who has a stellar reputation for creating a safe and mindful setting that is conducive to the journey you will take. 

Setting an intention is vital. You may not get what you want but you’ll get what you need, I guarantee.

Before I close, I want to bring Terrance McKenna back into the conversation. By his own admission in various interviews, he spent roughly thirty-six of his fifty-four years on Earth in an altered state of consciousness. And that was his body, and he had every right to do with it what he felt he needed to do with it. My point of view when it comes to traveling outside the body via the long term use of hallucinogens and spending a lot of time in that space is that we are all here to experience the physical reality. And I understand how boring and monotonous that reality is. And I absolutely understand how seductive and provocative it can be to travel within your own consciousness, through the use of these sacred plant medicines. My spiritual conundrum is always the same, even as someone who has experienced profound answers through the use of sacred plant medicine. And that is if you are here on Earth to experience what it feels like to be in a body and all that that experience demands and requires, how can you make that physical experience as breathtaking and meaningful in the same way that the otherworldly experiences are? There’s a lot of magic out there in the physical reality if you are open to seeing it and taking it in. Obviously, I have nothing against the spiritual use of sacred plant medicine. But my hope is that it can act as a window within a home that is built on the physical plane, that offers a unique perspective and provides answers to the questions that have to be faced and hopefully resolved on this plane of existence. 

That’s all for this week. Thank you for choosing to listen to this show. Keep emailing me all your great emails with your questions for the upcoming show I’m putting together. That show is scheduled for early September so stay tuned! Share this podcast with others and follow me. Check out the notes for this episode where you’ll see the links to find me on Instagram and X @laureldewey or thealchemyofnaturalhealing. On all the show notes, I’ve included the companies I support and have helped me greatly in my healing process, so check that and look for the coupon codes. Looking forward to you joining me next week for Part 3 of the series, when I do a deep dive into Ayahuasca and Ketamine. New episodes drop every Saturday. Until then, remember that “Awareness is a demanding mistress. Once she wakes you up, she won’t let you go back to sleep.”