Episode 29: [Part 3] Sacred Plant Medicine - Ayahuasca & Ketamine

In Part 3 of my Sacred Medicine series, I dive into two popular substances often used in transformational healing. Ayahuasca is a powerful psychedelic jungle vine found throughout the upper Amazon region of South America that many people are seeking out for relief from depression, addiction, anxiety and more. Ketamine is not a sacred plant medicine, but it is also sought after by those who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, pain, and anxiety. Both substances have the potential to heal but they can also be misused or overused. While I have not used either substance, I have spent the last thirteen months interviewing dozens of people from all walks of life who have used either Ayahuasca or Ketamine or both and provided a balanced point of view on their effects, their downsides and whether either one provided a lasting healing for them. 

DISCLAIMER: The information on today’s show is for informational purposes only. I don’t endorse either of these substances 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. The use of any sacred plant medicine is for those of you who are purposely engaged in transformative inner work and personal healing that is fueled with reverent intention as to the purpose of using these powerful medicines.  Ayahuasca is not available in its true form except in locations out of this country where it naturally grows and regenerates. Ketamine requires a prescription from a qualified physician or therapist where the dosage can be monitored and safely administered via an IV infusion. This show is not about the abuse of Ketamine for ANY purposes whatsoever and I strongly advise you do your due diligence before using Ketamine. The same goes for Ayahuasca. If you choose to use either substance, you do so at your own risk and the outcome and experience with the substance is solely YOUR responsibility. The use of these substances is not guaranteed to provide you with a useful spiritual experience nor will either cure any disease you seek to heal. If you choose to use Ayahuasca or Ketamine, I advise you to do so in a safe, monitored environment and with a qualified medical professi

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Transcript

            Welcome to Episode 29. Today’s topic is the third installment of my four-part series on Sacred Plant Medicine. This episode features the sacred plant medicine Ayahuasca and Ketamine which is not a sacred plant medicine, but I’ve included it because it’s gotten so much publicity lately and I get a lot of emails asking me about it. 

            First off, today’s show disclaimer. The information I’m discussing 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 Ayahuasca or Ketamine. And I understand that nobody in their right mind would opt for Ayahuasca for recreational use nor would they choose Ketamine to party, but I need to put that in my disclaimer. 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.  Ayahuasca is not available in its true form except in locations out of this country where it naturally grows and regenerates. Ketamine requires a prescription from a qualified physician or therapist where the dosage can be monitored and safely administered. This show is not about the abuse of Ketamine for any purposes whatsoever and I strongly advise you do your due diligence before using Ketamine. The same applies for Ayahuasca. Do your research and do it thoroughly. 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. When I discuss Ayahuasca and Ketamine on 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 are seeking. If you choose to use Ayahuasca or Ketamine, I strongly advise you to do so in a safe, monitored environment and with a qualified medical professional, therapist, shaman or guide present.  

            Also, if you have not listened to Part 1 of this series which is the overview and introduction, I urge you to listen to it first to get a better understanding of why I’m doing this 4-part series, my own point of view and the essence of what sacred plant medicine has the potential to offer you. 

            Okay, so before I launch into it, I want to say up front that while I certainly considered the use of Ayahuasca and Ketamine for myself at certain times during my healing process, after a lot of research and discussions back and forth with various retreats in the case of Ayahuasca and medical clinics in the case of Ketamine, I chose NOT to pursue either one. Much of that had to do with either the group or clinic as well as what I personally witnessed and observed from those who used either Ayahuasca or Ketamine or both. Neither drug intuitively felt like a good fit for what I needed at that time. I don’t take this subject lightly. If you’ve listened to the last two shows, you know that. And I’m a big believer in not jumping into something just because a couple people tell me I should, without examining the potential risks as well as the potential benefits. 

            Because I have not taken these substances, I spent the last thirteen months interviewing dozens of people from all socio-economic backgrounds, from all walks of life including nurses, doctors, attorneys, mechanics, construction workers, and so many more. Each of them had different intentions as to why they chose either substance or both as well as different levels of spiritual awareness which impacted the way either Ayahuasca or Ketamine affected them. And by that, I mean that some of the people I interviewed had no real understanding of alternate realities or the spiritual implications that occur certainly with Ayahuasca and thus, had to often blindly create another understanding of a reality that they had no reference point to. 

            While everyone had their unique reason for using either substance, there was this theme I continued to hear and that was “I was at a breaking point and I had to do something out of the box” in order to heal. And I understand that frame of reference. But that desperation energy often led to them making what they referred to as “bad decisions” and that mainly had to do with not being fully prepared for what the experience would deliver. A lot of them also went into it with the belief that one or both of these substances was going to “fix them.” But as I’ve mentioned before, nothing outside yourself is going to fix you unless you consciously engage with it and allow it to teach you something and then have the ability to know when it’s time to stop depending on the substance and take up the mantle of your own resurrection. 

Another theme that kept coming up and not just with the people I interviewed but also with people I’ve observed over the last ten to fourteen years who use sacred plant medicine, is what I would describe as a frantic need for enlightenment at all costs. That gets into the desperation energy I mentioned, where people believe that they can only achieve enlightenment through the use of sacred plant substances. But I see enlightenment as being infinite as well as needing long periods of sober reflection in order to understand what is often the onslaught of information or experiences that are given to you when you use sacred plant medicine. And so since enlightenment is an infinite concept, the need to keep going back to the well to get your next bite of a multi-dimensional cake, often turns into spiritual gluttony where you believe the need to take more and more in overrides your ability to digest, using the gluttony metaphor, whatever you have been presented with. And this is not just with Ayahuasca or Ketamine, the same follows for psilocybin, MDMA, high doses of cannabis, therapeutic LSD and others. 

The belief of enlightenment at all costs, often ends up costing you your most valued relationships. And that can’t be said enough when it comes to seeking enlightenment through the overuse or the misuse of any sacred plant medicine. Sometimes that cost is one’s marriage, job and interpersonal relationships. Now, I understand from personal experience that doing alchemically driven transformational healing alone without the use of sacred plant medicine can create the same outcome. I’ve ended or lost multiple friendships over the last eight or so years. But those were lost or I chose to end them simply because the shared past I had with many of them was not enough to maintain the friendship because the person they knew and had befriended was not the same person anymore. And in many cases, that disparity was a big factor for them. But in reference to today’s episode on Ayahuaska and Ketamine, I will tell you that the theme of enlightenment at all costs was a familiar thread that was woven through a lot of the interviews I did with various people. And that myopic thirst, hunger and craving for ‘enlightenment’ that translated into an obsession, especially for Ayahuasca, is what created a lot of relationship problems for many of the people I talked to. Not everyone! I don’t want to give that impression. But for some of them, they did not realize how narrowly focused they were. For a substance that was hopefully going to give them self-awareness, they did not possess it, in my opinion. And on the few occasions when I was able to speak to their partner or their sibling, I heard a lot from those people who went from once feeling cherished or seen by their loved one, to suddenly being rejected or ignored by the one who had become obsessed with the use of the sacred plant medicine. So that made me ponder as to how much true self-awareness was being generated and embodied by going back to the Ayahuasca ceremonies or continuing with the Ketamine drips. I kept waiting and truly hoping to hear anything that resembled enlightenment from those who fell into the group that I would call ‘obsessed,’ and I never did. And I realize we all speak in different languages when it comes to being able to interpret the messages we hear or receive from a sacred plant medicine experience and I realize it’s not easy to put words to one’s experiences that are very difficult at times to put words to. And when you are using Ayahuasca or Ketamine or any substance that takes you out of yourself temporarily and provides the potential for greater awareness and spiritual evolution, and it’s only a potential, no guarantees, the messages or visuals that you bring back with you are often shrouded in mystery or metaphor and need to be discussed with a qualified therapist who understands this type of really out of the box therapy. And that’s called ‘integration of the experience.” To not do that creates a high potential for a lot of confusion, mischaracterization of what you experienced, often generating a God Complex where someone believes they have been told vital information that needs to be shared with everyone and that’s something I do not suggest you do. 

Okay. So let’s start with Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is actually two different plants that are combinedwith the hallucinogenic leaves of one combined with the stems of another plant that doesn’t have any hallucinogenic properties of its own. Different shamans from different areas will often switch out the non-hallucinogenic plant addition with a different plant that when combined with the hallucinogenic leaves, offers a specific energy that the shaman feels you need. It could be targeted to create more of a heart opening aspect or lean toward encouraging more of an intense visionary experience. It just depends on who you’re working with. I’m not going to get into the botany of that aspect but I wanted you to know that.  

Now all plants carry an energy imprint, including mint. Sacred plant medicine plants carry a spirit energy. It is believed that it is this spirit energy within the plant that works within you to essentially be your guide and give you whatever it is you need at that time. May not be what you want, but you’ll get what you need. In the case of Ayahuasca, the plant spirit is a female energy and she is known a “Mother Ayahuasca.” She was described to me by one individual I talked to at length, as a “very powerful, very demanding and somewhat jealous” spirit energy. When I asked what he meant by ‘jealous,’ he said well, “they don’t suggest you have sexual relations for four to six weeks prior to the ceremony and four weeks after you return because Mother Ayahuasca wants your full attention”. Those were his words, not mine. Now for some people, that’s not problem at all. But for others, who enjoy and need a close intimate bond with their partner, it can be a problem. It’s a problem in two ways. If you refuse to follow that advice, apparently your experience with Mother Ayahuasca can reflect that through meeting a jealous energy. I heard this statement more than once. The second way it’s a problem is when your partner who enjoys being intimate with you is essentially iced out of intimacy for two to three straight months. That does not always end up creating a happy relationship from the individuals I spoke to. 

Now that’s not the only requirement that is necessary prior to doing an Ayahuasca ceremony. What I just talked about is part of the lengthy list of “dietas” (DIE-UH-TOZ) that one is strongly encouraged to follow. A dietas is, and I quote, “a strict agreement to prepare and cleanse the mind, body, and spirit for the ceremony through behavior changes and lifestyle modifications.” Making this agreement which can be extremely limiting, in essence, shows respect for what you are about to enter into and demonstrates what is considered a sacred commitment to the process of your spiritual growth. You will have a trained facilitator at the retreat that you will communicate with many weeks prior to attending and who will determine whether you are a good candidate for the experience. 

There are many reasons for the list of what you can and can’t eat and what you must give up and it’s not all about insulting Mother Ayahusaca. A lot of the dietary requirements are necessary to prepare your body, your stomach and digestive tract to handle the often purging quality that Ayahuasca creates. It’s well known that even with the best preparation, you will still vomit or have often severe gastrointestinal issues during the ceremony. This just comes with the territory. But if you follow the strict guidelines, there’s more of a likelihood that you will not have such a strong reaction, but it’s not guaranteed. The point of the “dietas” is to consciously and spiritually prepare your body and your consciousness for what you are about to embark on. And certain foods and medications and some herbs do NOT combine well at all with Ayahuasca. One of the biggest dietary restrictions are foods that are moderate to high in the amino acid Tyrosine. The reason being is that Ayahuasca is naturally high in MAOIs which stands for Monoamine oxidase inhibitors and these are found in drugs that are used for treatment resistant major depression as well as other psychiatric disorders. The warning for Ayahausca is identical to the same warning you would get if you are taking any MAOI depressant drug as well as some SSRIs. You'll need to avoid foods containing high levels of tyramine — which is an amino acid derived from Tyrosine that regulates blood pressure. So you can’t eat aged cheeses, sauerkraut, cured or processed meats, draft beer, fermented soy products (soy sauce, miso and tofu) and pickled and fermented foods. The reason for this is the interaction of tyramine with MAOIs can cause dangerously high blood pressure. If you are currently taking any prescribed MAOI drugs or SSRIs, you will be asked by your retreat facilitator to work with your prescribing physician to ween off the drug at least two to four weeks before your Ayahuasca ceremony. Herbs to avoid would include but are limited to turmeric, passionflower, Kava, nutmeg. Cough medications are also a no-go prior to using Ayahuasca. 

Each retreat will have its own dietas guidelines and your facilitator is there to go over it all with you long before you show up at the retreat. But it’s very common to also ask participants four to six weeks prior to their ceremony to cut out all spicy foods, fried foods, dairy products, refined or synthetic sugars, energy drinks, excessively sugary fruits and onions and garlic. You will also be asked to cease the use of all drugs including alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, LSD, MDMA, DMT, Ketamine, and GHB.

         The diet you are asked to follow is a vegetarian diet which prepares your body for the experience and also allows for whatever type of detox you can do prior to your Ayahuasca ceremony. Anything you can do to prepare yourself for the experience in regard to taking the load off your digestion and elimination is a very good idea. The way it was explained to me was that by doing this, Ayahuasca didn’t have to work as hard with the purging element and was able to penetrate the spirit easier by essentially bypassing a massive purge. Those who I talked to who disregarded this dietary advice told me they regretted it a lot because they spent the first two ceremonies of their trip with severe vomiting and nausea. So if you are inclined to take Ayahuasca and do it right, my advice is to follow the dietary guidelines. 

         You will also be asked to stop using all topical chemicals, including those found in non-organic soaps/shampoos, sunscreen, bug sprays, deodorants, non-organic lotions, and more. 

         But wait, there’s more. The lifestyle changes include no sexual activity for four to six weeks prior to your ceremony (and these timeframes vary depending on the retreat’s guidelines), no sexual activity during the two weeks you are doing the ceremonies, and often two to four weeks after you return home. You are also asked to reduce or eliminate completely all media consumption especially the consumption of dark subject matter and doom and gloom articles. I asked a facilitator about answering emails or texts and that was fine as long as you limited the time. Of course, you are advised against any type of partying which obviously would involve the no-no’s of booze and recreational drugs as well as, as one facilitator put it, energy vampires in your life who basically steal your energy which doesn’t allow you to fully hold and contain your power. And you’re going to need that ability when you are under the influence of Mother Ayahuasca. 

         The retreats are not cheap. They range anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 depending on what you are requesting. The minimum stay is usually one week. But most people do a two week stay and during that time, you can do as many as nightly six ceremonies with each subsequent night getting a little different blend of the Ayahuasca brew that is meant to take you deeper with each ceremony. You are doing the ceremony with anywhere from fifty to seventy-five people in a large outdoor area. There are retreats that offer smaller groups but you really have to do your research and ask a lot of questions no matter where you choose to go. Some retreat centers are more equipped than others and offer more one-on-one attention. 

My personal take and observation with the many people I personally know who have done at least one Ayahuasca ceremony, is that they either return from the trip with this clarity in their eyes that is truly something to behold or they return pretty shattered energetically. It depends a lot on their nature and how well they were able to integrate whatever they experienced. And then there are those who become so obsessed with drinking the brew, that it becomes their entire existence. Before they get back home, they are already planning their next trip to the retreat. If you’re doing these ceremonies regularly, and you are doing them reverently and with the dietas, you are blocking off ten to twelve weeks each time, between pre-preparation, the two-week retreat and the post-ceremony requirements that are strongly suggested. So if you are doing it twice a year, you are following the very strict guidelines for three months each time. So six months of each year is dedicated to what I would call an extreme diet and very and isolating lifestyle. I know people who do three ceremonies a year. So that means nine months of the year is consumed with either preparing for the ceremony, doing it and then the post-ceremony lifestyle. That leaves three months of the year in one-month intervals that are not consumed or focused on Ayahuasca. I know some people who have done this and all I will say is that from what I observed, a hedonistic energy began to take over. I personally found that hedonism at odds with what they claimed was their intentions of breaking through their psyche to learn where the root of the root of their lifelong problems began and then learn how to begin to make peace with whatever that was. That intention for these people seemed to take a backseat to what I call “The Infatuation Factor.” And The Infatuation Factor can be attached to any substance that takes you out of yourself. Certainly this is a reality for heavy cannabis users, psilocybin lovers, MDMA, Ketamine, which I’ll get to in a second. I’ve never witnessed anyone who is neck deep in The Infatuation Factor have a true transformational experience that is lasting and anchors into their psyche. They are always chasing the next ceremony or trip. The risk of becoming deluded by this way of life is so high that it’s very hard for them to see what they have become. Even when their life is falling apart and their marriages break up or they can’t hold down a job because “everything is an illusion,” you can’t get through to them. That is the dark side to not just Ayahuasca but any mind-altering sacred plant medicine or lab creation such as LSD, DMT or MDMA. When it becomes too much of an infatuation, there is no critical thinking or perspective and, as I said earlier in the show, ironically no self-awareness that one is falling into the void between the worlds. The biggest lie that these types of people who fall into this pit tell themselves is that they are enlightened beings. But from my point of view observing them and attempting to have a cogent conversation with them, many of them confuse enlightenment with infatuation of The Divine. This happens a lot with those who are strongly connected to Mother Ayahuasca. She becomes their everything and it seems that they never rise above the acolyte stage of their journey. They are the perpetual student. And those who choose to stay there are not vibrating enlightenment. They hover on the seams of enlightenment. But it’s more like puppy love with the Divine or with Mother Ayahuasca and it’s frighteningly ungrounded at times. There’s a lot of chaos energy around these types of people and chaos energy doesn’t live in the same zip code as enlightenment. TRUE enlightenment and awareness, from what I have personally experienced on a temporary level and from what I’ve witnessed in others, carries a calmness and grounded energy that is not robotic or devoid of true emotion. 

So let’s switch horses and trot over to Ketamine. This is not specifically used for enlightenment although many people can experience incredible trips where they return completely blown away by what they saw. If it is prescribed for you in a state that allows it to be administered in a clinical setting via an IV infusion, which is the best way to administer it as it’s not orally absorbable, Ketamine is targeted for treatment resistant depression, pain treatment and certain forms of anxiety. Understand that Ketamine is a Schedule 3 controlled substance and it’s only legal when prescribed by a physician. In 2019, the FDA approved a Ketamine nasal spray called Spravto which is used for treatment resistant depression. However, most of the people I interviewed who had access to the nasal spray said that they felt the infusions were much better. 

If Ketamine sounds familiar to you, you may have heard about it after actor Matthew Perry died of acute effects of Ketamine in his hot tub.  But understand that Perry was a hardcore addict even when he claimed to be clean and that he was getting black-market Ketamine that he had his assistant inject into him. The day he died, he had been injected three times with a large dose on the third injection. After I read his autopsy report, it’s interesting to note that he spaced out the injections three to four hours which is the half-life of Ketamine. So just like any addict I’ve known, he understood how the drug ebbed and flowed and wanted to ride the Ketamine wave continuously that particular day for twelve straight hours. Because it’s used as an anesthetic, and Perry got into a hot tub with nobody to monitor him, he drowned. Now, I want to be clear that I’m not conflating the abuse of Ketamine in the way Perry used it with the clinical use of it for treatment resistant depression, anxiety and pain relief. No clinic would ever have you riding a Ketamine wave for twelve straight hours. But for long term addicts like Perry, the clear dissociative effects of Ketamine are incredibly seductive to those who have trauma. My personal belief is that addiction and trauma go hand in hand and the visceral need to detach, dissociate and check out runs the programming for any addict. Obviously, alcohol can also create that hovering state of consciousness where hardcore alcoholics will have memory loss and time gaps. 

I first heard about Ketamine in 2010, when I was doing research for my thriller novel, Knowing, and I had sources I always called whenever I was writing a book and some were in medicine, some were attorneys and some were street cops and homicide detectives. So back in 2010, I called my favorite police officer and asked him if he could tell me what drug I could use in the storyline that would keep someone alive and in a suspended state while someone else did horrible things to them. Without hesitating, he said, “Ketamine.” I’d never heard of it. He told me it was used in veterinary medicine as an anesthetic and also was administered as a pre-anesthetic in humans, mainly as a relaxant. But from what he’d been told by various victims who were given it, it acted as a strong dissociative agent which allowed the victim to have an out of body experience and essentially witness their own abuse and not be able to react or act so they could escape. That image always hung with me and I found it deeply disturbing to say the least. And nobody denies to this day that Ketamine is a dissociative drug and cannot just take you out of this realm, but also sail you into some very intense waters where you can feel like you are having a near death experience. That is often referreed to as the “K-Hole.” That effect doesn’t happen to everyone but it happens to enough people that it’s well researched and is brought up as a possible effect you will experience before you do an infusion. I did find an interesting article on the study of Ketamine in the early 1960’s as a way to induce an out of body sensation and even induce near death experiences. So it’s dissociative abilities have long been known and even exploited in various human studies. 

When it’s being used today for depression, anxiety and pain management, a much lower dose is used and that is monitored during your session. It kicks in within three to four minutes and a treatment lasts around forty to forty-five minutes. As I mentioned, the half-life of Ketamine when it’s given in this way, is around three to four hours. You need someone to drive you home after your session and the sessions, while each clinic is different, can be a specific number of infusions over the course of a certain amount of days. The effects from everyone I spoke to, lasted anywhere from three weeks to one month. One individual I interviewed who did the treatment in Oregon, was very upbeat about her experience. She’s a retired RN and has used psilocybin for treatment of depression and found it useful. She told me she used Ketamine for pain management but that blissful after effects were a boon to her depression as well. She only had two infusions, spaced three days apart and felt the benefits for one month. She said she stopped doing it mainly because the cost wasn’t covered by Medicare and it was around $275.00 per infusion at that time. Now, in Colorado it can run as much as $500.00 per infusion. 

Of the people I interviewed, I would say one third had what they considered a positive experience. The other two-thirds varied between not liking the effects to not feeling as if it was the game changer they hoped it would be. And most of the people I talked to were using it for treatment resistant depression. And a few of them were really at the end of their rope and needed intervention immediately. I did contact a couple clinics to ask how they worked and my takeaway from these conversations was that a patient was encouraged to get a doctor’s script and have a few sessions to see what they thought. I asked one clinic if they checked to see if a potential patient had any type of known dissociative disorders due to trauma and I got a kind of non-answer. I can only speak to the vibe I got from the clinics I spoke to. And these were all in Denver, by the way. And the vibe I got reminded me of the early days in Colorado when cannabis was medically legal. Dispensaries back then had no problem charging insane amounts of money for an ounce of cannabis. It was not uncommon to have dispensaries charge $400 to $600 per ounce of cannabis. Today the average cost of medical cannabis is around $150 to $170 an ounce. So the saying, “profits over patients” certainly held true for early medical cannabis sales and I sense the same profit-driven vibe from Ketamine clinics, at least the ones I talked to.

I really am concerned about the dissociative effects of Ketamine and I can understand that if you are in a deep depressive hole and you want to check out, that Ketamine infusion therapy could lift you out of your suicidal hole and metaphorically help you get your head above water so you can get some perspective.  But I’ve seen firsthand how people who have clear dissociative behaviors due to trauma and often severe trauma, don’t seem to experience the same positive results nor does anything shift for them in a positive direction. In fact, one naturally dissociative individual I talked to who was given ketamine had a hard time negotiating their reality for several days afterwards because they questioned whether they were in a dream or wide awake. And by the third day, this person was really starting to freak out. It did finally go away but this individual never touched it after that. 

There’s a trauma disorder as DPDR which stands for Depersonalization and Derealization Disorder and I had a family member that most likely had this disorder, even though it wasn’t called that back then. The symptoms of extreme detachment to the point where this individual would often drift off during a conversation if something was said that triggered their trauma.  And when I say they would disappear, I mean it. You’d have to coax them back and maybe touch their shoulder to essentially bring them back into reality. Since I’ve learned about DPDR, I realize that I have known others who respond and react in this way. To be fair, I have experienced the same sensations when I was going through a lot of stress throughout my life. I know on one show, I can’t remember which one, I talked about zoning out in my office in L.A., staring out the window at my desk, and coming back from that dissociating state two hours later and being shocked how much time had passed. Because to me, it felt like a minute or so. So I really get the sensation of dissociation and I understand what that hovering place feels like. And I know that the few times I propelled myself because of unrelenting stress into that hovering space without the use of any drugs, just naturally went there, I know how comfortable and comforting it can feel. But you can’t heal in a state of detachment. You may certainly detach from this reality with any psychedelic plant medicine that is used for therapeutic benefit, but the healing takes place when the substance is out of your system and you are consciously working with a trained therapist who understands how to integrate your trip into a grounded, focused session that provides you with the tools you need to overcome whatever it is you are dealing with. The trip may give you insight or it may not. But if it does provide you with insight, the trip acts like a meal you take in and the integration therapy that follows is the way you digest that meal of experience. Without the ability to digest it, you are risking a circular thinking pattern that often draws you back to the substance in hopes that it will help you gain more insight, when in fact, you haven’t digested the first meal and so you’re essentially bloating up on supposed insight but, using the metaphor, you’re constipated because you haven’t digested the experience. 

One of the individuals I spoke to made a comment that Ketamine had helped him “reduce emotional attachment” to the stress he was experiencing at his job. I asked him if this was a different way of saying he felt “detached” from the stress. And he thought about it and I could hear he was struggling to discern whether that was true and so I asked, “How does that reduction in emotional attachment to whatever is going on at work affect your interpersonal relationships with others who you work with?” And he admitted that he hadn’t really thought about that and it seemed that he really didn’t have a clear perspective of how the other people around him were perceiving his reduction in emotional attachment toward work stress. 

A reduction in emotional non-attachment to stress is often seen by the person experiencing it as a positive thing and in some cases with certain relationships, it’s a self-preservation technique to manage how that relationship affects you. But I’ve seen far too many people incorporate what they call emotional non-attachment across the board in all parts of their life. Not just in connection to dealing with stress but it seeps into the rest of their life and informs how they interact or don’t interact on any deep level with those who they claim to love. And how that presents itself, as I’ve experienced it, is often a callousness that is hurtful without meaning to be hurtful. But the difference, at least for how I’ve personally experienced those who claim to be non-attached emotionally, is that they come across as very cold hearted and not easy to engage with. They quickly detach from the conversation and sometimes wander away in mid-sentence and I don’t find that healthy or mindful one bit. And it’s certainly not self-aware as to how that is being projected onto others who will often regard that behavior as smug or rude and, frankly, have every reason to believe that!

A few of the people I interviewed fit this identical profile. And it became tedious to continue the conversation with them. I wanted to ask, “What is the ultimate objective you have by continuing Ketamine infusions?” What was their end game? To just maintain the infusions as long as their physician would allow it and keep paying out of pocket until what? Where was it all leading? That’s what I wanted to know. Because it seemed that for those who admitted to being emotionally detached, while they were stepping outside themselves, they might have wanted to take a moment in that hovering space and contemplate whether they may need to stop the infusions. There was this singular note tenor in their voice that wasn’t exceptionally low, wasn’t overly high. It just was. Not much energy or inflection in their manner of speaking. And I found it difficult to draw out information from them. The ones I talked to who used it for treatment resistant depression where there was a clear suicidal ideation were able to emerge from that darkness and not return to the pit but every single one I talked to who used Ketamine for this exact purpose, said that they still were on anti-depressants to maintain an equilibrium and that the Ketamine only got them out of the pit but didn’t sustain any lasting anti-depressant effects. And many of them had stopped the infusions either because of the cost or they felt it wasn’t providing them with what they wanted by that point. 

And that is the ultimate question that anyone who is contemplating using Ketamine or any of the sacred plant medicines I’ve discussed during this series. When the plant medicine has done its job, at what point do you stop whatever it is and take a long break or a break forever from that substance? I’m not against psychedelics as a potential out-of-the-box treatment for depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, end-of-life sessions and more. I know that for many of the people I’ve talked to, psychedelics were noted as the reason for their ability to overcome or understand their trauma that was holding them back. And as I said before, when it works, you see it in the eyes. There’s this penetrating peacefulness and calm that shines through the eyes and is really felt, especially when you’ve spent your life or time with that person and only seen their eyes appearing sad, or lonely or shattered. 

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. You can lead a person to Ayahuasca, Psilocybin, Ketamine, Cannabis, MDMA, Peyote, DMT and more, but you can’t make them wise because of it. They can believe they are wise because they want it so badly. And everyone told them they would benefit so they are programmed almost in a placebo effect to have an experience and believe that they are a changed individual. Or better than before. Or more enlightened. But that wears off. I know too many people who go psychedelic shopping because they are at the end of their rope and they want to find anything that will stop their pain. But even with the use of sacred plant medicine, they can and still bypass that pain. Yes, it’s possible to do that. I know someone who took 10.29 grams of psilocybin to treat her severe depression and could not get past what she described as a “blank screen” for eight long hours. And 10.29 grams is more than double what is considered an heroic dose of psilocybin. So that told me a lot. The medicine is only as strong as you allow it to show you what you need to see. But if you’re resistant to it, you will never be able to cross the threshold that you must cross that will allow you to get to where this wisdom is that you are searching for. And then you must figure out whether what you experienced was a projection of your conscious desire or a genuine out-of-this-world experience. 

Not everyone is going to have access to sacred plant medicine, nor are they necessarily going to be drawn toward it. And that is fine and as I said in the first part of this series, using sacred plant medicine is not required to do alchemical healing. Some people would be better off opting for plant medicines that are non-psychoactive but still carry a potential for deep and meaningful healing. And that’s a teaser for next week’s show, which I’m calling “Legal Bliss,” which will wrap up this sacred plant medicine series. I’ll cover a long list of herbs, medicinal non-psychoactive mushrooms and unique substances that offer subtle but often profound spiritual awareness and healing. My best advice if you have strong dissociative traits, get some solid trauma therapy and potentially incorporate a non-psychoactive, legal plant or supplement that provides good stabilization of your nervous system and neurotransmitters so that you can successfully face the trauma head on and eventually heal it so you can finally feel safe in being present and have no desire consciously or unconsciously to detach or disappear. I also strongly advocate for Somatic Release therapy. You can buy books on this subject and there are a network of therapists who practice Somatic Release and what’s cool is that this therapy is specifically used for healing trauma, depression and dissociative behavior.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for choosing to listen to this show. 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 the show notes, I’ve included the companies I support and have helped me in my healing process, so check that out and look for the coupon codes. Looking forward to you joining me next week for the final part of this series, “Legal Bliss.” 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.”