I promise, I wasn't tripping!

Welcome Back to Self-Care Through Psychedelics!

Hi everyone! Well, this is truly embarrassing! 🤦

I actually sent out the last newsletter before I was even finished writing it!

As it happens, I was so caught up in capturing all of the details of the trip for you that I never even put it in the newsletter!

Good grief! How on earth did that happen? You probably thought I was tripping! 🍄

Mea culpa!

So today, I’m going to share with you what I had intended to write! :)

So, Let’s Talk about My First Psychedelic Experience! 🍄🍄🍄

I want to share this experience with you so you have a sense of what the first time might be like. As always, it’s different for everyone so I just want you to know what I experienced and how it felt.

When I embarked on my first psychedelic journey, I was scared sh*tless! I only knew of one person who had taken magic mushrooms. Fortunately, we were very close so I felt comfortable asking her about her experience.

She was a recreational user and mostly described experiencing visual distortions of the things she was looking at, like a palm tree that was moving. She described the experience as very “chill”. I didn’t tell her anything about why I was considering psychedelics, only that I wanted to try it. I knew that her use was going to be very different from mine so in reality, I was still on my own.

So, my very first experience was her bringing me a small quantity of magic mushrooms. They came in a small package that had a psychedelic graphic on the outside of the package.

Am I really doing this?!

I had no idea how much to take, nor did she, because we didn’t have a scale to measure them. Truth be told, even if we had a scale, we wouldn’t have known how much to take because everyone reacts differently to mushrooms (and other psychedelics) and each has a different potency.

So, she poured the bag of mushrooms on to the table and began picking her way through them, trying to find an amount she thought I could manage. I was quite surprised at the amount she gave me. It was just some small flakes and a part of a tiny mushroom cap and I thought to myself “how could that little bit do anything?!”

Little did I know! :)

OMG! NO! NO! NO! I’M TOO SCARED!

I spent the next half hour, both excited and filled with terror because I thought something bad was going to happen to me. I wasn’t inclined to want to be out of control but the most I expressed my anxiety, the more she giggled because she knew that she had given me so little that it was entirely possible it wouldn’t do anything!

This was the moment where I was going to have to jump off the metaphorical cliff and into the water and I just couldn’t get myself to do it. I’ve had other moment sin my life where I couldn’t jump off the cliff, literally and figuratively! It felt SO monumental, probably because I was in such emotional distress that I felt like it was a “do or die” moment. It felt like the stakes were SO high and that this was the only chance I had left to heal from my trauma and there I was, face to face with what just might hold the key to getting me out the other side of my trauma. But, I was paralyzed with fear because I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Gulp! Time to Just Jump In!

After continuing to reassure me as I was going back and forth with all of my anxiety, fear and hesitation, she finally said “just take it, already!” And with that, I gingerly put them in my mouth and chewed on them and all I could do was wait!

I immediately started scanning my body to see if there was any effect. Suffice it to say, there was no effect. Then again, it was only three seconds later!

I walked around the house and then outside to the swimming pool. My friend had settled comfortably into her sun chair, put her earbuds in and started chilling to the music. I, meanwhile, sat down on a lounge chart and waited.

After about a half an hour, I glanced up at the sky and saw an airplane overhead. I tilted my head back and forth and thought that the plane was literally a toy and I could just reach up into the sky and pluck it from the sky and bring it down. I didn’t quite know what to make of it and then I realized that yes, in fact, the mushrooms had started working!

As I returned my gaze to the swimming pool, I burst out laughing because of how ridiculous it was that the airplane in the sky was a toy and I could just hold it in my hand.

It was at this point that I finally started to relax. All that worry was for nothing because I had taken so little of the mushrooms that the effects were going to be more akin to smoking pot than anything else. I was buzzed.

At that point, I got into the swimming pool where my friend had now moved and as I paddled around the pool, I started laughing which made my friend laugh and for at least the next hour, I laughed harder than I had laughed in my entire life. I laughed so hard and for so long that I thought I might actually throw up because I was just heaving and heaving with laughter. I couldn’t help but wonder what the neighbors were thinking because “what on earth were these laughing hyenas doing and when were they going to stop laughing?!”

There isn’t a regular experience I can describe that captures what this type of laughter feels like because it was all about my body releasing the energy that had been stored up for a lifetime. My introduction to the mushrooms made it possible for me to expel all of that energy. Using laughter as the vehicle was the perfect antidote to so much suffering.

Within a couple of hours, I started to come down and as I was floating in the pool, I felt this deep and profound calm pass through my body and it was as if all the heaviness of my life was lifting. I laid still in the water and scanned my body and it was the first time I had experienced this feeling, where my body felt completely still inside, the anxiety had lifted, the depression had passed, and everything was quiet.

It was a feeling I’ll never forget because I hadn’t ever imagined I would feel something like that because my insides had been filled with so much turmoil and I had come to expect to feel that way and that it was my normal and here I was, experiencing something that had felt inconceivable and for just that moment in time, I could actually breathe and feel like myself again.

Exhale…

All of the fear and anxiety going into that first “trip” was completely unfounded because the experience was as benign as it could be. I could have just listened to my friend and simply relaxed into the experience.

The problem was that I was in so much extremis I couldn’t trust anyone, not even my friend that I trusted more than anyone in the world. This is why it’s SO important to be prepared before going into a psychedelic trip.

You can bring so much fear and anxiety into it that you defeat the purpose of what you’re there for and why you’re doing it. A psychedelic trip is designed to help you get at the things that are troubling you, the things that you are suffering from and the pain that you are experiencing.

It is kind of like a sauna for your emotions.

Why go into it completely tense and filled with fear and anxiety when the whole point is to allow the experience to give you what you need.

You have to get out of your own way and allow the healing to begin and the first place you start is letting go.

What’s Next?

In the next newsletter, I’m going to tell you about my second psychedelic trip. THIS is where everything came into focus and I began to understood all of what I needed to deal with to come out the other side of my trauma.

In the meantime, LAST CALL! I’m opening up the Facebook group this week where we’ll begin our work together. We’ll explore whether psychedelics are right for you and you’ll be able to ask all of your questions and gain insights into how psychedelics can help you and whether this is a journey you want to embark on. Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/yourpsychedelicjourneywithin

Then, next week, I’m going to hold a workshop with my dear friend, Dan Such, who has been an expert guide, facilitator, and trip sitter for more than a thousand trips and he’ll share his insights into the process you need in place to have an amazing journey.

What would really help is if you could let me know what time of day works best for you. We’ll meet for one hour via zoom.

So, let’s get ready to begin our journey together and see where it takes us! I’ll see you in the Facebook group this week and at the online workshop next week!

Warmly,

Arlene

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