Psychedelic Healing

The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development

Neal M. Goldsmith

• Publisher: Healing Arts Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781594778551
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Psychedelics as therapeutic catalysts for emotional and spiritual transformation • Explores the latest medical research on the healing powers of entheogens • Reveals the crucial role of tribal and shamanic wisdom in psychedelic medicine • Provides guidelines for working with psychedelics, including the author's personal healing and recommendations for creating change on the spiritual and societal levels Banned after promising research in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the use of psychedelics as therapeutic catalysts is now being rediscovered at prestigious medical schools, such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and UCLA. Through clinical trials to assess their use, entheogens have been found to ease anxiety in the dying, interrupt the hold of addictive drugs, cure post-traumatic stress disorder, and treat other deep-seated emotional disturbances. To date, results have been positive, and the idea of psychedelics as powerful psychiatric--and spiritual--medicines is now beginning to be accepted by the medical community. Exploring the latest cutting-edge research on psychedelics, along with their use in indigenous cultures throughout history for rites of passage and shamanic rituals, Neal Goldsmith reveals that the curative effect of entheogens comes not from a chemical effect on the body but rather by triggering a peak or spiritual experience. He provides guidelines for working with entheogens, groundbreaking analyses of the concept--and the process--of change in psychotherapy, and, ultimately, his own story of psychedelic healing. Examining the tribal roots of this knowledge, Goldsmith shows that by combining ancient wisdom and modern research, we can unlock the emotional, mental, and spiritual healing powers of these unique and powerful tools, providing an integral medicine for postmodern society.

1

SET AND SETTING

THE MOTHER OF ALL TRIPS

My purpose in taking “acid”—in 1991, eighteen years after my use of psychedelics in college—was to see if, after all those years, I had sold out my youthful ideals, if I had slowly, imperceptibly, become a person I could no longer respect. My goal was to lift up and look at the root ball of my life’s plant, but not to undertake a complete transplant—and I was terrified of what I might find.

I chose a day when I could be alone in my apartment. Although I did have friends on call, I wanted to have this experience on my own. Anticipating something similar to what I had experienced in my college days in the 1960s, I pulled out my old psychedelic music albums—The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the like. Since I was so scared of the experience—might I go screaming down the street, pulling my hair out, and end up in a mental hospital?—I decided to place Post-it Notes around the apartment with reassuring phrases such as “Don’t worry; it’s only a drug” and “You’ll be down soon.” I then swallowed half a square blotter paper dose and waited.

I knew from my research that contemporary doses of LSD were nowhere near the strength of what I’d experienced in the ’60s—the average dose was a modest 80 micrograms or so, compared with the clinical dose of 150 micrograms, the purported dose of 250 micrograms in the famed “orange sunshine” tabs, and the whopping 450 micrograms sometimes necessary in psychedelic therapy with alcoholics. When the acid began to come on, I felt a very minor fluttering in my belly, some slight increase in color, and some waviness in the lights and then… nothing. It all faded away. I thought, “After all this preparation, I got a weak disco dose,” and I took the other half of the blotter. A few minutes later, the first half started to come on in full force.

Of course, I’d forgotten one of the first rules of tripping that I’d learned in the ’60s: psychedelics come on in waves. The first wave tends to be just noticeable, often in a slight feeling in the belly. This first wave frequently subsides below the noticeable level, but is soon followed by subsequent waves that get stronger. I immediately remembered why I had taken these substances so seriously in my youth and realized I was in for a stronger ride than I’d planned.

Traveler’s Guide

Here are some other rules I wrote down around that time.

Things to bring along when traveling:

music (happy, positive, serene)

fresh flowers and fruit

art books

yoga music

Things to remember when traveling:

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream; it is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void; it is shining, it is shining. That you may know the meaning of within; it is being, it is being.” —John Lennon, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver, January 1966, closely adapted from The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, which in turn was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

“Sit down, shut up, and pay attention.” —Terence McKenna

Surrender.

Ask “What am I feeling?”

Broadly speaking, there are four stages to the psychedelic experience:

Sensory/visual—including generally pleasant visual distortions and amplification, appreciation for sounds and music, enhanced pleasure in physical touch, and so forth.

Psychological/recollecto/analytical—subconscious work on childhood issues, emotions, and the like.

Holistic/ecological/mythic—history of the species and of the planet, the march of evolution, sense of the global whole.

Integral/white light/ego death—dissociation from personal, individual identity and physical existence, replaced by identity with universal energy.

—Adapted from R. E. L. Masters, Ph.D., and Jean Houston, Ph.D., The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, 1966

More things to remember when traveling:

Don’t forget the fruit and the water.

Caffeine is a two-edged sword. It increases attention, but cushions against emotions. Best to avoid except perhaps toward the end as a refresher.

Marijuana can enhance, sustain, and rejuvenate the experience but not really increase the effect.

Writing is a two-edged sword. It captures the experience, but focuses attention through one medium. Best to avoid using a computer throughout; maybe keep a pad and pen around to capture important epiphanies. That being said, the truly important insights are memorable.

After an often uncertain first hour or two, the longer, remaining part of the trip can be a beautiful, benevolent, natural, wondrous experience.

Don’t be macho’d into taking megadoses. More may be appropriate for certain fields of study, but for psychological purposes, just significantly noticeable can be very effective. At lower levels, sensory experiences can be ignored and yet significant benefits can result.

Don’t think you are down enough to answer the phone. It will be your mother-in-law. There is a law of the universe that states that specifically. Even if it’s not, the conversation will more often than not be stressful for one or both of you.

To maximize psychological growth, don’t get distracted by the pretty, dancing visuals. Breathe and go deeper.

Tripping has sometimes been compared to a roller-coaster ride: at first, the car goes up and up and up, with the feeling that the climbing will never end and we will go up forever, never to come down. Like a roller coaster, however, once the trip reaches its peak, despite many dramatic ups and downs, the ascent is over. On my “mother of all trips,” once I felt the upward trajectory ease, I knew I would not “go through the roof” and began to feel safe and relaxed.

It was at this point that I had a profound internal experience, what I think of as a waking dream or eyes-closed vision: I was in a beautiful valley field of purple flowers with surrounding mountains in the background. As I continued to come on to the experience, I found myself descending deeper and deeper, eventually going below the surface of the ground (I generally don’t think of such experiences as going “higher”; rather, I feel that I am going down, into my deeper self). At that point, I saw the roots of the flowers—they looked animal-like, not like plant roots, but more like the thick tails of hairless moles—and in this dreamlike vision, I knew that they were my (psychological) roots. As I had just begun my trip and so still retained much of my “straight”-mind, operant perspective, I decided to examine them and fix any problems, so I visually zoomed in for a better look. As soon as I approached with this proactive, problem-solving attitude, my roots recoiled from my scrutiny, curling back and emitting a high-pitched, scared squeal. This response made me feel uneasy, and to avoid a vicious cycle of negativity, I mentally and visually turned the other direction and continued my descent. As I did and moved deeper, I saw at the bottom of me, a glowing, throbbing orb, that I knew was “the ground of my being.” As I descended and reached the orb, I touched it and immediately felt at peace. I finally remembered the important truths—that I was essentially OK, that love and acceptance were the fundamental solutions to my problems, in fact, that the “problems” I was grappling with were really just poignant developmental challenges, that I had not “sold out my youthful ideals” or become someone I couldn’t respect, and that my only problem was my sense that I had problems.

At that point, I began to ascend, back up from my depths toward the surface, where I saw my roots again. This time, however, instead of wanting to fix my roots, I felt enormous compassion and total acceptance. This time, I reached out to caress my roots with the attitude, “Of course. I understand. It’s OK.” In response, my roots unfurled, opening to my touch, and emitted a low-pitched sigh of safety, peace, and relaxation.

The experience was transformative in many ways—providing me with a clear understanding of our essential OK-ness as well as inspiring the personality theory underlying my soon-to-be-reestablished clinical practice.

Here is a poem I wrote about that experience:

Missed, Mist

I feel in a mist

Sleepwalking through life

Sleeptalking with other sleepwalkers

Triggering out my insides

On the other hand…

I float down to my ground

And on the way down

I cry my childhood into completion

On the ground

A glowing mound throbs,

Emanating peace

I touch the glowing orb

And my sleeping seed awakens

Reigniting the unfolding frozen so long ago

Unfolding unto the sun

Upward to the warmth of love

From the glow to the warmth

My worldview changed from an evaluation-analysis-repair-of-pathology model to one of essential all-rightness and acceptance, of maturation and spiritual development. Through that one experience, I came to see that we are, in essence, perfect at our core—and that insight informed my sense of myself and my approach to my clinical practice:

Psychology is the study of the psyche, the soul—the ground of our being;

Personality is acquired, secondary, external, defensive, strategic—a shell above our core of fundamental perfection; and

Love, empathy, and compassion form a more effective perspective for healthy, satisfying personal development than does the medical “fix-it” approach focused on pathology.

WHO I AM

Since this is such a personal book and one with a unique premise, it’s important for you, the reader, to know who I am, where I’ve come from, and what my credentials are to make such demands on your worldview.

My background includes both psychotherapy and policy research, and today I am both a psychotherapist in private practice and a drug policy analyst and writer. I am an expert in the clinical use of psychedelics, yet I don’t use them in my practice. Why not? Two reasons. First, they are illegal, and I would be putting much of my life at risk if I were to use them with clients. (Not patients. Remember, I take a developmental, not a pathology, approach to my clinical practice.) Second, I am not qualified to do psychedelic therapy—and almost no one is, simply because there is still no legal way to conduct psychedelic therapy outside the auspices of an approved research project, so the career path for a psychedelic psychotherapist is at the moment quite limited. And there are no clinical training programs in psychedelic therapy. That may change over the next five years or so, but for now a psychotherapist with a private practice in psychedelic psychotherapy does so illegally and almost certainly without clinical training.^a Even those therapists who do have training and experience with psychedelics gained when they were legal have no legal way to practice in this area.

So I remain a scholar of psychedelic therapy, but not a psychedelic therapist, except in very important sense that my experiences with psychedelics have fundamentally shaped my clinical practice.

One way to describe my background is to tell you about my experience at the local middle school’s Career Day. Yes, despite my specialty in psychedelics (they probably didn’t Google me), I have three times been invited to speak to local middle-school kids on what it’s like to be a psychologist. In preparing for such a lovely and important responsibility, I reviewed my background and can confidently say that I am a poster child for the range and diversity...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Foreword: Why This Book Matters
• Preface
• Introduction: The Questions That Led to This Book
• 1. Set and Setting
• 2. Is Fundamental Personality Change Possible?
• 3. The History of Psychedelic Research
• 4. The Ten Lessons of Psychedelic Therapy, Rediscovered
• 5. Many Thorny Theoretical and Methodological Questions Remain
• 6. The Development of an Integral Clinical Approach
• 7. Implications for the Future
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1. How to Put Science into Action to Change the World
• Appendix 2. Standards for Safe and Effective Psychedelic Journeys and Procedures for Handling Psychedelic Emergencies
• Footnotes
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Recommended Reading
• About the Author
• About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
• Copyright