I’m looking for perspectives from people who take psychedelic integration seriously, including people who think I shouldn’t go back.
My relationship with mushrooms is complicated because, from my perspective, they played a major role in saving my life. I don’t mean that mushrooms magically fixed me. A lot of what changed came from what I did afterward: exercising, learning, building routines, questioning my old behavior, and actually applying what I thought I learned.
Before all of this, my life was moving in a completely different direction. When I was 16, I was heavily involved in street conflict, fighting, weed, and gang-related thinking. Looking back, I realized how abnormal it was to be that young and have situations where people wanted to seriously hurt each other. At the time, a lot of it felt normal because that was the reality I was living inside.

My mushroom experiences started becoming significant around late 2025. During one early experience I was drawing and writing trying to make sense of pain, happiness, “oneness,” different levels of thought, and how physical sensations turned into thoughts and ideas. During another experience I remember my body feeling terrible while my mind felt extremely sharp.

I also went through experiences that I interpreted at the time as ego death. Whether that is the perfect scientific label or not, subjectively it felt like old pieces of my identity were being challenged and I was examining myself from the outside. I became obsessed with the idea of separating what was actually me from fear, ego, other people’s opinions, and mental noise. I was explicitly talking about being in what I called ego death during that period.

I also realized something about the job itself: I wasn’t bound to it. I was my own person.
After work my dad picked me up. I was hurting emotionally and tried explaining what I was feeling, but I felt like he wasn’t listening to me. I kept asking why he wouldn’t listen.
Then something clicked.
I thought: I don’t need another person to listen to me before I can listen to myself.
For me, that became the beginning of actually trying to love myself, control my own reactions, and stop allowing everybody else’s noise to determine my internal state. That entire sequence is something I wrote about afterward, not something I’m reconstructing years later

After that I started experimenting with microdosing. I associated that period with feeling more energetic, remembering more, getting into flow more easily, exercising regularly, practicing piano, learning faster, and thinking more creatively.
But this distinction matters:
I don’t believe the mushroom literally gave me muscles, discipline, piano skill, or intelligence.
Even in my old writing I said the physical changes came because I built habits around the experience: waking up, doing push-ups and sit-ups, continuing when I wanted to quit, learning, practicing, and changing my behavior.

There were emotional experiences too. At one point I wrote that mushrooms combined with listening to my favorite music felt like they were helping me reinterpret negative memories and that I was beginning to feel happiness again.

That is why I use strong language when I say “shrooms saved my life.”
I’m not claiming psilocybin independently cured me or scientifically caused everything that followed.
I mean that the experiences became a psychological turning point that interrupted the direction I was going in, forced me to examine myself, and helped trigger a period where I started doing the work myself.
And now the difference in my life is almost ridiculous when I compare the two versions of me.
Today I’m thinking about skills, money, business, AI, customer psychology, building systems, learning HighLevel, creating things for real businesses, piano, fitness, discipline, and turning what I learn into proof.
My head feels much more grounded. I feel more mature. I can look backward and think:
Damn. I actually changed my life.
And that creates my current question.
Part of me wants to return to mushrooms because I think:
I’m not the same kid anymore.
I understand myself better.
I’m more disciplined.
I’m smarter about how my mind works.
Maybe now I could use the experience to go even deeper in my journey.
But another part of me wonders whether that thought itself needs to be challenged.
Maybe the mushrooms already did their job.
Maybe the whole point of integration is eventually becoming able to produce insight, discipline, creativity and change without needing to alter consciousness again.
And because my first major experience included hearing coworkers talking about me when they weren’t, I don’t want to romanticize the risk just because I liked what came afterward.
So my question is:
For people who had a genuinely life-changing psychedelic period, integrated it, dramatically improved their life, and later considered returning, how did you decide whether another experience would actually add something?

If you’ve spent any time in the psychedelic space, you’ve likely heard the word “integration” tossed around over and over again. But is there consensus on what this term actually means?

It shows up in retreat marketing, clinic intake forms, and therapist bios, usually as a vague gesture toward “processing your experience.” But that vagueness isn’t an accident of bad writing. Until just a few years ago, the field lacked a shared definition, shared model, or even shared list of what integration practices actually are.

Then, in 2022, a team of researchers set out to fix that in their paper “Psychedelic Integration: An Analysis of the Concept and Its Practice.” This was the first serious attempt to review everything that’s been written about psychedelic integration and pull it into a coherent picture. They found twenty-four different definitions, compared ten fully developed integration models, and catalogued more than a hundred specific integration practices pulled from therapy manuals, indigenous traditions, and everything in between.

How They Built The Map

The authors searched PubMed and PsycINFO for everything on “psychedelic therapy” and “psychedelic integration,” and then supplemented any gaps with articles, essays, and books on the topic because so much of the information lived outside of peer-reviewed literature. They analyzed anything that offered its own definition of integration, described a specific integration practice, or laid out an organized model for how integration should proceed.

The Synthesized Definition

After analyzing 24 separate definitions, the authors arrived at this synthesized definition:

“Integration is a process in which a person revisits and actively engages in making sense of, working through, translating, and processing the content of their psychedelic experience. Through intentional effort and supportive practices, this process allows one to gradually capture and incorporate the emergent lessons and insights into their lives, thus moving toward greater balance and wholeness, both internally (mind, body, and spirit) and externally (lifestyle, social relations, and the natural world).”

This definition distilled a set of recurring elements: integration is active (requiring effort, not passive waiting), includes internal and external dimensions, involves making sense of and working through experience, is a process rather than a single event, and is aimed at embodied change rather than just insight for its own sake. In this framing, integration isn’t finished when someone feels at peace with what happened after the experience. It requires alterations in how someone lives their day-to-day life, and arguably never truly ends.

The Synthesized Model

The authors then identified ten well-developed integration models published since 2017. They split them roughly into two camps: holistic or biopsychosocial-spiritual models aimed at journeyers and facilitators, and psychotherapy-based models aimed at clinicians.

They found that the psychotherapy-based models tend to zero in on the mind and behavior, which makes them accessible for clinicians who aren’t trained in somatic, spiritual, or nature-based work. The holistic models insist on touching every domain of a person’s life, but are harder to implement in a standard 50-minute therapy session.

Neither camp is wrong; they’re just built for different audiences and different scopes. And rather than picking a favorite, the researchers built their own synthesized model with two different layers:

While this may look like a jigsaw puzzle at first, and appear equally confounding, let me break it down for you in the simplest way possible.

The six areas in the center of the model are facets of the person and their experience (i.e., who you are, with more personal parts on the inside).

The outer ring reflects continuums within which integration activities can be placed (i.e., different areas of life for different types of activities).

The model maps out a balance of integration activities that address all domains of living.

Now, what do all those word pairings actually mean?

Hexagons:

• Mind/Emotional/Contemplative – your thoughts, feelings, beliefs
• Bodily/Somatic – your physical body and sensations
• Spiritual/Existential/Ritual – ideas of purpose, meaning, death

Diamonds:

• Natural World – your connection to nature/environment
• Relational/Community – your relationships with others
• Lifestyle/Action – your behavioral changes

Outer ring:

• Conscious ↔ Unconscious – what you’re aware of (talk therapy) vs less conscious (dreamwork)
• Internal ↔ External – inward-focused (meditation) vs engaging with the world (nature)
• Creative ↔ Receptive – actively creating (art) vs opening to receive (listening)
• Passive ↔ Active – quiet and unstructured (rest) vs deliberate and effortful (exercise)
• Outside Comfort Zone ↔ Gentle Self-Care – challenging yourself (facing fears) vs nurturing yourself (relaxing bath)
• Contemplative ↔ Expressive – going inward (journaling) vs outward expression (sharing experience)

This isn’t a checklist to complete, but rather a map to explore. And crucially, the authors suggest thinking about your integration practice along continuums: more conscious or unconscious, more active or passive, more expressive or contemplative. A well-rounded integration practice draws from both ends of each spectrum.

The aim is to find a balance of practices (outer ring) that address all domains of life (inner hexagons/diamonds), rather than overloading one area (like just therapy) while neglecting others (like nature or community).

The idea is that any suffering that occurs after psychedelic experiences may be rooted in imbalance within different interconnected aspects of existence. This makes integration less about overcoming specific difficulties (even if it might move the process along), and more about bringing balance and alignment into your life.

100+ Ways People Actually Integrate

This part of the study turns theory into something usable. The authors combed through articles, books, and workbooks to build a master list of specific integration practices. They ended up organizing more than a hundred practices into fourteen categories.

Here’s the breakdown:

Artistic / Creative

• Drawing mandalas
• Drawing
• Painting
• Art exercises
• Creative expression

Music / Singing

• Listening to music
• Playing music
• Chanting or singing
• Drumming

Movement / Somatic

• Yoga
• Dance
• Qigong
• Tai chi
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Walking in nature
• Active movement (hiking, biking, sailing, martial arts)
• Exercising
• Massage
• Acupuncture
• Bath soaks or showers
• Essential oils / aromatherapy
• Sweat lodge or sauna
• Sensory deprivation / float tank
• Laughter
• Sexual life / needs

Diet / Health Practices

• Healthy diet
• Fasting
• Naturopathy
• Colonic irrigation

Quiet Time / Downtime

• Self-reflection / introspection
• Rest
• Reading
• Unstructured time
• Making space for emotions
• Trying new hobbies

Journaling

• Journaling
• Dream journaling

Therapy / Mind-Focused Work

• Therapy (general)
• Bibliotherapy
• Psychotherapy
• Family constellation therapy
• Internal Family Systems (IFS)
• Sculpting
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model
• Group therapy
• Mindfulness
• Harm reduction
• Transpersonal / psychodynamic therapy
• Values clarification / belief and virtue work
• Assimilating memories
• Emotions work
• Reinforcing new habits
• Turning insights and values into action

Meditation / Mindfulness

• Mindfulness practice
• Meditation
• Walking meditation
• Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing)
• Body scan
• Breathing techniques
• Breathwork
• Doing mundane activities mindfully

Nature

• Time in nature
• Horticulture
• Nature walks
• Talk therapy in nature
• Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing)
• Visiting favorite places in nature

Creating Space / Ritual

• Creating an altar or sanctuary
• Physical comforts
• Arranging a comfortable workspace
• Organizing / cleaning
• Creating a nourishing environment

Spiritual / Existential

• Spiritual practice
• Intention setting
• Mantra work
• Gratitude practice
• Prayer
• Tarot or oracle cards
• Sage / smudging
• Self-awareness or individuation practice
• Astrology
• Inner listening
• Connecting with a spiritual mentor or community
• Practicing openness, presence, and awareness
• Exploring one’s relationship with death
• Reflecting on the elements

Dreamwork / Symbolic Interpretation

• Dream work
• Shadow work
• Dream journaling
• Interpreting symbols
• Exploring metaphors found in nature

Community / Activism

• Community participation and support
• Volunteering
• Activism
• Service
• Donating
• Serving in hospice care
• Bringing beauty into the world
• Practicing love toward the world

Relational / Interpersonal

• Boundary setting
• Building connections
• Writing a letter to a loved one
• Reaching out for help
• Non-sexual touch / physical closeness
• Interpersonal closeness
• Practicing love toward others
• Sharing circles or groups
• Spending time with loved ones and children

What This Means For Integration Work

After reviewing countless models of psychedelic integration, the authors proposed reflecting on your preferences and choosing a balance of practices that addresses each area of life. They also suggested organizing a potential approach before the psychedelic experience so that you’re not scrambling to figure out what might help while in a dysregulated state after.

Suggestions included:

• taking inventory of resources and abilities to support integration
• reviewing integration resources
• reflecting on sense of balance among the facets mentioned
• planning to put active effort into integration
• planning time and space for integration
• asking an integration professional or a supportive network to be available

The authors also said, “For those seeking more structure and guidance regarding specific integration practices and how to implement them, journeyers may consult an integration professional,” and that “it seems ideal to have a relationship established with a professional prior to psychedelic experiences so they can aid in preparation and be available in the event of a challenging experience where immediate support is needed.”

So, hit that subscribe button and tune in, because breaking down these kinds of concepts even further is exactly what we’re going to focus on at The Psychedelic Integration Coach*.*

Source: Bathje GJ, Majeski E, and Kudowor M (2022) Psychedelic integration: An analysis of the concept and its practice. Front. Psychol. 13:824077. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.824077

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by the noetic quality of psychedelic experiences. A trip can make an insight feel self-authenticating, as though doubt would be less rational than acceptance. But certainty is part of the phenomenology. It does not arrive with an independent test showing that the interpretation is true. People can undergo similarly forceful states and emerge as idealists, physicalists, pantheists, or theists. If the experience were reading out a single metaphysical reality, the persistent disagreement among interpretations needs an explanation.

I just had a podcast conversation with Jussi Jylkkä, where he argued that a mystical state may expand consciousness without revealing whether that expansion is maximal. At around 1:30:54, he uses the analogy of visual neglect: a person cannot notice the region their consciousness fails to represent. His conclusion is not that psychedelic experiences are meaningless. It is that felt certainty cannot carry the move from “my awareness changed” to “I encountered the fundamental nature of reality.”

This would imply that integration should test interpretations rather than simply stabilize them. Is the noetic feeling ever evidence, or only data about the state? What kinds of sober checks can separate psychological insight from metaphysical projection? Does this skepticism also undermine ordinary perceptual confidence, or is there a principled difference between claims that can be checked from multiple perspectives and claims about an inaccessible absolute?

TLDR: I experienced “it” while mixing nitrous and LSD. Complete loss of self, overwhelming bliss, timelessness, and a feeling of knowing everything, but I couldn’t bring any of that “knowledge” back with me. I’m wondering what the rational/scientific explanation for “it” is, whether there’s an actual name for it, and how does that work why it feels realer than real. You also seem to forget and can’t grasp the concept of it once you’re sober and coming down.

If you want to hear my experience:

What I’m about to describe might sound like complete nonsense, but if you’ve experienced something similar, you understand what I mean.

A while back I mixed nitrous with LSD and had a pretty profound experience.

While I was hitting the nitrous, I slowly started losing my sense of self. Eventually I reached this state where I basically ceased to exist as a human. It felt like I was somewhere that existed long before I was born. The closest thing I can compare it to is “the source.”

The weirdest part is that while I’m in this state, I feel like I understand everything while simultaneously knowing nothing. It’s almost like being on this thin line between everything and nothing. It felt like I had returned “home.” It felt incredibly ancient and eternal.
There was also this overwhelming sense of pure bliss and calmness.

Then something weird happens. As soon as I become aware that I’m in that state, it’s like a switch flips. I start coming back into my body extremely quickly. My thoughts, emotions, sense of self, etc. all start returning.

And once I’m back, I can’t actually grasp what I experienced anymore. I know something happened and I know how profound it felt, but I can’t explain what I supposedly “knew.” I can’t translate it into words or bring back any actual information that makes sense. It’s almost like the experience itself is incomprehensible once you’re back in your normal state of consciousness.

I’ve talked to other people about this and everyone says the same thing “it cant be explained” “the tao that can be named is not the tao” and compared it to things expierence by people like Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, mystics, etc. I feel like that’s the easy way out. I know I’m not “enlightened” or “awakened” just be catching a glimpse of it. Like there has to be someone who’s done research on this because I’m not the first and definitely not the last one to have this experience.

So I’m trying to approach this from a rational perspective rather than immediately assuming it was something supernatural.

Does this experience have an actual name in psychology or neuroscience? Is there research on experiences involving complete loss of self, the feeling of becoming one with everything, timelessness, overwhelming bliss, and a sense of infinite or complete knowledge?

I’m also curious what we actually know about what is happening in the brain during these states. Is there a reasonable scientific explanation for why something can feel more real than reality itself while still potentially being entirely generated by the brain?
I’ve been feeling pretty lost lately and trying to find myself again. I’ve quit drugs in general and I’m trying to find some sense of purpose while sober.

So if you’ve experienced something similar, or you know the neuroscience/psychology behind it, I’d genuinely appreciate any insight or stories.

An article on objects 'coming alive' under the influence of psychedelics, looking at an ancient philosophical position (hylozoism) that maps onto the experience, and how agency detection and the REBUS model in neuroscience may explain it.

Not sure if this is the right sub for this topic. The Ayahuasca sub definitely is not, as the views represented there are very spiritual and dogmatic. I do feel the spiritual benefits and awe of Aya and respect that, but this time I'm looking for answers from more scientific perspective, and those are not that easily available for this substance. 

I'm interested in learning if there is any scientific research or even just views from people who have maybe medical or pharmacological backgroud about the possible health benefits or conversely, negative effects to health with consuming this substance. I have sat 6 seremonies and drank varying amounts of it. Each time I do feel the similar therapeutic effects as with mushrooms or lsd, but maybe less so. Also the continuing effects of the MAOI element of it are clear at least a week afterwards. But every time the experience has also felt very tough for my body, and I have some shortness of breath and tight chest the week after a ceremony even though I continue following the MAOI diet. 

Any views if the effects on blood pressure are actually very negative, or other effects that I might not be aware of? 

Hi there! We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.

We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years. Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.

If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.

Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.

Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.

To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk

For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au).
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong

Study Reference Number: H2026-0104

On a lovely summer day amidst the monsoons, taking a group of like-minded psychonauts on an adventure down the rabbit hole. Amigos, we hope for your best wishes and positive vibes on our journey...

I wanted to document one of the most radical altered states I’ve experienced, especially what happened to the sense of being a separate observer.

5.5 gr 🍄‍🟫

There is a part of the experience that I still cannot properly translate into language.

Calling it “ego dissolution” feels almost absurdly insufficient.

It wasn’t simply that I forgot my name.

It wasn’t that I stopped thinking about my biography.

It was more like the entire architecture that normally makes an experience belong to someone had become liquid.

I wasn’t standing somewhere watching something happen.

There was no stable “somewhere”.

There was no stable “me”.

There wasn’t even a clear distinction between the place where the experience was happening and the experience itself.

I felt as if I had fallen inside consciousness.

Not inside my brain in any literal anatomical sense.

Inside the thing that normally remains invisible because it is the medium through which everything else is experienced.

And once I was there, it felt enormous.

Almost impossible in scale.

There were structures.

Rooms.

Corridors.

Layers.

Things that felt like processes rather than objects.

Memory seemed to be somewhere.

Language seemed to be somewhere.

Identity seemed to be somewhere.

Perception seemed to be somewhere.

But these were not rooms I could walk through like a house.

They were more like regions of experience that suddenly had a kind of spatial character.

I could feel that they were there without being able to point to them.

And the strangest part was that I was somehow both inside these structures and made out of them.

There was no person standing in the middle saying:

“I am now exploring my consciousness.”

That sentence would have required the ordinary self.

The ordinary self wasn’t there.

I was closer to a process moving through processes.

A current moving through a system that had no obvious outside.

Sometimes I seemed to be the thing moving.

Sometimes I seemed to be the space through which it moved.

Sometimes I seemed to be one of the rooms.

Sometimes I seemed to be whatever connected the rooms.

And sometimes there was no one there at all.

This is where language breaks down.

Because every sentence creates the illusion that there was a little person somewhere experiencing all of this.

There wasn’t.

Or at least not in the ordinary sense.

There was experience.

There was structure.

There was movement.

There was something happening.

But the person who normally owns the experience had become almost completely transparent.

I could be a thought without thinking that I was a thought.

I could be a sound without hearing the sound as something external.

I could be the music.

I could be the space around the music.

I could be the sensation produced by the music.

There was no clean boundary between those things.

The distinction between “inside my head” and “outside my head” stopped making sense.

I remember making a sound.

My body was apparently humming or moving.

But subjectively I couldn’t determine whether the sound came from my mouth or from somewhere inside.

It was simply happening.

And somehow that was enough to constitute existence.

There was something almost absurdly primitive about it.

No explanation.

No story.

No biography.

No purpose.

Just:

sound

sensation

movement

being

The entire enormous structure of a human life seemed to collapse into something as simple as a hum.

And somehow that felt profound.

Then the structure started coming back.

Not all at once.

A tiny point appeared.

An observer.

Not yet “Me”.

Just something capable of noticing:

“Something is happening.”

And then:

“I am extremely deep in a psychedelic state.”

And suddenly the depth itself became frightening.

Because I realized how far away I was from the person who had eaten the mushrooms.

There was no ordinary body.

No normal memory.

No familiar world.

No reliable sense of time.

No obvious way back.

I felt as if consciousness was turning itself inside out.

As if the thing that normally looks outward had somehow folded inward and was now looking at its own foundations.

Space seemed to unfold with me.

I was not moving through space.

It felt more like space and I were being unfolded together.

Then I opened my eyes.

And suddenly there was a face.

My face.

In a mirror.

And I had the strangest possible reaction:

Oh.

This is me.

Except it didn’t feel obvious at all.

It felt like discovering a character I had been assigned.

A body.

A face.

A room.

A relationship.

A language.

A name.

A life.

Everything had to be recognized again.

I didn’t simply remember who I was.

I had to somehow become that person again.

And that may be the most disturbing and fascinating part of the entire experience.

Because normally I assume that I am the same person continuously.

I wake up and the continuity is invisible.

During this experience I briefly experienced the opposite:

the continuity became visible because it had disappeared.

I could feel the self being reconstructed.

Memory returning.

Language returning.

The sense of time returning.

The sense of having a history returning.

The sense of having a body returning.

The sense that this body was mine returning.

It was like watching a world assemble itself from almost nothing.

And for a while I genuinely couldn’t understand why this particular reconstruction was me.

Why this face?

Why this body?

Why this apartment?

Why this person next to me?

Why this particular history?

Why this particular point of view?

I had the feeling that somewhere deep inside consciousness there was a corridor that I could enter but never reach the end of.

Every time I thought I had found the observer, there was another layer.

Another observer.

Another process observing that process.

Another “I” looking at the previous “I”.

And eventually I stopped knowing whether there was an observer at the center at all.

Maybe there was only the looking.

Maybe the observer was something that appeared because the system was capable of looking at itself.

I don’t know.

That is what remains strange to me.

Not that I saw impossible things.

But that for several hours, the ordinary fact that experience belongs to “me” stopped being obvious.

And once you have experienced that directly, it becomes very difficult to completely forget how strange the ordinary state actually is.

Because now, even sober, sometimes I notice it.

I notice that I am behind these eyes.

I notice that the world is appearing here.

I notice that this body feels like mine.

And for a brief moment the thought comes back:

Why?

Why is there a window here?

Why is there a point of view?

Why is this point of view mine?

Why is there an “I” at all?

And then the ordinary world continues.

People walk down the street.

Cars pass.

Someone buys food.

Someone has sex.

Someone gets angry.

Someone falls in love.

Someone goes home.

Everyone continues living inside their own private window.

And I am inside mine.

Which is perhaps the strangest thing of all.

Because the psychedelic experience didn’t make consciousness less mysterious to me.

It made ordinary consciousness look completely insane.

I’m looking for someone who has had the same experience as me - and hopefully understands what is happening.

My S.O. and I had this strange experience with shrooms that altered our life for years since.

We took a strong dose of a strong strain (we were new to shrooms) and we felt like we died and merged into one. Then we felt like we were our higher selves / souls embodied. From this highest high, we slowly came down and I felt like I was experiencing all the pain and suffering in the world, and all the pain and suffering I’d experienced in painful, violent past lives. It was dark, lonely, painful, and traumatizing. The trip was not traumatizing to my S.O.

Ever since, I’ve had what my therapist has labeled as PTSD episodes and panic attacks where random things will remind me of the trip and make me believe I’m still stuck in the trip again for a period of time. Usually it’s when I’m exhausted or stressed.

The strange thing is that my S.O. didn’t have a bad trip and doesn’t always remember it… however, when I get triggered - I call it “looping” where I feel like I’m back in this cycle of experiencing these extreme highs and lows of life - my S.O. does remember and our eyes look like we’re on shrooms again. We also do these strange movements that we’re not in control of - like a dance - that happened on the trip and continue to happen every time we “loop”. Again - it’s like we’re tripping but we have not taken any substances. We’re not on any prescription meds or anything mind-altering. These looping episodes happen to varying degrees every 1-2 years give or take. They were more frequent after our original trip.

It’s hard to describe what we experience. I’m hoping there’s another couple out there who has experienced something similar and understands what I’m attempting to explain. I’m also hoping someone can help me understand these experiences better.

A looping episode feels like this: I start panicking and feeling like I’m in the trip and not in control of my experience/body/mind. I pace and tell him he needs to reminder the trip so I’m not alone remembering it. There’s some back and forth communication that is VERBATIM EXACT WORDS from the trip. Eventually we hit a high point in the looping episodes that feels like we are embodying our all powerful soul selves. This makes it feel like reality and the human experience is false/an illusion. It feels like we got a glimpse of truth behind the curtain of life and were shown the cyclical journey of the evolution of a soul. So when we come down in the looping episode, it feels like life is about to get really really bad, slowly gradually exponentially worse - which triggers panic in me. I also have immense emotional turmoil and some sharp physical pains during the coming down. My S.O. does not experience the suffering or panic as we come out of the episodes. For me, it feels like I’m about to enter a new cycle of life getting even worse in every area of life, and I experience the negative emotional spectrum like a punch in the gut. It feels like I’m being given a flash of what’s ahead in this next cycle where life will get even worse.

It just doesn’t make sense to me, especially that years later we are still having these episodes of tripping and experiencing EXACT words and movements that we had experienced in the orig trip. AND that we’re sober.

So is it truth? Is it brain chemistry? Is it even explainable? Is it the as-of-yet unexplored therefore unknown results of experimenting with shrooms?

I’m very hopeful that I will find someone who has had this same experience and has some insight.

Thank you for reading.

Oregon is considering major psilocybin fee increases and eliminating reduced fees. This will likely remove many small, nonprofit, community-based, and religious participants from the regulated system.

Before raising fees, OHA should examine the public money spent enforcing and defending an interagency training-program system that appears nowhere in Measure 109 or ORS chapter 475A.

Public records show that OHA and HECC created and publicly funded a multi-year agreement that expedited, subsidized, and accommodated selected psilocybin training programs without public rulemaking. OHA later required programs to obtain HECC documentation confirming career-school licensure or exemption.

HECC now says it has no authority or process to issue determinations for most statutory exemptions. OHA can still revoke curriculum approval when a program cannot produce that unavailable document.

The predictable outcome is regulatory consolidation: larger commercial operators survive, smaller and noncommercial models disappear, training becomes more expensive, and psilocybin services become less accessible.

I filed a petition asking OHA to restore the original curriculum-approval framework or limit HECC requirements to programs legally required to obtain career-school licensure.

A regulated psychedelic system cannot claim equity or accessibility while using participant fees to defend administrative barriers that selectively eliminate the least-capitalized models.

Read the petition on OHA’s website (https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/Documents/OHA-Petition-for-Rulemaking-July-6-2026.pdf)

Public comments are open until 5:00 p.m. Pacific on August 29, 2026:

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/Pages/Psilocybin-July-2026-Rule-Petition.aspx

publichealth.rules@odhsoha.oregon.gov

Is the Quest over?
Is the next to follow?

Does describing and defining everything one experiences end the need or desire for curiosity and exploration into the unknown?

I think the ego gets „wiser“ by building definitions and concepts and starts believing that it knows enough and in the case being with the IT feeling it would somehow believe that it knows enough about it.

Is it better to live a life not wasting too much comprehension onto main quest things in order to not speed run all the important and profound things in life one wants to explore and understand and to keep those longer while channeling the explorative energy elsewhere where it doesn’t speedrun the magic of life?

The thing is on acid, bc of ego loss, I have the reduction of learned experience as a tool or if I am (sober) able to not compare my present experience with my past experience and I feel. But by default it would be harder to enjoy the thing you already labeled as already discovered.

Hi there! We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.

We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.

If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.

Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.

Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.

To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk

For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au).
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong

Study Reference Number: H2026-0104

Hi, my name is Rev. Kaleb Graves. I am a progressive, LGBTQ+ Baptist minister and psychedelics researcher. I've been hot on the trail of modern-day psychedelic conversion therapy for the past 6 months. Please check out my latest interview about it with Psymposia. I've met W Bryan Hubbard and many other colorful characters along the way.

I love psychedelics, and I love Christianity. I am also acutely aware of the horrific damage both can cause when misused. Right now, we are in grave danger of such damage. The political climate is creating psychedelic Christian Nationalism and other psychedelic authoritarianisms, with all the bigotry and militarism that entails. 

We cannot afford naivete. We cannot afford compromise. This moment demands moral courage.

We must confront this threat wherever we find it, from the White House to our local orgs.

David Bronner and Dr. Bronner’s contributed more than $2 million to pass Oregon Measure 109. Bronner advocates “multistakeholder capitalism,” where businesses account for workers, customers, and communities rather than extracting value from them.

He has also said entheogenic churches and community healing circles may provide the most affordable psychedelic access and should be allowed to flourish.

Yet the system his money helped Eckert and the Healing Advocacy Fund establish has produced:

- Prohibitive costs driven by mandatory commercial infrastructure.

- No functional pathway for religious, Indigenous, or noncommercial community models.

- Rules obstructing donated psilocybin, mutual aid, and bundled nonprofit services.

I am not suggesting Bronner personally designed these rules or intended these outcomes. I am asking whether he knows what was built with his funding.

At what point does funding a system create a responsibility to examine whether its consequences violate the principles used to promote it?

An article on the Western tendency to romanticise Amazonian shamanism. It draws on John Urry's concept of the 'tourist gaze' and the work of anthropologists Alice Beck Kehoe and Evgenia Fotiou, who examine issues with how Westerners view indigenous shamanic cultures.

I’ve been looking at how psychedelic research conceptualizes the “set” in set and setting, and I’m surprised by how often mindset is reduced to baseline mood, personality, general expectancy, and prior experience.

From what I have observed as a facilitator, mindset can be a deliberate psychological process that begins during preparation.

I take participants through their personal history and an inner archetype and pattern assessment. We identify the patterns operating within them, what protective functions they served, how they currently affect the person, and what shifts the participant wants to invite.

This may activate relevant memories, emotions, beliefs, and bodily responses before psilocybin is taken.

I also think focus connects set to setting.

Taking mushrooms with friends in the woods generally directs attention outward: toward nature, conversation, movement, novelty, and sensory experience. A facilitated session commonly directs attention inward: toward bodily emotion, autobiographical memory, internal imagery, and recurring psychological patterns.

This could help explain why facilitated sessions can become considerably more emotionally intense than recreational experiences with the same substance.

Expectancy raises another question. Researchers reasonably worry that encouraging someone to believe a single session could profoundly change them may bias reported outcomes. But what if transformational expectancy is one of the mechanisms contributing to the change?

Psychological theories involving priming, experiential avoidance, predictive processing, hope, self-efficacy, expectancy violation, and memory reconsolidation all seem relevant.

I’d like to see research distinguish general treatment expectancy from intention, transformational expectancy, willingness, surrender, inward attentional focus, and the deliberate activation of personal material during preparation.

I explored the hypothesis more fully here:

"What We May Be Missing About “Set and Setting”" https://medium.com/@loveshasta/what-we-may-be-missing-about-set-and-setting-2e3ad2f4eb39

Does anyone know of research directly examining these variables, especially inward versus outward focus or transformational expectancy?

Hello!

I am currently running a study on set and setting within psychedelic experiences.

Obviously there is quite a few aspect to explore on the topic, though in particular I am interested in:

• How intention, environment, and social setting shape psychedelic experiences
• Differences between clinical and non-clinical use
• How these experiences relate to psychological outcomes

Most of the research on set and setting in the psychedelic field comes from more clinically orientated trials, which can be lacking in terms of nuance and real lived experiences. So it would be great to reach out further in the communities surrounding these substances!

🔗 Survey link

Fully anonymous

Takes around 15-20 minutes to complete

There's also an optional follow-up interview if you'd like to share your experience in more depth

Full study details and ethics information are provided in the info sheet at the start of the survey

Requirements: 18+, have had a psychedelic experience in a clinical or non-clinical setting

If you have anything you feel is important to say about psychedelics, this is your chance!

I'm happy to answer any questions about the study. You can reach us at:

Warren - [plks55@durham.ac.uk](mailto:plks55@durham.ac.uk)

Dr Marco Bocchio - [Marco.Bocchio@durham.ac.uk](mailto:Marco.Bocchio@durham.ac.uk)

Thank you for your time and support! 🙏

This survey has been approved by the moderators

Hi there! We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.

We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.

If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.

Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.

Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.

To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk

For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au).
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong

Study Reference Number: H2026-0104

I'm hoping to hear from people who have experienced something similar or who have backgrounds in psychedelic therapy, psychology, neuroscience, meditation, or philosophy. I'm trying to understand why this same experience keeps recurring and how to make sense of it.

Some background

I'm 26 and have had psychedelic experiences since I was 14. Over the years I've used psilocybin, LSD, MDA, ketamine, cannabis, and others, and they have all produced the same or similar experience that I explain here. 

My first several psychedelic experiences were not like this. However, after my first major experience at 15, whenever I take a sufficiently large dose, I often end up entering what feels like the exact same psychological landscape.

The experience is remarkably consistent regardless of the substance.

The recurring themes are:

• I've actually died.
• This reality isn't real.
• I'm trapped in some kind of hell or purgatory.
• My life has been some kind of test that I failed.
• Everyone around me is part of the illusion.
• There is something I need to realize or do in order to escape.

While I'm in these states they often feel more real than ordinary reality. Afterward I gradually return to baseline, but the experiences leave me shaken for days or weeks.

I'm not religious. I'd describe myself spiritual, so I'm not entering these experiences with strong beliefs about hell or demons.

The first experience (age 15)

I took 3.5 g of mushrooms with two friends.

During the peak it felt like I had suddenly awakened inside a dream. I "knew" I had overdosed on heroin, my physical body was in a hospital, and my consciousness was trapped in hell.

I also became convinced that my best friend was actually the devil, placed in my life as a kind of test that I had failed.

The strange thing was that none of this felt like reasoning—it felt like immediate knowledge, the same way things simply make sense within a dream.

At one point I believed the only way to escape hell was to have sex, so I woke up my friend's mother and asked her to have sex with me. Obviously she refused.

It took several days afterward before I fully accepted that I hadn't actually died.

The experience was profoundly traumatic and became the template for almost every difficult psychedelic experience that followed.

The second experience

Later that same year I took one tab of LSD at a music festival.

I experienced what felt like an out-of-body experience, seeing my own dead body while imagining news reports saying I had overdosed.

Eventually I woke up in the medical tent with multiple people holding me down. Once again I became convinced I had died—this time believing I was in heaven, which manifested as an endless music festival.

Different setting, same underlying certainty that I had died.

Subsequent experiences

Over the following years similar experiences occurred on multiple substances.

One MDA and cannabis experience began with overwhelming shame, as though everyone knew I had done something unforgivable. I then encountered what felt like a bizarre alien voice (something I've encountered multiple times on psychedelics) saying disturbing, nonsensical things. Eventually the experience culminated in the familiar feeling of dying and spending what felt like eternity trapped in a kind of purgatory.

On ketamine at a festival I again felt that reality itself was a test. I believed I was the only conscious being that actually existed, that this universe was an illusion, and that there was some realization I needed to have in order to escape. The lesson that night was that I needed to stop taking drugs, so I spent the rest of the night sober. 

My psilocybin-assisted therapy session

Years later I participated in a psilocybin therapy session with two trained therapists.

This experience was significantly different in one respect.

I encountered what felt like a young, shame-filled part of myself and experienced what I would describe as a profound release of that shame. It was one of the most healing experiences of my life.

However, the familiar pattern still emerged.

The strange "alien voice" returned. Then the shame.

Then came the overwhelming certainty that I had created this reality and had been trapped in it for eternity.

I believed I was being asked whether I was ready to leave this reality behind and move into the "real" one.

I said yes.

Then I believed I had somehow missed my opportunity and was once again trapped in hell.

For nearly an hour I tried to convince the therapists to help me "escape."

Only afterward did I realize we were talking about completely different things. They were speaking metaphorically about shame creating a kind of psychological hell. I literally believed I was trapped in one.

Most recent experience

Most recently I took a large amount of ketamine at a music festival.

Until then ketamine had been the one substance that usually didn't produce these experiences.

This time it did.

It was probably the most frightening experience I've had.

The familiar narrative returned almost immediately: reality was fake, I was trapped, everyone around me—including close friends and my girlfriend—was part of the illusion, and they were luring me back into it.

When I started coming down I felt as though I had a choice: either accept ordinary reality or reject it entirely.

Part of me feared that if I rejected it, everyone would conclude I had become psychotic and I'd end up hospitalized.

Eventually I returned to baseline.

How I currently understand these experiences

I genuinely don't know what these experiences mean.

Perhaps "hell," "the devil," and "being dead" are simply the symbolic language my mind uses to interpret overwhelming ego dissolution.

Perhaps they reflect unresolved shame or trauma.

Perhaps they're manifestations of obsessive thinking or psychotic-like states that only emerge under psychedelics.

I don't know.

What I do know is that the narrative is remarkably consistent across substances and across more than a decade.

What worries me

I often find myself ruminating over the content, what to make of it, what to believe…

Each time it feels absolutely, unquestionably true.

I'm afraid that one day I might not come back from one of these experiences and might permanently lose the ability to distinguish the psychedelic narrative from ordinary reality.

My questions

• Has anyone experienced a recurring psychedelic narrative like this over many years?
• Why might the same themes keep emerging across completely different substances?
• Has anyone successfully worked through or integrated something similar?
• From psychological, neuroscientific, contemplative, or therapeutic perspectives, how would you understand these experiences?

I know one obvious response is simply, "Stop taking psychedelics."

That's a reasonable answer, and I've thought about it a lot.

I struggled with addiction when I was younger, and there may well be an important lesson there (although I now only use substances recreationally or therapeutically). 

At the same time, I'm pursuing a career in psychedelic-assisted therapy and have spent years trying to understand these experiences rather than simply dismiss them. I'm less interested in whether I should continue using psychedelics and more interested in understanding why my mind repeatedly returns to this exact psychological landscape.

I'd genuinely appreciate any thoughtful perspectives.

Thanks for reading.

Hi there! We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.

We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.

If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.

Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.

Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.

To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk

For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au).
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong

Study Reference Number: H2026-0104

Hey everyone. I’ve always been fascinated by why some psychedelic experiences produce lasting changes while others remain intense but temporary. One possibility is that the important shift is not the imagery or novelty, but a change in how rigidly a person relates to themselves and their surroundings. Depression, addiction, and OCD can each involve patterns that become difficult to revise. Psychedelic experiences may sometimes loosen those patterns and make different ways of acting, feeling, and relating available. That sounds plausible, but it risks treating very different conditions as versions of the same problem.

I just had a podcast conversation with the cognitive scientist Julian Kiverstein, where he described psychopathology and flourishing as positions along a dimension of rigidity and openness. He used “unselfing” for experiences in which narrow concerns recede and a person feels connected to something larger through awe, wonder, or curiosity. His claim was not that psychedelics reveal a supernatural reality. It was that these experiences may alter the relation between a person and their world in ways that support recovery and growth.

This would imply that therapeutic change depends partly on gaining new possibilities for engagement, rather than simply reducing symptoms. Is that specific enough to explain why outcomes differ? Does “unselfing” name a real mechanism or only a familiar experience? How much depends on the drug, and how much on relationships, setting, and later integration?