10 Principles for Processing a Psychedelic Experience
Psychedelic experiences can be deeply profound, even life changing. Whether you are exploring legal or underground psychedelic therapy for mental health conditions, personal optimization, or simply a recreational psychedelic experience, Fireside Project has put together a few tips to help you along the way.
1. Start Before Your Journey.
Your psychedelic integration process begins before your experience. Set an intention for your journey: Why have you decided to take this journey? Why now? How well do you understand any therapeutic approaches involved? What do you hope to learn? What do you hope to find? Or let go of? Are you hoping to achieve ego dissolution, sometimes called ego death?
Cultivate a calm mindstate in the time leading up to your journey, using whatever practices feel authentic for you. This can include a wide range of strategies, such as time in nature, meditation, yoga, journaling, making art, dancing, and speaking to people you trust.
2. Take Time.
Take time after your psychedelic journey to process and explore. Avoid returning to work and the full, normal routines of daily life for at least a couple of days, if possible. The more time you have to process these profound experiences, the better.
3. Listen.
A healing process is unfolding within you. Integration journeys are an ongoing process with no quick fixes. What do you need at this moment to support you on your healing journey? Learn to listen to that voice inside of you. Allow your psychedelic experience to speak to you. Trust it. Let it guide you.
4. Do What Feels Right.
Personal growth is non-linear and different for every individual. Maybe you need time alone or in community after your psychedelic experience. Maybe you need to draw, dance, journal, meditate, do yoga, or sing. Maybe what feels right is time in nature, on a trail, or in a body of water. Listen to your needs and how they may change from moment to moment.
5. Be Kind to Yourself.
You may be in a highly sensitive, tender state after your journey. Treat yourself with kindness and gentleness. Be thoughtful about what you allow to enter your mind and body. Try to avoid social media, the news, and the like. Eat nutritious, unprocessed foods and drink plenty of water.
6. Be Patient.
Integration happens at its own pace, particularly when trying to make sense of mystical experiences. Healing is seldom linear or predictable. Insights and healing may occur quickly, or they may take years or decades. Be patient with the process. Trust that things will unfold as they are meant to.
7. Reflect on Your Intention
Did your intention manifest during your journey? How? Explore these questions in the days and weeks following your journey in the ways that feel right for you. Sometimes not having the experience you expected to can offer great insights and blessings in disguise.
8. Connect with Your Fellow Journeyers
Many supportive communities exist for the process of integration. Consider sharing insights from your psychedelic experience with others who were part of your journey or have similar objectives and intentions, whether those were for personal growth or other mental health outcomes. You may find that these connections help keep the light of your journey alive within you for months or years in daily life.
9. Notice Your Habits.
You may feel yourself letting go of old habits and patterns that were not serving you well. You may notice yourself creating newer, healthier habits. This is part of the psychedelic integration process.
10. Take Time Before Making Major Life Decisions.
You may have received powerful insights and messages during your psychedelic experience, leading to major changes you may want to make in everyday life. This can include changes to your job or your relationships. Consider sitting with these transcendent experiences for at least a few days or weeks before acting on them.
Psychedelic Harm Reduction: Fireside's Mission
Fireside project offers a free, confidential helpline for peer support during challenging experiences and assists with psychedelic integration. Our support line is staffed by volunteers for harm reduction purposes and does not offer mental health or medical advice, but rather seeks to help those in difficulty through compassion and shared human experience.
Specialized coaching
Want help from a psychedelic integration specialist to plan and process your next psychedelic experience? Explore our paid coaching. Book a free fifteen minute consultation here.
