MyJourney
Companion

Why have you decided to do this journey? And why now?

What are you hoping to get out of this journey?

What changes do you want to make?

What challenges are you seeking to navigate?

What are you seeking to let go of? Are you really, truly ready to let go? What might be keeping you from letting go?

Do you feel imprisoned or burdened by any unhealthy patterns? Where might those patterns have originated? What events or circumstances may have set them in motion?

What is your relationship to yourself, your past, and your feelings? Is it one of acceptance, resistance, or something else? Do you notice a subtle or not-so-subtle fog of shame surrounding any feelings or parts of yourself?

If your life were a book, how would you describe your current chapter? What chapter would you like to come next? What might be holding you back from entering this next chapter?

What fears are arising as you contemplate your psychedelic experience? Where and when might they have originated? How have they limited you in the past? How have they served you?

If the medicine worked exactly as you hope, how would your life be different? Be as specific and detailed as possible.

Listen to yourself. What do you need in this moment? What is your body trying to share with you? What is your heart saying? Open wide the channels of communication. Try to welcome whatever arises with curiosity and compassion. When you navigated big experiences in the past, what practices worked for you? Might they also be helpful here?

All emotions are okay, even the scary, painful, and shameful ones. Expect hard moments. They’re part of the process, and they can be an opportunity for learning and growth. As the psychologist Brené Brown has said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Remember your breath. Always, always, always, come back to your breath. No matter how difficult a moment may be, your breath awaits you. Connecting to your breath can ground you and bring you back to the present and back into your body.

Embrace sacredness. A moment is sacred if you choose for it to be so. Infuse each moment of preparation with deep respect for the journey you have embarked upon.

Cultivate gratitude. Gratitude can be the most beautiful, and healing, lens through which to see the world. Opportunities abound to polish that lens. One way is to write down a few things every day that you’re grateful for, no matter how insignificant they may seem. You can wake up or fall asleep thinking about things you’re grateful for. You can incorporate gratitude into a meditation practice.

Be really, really nice to yourself. Imagine the future you is watching you, looking down upon you. How much love can you show yourself now? What might it look like to treat yourself with grace? Think about how you treat the person you love most in the world. What would it be like to treat yourself just like that? Maybe you buy yourself flowers, treat yourself to a massage, or visit your favorite garden, whatever would make you feel loved and cared for.

Start now with healthy habits. Many people take psychedelic journeys to develop healthier habits. Why wait? Try to begin your healthier habits now.

Abstain. Pick one thing in your life and abstain from it during your preparation. Think of your abstention as an offering to the medicine or the ceremony. Examples can include alcohol, sugar, caffeine, sexual pleasure, meat, or salt.

Write a letter to your current self from your future self. Transport yourself into the future you want to create for yourself. Imagine you’ve made the life changes you’re hoping to. Imagine you’ve let go of some habits that were no longer serving you. Imagine you encountered some obstacles and were able to navigate them. What would you like to share with your current self?

Create an altar. An altar is a sacred place where you can put things that you love and that cause you to feel thankful, joyous, or grateful. You can include objects that remind you of your upcoming journey, your intentions, and whatever you’d like to let go of during or after your journey. It can be as big or small as you like.

Cultivate self-forgiveness. Prepare to make missteps, and prepare to forgive yourself. You’ll make mistakes. That’s normal. What matters is what happens after those mistakes and what you learn from them. Perhaps what seems like a mistake in one moment is actually a golden opportunity to continue your growth. Develop a strategy for how you’ll respond when mistakes happen. How will you speak to yourself? In what tone of voice? What will forgiveness look like?

Light a candle. Ask the people you love to light a candle for you during your journey. This can be a powerful way to invite those who you love to join you on your journey, and it can help you summon their presence and feel their love and support during your psychedelic experience.

Embrace new forms of expression. There are so many ways to express yourself, connect with yourself, and release energy and trauma. Some examples include drawing, painting, improv, dancing, singing, martial arts, qi gong, and yoga. As you slow down and tune in to yourself, perhaps a new form of expression and self inquiry is calling to you.

Pack your toolkit. There may be challenging moments during your psychedelic journey. That’s a normal part of the process. If such moments do come to pass, they likely won’t be the first challenging moments you’ve navigated. As your journey approaches, ask yourself: what’s worked for me in the past during hard times? What grounded or soothed me? Maybe it was a conversation with a trusted friend, the memory of a deceased loved one, a particular self-care practice, or a meaningful letter you received. Maybe it was a special object or a beloved photo. Assemble your toolkit and pack it with you.

Learn about the medicine. There are the basics, like dosage, duration, contraindications, and possible effects such as nausea, teeth grinding, hypertension, sweating, anxiety on the come up, etc. Consider going deeper. Perhaps you explore the fascinating neuroscience of psychedelics and explore how they make it easier to let go of old patterns and form new ones. Perhaps you cultivate understanding of the ways that indigenous communities have worked with this particular medicine. Maybe you go down a rabbit hole of reading trip reports on Erowid.org or Reddit.

Prepare questions for the medicine. You may experience the medicine as a being, an intelligence, a life force, a sentient creature, or a deity. What questions do you have for it? No question is too vast or too minute. The practice of writing out questions can help cultivate insight and healing, and shed light on your intentions for your journey.

Clean. Clean your house. Wash your sheets. Scrub your bathtub. Take out the trash. Imagine yourself walking through your door after your psychedelic experience. A clean home can help you ground and relax.

Shop. Make sure your home is stocked up on healthy foods and beverages. Is there a meal you love? Consider preparing it for yourself before your journey so it awaits you when you return.

Gift. What can you do now that would be a gift for your future self when you return from your psychedelic experience? Perhaps it’s booking a massage for the days after your journey, filling your home with your favorite flowers, or buying your favorite bubble bath.

Getting Home. Do not drive on the day of your experience. Arrange pick-up with a trusted individual beforehand. Consider asking them to spend the night at your place to support and care for you. Try not to take rideshare home if you are unaccompanied, especially if you are still in journey space.

Time Off of Work. We know this isn’t easy. Think of your psychedelic experience as a gift. The time after is when you unwrap it. Going back to work too soon could inhibit that process. The more time off, the better for most people. But at an absolute minimum, don’t go back to work for at least two days. When you do return to work, see if you can bring the clarity and consciousness you may have cultivated into your work life. Perhaps this is part of your integration work.

Removing Stressors. Consider the days and weeks after your journey and think through upcoming stressors. Are there ways that you can address the stressful situation now, such as completing a task, moving a meeting, resolving an issue, or making or putting off a decision?

Involving Community. Healing happens in community. Consider telling trusted friends about your journey before it happens, especially if you’re going to want to talk with them about it afterwards. Start with the loved ones who you know will be supportive of your psychedelic experience. It can be harmful and traumatizing to speak with people who aren’t, especially when you’re in a vulnerable state.

Come back to your breath. Always come back to your breath, especially when challenges arise. It can be easy to forget about your breath. To allow it to become shallow and rapid. Long, slow, deep breaths will ground you. They bring you back to your body and to the present moment. They bring you home. If painful moments arise, use your breath as a pump to keep your energy flowing.

Embrace slowness. Let go of urgency and effort. There is no need to rush. Your journey will unfold exactly as it should. See each moment as a jewel.

Notice sensations. Sensations, like emotions, may be messengers. Acknowledge them, honor them, and get curious about them. What do they feel like? Are they new or familiar? Are there any emotions or memories that you associate with them? Regard a sensation as a trailhead, the starting point for a deeper inquiry.

Remember that this too shall pass. Challenging moments may feel like they will never end. They may feel like eternities. But they will end. So will your journey. And, sometimes, the work you are called to do may be to say no more, enough, or I need a break. You can come back to yourself and into your body if you really need. This dance between letting go and feeling powerful and in control may be exactly the dance of life itself, the dance you are meant to learn.

Summon your allies. You’ve navigated challenging situations before. You have allies in your corner. They could be ancestors, friends, inner resources, beloved memories, creatures of your imagination, deities, animal or plant spirits, spirit guides, and more.

Tap into your intuition. Trust your gut. Trust that it will provide the insights and resilience needed to navigate your experience.

Be gentle with yourself. You may have just gone through one of the most significant and challenging experiences of your life. Your worldview, your sense of self, your core beliefs, your perception of the universe and your place within it, your feelings about the important parts of your life: all of this may have been thrown into question. You may be in an exceptionally open state that makes you feel vulnerable and fragile. Treat yourself with extraordinary care, kindness, gentleness, and grace. Treat yourself as you would a newborn self that needs the most tender love and care.

Be cautious of talking about your experience too soon. Talking about an experience can force you to reduce and simplify it, to convert it into a few digestible nuggets that you believe someone else will understand. Consider waiting a few days to talk about it until you feel that you are truly ready to do so. On the other hand, if you feel the need to speak to someone about something in particular, follow that urge too. There is no right or wrong, only learning to lean in with trust, care, and wisdom. Don’t feel careful, feel full of care, every day, every moment.

Avoid major life decisions in the immediate aftermath. You may have received powerful insights and messages about major changes you may want to make in your life. This can include changes to your job or your relationships. Consider sitting with these for at least a few days or weeks before acting on them.

Remember that integration is non-linear. Insights may come in waves, some big, some little. They may come at inconvenient moments. They may feel destabilizing. That’s normal. Just like during your psychedelic experience, expect the unexpected and do your best to flow with whatever arises.

Be patient. Healing unfolds at its own pace. It can’t be rushed. Cultivate patience with the process. If you don’t understand something that happened during your journey, that’s okay. The truth will reveal itself in due time.

Practice forgiving yourself. Mistakes happen. Letdowns and disappointments happen. That’s okay. Each moment, especially the hard ones, is an opportunity to learn about yourself. The obstacle is the path. Can you forgive the part of yourself that made the mistake? Work on sending love to, and indeed falling in love with, every part of yourself, especially the ones that sometimes feel unlovable and unworthy of love.

Be prepared to make actual changes in your life. You may have undertaken your journey because there were parts or patterns of your life that you wanted to change. Integration is the time to lovingly let go of what may no longer serve you. But changing your life is hard. It may be scary, or shifting or letting go of certain relationships. Remember this: new things, even things that are really good for you, often feel uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. It just means they’re new.

Know that your brain is in a highly neuroplastic state. Making changes after a psychedelic experience can be easier because psychedelics can re-open what’s called a “critical period” of neuroplasticity or learning. Have you ever noticed how easily kids learn new languages? That’s because they’re in the midst of a critical period. Psychedelics can re-open a critical period, making it easier to form new habits and life changes. But here’s the rub: just as you can form positive habits during that time, you can also form unhealthy habits or solidify old ones. This is all the more reason why integration is so important.

Be on the lookout for spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypass is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to “bypass” challenging emotions, maladaptive patterns, and unresolved trauma. This is extremely common after psychedelic experiences. That’s because psychedelics often provide a glimpse of one-ness, of cosmic consciousness, of the truth behind all things. That can feel, quite literally, divine, and it can foster the wrong-headed belief that simply witnessing these things causes our problems to evaporate. They haven’t; but believing they have is a subtle and insidious way of burying them, which will only cause them to manifest subconsciously. To guard against spiritual bypass, cultivate humility, continue engaging with challenging emotions and aspects of life, and seek support from those who are familiar with your journey and can lovingly hold you accountable.

Revisit your intention. Explore how, if at all, your intention manifested during your journey, and how, if at all, it’s manifested since.

Engage your community. Seek support from trusted friends, family members, or groups who can offer encouragement, understanding, and guidance. Connecting with others who respect and appreciate your journey can provide validation and help you navigate the challenges or uncertainties that may arise. Community support is invaluable for fostering a sense of belonging and shared growth.

Adopt or deepen into rituals and ceremonies. Your journey may inspire you to begin new rituals or deepen into existing rituals. In fact, every moment, whether it’s washing your face or walking to work, can be a ritual if you choose to approach it that way. As the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, and pioneer of engaged Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh beautifully advised, “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

Express yourself. Notice if you are drawn to engage in creative activities such as art, music, or dance to express and process your psychedelic experience. Creative expression provides an outlet for exploring the emotions and insights that surfaced during your psychedelic journey, facilitating deeper self-awareness and understanding.

Journaling or other forms of ongoing self-reflection. Journaling, whether in writing or through voice notes, can be an important tool to work on unpacking your psychedelic experience and documenting your insights, emotions, and reflections. Journaling can also help anchor you in the present moment, allowing for a more profound integration of your experiences. Sometimes we may think, how could I ever forget what just happened, but the experience fades and detailed notes can help us remember and relive important lessons from the experience. Listening to the music from the experience can often jog memories that can help with journaling. At other times, journaling in a pressured way (e.g., I must write all this down! I must remember everything!), can also take us out of the process of letting the work settle into our cells. Also stay attuned to whether you are centered and attuned to your true, deep self. This helps you to know whether actions and needs arise out of your true self or the self that fears and worries or feels driven to perform and do it right.

Deepen your healthy living practices, including good sleep hygiene, nutrition, and exercise. You may notice your motivation to engage in these practices has shifted since before your experience. You may find that self love animates your desire to be healthy, rather than an external feeling that you “should” be healthy.

Practice self care. Tune in to what your body, mind, and spirit need from one moment to the next, and do your best to honor those needs. This can mean everything from time in nature, to massage, acupuncture, or cupping, to moving your body through yoga, running, or other forms of exercise, to relaxation and grounding methods such as meditation, mindfulness activities, and mindful eating.

Celebrate your successes, no matter how big or small. What those celebrations look like, and who if anyone celebrates you, is up to you. But make sure that you notice, honor, and even rejoice as you reach milestones on your path. Those celebrations may be all the sweeter if you have an accountability partner, someone with whom you’ve shared your goals and is supporting you in achieving them. This can of course include your Fireside-Certified™ Psychedelic Coach and other trusted allies.

Be cautious about idealizing your sitter. Psychedelics can often make us feel profound gratitude and love that crystallizes onto the people who shared the experience with us. Be careful of sitters, especially self-proclaimed “shamans,” who foster this attachment instead of providing a loving container around it. Remember, the most gifted shamans and healers are also humans too, with all their imperfections and limitations, and you are the one you need. You are the one you’ve been looking for.

You may feel disappointed, frustrated, and even angry that problems you had before your journey still appear to be present.

You may notice that aspects of your life such as your job or your relationships don’t feel aligned with the visions, vastness, and sense of freedom that you experience on your journey.

You may feel disconnected from the life you lived before your experience, as though you’re wearing clothes that don’t quite fit anymore.

Some of your relationships may experience strain or disconnection. You may realize that some relationships, even treasured ones, are no longer serving you.

You may feel lost, alone, and alienated, especially if you no longer feel connected to some or all of the people in your community.

You may feel despondent to return to your daily, dualistic life. You may long to return to that state of one-ness.

You may experience delusions of grandeur, which can happen when your personal identity merged with higher levels of consciousness during your journey.

You may uncover traumatic memories that feel overwhelming. Sometimes, the memories are metaphoric; other times they are real.

You may feel like what you experienced on the journey was real, while this life is the illusion. This may make it hard to be in your life again.

Though rare, you may develop lingering visual effects, like the ones you experienced on your journey. This is called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD). It eventually fades for most people, but it can take time and may be helped with the aid of a psychiatrist.