Have A Safe Trip
To be safe when using psychedelic substances, maintain your independence and autonomy. Beware of mystic clergy promoting quasi-religious approaches as THE right way to trip. There isn’t one, true way. That dogmatic nonsense is packaging and salesmanship. There are two ways to trip: safely and unsafely. Within the realm of safety, there are infinite ways to enjoy the experience. Each involves a direct relationship between you and the universe, not a heavily intermediated relationship.
To put a finer point on this first issue, I will suggest that rigorous imposition of someone else’s dogma on your psychedelic experience might be a warning flag. Your psychedelic experience is uniquely yours, utilizing your stories and situations and the characters in your life. You are teaching you. If a guide insists on doing much more than providing safe substances, warmth, hydration, and a clear path to the bathroom, where will that interference end? Stated another way, if someone insists on being an intermediary between you and your experience, how dependent on that person will you be conditioned to become?
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The beauty of a psychedelic experience arises from open vulnerability. In that open, vulnerable state of consciousness, we are massively susceptible to suggestion. In that condition, our mind can offer us clarity and healing. Or someone else can offer us … anything. In large part, safety turns on how protected you are in that vulnerable condition. This article addresses three areas of needed safety: physical, emotional, and financial.
Physical Safety
Physical safety requires a space sheltered from weather and threats like traffic, cliffs, others not in ceremony, and law enforcement. It requires guides who are more interested in your welfare than their own gain and enjoyment. Also, physical safety requires control of stimuli. Some like music and lights, for example. Others do not. When starting on psychedelic experiences, I suggest less stimuli might be better than too much stimuli. Most people would rather be a bit underwhelmed than completely overwhelmed. Gradually turning up the volume can be more enjoyable than standing too close to the cosmic woofer (though I recommend you eventually do that, too!). While it can be scary to experience too much stimuli, limited stimuli tends to invite a traveler to look inward where most of the magic is found.
Emotional Safety
Emotional safety requires people around you who are supporting you, not preying on you or preaching to you. I have suffered through god-awful ceremonies where guides imposed their philosophy, “discernment,” demons, and general bullshit on me when I couldn’t crawl away from it. It was emotionally abusive. I left a dogmatic, controlling religion. I don’t need a replacement dogmatic, controlling religion. I need safety and comfort and room, to connect with the medicine and see where it takes me. Another human is just a backseat driver on that quest or, worse, a cosmic carjacker.
Financial Safety
Financial safety requires that your guide is your financial friend, not your predator. You are a seeker, not an open checkbook. Donations and gifts are part of the space. There is nothing wrong with exchanging value for value. This can include the value of location and pampering to your heart’s content. But it might be good to be skeptical, if significant value is based on a guide’s unique ability to introduce you to god or your inner self. Again, you don’t need anyone to stand between you and god or your inner self. I’d bet that plenty of other people in your life have already invaded that sacred space. Part of the journey is to remove those interlopers, not to add others, no matter where or how they trained. Your experience is uniquely yours. You and the medicine are plenty.
In a safe psychedelic experience, you are in control. Good guides help you learn how to find and assert your independence and autonomy in the medicine. That doesn’t happen, of you are dotting that person’s “I”s and crossing their “T”s. There are many safe, supportive psychedelic groups and communities. Try different ones, always looking for those that respect your sovereignty and your ability to connect individually with anything and everything.