The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys

by James Fadiman

it will be useful for the voyager and the guide both to review the suggestions in chapters 1 and 2. By reviewing the sections each deems important, together they can better align their intentions and increase their rapport.

If possible, approach a voyage as a three-day process.4 Ideally, on the first day, stay quiet and unhurried. Reserve time for self-reflection, spending a portion of the preparation day in nature. Set aside the second day, all day, for the session. Try to take as much as possible of the day after the session to begin to integrate the experience and to record your discoveries and insights.

To maximize the usefulness of realizations that may occur during your psychedelic voyage, it is invaluable to write out beforehand what you hope to learn, experience, understand, or resolve.

Your goals may be psychological: to find insight into neurotic patterns, phobias, or unresolved anger or grief. If you know you want to work in these areas, these guidelines may be insufficient. For these goals, additional preparation is recommended, and it would be best to work with a guide who has psychological training.

A useful response to any experience that stretches a voyager’s sense of reality during the session is to gently invite that person to go deeper by saying, “Yes! That’s good. Would you like to know more?”

Notice any shift in the depth or pattern of breathing. Shallow breathing or panting suggests resistance, while deep, slower breathing usually occurs when a barrier is being dissolved.

Relationship to voyager:

What if relationship is rocky with spouse being present during trip but they are NOT the trip sitter? Sounds too risky that sexual issues you long ago gave up on WILL resurface at some point during the trip. That I am aware of this now I cannot trip 😪 Almost like if you go into this expecting to hold on to concrete ego will almost guarantee a bad trip.

A reliable resource of information about doses for a range of psychedelics can be found at www.erowid.org/psychoactives/dose/dose.shtml.

The rule of thumb is the more profound the experience, the longer you should wait before doing it again. The Guild of Guides suggests a minimum of six months between entheogenic journeys because it takes at least that long for the learning and insights to be absorbed and integrated into your

life.

Alan Watts (1915–1973),

modeled that good living and good thinking went well together. For a sample of Watts talking about “nothingness,” go to www.youtube.com and search on “Alan Watts–On Nothingness.”

The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One’s normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment.

The truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, “not quite all there” and also not quite here: by overeagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at the price of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages.

The second characteristic I will call “awareness of polarity.” This is the vivid realization that states, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front or the poles of a magnet.

self and other, subject and object, left and right, and male and female, and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners,...

it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways

Go to www.youtube.com and search on “Huxley’s LSD Death Trip” for a short video about his asking for and receiving LSD to help him at the time of his death.

if ever you use mescaline or LSD in therapy, to try the effect of the B-minor suite. More than anything, I believe, it will serve to lead the patient’s mind (wordlessly, without any suggestion or covert bullying by doctor or parson) to the central, primordial Fact, the understanding of which is perfect health during the time of the experience, and the memory of the understanding of which may serve as an antidote to mental sickness in the future.

You can see Grof discussing his initial LSD experience by going to www.youtube.com and searching on “Stan Grof about His LSD Experience.” The following excerpt is from an interview that Grof did for Yoga Journal.3

video in which Shulgin explains what he does and why he does it, go to www.youtube.com and search for “Alexander Shulgin: Why I Discover Psychedelic Substances.”

www.youtube.com and search on “Richard Alpert—The LSD Crisis,” you will see a very young Richard Alpert discussing his early psychedelic insights. He has been an important worldwide spiritual teacher for many years. The following excerpt is from his chapter in the book Higher Wisdom.7

To see a video of Metzner giving a presentation at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland, in 2008, go to www.YouTube and search for “Metzner” and “World Psychedelic Forum.”

it is especially useful to help the voyagers record their most pertinent realizations about themselves.

how to help a friend, peer, or loved one make the most out of a difficult experience with psychedelics. www.maps.org/wwpe_vid

Websites such as those of Erowid (www.erowid.org), the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (www.maps.org), the Psychedelic Library (www.psychedelic-library.org), the Lycaeum (www.lycaeum.org), and the Council on Spiritual Practices (www.csp.org) are exemplars of such founts of accumulated knowledge.

In order to maximize the benefits of using low-dose psychedelics for creative breakthroughs as described in the prior chapter, the following six areas are important.

set is the most critical for problem solving.

The more the problem matters, the more likely the session will be successful.

People who are so involved with the problem that its solution is vital to their well-being are more likely to do well.

but many will be up late, even all night, continuing to work on solutions exposed but not fully explored during the session.

It may be that many of the methods used to stimulate or increase creativity actually are ways to reduce “non-creativity” instead and that normal awareness is far more fluid and flexible and innovative that it is given credit for.

I was sure then and remain just as convinced today that keeping me out of the war was the better alternative. When you have a long history in junior high and high school of being picked last for team sports, you don’t assume that you will thrive in the infantry, let alone rise to the higher level of competence needed in actual combat. I saw my government fellowship to study psychology as the government

One of the results of this sharpness was that my guitar playing became more focused and agile. I don’t play guitar enough anymore to get through most songs flawlessly, but on those nights, my playing was definitely more on the mark. I also noticed that my ability to recollect lyrics was noticeably superior to my norm.

I went to a place of total aloneness—the you’ve-got-to-walk-this-valley-by-yourself deep awareness of separation from the universe,

But it was also not very important, because the Jim Fadiman that was in that room on October 19 wasn’t very important, serving only as the container in which “I” found myself.

Yet we were asked not only to stop the research, but also to deny whatever we had already learned and to keep society ignorant of the work. We were asked to do this while millions of people in the culture at large were running around experimenting without knowledge, help, or support.

Motherfuckers running scared too much of the population would wake up and realise the human potential if psychedelics were unleashed. They have and will continue to oppress us. Bastards!!!

Psychedelics were a waveform growing in magnitude, and Vietnam was a stone wall. When psychedelics met Vietnam and the country split apart, the old guard who had created and maintained Vietnam and were into war and so forth were terrified and correctly threatened. Why? Because the psychedelic people were saying, “We are not really interested in any of your institutions. We’re willing to do whatever’s necessary to tear them down. We’re willing to eliminate your university, not to add some courses. We’re willing to eliminate your military, not improve training. We’re willing to empty your churches, because true religious experience does not happen inside walls.”