The cultural shift from pills to psychedelics

Take a pill and feel better! As Westerners that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. No muss, no fuss! Just take the pill and be done with it! Of course, as we know for these “mood managing”medications, the trade-off is side effects. The side effect reported to me most frequently is the narrowing of the whole emotional spectrum.

My pivot to cannabis & spirituality

“Oh no, microdosing psilocybin won’t do a thing for me!” he exclaimed, in total disbelief during our initial discovery session. He went on to tell me he was wrestling with grief and depression from his partner dying a couple of years ago and trauma from an abusive childhood. “I need something stronger to knock all that out!” he declared. 

In our take-a-pill-and-feel-better culture, people just want relief by taking that pill – or a whole bunch of them. Of course, if that was an approach that worked, we wouldn’t have an epidemic of anxiety, depression and despair in our Western world.

Rinse & Repeat: War on Drugs? 

Did you see? Last month the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and state police nabbed a 23-year old man. Well, I really want to call him a kid but of course I’m a woman of a certain age – so everybody seems pretty young these days to moi (that is eu in Portuguese, where I’m now living;) Anyway, the cops and DEA in Connecticut arrested 23-year-old Weston Soule for growing whopping amounts of magic mushrooms in his house.

Why psilocybin alone isn’t enough

“Oh no, microdosing psilocybin won’t do a thing for me!” he exclaimed, in total disbelief during our initial discovery session. He went on to tell me he was wrestling with grief and depression from his partner dying a couple of years ago and trauma from an abusive childhood. “I need something stronger to knock all that out!” he declared. 

In our take-a-pill-and-feel-better culture, people just want relief by taking that pill – or a whole bunch of them. Of course, if that was an approach that worked, we wouldn’t have an epidemic of anxiety, depression and despair in our Western world.

Why the 60’s psychedelic revolution didn’t work

There’s a lot of talk these days about getting the most out of a psychedelic journey. Of course, if you’re plotting and planning to do one, it makes sense that you focus on the best way to leverage the experience in the long-term. And as I discuss in this reprise video, that also means taking a cue from how the 60’s missed the mark.

Why Retreat Microdosing

If you’re looking forward to the possibility of joining me for one of my retreats in the future, I want to take a couple of minutes to explain an important dimension of my gatherings.

Glimpsers, Microdosing Alchemy & High Flow

Mystical traditions teach that there’s an infinite world inside of us – and the question for our Western minds has always been, “How do I access that infinite Inner world?” Of course most of us know that meditation is the one approach recommended time and time again…

Why “Citizen Science” matters in Microdosing

There’s a stampede of people experimenting with microdosing psilocybin (magic mushrooms) looking for ways to feel better. In fact they are diving in and going for it – and not waiting for clinical studies or laws and public policy to be established. That’s why as I explain in this video, what we call “citizen science” … Read more

Ayahusaca’s dark side

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby lived with indigenous Indians of the Amazonian rainforest and studied the ways of ayahuasca shamans and their relationship with the ayahuasca “plant teacher.”