Anubis Metaphysics

Tag: Trailer

Feed your head

Approach

Patients say psilocybin offers “experiencing everything” in contrast to the ennui of SSRIs

David Shrigley, ‘Magic’. Works from Lougher Contemporary

Depression is a problem. One is six Brits are prescribed drugs to counter it. But still nobody knows what it is, how it works, or how to cure it.

This is in stark contrast to the popular narrative that ‘depression is caused by an imbalance of ‘“happiness chemical” serotonin in the brain’. The most popularly-prescribed anti-depressants ‘selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors’ or SSRIs regulated it. Apparently. Like you might conclude by the name ‘selective’ and ‘serotonin’. Or by reading research in respected medical journal The Lancet, written by senior psychologists at Oxford and Yale; although the average depressive is more likely to get the mis-info off commercial content blogs from psychiatrists.

SSRIs have some worrying side-effects. Like nasty poos, even worse sleep, plus most notoriously loss of libido – which is no good if your relationship is already on the rocks because of your depression. Or your redundancy, which is a major cause of depression but not taken into account by the medical sector. Plus, the ‘medical model’ actually makes patients feel more stigma around their depression than otherwise.

SSRI users report an ‘emotional numbness’ known medically as ‘SSRI-induced indifference’ with practical effects not dissimilar to depression itself. ‘Evidence indicates that a reduction in depressive symptoms may not be the single most important outcome to patients, but rather factors such as the ability to participate in everyday activities and return to work,’ says this British Medical Journal article from its 2020 Evidence Based Medicine special issue.

“It was like the light switch being turned on in a dark house… [my] concrete coat had come off”

But SSRIs do increase serotonin levels (like recreational ecstasy) although possibly reduce them long term (like recreational ecstasy). Plus – anecdotally – my close friends who are prescribed SSRIs do say “help take the edge off.” I wouldn’t want to go without my ADHD meds, which do make an enormous difference. But neither SSRIs nor my Amfexa go any way towards curing the conditions, only reducing symptoms.

A balls-out report from UCL published only this summer, made headlines by highlighting the gap between this narrative and reality. And we know what happens when anybody does that. (Like I’m fond of quoting, in the original version of The Emperor’s New Clothes the child who points out the emperor is naked is banished to the wilderness. Not made king instead by a grateful populace, which is a modern alteration).

The status quo brought out its big guns. Rolling Stone, once the organ of the counter-culture, spread muck all over author Professor Joanna Moncrieff (of University College London, one of the most respected medical research centres in the world, while Rolling Stone is no longer respected as a pop music magazine, just saying) pointing out her membership of the Critical Psychiatry Network ‘Which aims to “[mount] a scientific challenge to claims about the nature and causes of mental disorder and the effects of psychiatric interventions.” Like RD Laing. Rolling Stone also drew attention to, and those of a sensitive disposition please stop reading now, her reticence for… vaccine mandates, as expressed in an open letter to the British Medical Journal from NHS workers that she signed. The real problem was that some of the shrill left’s enemies on the shrill right, like Fox News rabble-rouser Tucker Carlson, agreed with the paper.

I’ll stop before I get depressed. The point is: psychedelic treatment for depression counters the ‘emotional numbness’ of the condition, on or off SSRIs.

In fact, the opposite happens. “It was like the light switch being turned on in a dark house, the concrete coat had come off,” said one PsiloDep Trial participant according to the vital presentation by Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, a psychologist on the trials and facilitator of its dedicated ongoing integration circle. Another trial patient said: “I allow myself to experience everything, even if it’s sadness. Now I know how to deal with my feelings rather than rather than repress them.”

Why? “Oceanic boundlessness” AKA increased connectivity, the mystical trip accompanied by profound meaning, “going beyond the self”, and resolution of emotions (it’s usually shame according to Murphy-Beiner) by mini-spiritual emergency-cum-challenging experience are the top signifiers. This is before we discuss the default mode network, neuroplasticity, or neurogenesis. The ‘inner healer’ or ‘homeostasis principle’ to use its new scientific name dispenses these as required.

If depression can be cured by restoring powerful human instincts like connection and meaning, is it caused by a lack of them? Former narrative cheerleader yet admittedly rather good writer Johann Hari made his comeback from exile with Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions (here’s the TED Talk). Therein he claimed, backed up by doctors and patients, that depression is mostly caused by our bureaucratic dystopia: “the depression of many of my friends, even those in fancy jobs – who spend most of their waking hours feeling controlled and unappreciated – started to look not like a problem with their brains, but a problem with their environments,” he writes. And well done him. Although depression is not my area, and I’m far from qualified as a pro, it’s very tempting to agree.

But if the problem isn’t brain chemistry but civilisation itself, isn’t sending depressives back out after psychedelic treatment into the same desperate non-life that made them so desperate in the first place just going to make them depressed again? At this point one can only make a fart joke, and nobody can get away with that better than proper brain box Dr Chris Timmerman, who tweeted this new report Understanding the effects of serotonin in the brain through its role in the gastrointestinal tract because it describes psychedelics as ‘cognitive laxatives’.

June 29, 2022
Freud is dead

Therapy

‘ACE’ is a new therapeutic approach devised by Drs Ros and Richards, with inspo from Stan Grof

‘Icosahedron’ by Anthony James from Unit London

Freud is Dead. And we have killed him.

My loose understanding of the gossip in the ivory towers of psychology is that Freudian psychoanalysis maintains an iron grip on legitimacy.

This seems to have crumbled almost overnight like empires do. Psychoanalysis’ spiritual home The Tavistock Clinic has been rocked by scandal. And Imperial College didn’t use psychoanalysis as such in PsiloDep 2. Because it’s only been an initial part of psychedelic therapy as documented by Stanislav Grof.

Indeed Grof’s former colleague, TV’s Dr Bill Richards who’s still kicking it himself at John Hopkins (and on Netflix) advised on Acceptance, Connection and Embodiment (ACE) therapy, the model applied by Imperial College in its landmark trials testing psilocybin against a market SSRI anti-depressant.

“The trials followed a standard psychedelic psychedelic therapy format: preparation, the high dose, and then integration alongside an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy [ACT] adapted model,” relays Ashleigh.

ACT is a kind-of proactive mindfulness to encourage ‘psychological flexibility’ an adaptive mindset resilient to stressful events. The psychological flexibility model or PFM is referred to in the title of Dr Ros’ stealth bomber of a paper, The use of the psychological flexibility model to support psychedelic assisted therapy which points out the approach is in use in trials at NYU and Yale, too.

And guess what? Everyone prefers it to being told stuff in the past they were doing their best to forget has ruined both their present and future, so it’s going to cost them £200 a week. Plus, ACT’s explanatory infographic is a freaking icosahedron, the sacred geometric form that’s like a 20-sided Dungeons & Dragons dice.

Acceptance and commitment therapy’s ‘hexaflex’ graph

ACT is empirically proven in all of these tests we’re beginning to think will be endless, and approved by EG the NHS.

“It’s a very complex experience that people are going through. So we’re using lots of different influences”

But because ACT’s not Freudian analysis, it gets crap from the old guard. Seems like nobody cares what they think any more, though, because their way hasn’t worked, except for them. And they gave kids gender reassignment.

That’s not all. “As clinicians, we were drawing on a lot of different psychological theories to support people because it’s a very complex experience that people are going through. So we’re using lots of different influences,” says Ashleigh.

ACE is Dr Rosalind ‘Ros’ Watts’ remix of ACT. It even has P-ACE (for preparation) and I-ACE (for integration). It includes aspects of polyvagal theory, lived experience and non-dual thinking to name but two.

And there’s even deferral to the inner healer or ‘homeostatic instinct’ to give it its new scientific name in ACE. Metaphors employed for the healing process include ‘diving for pearls’ illustrated by specially prepared visualisers. Plus, let’s not forget, a new ambient John Hopkins’ LP bespoke-made for the trials.

“We’re asking people to open up to emotional pain at a pace they may never have experienced”

Stan Grof says psychoanalysis was useful for the earliest stages of treating in-patients, but soon gave way to even more fundamental realms of the psyche – and body – that required knowledge not only of cutting-edge thinkers.

“I wonder how possible it is to grasp”

He names William Reich for perinatal matrix III when the body spasms start (not seen many of those on the course yet) and Jung in his Red Book days, but the ‘transpersonal’ (IE weird), plus theology, literature and philosophy too.

“We invite them to tap into a sense that there may be wisdom and guidance to be learned from emotional pain, and difficult experiences in life,” says Ashleigh. There’s practical considerations that don’t come up in that room your therapist has in Finsbury Park with the knitted throws and knackered dreamcatcher on the ceiling.

“We’re asking people to open up to emotional pain, to an extent, and at a pace they may never have experienced before,” says Ashleigh, “I wonder how possible it is to grasp. We wrangled over what we tell people beforehand, so they can make an ethical and informed decision about taking part in a treatment like this.”

‘Must we ourselves become gods simply to appear worthy of it?’ opined Nietzsche upon his most famous line, ‘God is dead.’ The firebrand philosopher meant a sense of shared, guiding ideology rather than the monotheistic biblical concept of God.

He was mostly right, because us stupid normies did come up with a new God – science. The bits of that which considered our relationships to each other, so the only ones that counted, originated from Sigmund Freud, and Richard Dawkins via Charles Darwin.

The new anti-religion preached a mirror image of historical spirituality: humans were essentially chimpanzees, except cleverer, so even more unpleasant to each other.

Arts, achievement, compassion, shared laughter… all just tactics in the game to get ahead. Beneath it all we were just throwing our turds at each other, and pretending not to enjoy getting screwed by the alpha male.

Who hasn’t been seduced by this perverse science at some point? Especially on cocaine, like Sigmund Freud was half the time.

Eventually though it gets… depressing.

June 29, 2022
A Love Unconditional

Space

Wanted: open hearts to hold space over borderline personality disorder

From ‘ Dappled Light ’ by Rana Begum showing till September 2022 at Ptizhanger Manor and Gallery

If there’s a subject in mental health that’s lively as psychedelics, it’s borderline personality disorder or BPD. Things got even stormier when the two got together.

Or rather, didn’t. Psychedelic hierophant, Imperial College’s Dr Robin Carharrt Harris ruled personality disorder sufferers out of psilocybin trials in the earliest stages of reporting. Interpersonal relationship issues might prevent these voyagers achieving a necessarily productive therapeutic relationship with their guides, hindering ‘letting go’ to the experience.

Asked about respite for personality disorder sufferers in the Vital Q&A about her work at Imperial College with psilocybin, Ashleigh declares she certainly hopes so. She highlights a courageous academic appeal by Toronto’s Rick Zeifman, and Anne Wagner of the city’s Remedy clinic, on the subject.

The paper notes how clinically-proven effects of psychedelics, like increased mindfulness, a clearer sense of identity and behaviour, healing addictions and a reduction in suicidal tendencies line up neatly with BPD’s issues. The impressive doc proposes possible treatment angles including dialectal behaviour therapy (DBT) a socratic method invented for BPD, plus transference-based therapy (big up the space holders there). It also cites a bunch of examples where BPD symptoms were markedly improved by psychedelic treatment: MDMA looks like the front-runner for medical modality, but Swiss researchers say many came to them seeking LSD treatment for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in the late 80s and 90s with no major reported issues. Say what you like about them, but anyone turning up for LSD therapy saying “I’m a massive abusive narcissist, please help me” has done their shadow work. Moreover, just recently doctors in Basel claimed success when treating a complex personality disorder with LSD and MDMA. “This decision was not taken lightly,” reads the abstract.

There’s currently no medication for BPD but sufferers can be prescribed for co-morbidities. Savage psychological wounds, acute trauma, prompt intense abandonment fear in BPD sufferers, possibly leading to volatile and self-sabotaging behaviour. In a thoughtful article on BPD from multiple award-winning UK Cosmopolitan mag, expert Dr Dawn Starley levels it all out by reminding smartphone shrinks that by no means all personality disorder sufferers are disruptive. Moreover, any perceived cruelty, mind games or violence come from a place of terror rather than sadism. Words like ‘guilty’ and ‘innocent’ are perhaps not nuanced enough (sync!) to describe a BPD court defendant (certainly a diagnosed one). And neither is, for example, ‘manipulation’, says BPD specialist Dr Susan Heitler.

Equally, “[Partners, friends and family members] can experience feeling abused or gaslighted themselves. The negative experience for some is substantial,” she says. It’s natural to want to help a loved one in trouble. Selfishly wishing your lover would just get better is forgivable too. But the two of you are often better served by staying apart. This is non-dual acceptance at its starkest.

June 29, 2022
Results Based

Medical

Does psilocybin therapy work, or not?

Kirsten Liu Wong, ‘How Fast the Shadows Fall’

Does psilocybin therapy soothe depression? The short answer is yes.

But don’t go getting all ‘salvation fantasy’ on me now.

Kick ass John Hopkins studies out earlier in 2022 claimed more than half of test subjects suffering from major depressive disorder were in remission (statistically cured) after treatment and a year later, after eight hours of prep (with Bill Richards, mind) and two doses, with five follow-up appointments. Which is… mind-blowing.

Imperial’s comparison to SSRI escitalopram ‘PsiloDep 2’ ran into some IRL type stuff when the scale it used turned out to give mediocre – well, equal – results. Other scales fared far better. But symptoms returned within three to six months. Is it fair to say that “the miracle cure thing ain’t gonna stick” as Rick ‘The Strass’ Strassman laid down in his own Vital lecture?

“Some will want longer term therapy, to understand or change things in a way that others may not”

Several patients went back to SSRIs. “For some people, psilocybin was very powerful,” says Vital lecturer Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, who acted as a guide on the trials, “They’re quite okay with saying ‘that’s enough for now’. Others lived with the symptoms of depression in a new way, probably the majority, actually, did. The psilocybin brought relief.”

NYU trial subject Court Wing defended PsiloDep 2 on Psychedelics Today, saying he “received incredible benefits – my depression of five years went completely into remission and has remained there.”

Depression is one of humanity’s worst problems, barely understood. It’s a bit consumerist of us to think somebody’s suddenly sorted it, in such a romantic fashion. For now we can only defer to the inner healer, wish godspeed to the guides, researchers, and patients, then get our Forest Passage on.

“The longer term option will be costly”

From the sharp end, Ashleigh says: “I hope all options are available to people, to work very differently with the experiences that they’ve had in life. Some will want longer term therapy and really get to the roots, understand or change things in a way that others people may not.

A shorter treatment or less intensive psilocybin therapy might be sufficient for them. I’m worried that the longer term option will only be available privately [not via the UK National Health Service], because it will be costly of treatment. And I’d really like the longer term treatment to be available at an affordable cost.”

Thought leaders like Dr Ros evoke 12-step-esque community circles. But, Ashleigh observes, “There’ll be a push to making shorter term treatments like we have in traditional talking therapies already now, because of budgets, and funding. The people that want to resolve aspects of their mental health experiences are disadvantaged by that.”

June 29, 2022
IRL is a bummer

In te gr at io n

Returning to everyday existence brings depression patients right back down

Nick Cave ‘Soundsuit’ at In the Black Fantastic Hayward Gallery till September 18

Psychedelic integration isn’t the ideal topic for water cooler chat with your line manager on a Monday morning.

Meditation, vegetarian diets, forest bathing and volunteering, all inspired by the cosmic visions on a magic mushroom trip. It all sounds suspiciously like hippy stuff, guaranteed to create even more disconnect between you, your news cycle-bedevilled colleagues, wine-guzzling borderline alcoholic partner, and rigid family.

“Most of the people I’ve worked with have had a disappointing crash. Integration is partly about managing that disappointment. You can’t separate the drug from the therapy – and the community you go back to after a session,” said Dr Ros, AKA PsiloDep 2 clinical lead Dr Rosalind Watts at Psych Symposium’s integration panel earlier this year also featuring Ian Roullier, co-founder of trial subject support and campaigning group PsyPAN.

“My colleagues think it’s extreme… whacky”

PsiloDep 2 trial subjects were given 35 to 40 hours of therapy, which is more than I’ve had in my life. But costs, for a start, kept post-experience integration services light. The trial subjects’ woe prompted Dr Ros to manifest ACER, her integration platform that “involves getting into nature and a closely bonded support group, that’s saved all of us during the pandemic,” says Roullier.

Former international-level professional sportsman and Iboga advocate Rory Lamont was on the panel too. played rugby, a traditional contact sport that’s notorious for its conservative values. He only had the informal WhatsApp group set up by the folks on his retreat for succour.

“I went through some difficult challenges post experience,” he told the panel, “The connection with the medicine is just the start: we want to embody the insights but if we’re not being met by our family and friends it’s isolating and can bring back the loneliness, and the depression.”

The new approaches his insights compelled him to take were nightmarishly distant from his existing lifestyle. “These medicines get to the root of our suffering, the trauma and disconnection from family, friends, society,” he says, “Instead we get a connection to mother nature and community, that brings about the profound healing.” After the experience is over though it’s straight back to ‘real life’, such as it is. Most of my colleagues think it’s extreme, whacky,” says Lamont.

“The worst part is when you feel the effect fading, and you can’t access it any more”

PsyPAN co-founder Leonie Schneider says psilocybin was “the start of a long healing process which I’m very grateful for, but it’s quite a thing to be involved in. I didn’t get the ego death, the mystical experience, and came out slightly disappointed. But I got some other, incredible things that we wren’t what I expected.” Schneider may not have been able to get those benefits without experienced integration support.

Ian Roulllier also took part in Compass’ psilocybin trials, where “my depression came back as soon as the drug wore off. But there was a strong focus on integration with a group centred on Maudsley Hospital [where Compass and the UK NHS public healthcare provider are building a dedicated centre in woodlands of New Bethlehem AKA ‘Bedlam’ asylum].”

The drugs are catalysts and require the integration to have long-term tangible effects, says Roullier. Trial subjects can’t breeze into Imperial for another heroic dose top-up, “The worst part is when you feel the effect fading, and you can’t access it any more.”

Although there were moments of oceanic boundlessness.

“The best is every now and then I check in, and just go out on the grass, and feel it under my feet,” muses Roullier, movingly and sincerely, “But I did get attacked by a swarm of wasps once. I thought, am I still tripping?”

June 29, 2022
Kool-Aid Corner #11

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

Panic over, someone’s sorted the whole ‘fly agaric is stronger once it’s gone through someone else’s bladder’ question

Direct Analysis of Psilocin and Muscimol in Urine Samples Using Single Drop Microextraction Technique In-Line with Capillary Electrophoresis by Anna Poliwoda, Katarzyna Zielińska Piotr P. Wieczorek published in Molecules spring 2020.

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: Shroom by Andy Letcher

From WoB for £9.99, there are ones with slightly better covers out there

It’s a lecture circuit gag that one of the best books on the history of psilocybin has a really crappy cover.

Andy Letcher, writer of Shroom, is a high-level druid here in Britain. His rigorous taxonomy of magic mushrooms within society comes with shadow work: it debunks myths and sacred cows, in particular the stoned ape theory, left and centre. This paraphrase from author will Self, in his review of Terrence McKenna’s Food of the Gods is possibly the shadowiest bit: “he compares McKenna’s [worldview] to Marxist dialectical materialism, where the type of drugs you take determines the society you live in: mushrooms good, alcohol bad.” Want more? “Indegenous communities are rarely harmonious, and use ayahuasca to curse as much as cure.” Essential.

Next issue: MDMA therapy with the dyad who wrote the MAPS program

June 29, 2022
Power to Empower

Approach

Inner journeys require deft guidance deployed with subtlety

From Seascapes by Paul Rosteau published by Loose Joints

Talismanic underground figure Leo ‘The Secret Chief’ Zef began his psychedelic guide self-training using talk therapy in his voyagers’ sessions.

Eventually he wrote, “I realised I didn’t know what they needed and neither did they. Something inside them did. Just leave ‘em alone!”

Photos of the general public tripping in blindfold-and-headphones under strip lighting prompts revulsion in recreational users – or it did in myself, certainly.

Stanislav Grof, ‘The godfather of LSD’ according to its inventor Albert Hoffman, who ‘nobody has contributed as much to the development of my problem child’ explains in his landmark work LSD Therapy that he went through a similar thought process as a researcher in the 1960s and 70s.

The simultaneous model,‘psycholytic therapy’ Grof says does have its advantages compared to regular psychoanalysis, cutting treatment times by a third. But the doses he believes are too regular and possibly too small. Most importantly, the open-ended process has no focus on the rigorous analysis and integration of insights.

“It will seem weird to them. Normalise. Don’t pathologise”

Grof concluded that ‘psychedelic therapy’ which features three to four regular therapy sessions punctuated by high dose experiences where the patient mostly corresponds with their inner healer,

While skilful guidance by the therapists can make impact, this requires elegance and subtlety.

Vital Week Ten lecturer Kylea Taylor has worked for Grof Transpersonal Training since the 1990s. Like veteran Dr Bill Richards back in Week Four, she says the number one thing to keep in mind is the existence, and the potency, of the inner healer. In an ethical context this means trusting the client’s relationship with the process more than yourself.

“Work at the speed of safety. Move at the speed of trust”

Creating a sense of permission to unfold, “the power to empower” is a very different role to that of the modern psychotherapist, who in my own experience prefers their narrative to any individual ones. Let alone any insight dispensed by cosmic visions.

“Normalise, don’t pathologise,” says Taylor, “It will seem weird to them, outside their own frame of reference.” While I absolutely agree this will be true for some voyagers, I’m inclined to believe plenty of others will find their fantastical visions more compelling than a grim raking over of their early childhood, accompanied by a gentle shaming of any non-narrative impulses. Get out the Soul Collage, which is like a ‘make your own Red Book kit’.

“Think, ‘How can I support this client to take their next step into freedom, where they can be fully who they are?’” Says Taylor, again echoing Bill Richards who worked alongside Grof for many years, this time with his ‘cosmic midwife’ allusion. Providing examples, stories and suggested reading are more appropriate than Freudian psychoanalysis, which can seem terribly pompous when you’re tripping. Just like all cokeheads. Stop gabbling like one right now: “Part of good attunement is not knowing what’s going on with them and attuning nonetheless,” says Taylor.

And don’t rush it, despite the promises of miracle cures. “Work at the speed of safety… move at the speed of trust. Especially with clients who have a different life experience.”

June 27, 2022
Who’s therapy is it anyway?

Therapy

Probe your own intentions, for the floor of the abyss is littered with wounded healers

From Phantom VII by Neil Krug

The will to power exists even in the most open hearts: “Every ethical misstep has a healing impulse,” says therapist ethics expert Kylea Taylor.

73.9% of therapeutic professionals entered the field due to their personal history. The ‘wounded healer concept was flagged by Carl Jung, who wrote “A good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself… it is his own hurt that gives a measure of his power to heal.”

A psychedelic guide must wrangle with their reasons for being in the space. Achievement, hoping the voyager enjoys a significant experience, is a forgivable impulse; influence too if we’re being as honest like both the medicine, and the guide’s role, demand.

“Mistakes are an opportunity for improvement and change”

But the guide isn’t drilling the patient like a sports coach. Complementing the voyager’s experience is akin to dancing with them, says Taylor in the deft analogy she uses in her book The Ethics of Caring.

“We do best in the dance when we are not ahead of ourselves,” she explains of letting the process and the client lead this technicolour two-step, “we are able to know what we need to know in the moment.” One must be instinctively aware of one’s dance partner, the music and the dance floor. “A foot in the client’s world and the other in our role of providing safety,” illustrates Taylor, “The container is the ballroom; others are dancing there too… it’s set and setting, preparation, relationship, and relational dynamics – and the psychedelic space itself.”

The effortless presence of mind honed in meditation is considered the number one skill required for psychedelic therapists, claims Taylor’s presentation, and she is consulting for two different written codes of ethics currently in development. Taylor calls this ‘bi-modal’ consciousness. To me it seems quite demanding; out of reach of many perhaps. “Unawareness leads to missteps and sore toes,” says Taylor, “but mistakes are an opportunity for improvement and change.”

June 27, 2022
Nothing beats lived experience

Space

Only by learning on the job can guides figure out how to deliver ethical psychedelic therapy

From ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་འགྱུར། (The Earth Turned Green) by Shen Xin at the Swiss Institute in New York until August 28

There’s no substitute for first-hand learning with psychedelic therapy says its number one ethics coach Kylea Taylor.

Like sparring in combat sports, you can hit as many punchbags as you like but nothing beats the real thing.

“Transference and intensity are triggers. What we’re trying to use emotionally, and what we connect to, can stir up our own sensations,” says Taylor.

Only the act itself can provide the level of intensity and pressure to identify the areas where we need to improve, and do better. Yes, that’s Maria Sabina’s lilt you can hear fading into the background music to this article, as we ponder for a moment how psychedelic therapy evokes the indigenous lifestyle where there is no school and the only knowledge is directly acquired.

Back to minding your Ps and Qs at the ketamine clinic. “We will get even more familiar with our own unknown material,” says Taylor of the necessity to walk the walk.

“Be conscious of feelings in your body, energy… an opening of the trauma capsule within you”

Because noticing when you’re off on your hamster wheel is hard. “We can’t focus back on the plan cos we don’ even know that we aren’t focussed on the plan,” says Taylor.

To give one example, in complex post-traumatic stress disorder blockbuster From Surviving to Thriving Pete Walker describes the inner critic as ‘sneaky’. Just when you think you’ve got tabs on it, the utter bastard finds a way to express itself that even one’s Vital-trained, shadow-integrated self doesn’t put into the ‘twattish behaviour’ category – yet. Other ingrained patterns can be equally polymorphous.

“Trigger management is the most noticeable area of sitting,” says Taylor who first began working with the Grof Foundation in 1984, “When we are sitting in a psychedelic session we are much more likely to have deep brain responses than in a regular talk therapy session. The older parts of our brain react much faster. If we are deeply triggered the reptile brain won’t consult the neocortex for what we learned in the ethics class.” For example: the amygdala fear response deep inside the oldest part of the human brain still has complete control over the senses of touch, smell and taste, only deigning to consult the past 200 million years of evolution on sights and sounds.

“The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion”

Stanislav Grof calls our internal mini-narratives ‘systems of condensed experience’ or COEX. “We must choose to come out of the COEX capsule and refocus on the client,” says Taylor, using the phrase “in process” to describe a therapist essentially acting out with the best of intentions.

Compulsive behaviour of all levels is notoriously gruelling to identify and heal. Lack of awareness is intrinsic, and complete: like a dream, anger, or a PTSD flashback. So is humanity under pressure – the compulsion to succeed with a patient who reminds the therapist of the son they ‘failed’ to ‘save’, or the instinct to share a positive ideology.

“Try to be conscious of feelings in your body, an energy; the opening of the trauma capsule within you,” says Taylor. As ever, “The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion.”

June 27, 2022
Unconditionally loving cuddles: Yes or No?

Medical

What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder or supportive hug? Easy tiger…

Ravers in east London

Don’t put it past anyone’s shadow self not to get off with a pilled-up patient.

That’s the message from therapy ethics expert, transpersonal psychologist and addiction counsellor Kylea Taylor.

I’d hate to wipe any glamorous, lifestyle magazine-sheen from the Vital Student Zine. Yet seeing as this is ‘The Ethics Issue’ of Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine it’d be remiss of me not to mention the sordid revelations to have swept the psychedelic space of late.

First fell Francoise Borat, the French figure fancied by many more than myself. Women like Maria Papasyrou, Adele LaFrance, Celia Morgan and Reanne Crane are tackling the least agreeable and most necessary areas of the psychedelic renaissance right now, and Borat pioneered that. Investigations showed she lived up to her femme fatale archetype.

The scandal also exposed the wellbeing industry’s appalling lack of oversight, from passing your email address on to cat charities to… not actually removing famous people from your public register after you’d struck them from the official register for shagging clients. The stink was mostly coming from Bourzat’s hubby Aharon Grossbard in the form of detailed and sustained allegations by counsellor, campaigner and award-winning blogger Will Hall.

“Have a safe word. Even if it’s just: Stop”

Next, just when you were thinking some boomers may be OK, MAPS therapist dyad Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer blotted the saintly org’s copybook during landmark 2015 trails. It’s worth watching the CCTV. Trial subject Meaghan Buisson, a PTSD sufferer who took the edge off her condition with a career in the tough sport of inline speed skating, then moved near the couple as her only option to continue treatment. Yensen and her slept together during the period.

In 2022, welcome to a world of headlines like A psychedelic therapist allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor, highlighting worries about elders taking hallucinogens. Campaigning website Psymposia which produced the Power Trip podcast with New York Magazine that brought many of these stories to a wider audience, does a sterling if militant job of sniffing out stuff like this.

Thing is, some patients really would like a hug during MDMA therapy. Recreational users might sympathise. Written and thoroughly discussed pre-agreements are the done thing, says Taylor.

“Have the safe word, even if it’s just ‘stop’, and tell the patient, ‘Remember you can say stop’ even when you’re merely putting a blanket over them,” advises Taylor, “a lot of people are recommending a dual consent process involving a written agreement on touch, that is sacred and not changed in the middle of the session.”

The subject should be fully felt through: “Explain the reasons why they might want it, and might not want it, and that if they say no now, they won’t get touched in the session,” says Taylor. California bioenergetics bodywork teachers have legal license to handle clients when required.

Strictly unconditionally loving cuddles can be a productive part of emotional breakthrough, release and recovery, say many therapists.

“A third agreement is ‘If you do ask me to touch you in the session, I will’,” suggests Taylor, “If they do want that, then watch out for obvious gestures suggesting they might require physical comforting. If their body language suggests it, then you might – for example – touch the back of their hand, and read their reaction.”

It’s a jungle out there and not all accusations, unfortunately, carry complete legitimacy. Professionals in an area as unpredictable as psychology, let alone shamanism, expect accusation of some sort eventually according to Vital students in the field. Soccer players in the UK are advised to simply stay away from any form of ‘nightlife’ as it’s known in sporting circles, and most now do.

June 27, 2022