Solo Psychedelic Psychotherapy?

[Shabadaha]

Hey there everyone,
I have been considering the undertaking of some serious healing work with psychedelics, and I would greatly value a little advice. I have experimented with all sorts of psychedelics multiple times, but to this day I have still never broken through. I have come to the conclusion that it is due to a strong and deeply entrenched wall or walls that I erected as a youngin, mostly relating to shame and embarrasment and conformity to authority. Growing up in a very conservative family, it was basically conform or lose love. Hence, to this day, as a 22 year old, I still feel trapped and subject to the validation and acceptance of others. I realized that I have never fully been able to know, or love myself. I have encountered these walls on many occasions, but never with the readiness to break through them and see what lay on the other side. Very, very strong fear and panic. As a result, the trips (which took place in awkwardly social settings) have led to a level of depersonalization and depression that lifts only when I make very distinct efforts to be authentic with myself. The feeling that these bad trips led me to were horrible, things like you will never be happy again, you have fucked up your brain, you will never know yourself, etc.

As an example of how large these barriers are, I did not break through on 50+mg of 5-MEO DMT. I got to the wall, but could not let go. I have been serious about healing these very early wounds, but my problem is that I have virtually no knowledgeable support through peers or family for undertaking this arduous process. Even though I realized that I have been largely asleep for most of my life, none of my friends or family even blink an eye when I try to discuss these things. I still live in my hometown, and I think much of this comes from the fact of having my childhood self reflected in everything I experience.

Basically, my question is this: Having had multiple traumatic experiences on psychedelics, and noting the obvious amount of repressed energy that is bound to come out post-breakthrough, would it be wise to engage in solo expeditions into my mind? I want more than anything to break down these walls and begin really living, but I don't want to do any more psychic damage to my flailing ego than has already been done. If anyone has had any experience with such things, I would greatly appreciate some advice. Thanks for all the great information and advice already circulating around this place!

 

[Dream2Awaken]

the trips (which took place in awkwardly social settings)

Care to elaborate on the setting? This may be the problem. The setting for a breakthrough has to be just right.

You also seem to have a fear of breaking through and this may also be it. You should just keep in mind that you'll be safe in your journey (even on massive breakthroughs) and come out completely fine, if not better. I have smoked with a lot of people (upwards of 50+) because I act as a sitter for others, and not once have I seen anybody come into harm (physical or psychological). Just rest assured that if you're doing this with the right intentions then you will be fine, and it sounds like you are.

Also you mentioned having nobody to turn to for things of this matter, but now that you have joined the nexus that is over. We are always here to help, and gladly do so.

Last thing I'll add is that some people just aren't ready to breakthrough. I've seen people go through 10+ sessions on high doses and not breakthrough. This may simply be because they aren't ready, and in a weird way DMT knows it.

As for doing it alone that is a yes and no. If you can find a trusted friend. One who you are very comfortable with then I suggest doing it with them. Just ask them to watch over you while you're out and in turn maybe do the same for them if they do it.

I hope things get better for you, and I look forward to reading a trip report about your first breakthrough

 

[Global]

If you managed to smoke 50mg 5-MeO DMT and not break through, then there's something wrong with your vaporization technique. You shouldn't need nearly that much (regardless of these "walls" --- with a dose that big, there would be little pressure your ego could put on the experience to slow things down when smoked properly). What are you smoking the tryptamines out of and with what kind of lighter? Are you holding your hits in for as long as you can? Are you using sufficient screens/ash/mesh to prevent the DMT from melting and running too far off to get vaporized? Have you tried taking harmalas and then smoking? Or have you tried ayahuasca/pharmahuasca at all for that matter? Perhpas you'd find more success with changa or enhanced leaf as they're easier to smoke as well.

 

[Dream2Awaken]

Global makes some very good points as well. I'd take his advice

 

[gibran2]

I share the general consensus here: After a certain dose, your body/brain will respond in a certain way regardless of your mental defenses. DMT is stronger than any defenses you might have in place.

If you’re not getting effects, then there’s something wrong with your substances and/or techniques. Also, avoid the “awkward social settings” when journeying.

 

[Shabadaha]

the trips (which took place in awkwardly social settings)

Care to elaborate on the setting? This may be the problem. The setting for a breakthrough has to be just right.

A bunch of kids I didn't really know up in the mountains on a camping trip. No one had any idea what was going on, and neither did I, and to this day it's still weird seeing most of them.


Anyway, thanks for the responses all. I think maybe it was the ingestion of the DMT that was the problem, as I simply used a lighter and burned it out of a pipe. Definitely felt the dissolution happening though, and then just hit a point where I couldn't let go any further. I think more DMT indeed will do the trick if properly ingested.

I guess I'm more looking to uncover and resolve things on an egoic level for right now, perhaps unearthing things from the unconscious at a bit slower of a rate than DMT will provide. I know that the hyperspace trips will come, but for now I am just looking to get a better handle on my ease of mind in day to day life.

Thanks again for the caring replys.

 

[bemeda]

This sounds very familiar. I have yet to do any DMT, but it's been on my to-do list for a long time. When the time is right, when I feel it all the way down in my bones, I'll go through the extraction process and take that plunge.

However, I have experimented with Salvia on over a dozen trips. I'm what you'd call a serious hard-head. On doses that seem to blast most people off instantaneously - with a torch lighter, a bong, 30x, and holding smoke in for 30+seconds, I STILL couldn't break through. There was a tether that just would not sever. I would try to relax into it - a hard thing to do in a threshold sub/breakthrough salvia state. And every time I feel the same thing: "Why am I putting myself through this again?" It's always highly unpleasant physically, and quite frightening in how utterly real it all is. Like there's a fresh reminder every time I try that says "Did you forget? This shit's real. If you want to have a breakthrough, you have to die. Here we go!" And before my body can be physically split into a millionfold bristling cells, like a yo-yo I always get pulled back into my body on the couch.

For me, I finally achieved breakthrough by using the tried-and-true method of "if at first you don't succeed, toke, toke again."
I had two pipes ready with salvia. I started on 10x, then hit a second bowl of 30x and while holding that in, loaded more 30x into the same bowl. I laid back, and sure enough, within a couple of minutes was not breaking through. While I was in the process of fractalizing but still concretely tethered to my body, I hit the 30x one more time. It definitely worked.

Ultimately there is always this option to achieve breakthrough. If the membrane is there and you just can't get through it - if, like me, you just can't seem to let go - you can always force your way through by hitting the pipe again (and possibly again). Trust me - eventually it will overpower you and pull you through.

Breakthrough anxiety is a big thing for me. I can bounce around the room all day on a sub-breakthrough trip, but getting past that stage is incredibly difficult for me for whatever reason. I think part of it for me has to do with my lifelong, stubborn atheism. I always believed very firmly that death is death - that without a brain you have no mind. But now that I've experienced these things, I can't maintain that viewpoint anymore. There's something greater than us, and while I still have seen nothing to suggest that God is anything other than a pure "enlightened" awareness which we all share, I do believe that there is a sort of cosmic conscious energy that we're all a part of.

As for solo psychedelic healing and therapy, I highly recommend it. But smoked DMT and Salvia may not be the ways to explore this - their insights tend to be on such a vast scale that integrating into your daily life and solving those deep-down issues may prove elusive.

Based on personal experience, I highly recommend sublingual salvia tincture. http://www.sagewisdom.org/salviashop.html
It's wonderfully gentle and pleasant on mild to moderate doses and can give you access to a clearer state of mind for a good hour or two. Great for inner ego exploration. Dig through your old memories, face your fears, ask yourself the big questions and explore your mind for answers. It's a bit pricey, but totally worth it in my experience.

I've never done ayahuasca or pharmahuasca, but from what I've heard from numerous accounts, this may be more what you're looking for in terms of chasing down personal demons. Perhaps before you make a breakthrough by smoking you might consider trying tincture or tea to do a more gradual exploration of your psyche. And please do keep us updated with whatever you discover, however you decide to proceed!

And finally, remember that you've got your whole life ahead of you as well. Don't let an elusive breakthrough depress you. You're not busted or broken (these thoughts troubled me as I failed repeatedly to achieve a salvia breakthrough). You've got all the time in the world, and the longer it takes to get there, the more meaningful the experience will eventually be.

Best of luck to you!

 

[VoidTraveler]

Bemeda: As in regards to you being unable to breakthrough on salvia with 30x doses: I think you're putting too much pressure on it. It almost seems like if you're forcing your mind through that barrier. And maybe that's where Salvia says "Hold on mister, you're not ready to venture past. You need to learn to let go and accept". Acceptance is the biggest thing you may need during a trip. So what if a trip fails and you do not breakthrough? You could try to pick up some meditation techniques and meditate before initiating your trip.

I personally prepare myself for a DMT trip by a short 5 minute meditation to calm my mind and prepare it for the journey. Meditations seem to make the experience more calm.

For the OP: I'm not sure if doing self psychotherapy with psychedelics if you've only had bad experiences. Inexperience can be a big no-no with psychedelics. You do not want to start panicking, scream so hard that people will call the police / ambulance. Find a tripsitter that you know and trust to sit with you. Even if they do no interact with you and are just there to monitor you and are only allowed to intervene in case of a bad trip.

 

[bemeda]

Bemeda: As in regards to you being unable to breakthrough on salvia with 30x doses: I think you're putting too much pressure on it. It almost seems like if you're forcing your mind through that barrier. And maybe that's where Salvia says "Hold on mister, you're not ready to venture past. You need to learn to let go and accept". Acceptance is the biggest thing you may need during a trip. So what if a trip fails and you do not breakthrough? You could try to pick up some meditation techniques and meditate before initiating your trip.

I personally prepare myself for a DMT trip by a short 5 minute meditation to calm my mind and prepare it for the journey. Meditations seem to make the experience more calm.

For the OP: I'm not sure if doing self psychotherapy with psychedelics if you've only had bad experiences. Inexperience can be a big no-no with psychedelics. You do not want to start panicking, scream so hard that people will call the police / ambulance. Find a tripsitter that you know and trust to sit with you. Even if they do no interact with you and are just there to monitor you and are only allowed to intervene in case of a bad trip.

"perhaps it seems like you're forcing your mind through that barrier" - I think you've got it dead right. I smoke salvia and I TRY to break through. I look for ways to do it, I look for doors and portals and feelings of "other" or "else" and I try to pursue them. When that fails, I TRY to sit back and relax and just observe the experience coming to me, but this tends to fail to produce breakthroughs, especially the more traumatic it becomes.

Perhaps the most pleasant Salvia experience I've had was one in which I spent the entire day thinking: "tonight's the night." I put myself in a calm and accepting headspace, and when I got home I spent a solid hour with ambient music and meditating on my favorite artwork before smoking.

I had something of a breakthrough on this dose in that I experienced the sensation of suddenly realizing that I had no memory of who/what/where I was. A moment of frightened astonishment before the obvious solution: you're here now! you did it! go with the flow!
From there I swam playfully in the quantum foam for what felt like a very, very long time until I came down. I felt like I was constantly side-stepping into alternate realities/universes, each bubble in this expansive foam an entire existence all its own. There was a "horton hears a who" theme - that each bubble was both an entire universe of its own and a single particle in another universe. My new form felt physically free from any confines - I could simply "be" without any body whatsoever, or I could assemble like fog into a flying/swimming form and blissfully play in what felt like an eternal, and safe, sea.

I don't like "forcing" breakthroughs on Salvia because the extremely high dosage is just too much - once you break through, it takes you to the edge of the SALVIA scale and you come out with little memory of the actual experience. The amazing thing is that I still had the lessons - I didn't know how, but the following day was absolutely full of spine-tingling, massive revelations about the shape of existence and the nature of life. I had this deeply-rooted love of all living things and all that exists and can be perceived. There was this one tree with red flowers outside my house - I nearly fell to my knees when I saw it. It nearly brought me right back into... something... that I had been through. This happened again as I was walking down a sidewalk with a particular pattern to the tiles - The pattern triggered some memory and again a quick flashback of the "other" state that I had known. I felt connected on a deep, core level to everything that ever lived. Quantum theory, philosophy, evolution and genetics, religious mythos - suddenly all of these things took on deep and real new meanings for me.

My last salvia trip - a week ago, on 10x and boosted with tincture - produced no breakthrough results. More unpleasant physical sensations and the initial process of hiving/splitting of the somatic self. It was so thoroughly unpleasant that I couldn't get far - relaxing into it would separate me from the physical trauma temporarily - I went from feeling like I had been steamrolled and turned into a sort of 2-d rolled cylinder to feeling like I was floating in between a bunch of rolling cogs or cylinders that were all around me - like I was in a quiet, free space in between a bunch of vortexes. But before long I'd get caught back into the fractalizing hiving bristling prickly sweaty physical trauma. Argh. I read reports of people who claim to feel a warm loving physical touch and then they open into a yawning lotus portal where they break through into the other realm and converse with entities. It's never once been like this for me - on the physical side it's always traumatic and uncomfortable in my experience.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread! I'll make a proper salvia-hardhead thread in the future after another attempt or three. I do want to second what the other folks said about having a sitter. This is particularly true if you're going to do ayahuasca. Potentially lots of nausea and puking and generally a difficult journey for most people. A traditional communal ayahuasca ritual would be a wonderful experience. I'd love to make a trip to South America and do something like this.

Mild doses of salvia tincture are great to do alone. Pretty much no risk of a breakthrough, but easy access to very deep meditational states that are just primed for self-exploration. It also, like weed, greatly enhances sensory experience. Music and touch are particularly lovely.

 

[Dream2Awaken]

A bunch of kids I didn't really know up in the mountains on a camping trip. No one had any idea what was going on, and neither did I, and to this day it's still weird seeing most of them.

This sounds like the root of the problem along with the vaporizing technique. The setting is extremely important! Adjust both and get back to us when you get back from the center of the universe

 

[Global]

However, I have experimented with Salvia on over a dozen trips. I'm what you'd call a serious hard-head. On doses that seem to blast most people off instantaneously - with a torch lighter, a bong, 30x, and holding smoke in for 30+seconds, I STILL couldn't break through. There was a tether that just would not sever. I would try to relax into it - a hard thing to do in a threshold sub/breakthrough salvia state. And every time I feel the same thing: "Why am I putting myself through this again?" It's always highly unpleasant physically, and quite frightening in how utterly real it all is. Like there's a fresh reminder every time I try that says "Did you forget? This shit's real. If you want to have a breakthrough, you have to die. Here we go!" And before my body can be physically split into a millionfold bristling cells, like a yo-yo I always get pulled back into my body on the couch.

I can relate with you on the "why am I putting myself through this again?" sentiments with salvia. I've felt it in particular regards towards salvia for the same reasons that you have, and also acid usually seems to be a bit more of a not-so-comfortable trip than I normally remember. I dropped some acid this summer at a Phish festival, and I remarked to some of my friends who were also on acid, "They should call this [the acid] 'This Again?' You always can't wait to get your hands on some or find a good setting to take it in, and then shortly after you do, you may find yourself inevitably remarking, 'this again?'" Luckily vaporizing DMT on acid is always a way for me to take off that physical/emotional edge of the trip where adding the DMT to the mix let's me feel completely comfortable and peaceful or downright euphoric for a few minutes. It also so happens that this combo has produced some of the most spiritually purifying experiences I've ever had, and I would recommend highly recommend it to most psychonauts.

 

[jamie]

IMO if you want healing, stop trying to break through..Trying to "Break through" is a sort of distraction and a concept people just like to talk about here..it will happen when it needs to happen and just because you do break through, does not mean you necessarily get a deeper healing than if you dont break through. Smoking DMT is not the most effective route for healing either but that is just my opinion. I would get some harmalas, rue or caapi and work with them for a while in a medative state of mind and then slowly add DMT plants once you are familiar with harmalas. Harmalas are some of the best psychedelic medicines for this sort of work I find.

If you want to work with salvia more for healing..quid it. Smoking it can be a waste of time if you want to use it for healing old trauma etc..might work for some but quidding is much more benificial I think. Smoking salvia is great for exploring the nature of reality and contemplating physical laws and other philisophical pursuits, but I dont find it necessarily theraputic in the same way that quidding is..smoking it can be very medative though.

 

[Sol Reverie]

Best advice I can give Shabadaha is just to take it slow.

I mean this in regards to your psychedelics, and I mean this in regards to your personal growth.

I've been through several lifetimes worth of really tough shit it seems during my time on earth and this is the best advice I feel I can give to anyone going through a rough patch. You really have to just relax and come to actively love yourself no matter how much your conceptual mind might find faults with who you think you are. This can be a struggle at times but its an essential practice for growing as a human being and coming to fully realize yourself.

Personally it was philosophy, religion, and psychedelics that came to bring me out of my worst times, times which I sincerely thought would never end. I instead thought those horrible times would just drag on forever until I offed myself.

But eventually I came out of that dark night of the soul, as some call it, and ultimately I'm happy to be here and explain to others the merits of life without forgetting the immense difficulties that often come with it.


A basic practice for transforming the mind that I often recommend to others in tough times is a breathing exercise where one gets into a comfortable position, closes the eyes, and breathes in, focusing on the in-breath as being filled with a bright white light which represents the most positive life giving energies of the universe. One then pauses and lets this in-breath full of positive energy and happiness fill every space in their body, relaxing it completely.

Then one breathes out deeply, the out-breath filled with a smoky black stream of negative energy which represents all the pain and discomfort of life, the destroying powers of universe. Going out with the out-breath is the sense of expelling all the negative forces from your mind and body, purifying yourself and leaving you relaxed and cleansed, light and supple.

Then you repeat the in-breath of white positive light along with happiness, and repeat the exhale of the black negative smoke along with suffering, making sure to focus with each breath on their corresponding forces using any personal reference that's necessary to summon the proper energy. Focus on the things that make you happiest on the in-breath, focus on the things that bring you down the most on the out-breath. Absorb the happiness, expel the suffering. Repeat ad infinitum.

Do this for about 2 minutes at first and see how it makes you feel. If you find that it works, gradually work your way up to longer periods and you may start to see a drastic change in your flexibility in being able to deal with your world. You may find yourself strangely relaxed and at peace despite the circumstances.

Regardless of whether you find success with this particular practice, I wish you the best of luck with much love in realizing your true self and always remember: you're never truly alone.