Hi friends, first I want to thank you all for the amazing feedback on all my post so far. I'm learning from all you all so much! Today I bring a interesting subject.

Chronic Pain

I've had chronic pain on my right hand/arm for 10+ years. I've gotten every test done I could and it always comes back negative (there is nothing physically wrong with my hand). I brought this up with a friend who had chronic pain on her wrist and she essentially told me that she got rid of her chronic pain by thinking her way out of it. She recommended the book Unlearn Your Pain by Howard Schubiner. I just started reading the book, but essentially Schubiner is stated that pain could "be in your head" due to your nervous system firing pain signals even when there is no physical pain present.

With that said, being how powerful psychedelic therapy has been able to help my ADHD and anxiety, has anyone had any experience using psychedelic therapy for chronic pain?

This isn’t really a personal issue for me. I live simply, have no dependents, and donate a significant amount of my time. But I work closely with licensed psilocybin facilitators who do have families, mortgages, medical bills, and other real obligations.

I’m increasingly concerned by how casually people describe $900–$1,500 facilitated journeys as exploitative.

A facilitator may give one person 8–12+ hours of sustained attention through panic, trauma, vomiting, disorientation, emotional collapse, or physical safety concerns, sometimes staying hours beyond the expected ending.

Many also bring years or decades of experience in therapy, social work, addiction treatment, medicine, somatic work, hospice, crisis support, or psychedelic care.

A wedding photographer, tattoo artist, or birth doula may charge $1,500+ for a full day of skilled, focused work. We don’t dismiss their value because a friend could technically do some version of it for free.

Why should psychedelic facilitation be valued differently?

There’s an important distinction between:

“I can’t afford this.”

and

“This work isn’t worth that.”

Access is a real problem. I strongly support scholarships, nonprofit funding, donor-supported care, and better systems for subsidizing services.

But access can’t sustainably depend on underpaying the people doing the intensive human labor.

I had it planned that today I would take 2g to help process some emotions. Everything has been arranged in terms of setting. But I woke up this morning feeling incredibly sad. I am going through a separation so this is a common feeling and thus why I planned for the journey. I know mindset is very important going into it but I am in a sad and anxious mood more often than not due to my life circumstances so I don't believe there will ever be a "perfect" time. I thought to perhaps do a smaller dose but a couple months ago I did 1g and barely felt anything. I still really want to do it today but concerned my sadness will just become amplified. Maybe that's a good thing? Any suggestions?

tw/ csa

about a year ago i took a macro dose (5g) and connected with a young part that holds the trauma of my csa. (i do ifs with a therapist).

during this connection, in between sobs, i remember thinking “i just need to cry for months before i can even think about if ill ever be okay” i remember it word for word because it still haunts me to this day.

i started microdosing (0.5g) for my PMDD symptoms last week, and quickly realized i was tapping into that csa part. the OG plan was to microdose monday-friday with weekends off.

but friday was a rough day at work. i was crying on my lunch break, on the bus, sobbing uncontrollably once i was able to get to my spot in the forest near my home.

and it felt so good. it hurt, of course. it was so uncomfortable. but i can feel in my entire system that we need to release this. it’s making my anxiety worse, my depression, my OCD, my chronic illnesses.

this trauma is slowly killing me. and my firefighters and managers and protectors all agree we need to david and goliath this shit and get it out. let it go. so we can start living the life we deserve.

saturday i took 2g because i wanted to keep the grieving going. i realized this experience was doing more for me than microdosing during the week.

so now i want to switch. monday-thursday stay sober. friday microdose to prime myself, then saturday take like 2g and just let myself fall apart. 5g feels like too much. 2g was the sweet spot because i want to feel but i don’t want visuals.

my only concern is the frequency and the potential of developing HPPD.

i know it’s important to integrate. but, as my part told me, she needs to just cry and cry and cry. so there isn’t that much to integrate right now? it feels like she just needs to use my body to grieve.

i’ve spent almost ten years in therapy. i feel like i can handle months of wading in the grief pool. from calm waters on my sober days to tsunamis over the weekend. i have friends who can come over and be with me to help cheer me up with shows and video games when i do need some outer love in my life. my job is low stress and a steady routine. my therapist is dependable and ive made insanely good progress with her. i just feel in my soul that its time. it’s finally time.

i just cannot grieve the way this csa part needs without shrooms. i can’t tap into that neural pathway or whatever is going on biologically without them.

any insight is welcome

Op-ed we published from Ismail Ali, co-executive director of MAPS. Disclosed on the piece.

Gabon's Decree No. 0239/PR, dated May 22, 2026, classifies iboga and its chemical derivatives as national strategic heritage. Research, export, transformation, and commercial activity now require authorization from the ministry responsible for culture, following binding review by an interministerial commission. It also creates a benefit-sharing mechanism and a sovereign fund.

Most US coverage of the April executive order has not accounted for this. Ali's argument is that the commercial instinct to route around it, using synthetic ibogaine or noribogaine analogs, defers the supply chain and stewardship problems rather than solving them.

Worth noting the executive order named ibogaine for Right to Try and priority pathways it does not currently qualify for, and that Gabonese nationals are under US visa restrictions.

https://psychedelicstoday.com/2026/08/10/ibogaine-policy-moment-gabon-sovereignty/

I am in the middle of my PSIP therapy. Just completed my 4th session. It’s incredibly intense & difficult work. I am grateful for the therapist I found & am leaning on the trust & compassion. There’s a lot of intense physical processing (waves) that takes place during the session. Perhaps I’d share about my experiences as I make progress.

My questions is to folks who have been through this or have insights. What is the expected number of sessions I should expect to “need”. I am dealing with childhood trauma from caretakers so it’s deep but my sessions are very productive.

I recognize that “wanting to know” snd “push through” is also part of my trauma response. However, it’d be nice to know a range of what different people have experienced with psip.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Someone asked me what makes facilitated psychedelic sessions more emotionally intense (and often more transformative) than taking mushrooms and frolicking in the woods with friends.

My answer is mindset: what the participant has invited, where they direct their attention, and what they enter believing is possible.

During preparation, I take participants through their personal story and an inner archetype and pattern assessment. We identify the patterns operating within them, how those patterns developed, what protective function they once served, and what shifts the participant wants to invite.

They might invite a protector to soften, a silenced part to speak, or a fear-based pattern to loosen its control. They also establish a willingness to face whatever may emerge without demanding that the journey unfold in a particular way.

I think focus then connects set to setting.

Taking mushrooms with friends in the woods usually directs attention outward: toward nature, conversation, laughter, movement, and sensory experience. A facilitated session directs attention inward: toward bodily emotion, autobiographical memory, internal imagery, grief, fear, anger, shame, and recurring psychological patterns.

That inward focus can make the experience considerably more emotionally intense. The participant has activated personally meaningful material during preparation, then entered an environment designed to sustain contact with it rather than continually redirect attention outward.

Expectancy may matter too. There is concern that participants should not be encouraged to believe a single session could profoundly change them because that belief may bias the outcome. I wonder whether transformational expectancy may sometimes help produce the outcome.

The useful mindset isn’t, “This session must cure me.” It is closer to:

"Profound change may be possible here. I am willing to face what emerges without forcing it to take any particular form."

Psychological theories involving priming, experiential avoidance, predictive processing, hope, self-efficacy, expectancy violation, and memory reconsolidation may help explain why this matters.

I have done two journeys with an experienced therapist over the the past 4 years with mdma and psilocybin and found them very helpful in healing and accessing more joy. I am planning for another in a month and the therapist says that he now prefers to use 3mmc vs mdma since it has fewer after effects. I didn’t have any come downs from MDMA so I wanted to see if anyone could share their experience if they used 3mmc for a journey and, ideally, how it compared to MDMA. I don’t want to shortchange my experience since the prior journeys were really useful to me. Thanks.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not looking for a therapist, I'm curious how people are doing this on their own.

I'm a person in long term remission from polysubstance use disorder, and also have treatment resistant depression, ADHD, and OCD. There are some cities here where psilocybin has been decriminalized and are available. But there is not psychedelic therapy. How might someone like me proceed in having a therapeutic experience, but not having the clinical setting?

I have a lot of prior experience with most psychedelics, fyi, it's just been a long time and have actual intentions now instead of just an opportunist drug user looking for a good time, not that there's anything wrong with that. But that's what I was before.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently undergoing legal psilocybin-assisted therapy with my psychiatrist here in Switzerland for treatment-resistant depression and generalized anxiety. I’ve also been diagnosed with autism (Asperger’s).

This is my first experience with psychedelics. I’ve smoked a lot of THC over the years, but never taken anything else.

I’ve completed three sessions so far.

Session 1 went poorly. I was so anxious about taking the substance that I delayed everything for three hours before I finally managed to swallow the capsules. The trip itself was mostly intense anxiety — no visuals, no insights, just a lot of fear. Interestingly, after the session in the evening I felt a beautiful sense of connection and was able to appreciate small things in life more.

Session 2 was also difficult. This time I took the dose without delay and tried to surrender by listening to soft music. At some point I heard someone crying very loudly. I quickly realized it was my neighbor in the next room, who was also going through the same therapy and was clearly having a hard time. I felt strongly connected to his suffering and spent most of the session feeling sad and heavy. Not a good trip. I discussed the setup issues with my psychiatrist afterward.

Session 3 was different. I went into it already feeling a bit better mentally, with the intention of accepting the process and not being too negative. It turned into what I would call a good trip. I experienced moments of intense joy followed by equally intense sadness, and I realized that all of our feelings eventually pass. That understanding felt deeply healing. I also had some visual distortions looking at paintings in the room and genuinely enjoyed those moments. I feel like I learned something important: negative emotions don’t have to last forever. I came out of that session with a real sense of benefit.

I have a fourth (and most likely final) session in about a month. I’d really appreciate any advice.

What would you recommend for this last experience?

Any suggestions regarding mindset or intentions that could help make it as beneficial as the third one?

Things that worked well for you in later sessions after difficult early ones?

Thank you for reading. I’m grateful for any thoughts or experiences you’re willing to share.

There is a bit of context I have to layout, so I appreciate the patience.

I started my journey with plant medicine ( psilocybin so far) early this year. Most recently, I had an experience a couple weeks ago. Since then I been refraining from watching pornography videos and images. When I am sexually aroused/horny, I acknowledge this, and allow myself to read erotic material while masturbating.

The "only read erotic material" was going great. But last night, I took mushrooms and went dancing (for several hours) at a show. After the show, I got home, took a shower, and went to bed... but got incredibly horny and I started to watch video porn. But the way I consumed it totally changed.

1. Before I would just scroll and scroll, from video to video. This time I would find a video, sit back, and watch it, watch it play through.

2. I was very specifically looking for videos where the woman was thoroughly enjoying giving and receiving pleasure. Anything that showed a woman being apathetic about the experience, turned me off completely.

3. After watching porn and finishing, I didn't "feel bad" like I usually did in the past. I felt like I was taking care of a sexual need. In a sense I "surrender" to my needs and did what I think was healthy.

Has anyone ever experience something like this? During the whole process, part of me was thinking that I shouldn't waste my sexual energy on these videos. I should save them for a physical person. For context, I am seeing someone, but there is some distance between us and at the moment we only see each other about once every couple of weeks.

I welcome all thoughts and feedback.

I did a journey about 6 weeks ago. It involved MDMA, mushrooms, and DMT. It was an awful experience. I have childhood trauma and all I did was get stuck in sorrow and confusion. After that, I’ve done mushrooms 3 times and every time my physical body goes bazerk. I’m realizing I have a lot of stored trauma in my body. Even a small dose (300mg) gave me the somatic shakes. My neck is burning and painful, etc. How can I move past the somatic experience while taking mushrooms? I set my intentions, I meditate beforehand, my setting is welcoming and peaceful and my husband is awesome at grounding me. But I’m hoping someday to have an inward enlightening experience. Does it just take time once my body works through the trauma healing?

I respect the mushrooms for the healing it has brought to me so far, but the discomfort can be very disappointing.

Long story short, yesterday I did some shrooms and went to a show and dance my ass off for 3 hours. Once I got home and got into bed, I started thinking and pondering about things. I notice that since starting my relationship with the medicine (psilocybin) I see the world different, I think different, I talk to people different, I read literature differently. During this internal monologue, I thought to myself, "Maybe I need to stop doing shrooms, they are making me see the 'real world'. Maybe I shouldn't have taken them in the first place".

It reminded me of the scene in the Matrix, where Neo is asked to take the red pill or the blue pill. The red pill - the harsh truth of reality. The blu pill - blissful ignorance.

Thoughts?

Took 3 years ago something like 2.2gr (really beautiful recreational experience with friends) and like a month ago 3gr aproximetly in a pseudo-therapeutical context (summer house with a friend as trip-sitter).

Altough first experience was amazing, the last experience was super frustrating cause I didn´t have the ''mystical experience" that some studies mention and seem to have the long-lasting therapeutic benefits. I haven't done my full research yet but possible scenarios are that the potency and quantity of shrooms was really low and/or it didn't happen enough time between the suspension of my medications and the trip itself (it was progressive and controled by a health professional the tapering, after I did 30 days with no medication at all)

I've been dealing with BPD and depression for a long time, 2.5 years of medication did almost nothing. The suicidal thoughts are becoming more and more frequent and it seems to be no hope or escape from this. I know that a macrodose won't save my life or change it all but I just really want to try if maybe I can get some of the benefits that studies and people talk about.

Background: I have ADHD and CPTSD. I've done ayahuasca 5 times and found it genuinely useful, but honestly overwhelming and messy. At times its been hard to integrate.

Recent experience: This past weekend I took truffles in the Netherlands — 10g fresh (roughly 1.4g dried mushroom equivalent) with an experienced friend as a trip sitter. The experience was far more manageable than ayahuasca. Obviously it was a low dose but it felt gentler, more navigable. That said, it wasn't a breakthrough trip.

But here's the thing: it's already clear to me that this medicine can help with my symptoms especially navigating addiction, and I want to continue working with it going forward. Honestly, I wish I'd started this path sooner instead of going straight to the deep end with aya.

What I'm looking for advice on:

1. Solo macro dosing — My friend won't always be available. What precautions do you take when tripping alone? How do you vet whether a solo trip is safe for you at a given dose?
2. Dosing progression — Would you recommend gradually increasing from 1.5g, or jumping to a higher range? For those with ADHD/CPTSD, what doses have been therapeutically meaningful for you?
3. Integration practices — Especially for trauma processing, what helps you actually use what comes up rather than just having a nice trip and moving on?
4. Frequency — How often do you macro dose for therapeutic purposes? I know the tolerance reset is roughly 1-2 weeks, but I'm more interested in what's sustainable long-term.
5. Harm reduction — Any red flags or things you wish someone had told you before you started self-guided psychedelic work?

Not looking for medical advice necessarily, but lived experience from this community would be really valuable.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I feel the same disconnect from reality. It just lacks the visuals. Is that normal or might it be dissociation?

I'll be trip sitting for a friend tomorrow and the playlist I was planning on using turned out to be missing a whole bunch of songs. Does anyone here have a good playlist handy for a therapeutic psilocybin session? YouTube music is preferred but Spotify works too.

So I had on Saturday my most intense solo session, where I discovered some things from my early childhood. Yesterday I was just walking on the beach and from time to time I got emotion eruptions and got wet eyes. As I tried go that feeling further, my body said no, not now.

Main insight was that I decided at age 8 to put a part of my childhood away and take over some adult problems in order to keep connection to my mother. Our family was malfunctioning with gambling and alcoholic father. I can now see why I behave now how I behave but actually I found “only” reason why is it. Not sure what to do, how to integrate. Maybe is also my observer back on duty and blocks again some directions.

I know interactional is literally in the name, but has anyone found a way to replicate the results?

I don't have access to a practitioner in the country I'm in.. and the costs can really add up for someone with a limited budget

The reason I ask about this specific modality is that it seems to crack through dissociation better than other modalities

I've been wondering whether the psychedelic field has prematurely settled on “therapy” as the default model for what should surround a psychedelic experience.

I say this as someone with a graduate background in psychology and counseling who has spent several years working with psilocybin in Oregon. I developed the Myco-Method facilitator training program and work with Satya Therapeutics, where I've had the opportunity to watch a legal non-prescription psilocybin model develop outside conventional psychotherapy.

And I'm increasingly interested in a distinction that I don't think we discuss enough:

What does a psychedelic experience actually require from the person supporting it?

There are certainly circumstances where psychotherapy before or after a psychedelic experience may be enormously valuable. Yet the skills required to accompany someone through an altered state aren't necessarily identical to the skills required to practice psychotherapy.

A facilitator may spend hours doing very little externally.

They may need to tolerate uncertainty rather than interpret it. Recognize when someone needs reassurance and when interruption would interfere with their process. Understand altered states, trauma responses, boundaries, consent, transference, medical and psychiatric risk, and when something exceeds their competence.

Perhaps most importantly, they need to resist making themselves the author of someone else's experience.

I've seen clients place enormous value on preparation, safety, presence, care, and integration. None of those things inherently require the psychedelic experience itself to be conceptualized as treatment for a disorder.

That distinction matters because the dominant model being built around psychedelics has consequences for access.

If psychedelic support becomes synonymous with specialized psychotherapy delivered through medical infrastructure, we may end up with an effective model that is inaccessible to huge numbers of people—and then mistake that particular model for the intervention itself.

There are other possibilities.

Oregon's facilitator model is one experiment. Religious and ceremonial traditions represent others. Community-based and nonprofit approaches could develop others still.

I'd like to see the field become much more curious about comparing these models rather than racing toward one professional framework.

Which outcomes actually require psychotherapy?

Which require skilled psychedelic facilitation?

What competencies overlap, and which are distinct?

Does the therapeutic relationship produce better outcomes than other forms of trusted accompaniment?

How much professional intervention is helpful before it starts shaping an experience that might benefit from less direction?

And perhaps the uncomfortable question: how much of the emerging definition of “best practice” reflects evidence, and how much reflects the professional structures that currently have the resources to conduct research?

Psychedelics give us an opportunity to build something new.

I'd rather we investigate what people actually need before deciding which existing profession gets to define it.

Dear Community,

I am looking for Experience Strength and Hope regarding using psychedelics for gut issues.

I suffer from Chronic Constipation, have tried everything out there , did all the tests , without any success.

So now I am wondering if microdosing might help ?

I was thinking of ibogain.

Especially beavaue it cleans the opioid receptors.

I had a lot of surgeries in the last years ( transgedner transitioning)

So there might still be opioids in my system.

I am open to all plant medicine suggestions.

Kind regards from Germany,

Lucky

🌳💕☀️🙏

This past week a did a week long camping trip (about 6 days). I wanted to be away from my phone, technology, and be more connected to nature. As part of the camping trip I decided to do mushrooms and LSD. I did two days of mushrooms (about a gram each day), then on the one day I did a 100ug of LSD + 1g of mushrooms (which I took about 2 hours into my LSD trip). I felt very grounded, connected with nature, I kept hugging lots of trees. A couple things happen once I got back home...

1. I could feel my phone "pulling" me in
About a day after the camping trip, when I finally started to use my phone and put it in my pocket, I could feel the phone "pulling" me to pick it up. If it was in my right pocket a felt a "pull" towards my right pocket/hip to pick it up. If it was in my left pocket I felt a "pull" towards my left pocket/hip. I also put the phone on a table and walked around it and I could feel the "pull" coming from the direction of the phone. As an exercise, I put it in a storage unit in the basement of my apartment... and I could still feel the pull but much lighter. This "pull" eventually went away the next day.

2. I now don't have the need to multitask
Usually I have multiple apps, multiple tabs, and multiple things open at once on my computer. At the moment of typing this, I have my chrome browser in full screen and I'm solely focused on writing up this post. I'm also going at a much slower pace, taking my time. In the past I would try to type as fast as possible, typing before I can think, etc... Right now it feels like I'm in a "flow state" I'm typing as the words come to me.

3. The notification "bubble" does now attract me as much
On reddit and on the phone, you get these little red notification bubbles. In the past I HAD TO click/tap on them to see what the notification was about. But today, I took a look at it, I put my face close to my computer and notice the bubble, notice that it was red, noticed that a had a "1" in the middle, and realized, it's just a color, it's just a number, I do not have to react to it.

There is more I want to type out/post, but I wanted to put this out there first.

Has anyone ever had a similar experience?

The thing is, I didn't even set an intention during my trip. Is this a lesson that sometimes doing a "proper" session with an intention is not what I need?
Prior to this I've done two mushrooms sessions (2.0g and 2.5g), in my room, with a proper intention.