James Hawkins, Medical psychotherapist

Published in JHH 19.2- Embodiment and bodywork

‘A person is a spatially and temporally limited piece of what we call the “universe”. He experiences himself and his feelings as separated from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The pursuit of liberation from this bondage is the only object of real religion.’

I trained both as a medical doctor and as a psychotherapist. Going up to university in the late 1960s, it’s no surprise that I’m intrigued by the re-emergence and therapeutic potential of psychedelics. I have written and lectured a good deal about these topics – see for example on my own website at goodmedicine.org.uk>good knowledge>psychedelics or on the psychedelic health professionals’ site at psychedelicnetwork.org.uk>lectures-and- tutorials. Over two years ago, I helped found the PHP Network and we’re currently in the process of setting ourselves up as an educational charity. Do visit the PHP website for information about a wealth of opportunities. We provide including a weekly newsletter, podcasts, journal clubs, a linked book club, orientation/integration groups, supervision, lectures and also (legal) psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands.

I very much agree that ‘The plural of anecdote is not data’, but sometimes personal experiences and qualitative studies can act as scouts scoping out the countryside and suggesting territory that might later be worth exploring further both by individuals and by the slower moving heavy artillery of randomised and other formal research trials. I want to comment on five areas here: first, and a bit more fully, how I personally have found psychedelics and meditation enhance each other; second the value of trying different settings/activities when using psychedelics; third the question of whether one trips with a sitter or friend or group or alone; fourth the potential helpfulness of using some form of recording device to make notes during the trip; and fifth a brief discussion of ways I have found helpful for personal integration.

My personal psychedelic experience involved a number of LSD trips in the late 1960s and early 70s. Then after a long gap I took a series of legal psilocybin truffle trips in the Netherlands. I have visited the Netherlands on a series of occasions and, of course, other psychedelic drugs are readily available there too. I am not a hugely experienced ‘psychonaut’ but I have ‘journeyed’ on various psychedelic substances 30 to 40 times in my life. I have also meditated regularly for more than 50 years, have gone on a series of meditation retreats, visited a variety of monasteries and ashrams, and for a while taught meditation. I’m very fortunate – self-assessment using the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) (Barrett et al, 2015) suggests I am nearly always blessed with ‘a full mystical experience’ when I trip. This seems rather a high frequency and I am very confident that long meditation experience greatly helps me to approach these journeys in a state of humility, calmness and surrender. Probably too, secure childhood ‘attachment’ and a fortunate life course/situation also contribute. Intriguingly, I suspect that tracking ‘ego-dissolution’ through most of my trips (see charts and other details below) also helps me navigate deeper. As has been said, ‘What gets measured, gets managed’, although ‘managed’ is rather a poor description for what feels more like nudging the prow of the boat repeatedly into the centre of the river when on a trip.

Besides ‘ego dissolution’, it seems probable that another good predictor of long-term benefit in general population participants is intensity of positive emotions – for example, love, beauty, reverence and gratitude – experienced at times during the trip (McCulloch et al, 2022). I personally have found that including these qualities in one’s initial trip intentions and then using practices like breath focus, compassion meditation and gratitude practices during the trip itself, can often deeply enhance these experiences.

How have I personally found psychedelics and meditation can enhance each other? Talking with a friend recently, I said, ‘Maybe one way of looking at it is that, if one went on a week’s meditation retreat say, you might reach places that you very rarely, if ever, reach in your daily practice of meditation. But somehow having swum out into that bigger lake enriches your daily practice. It gives it a context; it changes how you see it a bit. I think psychedelics are like that for me.’ For most of us, high dose psychedelics are very likely to produce profound learning opportunities. As the meditation teacher Sam Harris put it so memorably (riffing on a well-known remark by the ethnobotanist Terence McKenna), ‘If you teach someone to meditate or to do yoga or to go on pilgrimage to some holy mountain, nothing is guaranteed to happen. Yet if you are given five dried grams of magic mushrooms or DMT or some other potent psychedelic, whoever you are, a freight train of significance is going to be coming your way in a matter of moments.’

Nowadays, both when taking psychedelics and when meditating, I use the same process of ‘letting go of everything’. This involves a psychological process of surrender which seems so centrally important (Russ & Elliott, 2017; Russ et al, 2019) and this is mirrored in repeated physical release of the body and its boundaries (Dambrun, 2016). I’m reminded of the poet e e cummings’ wonderful words: ‘Seeker of truth – follow no path – all paths lead where – truth is here’. On high dose psilocybin nearly three years ago now, this truth/experience hit me pretty much like a train in what was then the deepest spiritual experience of my life.

And this is interesting. I do feel that psychedelic experience has deepened the surrender, depth and dissolution of my regular meditation practice… and has done something similar for dance and love-making and when in relationships or in nature. But more important,I suspect, is not just the effects while engaged in various activities, but also what feels like a shift in my internal structure. So again, speaking with a friend, I said something like, ‘I’m already so very fortunate in my life situation (relationships, work, health) – it’s a bit like living in a rather beautiful house. What it feels psychedelics have done is to open all the doors and windows… I feel both bigger and smaller… softer, emptier, more loving.’ It’s a wonderful thing to feel and I hope there is at least some truth to it!

So, ego dissolution feels central to psychedelics’ benefits. This is the territory highlighted by the Einstein quotation at the start of this article… ‘liberation from this bondage (of apparent separation) is the only object of real religion’. Savouring and simply being present is another related potential benefit – both while meditating and in life more generally. Over 50 years ago, at university, during a particularly special LSD trip, I wrote, ‘Everything is and almost bursts with being so’. Huxley described this so well in his book The doors of perception. And so central as well to exploration of psychedelics and meditation is ‘the river of kindness’ that has been a repeating theme in trips over these last years.

So, psychedelics have infused my day-to-day meditation practice and vice versa. And most importantly, both psychedelics and meditation for me underline the centrality of letting go of everything, of savouring, gratitude and being present, of opening the doors of the heart even further, and of support for living more fully what feels true. And I am not any kind of saint and I tumble into all kinds of self-centredness and other foolishness very regularly, and I think I am also less dismissive of the so-called ‘ego’ and find these internal ‘executive structures’ are often a helpful, kind caretaker.

As well as these comments about how I personally have found psychedelics and meditation enhance each other, I also want to say a little about settings, company, note-taking, and integration. As for settings and activities, I understand that most recent research on psychedelics has involved lying down with eye mask and playlist. This is fine, but other settings and activities are very well worth exploring too. Being in nature, dancing, relating to others and for me especially, meditating while on psychedelics are further ways of going forward with these practices. There is some evidence that psychedelic experience may especially affect activities that one practises while taking the psychedelic – so Kettner et al (2019) in their paper.

From egoism to ecoism comment, ‘The frequency of lifetime psychedelic use was positively correlated with nature relatedness at baseline. Nature relatedness was significantly increased two weeks, four weeks and two years after the psychedelic experience. This increase was positively correlated with concomitant increases in psychological well-being and was dependent on the extent of ego-dissolution and the perceived influence of natural surroundings during the acute psychedelic state.’ If psychedelics especially nourish nature-connectedness when one has been out in nature during the trip itself, it seems likely that psychedelics may especially infuse meditation practice if one meditates while tripping. This is certainly my experience and the way I personally spend most of my time when on psychedelics. On a high dose, it can feel that sitting and walking meditation are too difficult and one just wants to lie down. Lying down is fine, but with a little practice sitting meditation and some walking meditation are likely to come more easily as well.

Third, what about tripping with others or on one’s own? A metaphor I think of here is the similarity to walking in the Scottish mountains. I have often been into the mountains with friends, I have trained with guides to learn how to look after myself in these potentially dangerous environments, and I have had many journeys into these wonderful hills on my own. All have been precious and being on my own or with others lead to overlapping but different experiences. Going into these potentially wild, mountain regions without planning, maps, knowledge and fitness would be foolish (especially on one’s own). To me, it seems much the same for journeys into the psychedelic mountains.

The fourth area I want to say a little about is the possible use of a recording device – for example a mobile or a dictaphone – while one is tripping. The first time I tried this, it felt clunky, difficult and, at times, a bit sacrilegious. As with other challenges, I am surprised how quickly one can learn to ‘function’ while tripping. Yes, sometimes I’m blown so out of time and space that there isn’t a functioning component of myself to operate a dictaphone, but mostly I can manage. This is made much easier because I usually trip sitting meditating, not lying down with a playlist. I typically record a brief set of comments – maybe a minute or less – roughly every half hour. Usually this includes off-the-cuff 0 (none) to 100 (extreme) estimates of ego dissolution, emotional intensity, and challenge. After the trip I transcribe all the comments and sometimes make a chart of particularly ego dissolution changes over the course of the trip. I find working with the recorded comments when I come to integrate my experiences to be wonderfully helpful.

And lastly, I want to say a few things about post-trip integration. Psychedelics induce neuroplasticity (de Vos et al, 2021; Lepow et al, 2021) which potentially makes the process of taking lessons from trips into one’s life a good deal easier. I nearly always go into a trip with one or more intentions. There is some evidence this promotes better outcomes (Haijen et al, 2018), as long as the intentions are held lightly and paralleled by an openness to possibly finding that the trip’s major lessons may be unexpected and surprising (Russ et al, 2019; Wolff et al, 2020). I use the recordings I have made as a major help with integration. I may – in the first day or so afterwards – describe the trip to a friend and record the description so that I can revisit what I have said. Quite frequently I draw the trip as a picture. I may well write a poem about it. I sometimes commission artworks to remind myself of key lessons. I may well incorporate these lessons too into meditation practices that I use several times daily. In altered states of consciousness, I can revisit the feelings of the trip (Lynn & Evans 2017; Amigó, 2021). I may well make action intentions too. Some are fairly well known like gratitude and appreciation practices and nature walks. Some will be more idiosyncratic and specific to the messages of the trip. I’m a great believer in the remark made to me by a psychedelic guide and friend, ‘If you don’t change, you don’t change’. Wanting to alter longstanding personal patterns is common and typically ineffective (Miller et al, 2019; Baranski et al, 2019). As Hudson wrote in You have to follow through (Hudson et al, 2018), ‘Participants provided self-report ratings of their personality traits and were able to freely accept and complete weekly ‘challenges’ – pre-written behavioural goals that would pull their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in line with their desired traits … only actually completing challenges (ie performing trait-typical behaviours) predicted trait change over time. Thus, merely wanting to change does not appear to be sufficient to evoke trait growth; successfully changing one’s personality traits may require actively and successfully implementing behaviours to change oneself.’

In these two articles on psychedelics and meditation, I have mentioned much of the recent relevant research in this area. I have also said a bit about my own experiences, as sometimes this more qualitative approach can throw up useful leads and insights. Chart 1 illustrates four trips using psilocybin truffles. These are the quantities that we use on the PHP network retreats that we run in the Netherlands, so it’s encouraging to see the high mystical experience questionnaire scores. Chart 2 illustrates that MDMA can also induce strong mystical experiences too, especially with the right kind of set and setting.

I mentioned that sometimes I write poems after trips. Asking Three Times links with psilocybin. I would like to quote the final words:

And the blessing:

This is the countryside where the outbreath is infinite.

This is the direction of letting go.

This is the last staging post… where we can meet our brothers & sisters

as they take off the last of their egos… smile…. smile… at each other…

at our good fortune… as we step forward to swim out into nothingness.

Going beyond space & time… on the shore and beyond the shore…

giving up all these molecules and atoms into the universe…

and realising that’s how it already is… we don’t own this space.

There are no walls… they’re illusions. Boundaries… they’re illusions.

Swimming out into the vastness, until there’s nobody swimming.

This is the countryside where the outbreath is infinite.

Swimming out into the vastness, until there’s nobody swimming.

References

Amigó S (2021) Inducing effects of illegal drugs to improve mental health by the self-regulation therapy: A pilot study. Preprints. doi: 10.20944/preprints202109.0134.v1

Baranski E, Gray J, Morse P & Dunlop W (2019) From desire to development? A multi-sample, idiographic examination of volitional personality change. Journal of Research in Personality, 85. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103910

Barrett FS, Johnson MW, Griffiths R (2015) Validation of the revised mystical experience: questionnaire in experimental sessions with psilocybin. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 29(11) 1182–1190. doi: 10.1177/0269881115609019

Dambrun M (2016) When the dissolution of perceived body boundaries elicits happiness: The effect of selflessness induced by a body scan meditation. Conscious Cogn 46, 89–98. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.09.013

de Vos CMH, Mason NL, Kuypers K (2021) Psychedelics and neuro plasticity: A systematic review unraveling the biological underpinnings of psychedelics. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12(1575). doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.724606

Haijen ECHM, Kaelen M, Roseman L et al (2018) Predicting responses to psychedelics: A prospective study. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 9(897). doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2018.00897

Hudson NW, Briley DA, Chopik W & Derringer J (2018) You have to follow through: Attaining behavioral change goals predicts volitional personality change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(40) 839–857. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000221.

Kettner H, Gandy S, Haijen E & Carhart-Harris R (2019) From egoism to ecoism: Psychedelics increase nature relatedness in a state-mediated and context-dependent manner. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(24) 5147. /doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245147

Lepow L, Morishita H & Yehuda R (2021) Critical period plasticity as a framework for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 15(1165). doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.710004

Lynn SJ & Evans J (2017) Hypnotic suggestion produces mystical-type experiences in the laboratory: A demonstration proof. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1) 23–37. doi.org/10.1037/cns0000105

McCulloch D, Grzywacz MZ, Madsen M, Jenson P et al (2022) Psilocybin-induced mystical-type experiences are related to persisting positive effects: A quantitative and qualitative report. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 13. doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2022.841648

Miller TJ, Baranski EN, Dunlop W & Ozer D (2019) Striving for change: The prevalence and correlates of personality change goals. Journal of Research in Personality 80, 10–16.

Russ SL, Carhart-Harris RL, Maruyama G & Elliott MS (2019) Replication and extension of a model predicting response to psilocybin. Psychopharmacology, 236, 3221–3230. doi: 10.1007/s00213-019-05279-z

Russ SL & Elliott MS (2017) Antecedents of mystical experience and dread in intensive meditation. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1) 38–53. doi.org/10.1037/cns0000119

Wolff M, Evens R, Mertens L et al (2020) Learning to let go: A cognitive behavioral model of how psychedelic therapy promotes acceptance. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11(5). doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00005