What is Psychedelic Integration?

Psychedelics are blowing up!  They occupy that sweet spot of being dangerous and edgy but just mainstream enough because Michael Pollan's research shows "good results".  WIth this explosion comes a career I never thought I’d see– the psychedelic integration specialist!  I wish I had been able to talk to one of those when I was a younger person exploring psychedelic worlds.  But alas, I had to make my own way or read what the psychedelic pioneers of the 1960’s and 1970’s said.     

What does a psychedelic integration specialist do? ​​They help the psychedelic traveler “integrate” the content of their psychedelic journey.  Sounds great right?  Someone who will be there to help you “process” painful memories or traumas, or help you remember beautiful insights.  Who wouldn’t want help from someone trained in psychedelic integration? 

Here’s where I want to ask you a couple questions– why does the psychedelic journey need to be “integrated?”  What is the content of the psychedelic journey if not things that have been inside of us all along?  If this is the case, then the psychedelic journey reveals a part of our self that has been “unintegrated” or fractured. What part of us is that?  

It's the part of us that our families, culture, society and ultimately we ourselves have been suppressing for millenia. Usually it's the “bad” part– the part that doesn’t fit in with someone else’s idea of who we should be, what we should feel, or who makes a “good” member of our family or society. In my work, “Integration” is not so much of the psychedelic experience but of this suppressed side.

And that’s one of the main issues I have with the modern psychedelic integration framework– it’s the psychedelic “experience” they try to help people integrate rather than the big picture of the fractured self. If we start to see the integration of the self as the goal we now pull the rug out from under many of our concepts around life, relationships and society. More questions arise, and the nature and goal of integration get wild.

One way this shows up for me in in my dialogue with integration therapists. I’m always surprised when they advocate for their own compartmentalization in the therapeutic space. Isn’t compartmentalization the opposite of integration? How can you help someone integrate their fractured self if you are actively fracturing your own self in your relation with them?

Within the modern therapeutic framework, compartmentalization is a key to creating a “safespace” for vulnerable people. In this model, when the therapist’s shit arises in relation to a client, the therapist should compartmentalize to minimize the effect on the client. I get it– keep your own shit separate so they can have their own journey and process. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from psychedelics it's that those compartmentalizations are illusions. Integrating the “knowledge of self” that psychedelics teach means integrating the knowledge of the interconnected fibers and knots that weave together all of life. In this model, if you want to help someone you better have your shit together, because it will (consciously or unconsciously) come out and entangle with everyone. If you don’t have your shit together (a nebulous concept I know!) then at least you should be in a community that actively engages in exploring your wounds and making them conscious.

This is also reflected in the type of training required to help people in the shamanic model.  In this model, you don’t learn your medicine by going to a weekend workshop.  You go out in nature and take the medicines.  You fast, pray, work with the spirits, and encounter your own wounds time and time again until something breaks inside of you and a little drop of spirit emerges.  When you have that little drop of spirit, maybe you can start to be of use to people. 

This “drop of spirit” is the result of our wounds transforming into medicine. Wanna help people?  Do the internal work, transform your wounds and find your medicine.