5 Key Techniques to Hulk Smash Through Psychedelic Plateaus π΅βπ«
How to keep evolving in psychedelic therapy.
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"Take it easy dude. But take it!" β Terence McKenna
I've been forming the foundational pillars of what will become the future of my work-play. If you've been following, you see the themes emerging.
I call them the 3 B's: Beef (animal-based/ancestral living), Bufo (entheogens & psychedelic therapy), & Bitcoin (sound money & bulletproof monetary standards). The last pillarβunfortunately not a βBββis Zen/Ch'an.
Psychedelics are an incredible force for awakening, personal development, and ongoing individual evolution.
I have spent thousands of hours swimming the psychedelic waters. Tens of thousands of people have gone through psychedelic therapy programs I created β from shamanic plant medicine retreats to clinical ketamine treatment protocols.
All to say, I've deeply experienced this space myself, and have seen the vast spectrum of healing and growth in others when it comes to working with psychedelics intentionally.
A Walk Through the Forest...
I was on a hike in the forests of North Carolina with a friend and colleague, talking about psychedelic therapy, ketamine treatment protocols, and the healing journey.
He felt like he had 'plateaued' in his experiences.
Not much novel information was surfacing, the experiences were becoming mild and expected. Fast forward a few months, and yesterday I sit down for a conversation with my friend Charlie of the Pharos Podcast, and this theme of how to make continued progress in the psychedelic space resurfaces!
It seems a lot of peopleβmyself includedβhave had experiences of 'plateauing' in their psychedelic adventures. I am working on a more comprehensive 'Psychedelic Kung-Fu (Mastery)' article to release soon.
For now, here are the key levers you can pull to help you break through psychedelic plateaus.
1. Refined Intentions
Your experience always maps onto the intention you set.
Psychedelics and plant medicines are on your side, they are trying to help you. If you set a clear intention, they give you what you need to work on that. It might not be obvious or easily understood, but this is the case.
If you want to break through a plateau (accessing information/experiences of greater strength, complexity, and intensity) change the nature of your intentions.
Many people in psychedelic therapy are actively struggling. The intentions tend to revolve around managing mental health and well-being. "Help me experience joy again." "I want to grieve the passing of my father." "Allow me to experience peace and true rest."
These are beautiful. But keeping your intentions in this domain gives you these experiences again and again.
Notice the difference if we change the intention to "Help me overcome the fear of death." "Show me exactly what I don't want to see." "Show me the True Nature of Reality."
These intentions are different in complexity and intensity. Feeling joy and overcoming the fear of death are both valid intentions, but the experience will be very different.
The first way you can break through psychedelic plateaus is to increase the purpose and intensity of your intention.
2. Increased Dose / New Route of Administration (RoA)
The second way to break through a plateau is to tinker with the dosages that you're working with, and how it is administered.
Changing dosage is straightforward. If your experiences are with 150ug of LSD, or 2g of mushrooms, you will inevitably have a different experience if you take 300ug or 5g. Similarly Ketamine, 5-MeO-DMT, NN-DMT, and all others.
At some point, strength decouples from the dose. Until you reach that threshold, increasing your dose can do the trick.
You may notice that as you sit and think about the possibility of moving into more heroic doses, a level of fear or resistance arises. This is the point. That shows you that you are moving beyond your comfort zone into a growth zone, going towards your limits safely, and you will have a different experience.
Route of Administration also changes things. You have a different experience with the same compound depending on how it's delivered. Psilocybin tea, lemon-tekking, intravenous psilocybin injection, or eating straight mushrooms will all provide a different experience, timing, and felt intensity. Similarly, snorting powdered ketamine vs. intra-muscular injection vs. rapid dissolve tablets will fundamentally alter the nature of the experience.
The second way to break through a plateau is to alter the dose, the RoA, or both.
3. Different Compounds
If you want to change the experience, change the compound youβre working with.
The following list is a gross oversimplification, everyone responds differently to different compounds. An example of a psychedelic progression path might look like:
Smoking marijuana.
Holotropic breathwork.
Ketamine treatment.
Standard-Heroic (2-5g+) mushroom dose.
Standard-Heroic (100-350ug+) LSD dose.
Ayahuasca ceremony.
Iboga ceremony.
Smoking NN-DMT.
Smoking Bufo (5-MeO-DMT).
This is just an illustration. It demonstrates that the nature and intensity of your experience can change drastically by changing the compound you work with. Always work with trained practitioners, and pure medicines, in safe contexts.
The third way to break through a plateau is to change the compound you are working with.
4. Modality Stacking
βStackingβ refers to incorporating multiple consciousness-altering modalities together throughout your experience. This increases the depth/heights you can reach, and the richness/complexity of available information.
If you are not working with trained professionals or have plenty of experience with each modality you're working with, I do not recommend this.
You can stack things like breathing rhythm & breathwork, music selection, and embodiment/movement. I am not implying that you mix compounds together, I am suggesting that you combine various tools to complement the psychedelic experience.
If you're trying to do shadow work, curating a playlist with darker or more dissonant tones drastically amplifies the experience. Breathwork combined with ketamine nasal spray is unbelievably powerful.
The fourth way to break through a plateau is to stack various modalities together.
5. Deeper Engagement / Integration
The final technique to break through a plateau is to increase your engagement in the experience and to take the integration period more seriously.
In traditional psychedelic therapy protocols, you are in a highly receptive, albeit highly passive stance.
Eye mask on, lying down in bed, soft music. You can break through plateaus by becoming an active participant in the experience. Try seated meditation on LSD. Stand naked in front of a mirror and eye gaze with yourself on mushrooms. You notice the difference between those two suggestions and lying peacefully on your bed.
Deeper engagement with the experience surfaces novel information and facilitates richer experiences.
The second component is integration.
Take your integration process far more seriously. Without integration, because you haven't acted on the lesson, medicine will never give you new material. Why would it? If you're not going to take the first step, it won't give you the second one.
If youβd like to explore psychedelic integration, I released a 45-minutes solocast on the HighExistence podcast exploring this:
For example: if you realize you want to be more creative in your life, create 100 pieces of art before your next dosing session. If you want to write more, write 56 blog posts before your next session. This is enough active embodiment to help you integrate and become a new person, with a new identity. At that point, this new person is ready to receive new information/experiences in the psychedelic space, and your progress continues.
The fifth way to break through a plateau is to be more engaged in the experience and seriously integrate each session.
This is not medical advice. Psychedelics are powerful agents of consciousness. Do your own research. Take everything at your own risk.
If you would like to explore this further, leave a comment or message me and we can arrange a call/coaching/integration session together.
With love, EB. π