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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally
When you have to be professional about psychedelics
John William Waterhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As
a professional in the field of psychoactive substances, I spend much of my
time thinking about how I would describe the psychedelic experience to
someone who has never taken psychedelics before. The most difficult part of this is
trying to put me into the mind’s eye of someone who has been completely sober all
their lives.
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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
For me, this is a very interesting experience because I realized that all of my
perceptions were based on what I thought reality should be.
For example, when I looked at the computer screen in front of me, I was not seeing it
as a bunch of pixels. My brain automatically saw the image on my screen and fill in all
the details without even thinking about it. Or, to further illustrate the point, a chess
grandmaster doesn't look at a chessboard and sees a bunch of pieces of wood
randomly placed. They see pieces, positions, tactics; patterns.
My visual perceptions were all based on my previous
experiences, which included the assumption that
what I was seeing is reality.
When approaching this topic from an unbiased perspective, it becomes clear that our
perception of reality is only a collection of images assembled in our minds.
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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
E. Irving Couse (en.wikipedia), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
To someone who never had any contact with psychedelics, reality is limited to what
they can see with their eyes and feel with their skin. They don’t have the ability to
perceive other dimensions that are impossible for them to measure.
All of the senses that we call 'supernatural' are not
supernatural at all. They just exist on a higher plane
than what is detectable by ordinary humans.
It is hard to describe a psychedelic experience in words, as the words one uses for
describing things are not the same as those used while experiencing them.
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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
When one talks about a psychedelic experience, even if the person has never had a
psychedelic journey before and they use neutral words to describe it, the listener will
nevertheless get a lot of information from them. Those sounds that come out of their
mouth are not just aleatory words strung together in order; they do carry a lot
of meaning with them.
It’s important that this meaning does not develop
into misconceptions.
Those who have experienced a psychedelic trip know how difficult it is to put into
words. It isn’t just that the experience itself cannot be explained in words, but also
what they are trying to describe has no direct equivalent for most people.
What is it that makes psychedelic experiences so hard to describe and
what information about them gets lost in the description itself?
One of the reasons is that when you describe something, you are not just describing or
depicting a single 'thing' but instead a whole collection of things.
In addition, such as a night dream, the psychedelic experience seem to fade away as
we attempt to picture it with the mind. And in the occasion in which we manage to
hold the mental image of what the trip was for us, the words seem insufficient
because there’s no ordinary landscape that we can use as a comparison to verbally
describe how a psychedelic voyage looks and feels like.
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John Everett Millais, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It is not that a psychedelic experience is hard to describe. It is rather that the person
who has never had one does not have enough background information to
understand what you are trying to explain.
When you try to describe something that is outside of the normal human experience,
there is a natural difficulty in finding the right words and concepts. In addition to this,
when describing an experience with psychedelics, there are inherent limitations due
to its nature.
When you take psychedelics, your brain is getting flooded with foreign chemicals that
stimulate the production of a wide range of neurotransmitters.
This turns on different parts of your brain in a way that normally does not happen,
and it may have an effect on how you see yourself and the world around you.
The problem is that the person who has never tried psychedelics does not have
enough information in order to make sense of this.
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Your words are foreign to them, and their brain cannot incorporate them into
a coherent picture.
They do not see the world in the same way, and they are not aware of what you are
trying to tell them. They will try to interpret your words based on
their preconceived notions, which are different from yours.
In addition to having a different view of the world, they may not be able to fully
understand your intentions. They will try to make sense of what you are saying
from their point of view.
Painting “The Creator” of the Macedonian painter Vasko Taškovski — Macedonian Academy of Sciences
and Arts, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Professional Tripper
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As
Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
someone who needs to be accurate and professional, I decided that I
should avoid describing the trip in terms of my subjective perspective. To a
total beginner interested in trying psilocybe it is more useful to have the trip
described in terms of superficial sensations.
The reason for this is basically two things:
1. If I try to describe to a totally inexperienced tripper what the foreign perception of
reality that psychedelics can induce feels like to me I would most likely be
inaccurate. It’s like the idea of describing colors to a blind person.
2. I don’t want to form expectations of any kind in the mind of the customer. As a
matter of fact, to every customer who tells me they are tripping for the first time, I
make the effort to make them understand that it’s best to unlearn all they think
they know about tripping and go on the journey with the intention of discovering
it in real-time.
Last year I worked in a high-end smartshop — store specialized in responsible
psychedelic use — and had the opportunity to talk to literally thousands of customers
who never experienced any kind of psychedelic substance before.
In those cases, I limited myself by only describing the surface sensations that appear
after the consumption of the substance and by using as reference what other
beginners reported when they came back in the store to describe how their first trip
had been.
I describe the psilocybe experience a little like this:
The first effects should surface around 30 minutes after the ingestion of the fungus.
Each person feels it differently so don’t be alarmed if you feel something you didn’t
expect.
Many people report that the colors starts to standout with a luminous aura as if the
entire world is covered in soft cotton.
The sounds in the background — like the birds chirping or cars in a farway road —
seem to fit together with each other harmonically like a big orchestra.
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It’s usual to feel a general tingling sensation throughout the body and a sense of
euphoric wonder.
The effects appear organically and gradually increase into a climax. Usually, this
peak happens 2 hours and 30 minutes after the ingestion and should last for 20–30
minutes until the effects starts to slowly decrease until it completely fades away.
The psilocybe fungus is usually completely metabolized by the body 4 hours after
the ingestion, but there’s a pleasant afterglow that should last until the end of the
day.
With this simple description, I believe that the beginner can satisfy their superficial
curiosity and prepare for any possible drastic change in their senses without being
alarmed.
This description does not touch the deeper spiritual aspects of the mushroom
experience, but I doubt that I would be able to successfully prepare them for this kind
of experience. So I prefer to let them discover this for themselves, I just think it’s
important that they have the right mindset so that they can properly navigate a
possibly challenging psychedelic landscape.
I believe that for a novice, it’s important to unlearn
everything they heard about psychedelics prior to the
first trip.
Is it possible to get a bad trip?
Yes.
As simple as this, the answer is yes. It’s possible to have a bad trip. And if the
customer is seriously worried that they can be in a state of panic during the trip, the
best choice to me as a professional is to discourage them to buy the psilocybe fungus
or any substance they are thinking of discovering.
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Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s not good for a business to tell a client to not buy the product, but it’s even worse to
have a client come back the next day describing 4 hours of an uncomfortable and
unpleasant experience. Especially when this customer is discouraged from exploring
the psychedelic world again.
If they are just unsure and would like to try I say this:
Start slow. Go with a normal dose but divide in smaller doses and tconsume them in
parts. Take the first dose and wait 30–40 minutes until the next dose.
Don’t use it in public. Choose a place in which you feel comfortable and with people
you completely trust.
If you feel like the effects are alarming you, go to a quiet place and take deep
breaths. Pay attention to your surroundings or close your eyes, do whatever makes
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you comfortable.
Have with yourself the understanding that once the substance is metabolized the
effects will fade away. And have this understanding strongly rooted, because
during the trip it may genuinely feel like the effects are going to persist for more
time. But they won’t.
You already have everything you need to deal with a possibly challenging
psychedelic journey, but if it makes you more comfortable try to eat some citric
fruits — like an orange — and with some sugar — chocolate, for instance.
This is it. If the customer has some questions for me or wants to know more about my
personal experiences then I allow myself to venture into describing my subjective
experience and insights, in hope that I can reveal the potential of going deeper with
psychedelics, but I must be aware of the fact that an inexperienced psychonaut will
most likely misunderstand my attempts to describe my trips and possibly create
misconceptions about psychedelics.
Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Human beings are extremely complex, and so is the nature of
consciousness.
As
I discussed previously, one difficulty in explaining a psychedelic experience
is that they may not have any frame of reference for understanding
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what you’re trying to explain.
Salasdavila, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
A lot of people who have never had any kind of psychedelic experience always picture
the person tripping as being completely out-of-touch with reality.
They might imagine that they’re in some sort of altered state where their sense of time
and space are warped or non-existent.
That is not entirely correct. It’s true that a psychedelic experience presents the user
with an altered sense of time and space, but there are some people who have had the
opportunity to take psychedelics many times over their lives and found a way to safely
and accurately navigate reality through the psychedelic lens.
They have a sense of what to expect from the drug, and they know how long it will
take for their body to metabolize its effects. They also understand that even though
time may seem dilated or warped, it’s still happening.
If you were to take a psychedelic drug in the presence of someone who has taken it
many times before, they would be able to tell that you’re under its influence. You
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might think the time is moving slowly and space is warped, but your friend will
know that’s just what happens when the drug takes effect.
In fact, they might try to help you out by telling you that everything will be okay.
They’ll tell you that a lot of the fear and paranoia that comes with taking psychedelics
is just in your head.
This is what a professional must do.
Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
T
hanks for reading until here, I really appreciate it. If you can join this
conversation please don’t hesitate. There’s a way of speaking about his sensible
subject in an accurate way without woo and that does not create misconceptions, and
I believe that the only way to achieve this is by practicing.
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Describing a Psychedelic Trip: Professionally | by Alexandre Porto | Entheogen | Medium
My mission is to make people understand that they should not keep their psychedelic
experience to themselves and should not be ashamed of talking about this with people
who firmly believe in a warped concept of psychedelics.
I talked with artificial intelligence the other day and it told me that the only way to
make people believe in something they don’t want to believe is to tell a story from
THEIR point of view.
So I propose this exercise to you:
Practice telling stories from other people’s point of
view.
I have some articles that might interest you as well:
If you want to know more about getting used to the psychedelic landscape:
How To Handle A Strong Psychedelic Experience
A psychedelic is a powerful tool for those who can handle it. Are you
prepared for a transcendental mystical…
alex-porto.medium.com
How to get more of your psychedelic journey:
The use of psychedelics as a tool has been shown to be effective in
many different situations, and…
There are many different types of psychedelic experiences that
people can have.
alex-porto.medium.com
And if you are curious about my professional background I wrote a bit about it in The
Trip:
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How I Landed a Job in Psychedelics
This is how I did it and you can do it too
medium.com
Psychedelics
Mental Health
Spirituality
Self Improvement
Work
No rights reserved by the author.
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