The Virus, Ayahuasca, Grief, and Hope
As the whole world grapples with coronavirus, I have the peculiar fate of being deep within the Peruvian Amazon. I’m an hour outside of...
Can Ketamine-Induced Near-Death Experiences Expedite Healing?
Since entering our current climate of shelter-in-place order and social distancing induced by the COVID-19 global pandemic, I have witnessed our unprepared health care...
Integration: The Upside of Coming Down – Debriefing, Disrupting & Dark...
Objectives for Integration
A broad consensus now exists: effective integration is where the therapeutic action is. Otherwise, these openings, insights, and transmissions become nothing more...
Integration: The Upside of Coming Down
Part One – Overview
Integration has ascended to quite a prominent position in the research and practices of what has recently come to be called...
Personal Healing with Ayahuasca Helped Me Be a Better Psychotherapist
Plant medicines
can help us achieve a more integrated perspective on how we see ourselves and
the world. This is an important goal that a therapist...
Ayahuasca, Depression and Me
Far along the path of life, I fell into a rare dark nine-month depression. I say “rare” because, blessed with good brain chemistry, I...
Should Psychedelic Therapists Have First-hand Experience with Psychedelics?
Considering the clinical outcomes of researchers’ and
clinicians’ personal relationships with psychedelic compounds
Self-experimentation with psychedelic compounds by researchers
and therapists played an important and largely...
A Clinical Psychologist’s First Experience with Ayahuasca
A colleague and friend referred a shaman to my private practice. We did
brief and very focused work in one area of distress. As our...
Ayahuasca and Dreaming
A
crocodile, a pioneering rock band, and a Ryan Gosling film? As a
psychotherapist working in New York City with patients who use ayahuasca, I am
regularly...
Ayahuasca and the Twelve Steps: An Anonymous Friendship
Heroin needle
marks on my neck, benzodiazepines with alcohol in the mornings, and frequent
crack-cocaine binges; that was my life for well over 20 years. I...
