Tripping Alone
My first trip ever, I took 3-4g of mushrooms alone in my bedroom and turned off the lights. I forgot to play music so I just laid on my bed in total darkness and silence. I had a spiritual awakening that night, and it put me on this pathless path I’m on. I still trip solo to this day, even after a significant, dangerous and traumatizing bad trip.
I’ve learned to be more responsible and effective through years of inner journeying with psychedelics. Buddhism, yoga and transpersonal psychology have been fundamental in helping me integrate the states of consciousness I’ve encountered.
Over the years, I’ve participated in a handful of group ceremonies held by Indigenous elders, experienced facilitators and even a therapist, but I continue to prefer tripping alone. In the eye of the psychedelic experience (if you take enough), you’re forced to face your death. It is a spiritual death, not a biological death, thank God, but you must surrender yourself completely. The death of the self caused by psychedelics often feels like actual death. The fear, the loneliness, the sickness, the confusion, the despair, the attachment, the hopelessness. It’s all there. It’s all real.
In the eye of it, you are dying even if your body is not. And it’s fucking hard.
There was a time in my early explorations where, upon facing ego-death, I would freak out and verge on psychosis before giving up and surrendering to the process. After years of deep psychedelic-assisted soul explorations, I’ve learned to relax into the process and generously give myself up. These days, the fear of death is there, but it doesn’t take over the ego. If I begin to freak out, I’m quick to recognize this ancient pattern, and I immediately override it with mindfulness, gratitude and deep breathing.
Although I believe tripping alone is a powerful way to psychospiritual development, I recognize that tripping alone might hinder my ability to surrender into deeper layers of psyche. Stanislav Grof, the legendary Czech psychiatrist who pioneered psychedelic research and transpersonal psychology by giving people acid and mapping the unconscious processes engaged by LSD wrote something about the value of having a person sitting by your side, especially in the difficult moment of psychospiritual death.
However, surrendering to deeper layers requires a knowing that the body is safe. If alone, the body cannot know that it is safe. You may injure your body by accident, or a saber-toothed predator might have you for dinner. We all need a guardian to watch over our material body when our spirits temporarily depart. It’s the safe thing to do.
Moving forward, I will trip with a trusted guardian to watch over my body as I face death and God, alone. The least I can do as I learn to take responsibility for my life.
Tripping alone versus in groups is like going to an empty church versus going to a full Sunday church. I don’t go to church on Sundays much, but I go to church by myself on the way back from the dentist or something. I bow at the door, enter the church and find a hard wooden seat to semi-comfortably stare at Jesus while praying to God. Naturally, I feel close to God when I sit in a church by myself, just like I feel close to God as I am tripping alone. Vulnerability is easy when you’re alone. When I go to church on Sunday with a bunch of people (which I used to do for fun, sometimes on acid) I didn’t feel as close to God, except perhaps while chanting my heart out with a bunch of beautiful Christian people. It always felt fun to be that guy who’s in church but doesn’t actually subscribe to the religion. Religion is more fun that way.
Being around other people keeps my mind on alert. I can’t surrender completely with people around me. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert and I can only completely relax when I’m alone. Maybe it’s something else. I don’t know.
It’s a beautiful thing to feel the heart open and the spirit fly while singing with people in church, or while doing conscious and connected breathwork in a ceremonial circle. However, in my recent ayahuasca ceremony, the presence of other people hindered my ability to fully express and surrender myself while facing fear of spiritual death. I was 3 cups deep and I could see tiny little evil spirits with grotesque faces trying to suck my life force away by making me fear the spiritual death that I know is innevtible in my journey to heal from my traumatic dark night. I was scared. Very scared. The tiny evil spirits were visible in my mind’s eye. They were ugly. Since I was in a group ceremony, I felt unable to fully release into my psychospiritual process, which would require lots of yelling and crying and other weird and intense behaviours. I didn’t want to disturb the group with my processes, so I couldn’t release completely. Since I couldn’t release completely, I couldn’t get to God in the way I could alone.
However, maybe the people around me were a safety net. Maybe I’m not ready to face that spiritual death again, with others around me. Maybe it’s all a part of the process and I just need to continue participating in ceremonies until I find a group of people I feel I can trust completely with my innermost vulnerabilities, with my own death.
I have attended a few group plant medicine ceremonies, and they have been beautiful and sacred. Yet, none have reached the peaks of mystical delight or suffering that I have reached alone. My most powerful spiritual experiences have happened alone.
I believe that’s because in the face of death and God, you are always alone.
Plotinus spoke of life as “the flight from the alone to the alone”.
In Neoplatonism, ultimate reality is the One, which is pure, infinite, and transcendent. The One is beyond all concepts and cannot be directly experienced or known by the human mind. However, it is believed that individuals can achieve a glimpse of the One through spiritual practices such as contemplation and meditation (and according to me, and maybe you if you’ve tripped enough, psychedelics too).
According to Plotinus, human beings have a natural longing to return to the One, which is our ultimate home. However, we are born into a world of multiplicity and separation, which causes us to feel a sense of loneliness or "aloneness." We spend our lives searching for fulfillment and connection through relationships, experiences, and material possessions, but these can never fully satisfy us because they are not the ultimate reality we are seeking. The ultimate reality we are seeking is the spiritual reality from which we are materially incarnated in this human life. The spiritual home from which we came and to which we shall return upon our human death.
Thus, "life is the flight from the alone to the alone" signifies that our journey in life is a quest to transcend our sense of separation and return to our true nature as part of the One. It is a flight from the sense of being alone in the world to the realization that we are always connected to something greater than our separate selves. This flight requires a psychospiritual transformation, a letting go of self, a merging with God.
Psychedelics have helped me satisfy the longing of the spirit to return to its divine source. Psychedelics and other spiritual practices have also convinced me that this spiritual journey, which is most fundamentally human, is the essence of human life.
There’s something special about tripping in solitude. Something I have yet to find while tripping in groups. Perhaps this is only because I don’t have as much experience tripping in groups, and I’m still learning to trust these settings. Maybe I need more practice tripping in group ceremony. Regardless, ultimately, facing death and meeting God is a solitary journey because no friend or parent or teacher or lover will die with you. And, when there is God, there is no space for anything or anyone else.
Solo tripping has been an important part of my spiritual evolution. Yet, because I’ve done it a lot, I feel that my spiritual evolution lies in doing spiritual stuff with and for others. I feel ready to participate in more ceremonial groups and help people take the flight from the alone to the alone. I also feel ready to have a trusted guardian by my side as my spirit leaves my body on high doses of psychedelics. I can leave my body with another, but I will have to face death and God as I always have, alone.
If you’re interested in self-healing through psychedelics, breathwork and meditation and need some support or guidance in the process of spiritual discovery and transformation, I’d be honoured to support you. You can reach me @ lou.fyi.
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Thank you for being here.