Intention: To help anyone interested in a psychedelic experience to best prepare mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Going on a psychedelic journey is akin to running a marathon.
It’s a big experience that will likely leave the individual who completes the feat feeling fulfilled, self-actualized, and perhaps a bit tired.
In a similar vein, the activity tends to go better if the individual prepares for it ahead of time.
Clinical and traditional lineages prioritize preparation as a key step in maximizing the benefits of plant medicines. We provide this foundational guide for anyone seeking to ready oneself before a psychedelic experience, be it a personal, therapeutic, or ceremonial journey.
Preparing for a Personal Journey
People access psychedelics through a variety of avenues, and while the media tends to cover clinical trials or ceremonial settings abroad, one of the most common methods of having a psychedelic experience is a personal journey.
Individuals may choose to embark on a personal journey within a private, safe setting with compounds like psilocybin in magic mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, mescaline, or ketamine. Although we don’t endorse the use of illicit drugs, we provide some key considerations for knowing your substance well, preparing yourself physiologically and psychologically, and readying your set and setting.
Research and Substance Testing
On a personal journey, you’ll need to source your own medicine, so it’s critical that you know what you’re taking, including purity and dosage. Harm-reduction best practices advise that you test the material.
There are testing kits from groups like DanceSafe, which give you insight into the purity of your substance. Similarly, you can use tests from QTests to assess how potent your mushrooms are.
Testing is necessary because there is currently no regulated, safe supply of psychedelics. However, there are a few options for folks who live in legalized or decriminalized areas. Consider checking the legalization tracker at Psychedelic Alpha to see updates on state and local laws around plant medicines. For those interested in traveling abroad to access psychedelics, there tend to be more open laws outside the U.S.
Mental and Emotional Readiness
Psychedelic journeys have a tendency to generate powerful emotional momentum within us. Therefore, it’s helpful to prepare mentally to ensure the journey is psychologically safe and meaningful.
Here are some preparation tips for emotional readiness:
- Set Intentions: Know why you’re journeying and gently welcome these intentions into your psyche before and during the experience.
- Mind Your Methods: Take inventory of what’s serving you in life—can you lean into that? Also, note what’s not helpful or wanted—could you lessen or let go?
- Embrace Mindfulness: Try to practice contemplative practices like meditation, yoga, or walking without distractions to work your mindfulness muscles.
- Create An Integration Plan: Know how you’ll access support, e.g., having a guide, journaling, talking to a loved one, after a journey.
As you might imagine, navigating these practices on one’s own can be daunting. That’s one reason why people choose to work with a guide or facilitator who can not only support them during the journey, but also ensure they achieve their therapeutic goals through preparation and integration.
Set and Setting
The two biggest factors to consider when undergoing a psychedelic journey are set (i.e. mindset) and setting (i.e. physical space/environment). Here are some quick tips for optimizing your set.
- Reduce Stress: Spend the day(s) prior with an unhurried mind and little to do.
- Support the Body: Get plenty of sleep; engage in movement like walking or safe exercise; choose foods that nourish and promote healthy digestion.
- Revisit Intentions: Spend some time reflecting on why you’re going on the journey and what is important to you.
If your guide or support person has a mental health background, they’ll likely have psychedelic-relevant skills to help you prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.
As for settings, people respond better in interesting or more comfortable environments than dull or cold ones.
Here are some considerations:
- Location is Key: Choose a safe, calm, and comfortable space.
- Go Inward: Start indoors and treat it like a deep meditation.
- Embrace Comfort: Utilize some healing-conducive items for the journey, such as a bed, pillows, yoga mat, blankets, eye shades, incense, and music.
It is important to create a space that allows you to maximize your personal sense of comfort either in a familiar home or out in nature, albeit in a location that is safe. Additionally, minimizing distraction/interruption and adding other positive sensory inputs (music, candles, etc.) are ways to maximize the setting of a personal journey.
Preparing for a Therapeutic Journey
If you are looking for a therapeutic experience, there are some trained providers (therapists, guides, doctors) that can facilitate your journey.
Just as is the case for a personal journey, local and state laws often determine what’s legally possible in your jurisdiction. For example, in a state like Oregon, individuals can now pursue psilocybin treatment in a trained and regulated capacity. In all 50 U.S. states, individuals can find prescribing doctors and providers for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Research Providers
Since the psychedelic medicine landscape is an ever-evolving field, it’s important to check in on legality and your own risk tolerance to assess which route is best for you.
Once you know what you’re seeking, it’s time to find a professional that you trust and vibe with who can provide services to you. Here are some tips for researching providers:
- Internet Search: Try your preferred search engine for “psychedelic therapy + [location]” to find therapists and medical providers.
- Ask Your Network: See if friends or family have gone through an experience and can point you in the right direction.
- Clinical Trials: Check with nearby research institutions to see if they study psychedelics and are accepting participants. (note: these studies are usually highly competitive)
Knowing what your intentions are with the experience is important to understanding who you would want to work with and in what type of environment would be best for you. Setting up an initial consultation to meet with someone can help you better understand your expectations and whether or not a certain provider is right for your needs.
Mental, Emotional, Spiritual Prep
When you work with a clinical professional, you’ll likely meet with your provider to prepare ahead of a journey.
In your “prep” sessions, the provider/guide will work with you in order to understand your therapeutic goals and discuss how the psychedelic experience will help work towards them.
Psychedelics work in large part by reducing our psychological defense mechanisms and allowing for unconscious material to be confronted on a conscious level. Understanding what material may surface during the journey is the underlying goal of therapeutic prep work. This may occur from exploring present/past emotional experience, important relationships, important self-identity roles, or several other therapeutic concepts.
A therapist may also provide you with relaxation and grounding techniques during times of possible emotional challenges on the journey. These techniques will hopefully work in conjunction with the preparatory material in order for you to be able to experience what is happening with as little psychological resistance as possible.
Additionally, a provider should at the least be able to offer general information regarding the possible physical health effects (ex: increased blood pressure/heart rate) and help you make informed decisions regarding journeying with specific medical concerns.
Preparing for a Ceremonial Experience
For a ceremonial experience, many of the same principles apply: be intentional, ready the body and mind, and find a trusted support person. However, for many people, their first “ceremonial” experience can come with some added considerations, such as:
- Extensive preparation instructions
- Journeying with a wider array of medicines, most commonly psilocybin, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, or ayahuasca
- Culture shock
We cover some preparation practices at various stages approaching the ceremony experience in the following sections.
Weeks Before the Experience
To find a psychedelic ceremony experience, you might ask around to hear what others have done or search the web.
Another consideration for journeyers is to evaluate your own personal, generational, and cultural lens as it relates to the area to which you intend to travel. For some people, there is a sense of “culture shock” or a similarly jarring psychosocial phenomenon when they are exposed to a new area, people, and setting.
The setting may spark a felt sense of trauma or guilt, and, as you might expect, this can pose a challenge. It’s worth both reflecting upon your own experience and considering the location and the people with whom you’ll be engaging in the ceremony.
Once you find your ceremony space, you’ll likely receive preparation instructions for these from the shaman(s) or facilitators. Here are some common practices for preparing the body and mind:
- Engage in expanded consciousness practices like meditation, breathwork, and yoga.
- “Cleanse” the brain and body, staying mindful of media consumption (often eliminating technology) and food consumption (often going vegan and limiting salts and oils).
- Undertake a Dieta – this practice helps journeyers connect with the spirit of the plant and can include things like abstaining from foods or sex.
Since the ceremony space is largely unregulated, it’s best practice to conduct your due diligence, gather reviews from previous participants, and ask questions of retreat facilitators to ensure they can provide a safe space for you.
Days Before the Experience
Leading up to the experience, you might be invited to engage in direct introspective practices such as deep meditation, prayer, or yoga. These activities can help journeyers tap into their internal and spiritual selves while further purifying the body.
In continuation of the dieta, there’s often a stricter set of requirements for things like food and sex just before the journey. Our invitation is to follow the guidelines laid out by your facilitators so long as it feels aligned with your intentions and is, of course, safe for you to pursue.
Day of the Experience
Come the day of the ceremony, you should be well prepared for the experience and receive some guidelines for maintaining your health. Fasting is usually the recommended practice.
Your facilitators should provide adequate instruction for the ceremony itself, but you can expect to spend the bulk of the day or night in a group setting, lying on a mat or sitting on a cushion. The experience will often involve music, such as drumming and chanting.
Depending on the medicine, psychedelic effects can vary in length and intensity. You should be briefed on these differences by your facilitators ahead of time, but take note of what you can expect for side effects and how long you’ll be in the journey space.
Preparation before a ceremony requires great intentionality, and we recommend you bring this same level of commitment into the ceremony itself. To approach the experience with reverence, consider once more your intentions, what calls you to the medicine, and the mental disposition that will help you embrace whatever you have to learn.
Final Thoughts
Whether you choose to journey in a personal, therapeutic, or ceremonial setting, consider working with someone trusted who can support you along the way. We hope this rundown of foundational preparation tenets to ensure you ready the body, mind, soul, and psyche.
The most important principle in preparation is moving through the process with a sense of intentionality and mindfulness.
And to that end, we want to extend some praise to you, diligent reader, for exploring this guide.
Simply reading about preparation is a strong indicator of thoughtful commitment, which in our experience, always serves people well. Kudos to you, and best wishes for your journey!
RS Contributing Authors: Nick Martin, M.A. and Rob Mudge, M.A.
Nick is a psychedelic guide in San Diego, CA. Inspired by personal healing experiences with plant medicines, Nick is on a mission to facilitate safe access to psychedelic therapy. He completed his Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Boston College and has worked at several psychedelic startups. He founded Pivot Psychedelics, a psychedelic therapy and guiding service in Southern California. Nick enjoys surfing, plant-based food, and playing music.
Rob is a psychedelic guide and therapist in San Diego, CA. His intentional psychedelic journeys have helped him move beyond anxiety and his “always in motion” way of thinking. After graduating with Master’s degrees in Counseling Psychology and Theology, Rob has worked as a community mental health therapist since, supporting people of all ages coping with anxiety, depression, and past trauma. He now guides and provides psychedelic integration therapy through Pivot Psychedelics.
