by Anonymous | Edited by Janine Samuels (she/her)

Image by @tomatoseasonofficial for @materialkitchen.

Psychedelics are generally associated as a recreational release and escape from physical reality. Honestly speaking, I initially shared this sentiment myself until I eventually realized that the psychedelic experience actually offers more positive possibilities if you set the right intention. I understood this when I read other people’s reddit post-trip stories about how they experienced deeper catharsis through their intentions. Now, I use psychedelics as a cathartic tool that adds to my arsenal of shadow work especially in relation to healing the fragmented connection between my body and mind. After all, the intensity of the psychedelic experience nudges you to be present with the repressed emotions deeply embedded within the body. It nudges you to be present with the unresolved, urgent inner issues that you often overlook amidst the drudgery of daily mundane life.

Psychedelics helped me deal with my dissatisfaction with living in survival mode. This dissatisfaction also affected my ability to truly feel pleasure because I wasn’t yet ready to challenge myself sexually due to repression. The thing about being emotionally avoidant is that you end up desensitizing yourself from feeling pleasure too, in your attempts to protect yourself from feeling the much-dreaded emotions. When I first heard about how psychedelics can enhance your orgasms, this appeal automatically made me gravitate toward them since I have always searched for solutions to resolve my desensitization. The euphoric physical sensations I experienced during my first trip gently bulldozed my emotional walls and this subsequently made me cry a lot to the extent that I eventually developed a more accommodating and accepting relationship with my emotions.

With psychedelics, you don’t want to be overly untethered to physical reality because emotional repression and intrusive thoughts can take a life of their own mid-trip in ways that might lead to a bad trip. This usually happens when you want to prematurely access elevated states of consciousness and dimensions like Icarus flying too close to the sun. In order to prevent a bad trip, it is useful to keep a physically grounding object nearby, especially one that holds sentimental value for you. For example, looking at pictures of my loved ones personally grounds me in reality whenever I am about to find myself wandering in an intense spiral. Meditating whilst waiting for psychedelics to digest in your system is also effective in setting the tone for increasing the likelihood of experiencing a peaceful trip. However if you ever experience a bad trip, deep breathing exercises, anti-anxiety medication, drinking lots of water and playing calming music are strategies that can help you end the terror. Some people in the psychedelic community believe there is no such thing as a bad trip because all trips have their own insightful lessons to teach us regardless. But it is better to be on the safe side by having a guide or sitter, someone sober who will look after you and make sure you are safe during your trips. Although the psychedelic experience can be unpredictable in its kaleidoscopic unfoldment that surpasses expectation, it still helps to set an intention that could amplify your soul-searching in shadow work during the experience itself.

Using psychedelics with the intention of healing emotional repression is one of the reasons why I have finally allowed my body to become uninhibited in the domain of kinky sex, a carnal catharsis which happens to be the main driving force behind my self-liberation. There is just something about the immersive experiences of both kinky sex and psychedelics that puts you in the front-seat of your innate intensity and life force energy as a human being. All my psychedelic experiences of soul-searching and shadow work have ultimately affirmed me of one thing: I can allow myself to feel as much pleasure as I want, only on the condition that it must honour my self-liberation.

Even though psychedelics have helped me improve my relationship with pleasure, I still struggle with sexual shame due to past traumatic experiences. I have learned that successful transmutation of the sexual shadow can only happen if you don’t shame yourself in the process. Shame fragmented the connection between my body and mind a lot in the past. I realized this when a certain psychedelic trip confronted me about the shame that I was trying to run away from. I have never actually had an external safe space that allows me to be fully present in my own body during kinky sexual exploration. This type of shame was an overpowering bully in my sex life because it robbed me of the language of naming and identifying my personal power. Where words fail me, psychedelics and kinky sex help me take my power back by reminding me of my ability to transcend and unlearn any toxic purist conditioning tat as ever tries to sabotage my sexual self-empowerment in daily mundane life.

Although the usage of psychedelics can be therapeutic, they shouldn’t be used as a one-size-fits-all solution or as a total substitute to seeking professional therapy. In my opinion, psychedelics should rather be used as an additional healing tool or just for harmless fun if the intention behind it all is not egocentric since the experience can humble you by unlocking overwhelming and disorienting levels of spiritual sensitivity that you might not be ready to handle.

By a trusted Anononymous writer.