Research claims voyagers prefer guides to trip with them in the shamanic tradition

Down at your local psychedelic clinic, your therapist is certainly not tripping with you like an Amazon shaman would.

‘Therapists should not take any mind-altering substances before or during therapy sessions,’ says a 2021 review of the nascent Western sector. While it’s certainly not new for indegenous people to voyage alongside each other, historically the ceremony leader alone takes the medicine while the community receives mystical healing.

In Dr Luis Eduardo Luna’s question and answer session following his Vital lecture on medical anthropology, one student who facilitates jungle ayahuasca ceremonies lamented this state of affairs in the West. “You drink when you assist,” she said, “There is no choice. And so much magic happens.”

Sober sitter or co-consumer? published May 2022 in Addiction Research and Theory concluded that heads out in the space did prefer their guide to be tripping too. Although maybe not as hard as they were. How much? One poster is quoted as recommending “around a quarter to one gramme of cubies [Cubensis mushrooms, the underground’s fungi of choice].” 

Why? The ‘benefits of improved communication and shared experience’ according to the report.

“The relationship is subject-to-subject, not object-to-object”

It went on, ’Psychedelic co-consumption was portrayed as an opportunity for bonding, connection and communication between co-consumers. This seemed related to a perceived mutual understanding of the ineffable that couldn’t be accessed without the influence of psychedelics.’ Given that a strong, open, trusting relationship between voyager and therapist is absolutely key according to modern-day experts wouldn’t a quarter gramme of Cubensis for the therapist contribute to the success of the therapy?

That’s not all. Normals hanging around bring the vibe right down.

‘Consuming psychedelics alongside sober people could increase anxiety,’ suggest researchers, ‘It was also suggested that sober carers could make psychedelic experiences more awkward. Other forum participants simply found being around sober people whilst experiencing the effects of psychedelics to be irritating.’

The Sober Sitter or Co-consumer? paper said recreational requirements for guides did align with many other elements of psychedelic therapy: including not directing the experience, first hand knowledge of the substance, unconditional acceptance of what comes up for the patient, and boundary-setting beforehand. The data also uncovered recommendations that a ‘sober sitter’ be used during difficult emotional times, when out and about… or taking 5-MEO DMT.

“Lived psychedelic experience represents knowing through identification, and transformation… the spirit of the jaguar”

How does the ceremony leader partaking – be they guide, therapist, sitter, shaman or space holder – contribute to a better experience? Dr Luna thinks it’s because “The relationship is subject to subject, not object to object.”

Being ‘on the same level’ is equivalent to a “relational epistemology” where there is “reciprocity” which in this case means a mutually endorsed understanding rather than overdue donations to the indigenous people.

By tripping together “magic happens” because therapist and patient are ‘being’ together rather than ‘doing therapy’. They share a bathtub of their own cosmic love, as opposed to nervously going through the motions set out in a top-down bureaucratic directive. “That is non-particpation, disenchantment,” says Dr Luna, “with objectivity, the world is not of my own making… I do not feel a sense of belonging to it. What I feel is a sickness of the soul.”

Relating instead to a sense of subject promotes agency and mindfulness. Here’s someone who knows about lived experience: ‘I am not a thing, a noun,’ wrote engineering genius Buckminster Fuller, ‘I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe. Life is regenerative, and conformity meaningless.’ I pinched this contribution from a Vital school chum, in case they are reading.

“You drink when you assist at the ceremony, and so much magic happens”

Dr Luna says this is part of the ‘lived experience’ of animism. “Ancestral language is 70% verbs compared to 30% in English,” he adds by way of illustration, “the lived psychedelic experience represents knowing through identification, and transformation… the spirit of the jaguar.” Not simply referring to ‘your dried pig skins’ as militant tribesmen call books. 

Sure, the preference for ‘co-consumer’ guides comes from the psychedelic underground rather than clinical patients. Yet as the report points out in its intro, ‘In a similar way that indigenous knowledge about psychedelics can be utilised to inform psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy,’ like the lecture from Dr Luna you’re reading about now, ‘we believe that Western people who use psychedelics outside of a clinical environment for healing purposes also have knowledge relevant to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.’ Like Dr David Luke said in his Vital lecture on transpersonal psychology, the underground can teach the medical sector “everything.”