The Importance of Community on a Psychedelic Healing Journey
by Azalea Kemp
When you take a psychedelic substance, especially for the first time, common side-effects can range from slight nausea to perceiving colors differently and everything in between! A very common side effect that comes with taking psychedelics is an increased perception of connectedness and the importance of community. While there is surely an opportunity for us to learn from psychedelics in settings where we are alone, there is something extremely special about taking this medicine with others.
One of my most transformative experiences with a psychedelic was the time I spent in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest drinking Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic tea brewed from a caapi vine and leaves from a shrub both native to the Amazon rainforest naturally containing DMT and MAOIs. Some consider Ayahuasca the most potent psychedelic known to man today! While my experiences drinking Ayahuasca were incredibly intense and life changing, I actually feel that most of my healing happened in between the ceremonies when I was connecting with community.
When one drinks Ayahuasca, it is usually done inside of a maloca - a circular hut where people can sit together and connect. The group I drank with was made up of 20 participants, 5 facilitators, and 3 shamans. The shamans, of course, are the people who were trained to work with the medicine for years and open up pathways in which we can be healed. The facilitators are there to help you do basic human things like walk to the bathroom or hand you napkins if you throw up all over yourself. (Tossing cookies under the influence of Ayahuasca is quite common and, actually, very healthy!) The participants are the ones who are drinking the medicine, seeking their own personal healing.
During ceremony, under the influence of the medicine, I felt so connected not only to those in the maloca, but also to the animals I could hear outside of the hut, the trees that were caressing the space, and the air of breath that flowed through all of us as a force of life. I was reminded that my struggles, as difficult and painful as they were, were extremely valid and I was not going through them alone. I was surrounded by people, plants, and animals that were all going through their own difficult, beautiful journeys while simultaneously rooting for me as I was rooting for them. I understood clearly that we are all healers in our own capacity to ourselves and to each other as we choose to be.
The mornings after we drank the medicine, we would have integration circles. This is honestly where I witnessed the majority of the healing happening. We would all, one by one, talk about our own experiences and what we learned from the medicine. We would check in with our original intentions, elaborate on lessons learned, and express how we were feeling. While one person would speak, 27 others would sit up, hold space, offer love, and truly, actively listen. This, alone, was life changing.
Although listening may seem like such a simple thing to do, we often forget to make space for other peopleโs experiences. In the human experience, it is so, so easy to get drowned in our own personal experience and the emotions attached. While our experience is extremely valid and important to acknowledge, there are billions of other life experiences happening around us at the exact same time. Iโm definitely not suggesting that we should put more value into other experiences than our own, but there is unquestionable healing gained for the collective when we take the time to work on ourselves while creating space for others to do the same.
Maria Sabina, the very first Mazatec mushroom shaman to share mushrooms with the Western world, had a saying - โYou are the medicine.โ Any healing that we search for is within ourselves. Psychedelics simply open up neurological pathways that help us access what we are looking for! So does community. We are all the medicine working through ourselves and others in every moment of every day.
In September of last year, there was a study done on the effect being involved in an active community had on those who suffered from depression. The study focused on 2 groups of people dealing with depression. 1 group was assigned to work once a week on a community garden while the other group just kept their usual routine. In just a few weeks, the researchers and therapists working on this study noticed that the people spending time in the community garden once a week showed less depressive symptoms and more overall optimism about life than the people who were not spending time in the garden! These people still had the same life-challenges they showed up with at the beginning of the trial, but they were able to navigate their emotions in a way that helped them make lasting progress. Itโs clear that community was a key factor in the positive growth that was witnessed within the participants here. Connecting with other human beings was essential, but so was connecting with nature. Being around other humans that were trying to help something grow (literally) gave the participants courage, strength, and motivation to grow themselves!
Exploring a psychedelic space can be an opportunity for growth. In certain sets and settings, psychedelics can generate healing and therapeutic experiences. When we attain different states of consciousness, we will often learn a lot about ourselves. It is very easy to learn lessons in That space, but taking actions to integrate those lessons into our lives when we are not in That space requires hard work. This is precisely when being surrounded by others can be extremely beneficial. Navigating a psychedelic space alone can be overwhelming. Itโs helpful to connect with people who understand you and the states of consciousness which you explore.
We all have this incredibly beautiful capability to grow. Sometimes, life deals us some really freaking difficult cards and the growing process can be painful. In these times of pain, we can and should reach out to community for help. Like a mycelium network of mushrooms keeping plants and our planet safe, we are always working through each other to help one another. Community is a medicine itself. During difficult and easy times alike, remember to share and connect with others. This connection is essential when we are on the path of healing ourselves. And when we truly heal ourselves, we are helping to heal the collective.
