Reddit reviews The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys

There's entire books written on how to take psychedelics responsibly to maximize the benefit. People shouldn't expect to just take psychedelics and conquer their anxiety without knowing what they're doing. It takes a bit of knowledge about how to navigate your own consciousness to "transcend" the anxiety and attain a state of complete inner peace. Basically lay down with calming music, eye shades preferred, look within your mind. Accept and surrender to everything you experience: even to the point where you think you're dying and you just let it happen. It sounds scary, but when you come out the other end of that, you feel fantastic because you conquered life's greatest fear. Anxiety is normally gone for the rest of the trip at that point. Many people experience jaw tightness while on a psychedelic, but that goes away too along with the anxiety.

There's other pitfalls you have to watch out for too. A main one is that you shouldn't put any expectations on the experience. Just be fine with whatever is happening in your mind and let it all happen on its own.

Reading The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide is what helped me go from having anxious trips to beautiful spiritual experiences:

https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-Journeys-ebook/dp/B0051OHLVG

These are many of the same things that therapists conducting studies into psychedelics have their patients do. It's really decades of illegal personal experience that has determined the more effective ways to take psychedelics, not the recent scientific studies. The studies are just trying to prove the efficacy.

Now lets move onto the real "medicinal" stuff, Psychedelics.

LSD, MDMA and Psilocybin are among the most powerful drugs when used in regards to therapy when fighting depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD and all sorts of disorders.

Therapy conducted with Alcoholics with LSD found that it took one LSD therapy session to break addiction in 50% of the patients, has any other drug ever had such a success rate?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-ebook/dp/B0051OHLVG

I would recommend anyone interested in the medicinal use of psychedelics pick up this book from the godfather of Psychedelic therapy James Fadiman, Ph.D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A34x6W-3lJI

Read "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys" by James Fadiman. It is an outstanding guide to tripping and trip sitting and is essential reading for anyone interested in being well prepared for using psychedelics effectively.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051OHLVG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_dp_T1_83LDzb2FNQPV4

Its one of the best psychological toolkits available for diagnosing and analytical problem solving.

I would recommend this book: The Psychedelic Explorers Guide

You Need:

The Psychedelic Explorers Guide by Dr. James Radioman

The book outlines exactly what you should do for a therapeutic session, with directions for both the subject and the guide. It was written by Doctors who practiced psychedelic therapy (including MDMA) before it was made illegal.

I highly recommend this for what you're trying to do.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051OHLVG?btkr=1

Psychedelic therapy

The "Why" Book: Pollan's How to Change Your Mind

The "What" Book: MAPS's A Manual for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy in the Treatment of PTSD (alternatives would be this treatment protocol from Phase 2 MDMA trials and Grof's LSD Psychotherapy)

The "How" Book: R. Coleman's Psychedelic Psychotherapy: A User-friendly Guide for Psychedelic Drug-assisted Psychotherapy (the runner up would be Fadiman's The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide)

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X-posted from this post on the EA forum: Cash prizes for the best arguments against psychedelics being an EA cause area

i'm not suggesting any course of action but i understand mushrooms are easy to grow at home after a certain learning curve (shroomery.org has lots of info on this), and trichocereus pachanoi, a mescaline-laden cactus frequently used in ceremonies, can be purchased on ebay, flourishes in gardens all over california, and can be prepared easily on a stovetop. both of these offer an experience nearly identical to lsd (though experienced psychonauts can tell the difference in much the same way experienced marijuana users can tell the difference between cannabis strains) and avoid the whole "drug trade" thing. it's still illegal to do unfortunately so i'm not recommending it, just passing on readily available information i've read.

if you'd like to know more about the therapeutic use of psychedelics i would highly recommend reading the psychedelic explorer's guide, by james fadiman www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0051OHLVG

Here's a good resource: https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-Journeys-ebook/dp/B0051OHLVG

> what do you mean that a few weeks of research is not enough?

I believe OP is alluding that people 'studying' the effects of LSD (and it's pharmacology etc) for weeks is STILL insufficient in preparing them for the actual experience.

It's the difference between reading a book about swimming and getting in the pool.

It's an entirely different ballgame.

With that said, OP, for a newbie it is FAR MORE important that they trust you and you are patient with them than their 'knowledge' about a substance.

Take a look at James Fadiman's book for some ideas on how to communicate the importance of set/setting/mindset etc. and always start small.

I've introduced many newbies to psychedelics and I always take it super slow and step through their (irrational) objections together and explore their fears etc...

Most of the time their response is: "oh man! I had no idea" and overwhelmingly positive.

My advice would be to ask about their life goals, challenges, intentions, and motivations for exploring psychedelics etc. and reverse engineer those so you could easily connect them with the benefits of psychedelics.

At least, that's my approach.

I initially heard that idea from the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide which has a lot of great tips on tripping if you are wanting to do a bit more in depth reading. It's written by a guy named James Fadiman you was a psychologist that basically had a job of trip sitting people back in the 60's when he was working on his PhD. Anyways, I wish you the best of luck with whatever you decide.

Yleisesti teemasta suositellaan luettavaksi James Fadimanin kirjaa The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. Fadiman tutki psykedeelejä jo puoli vuosisataa sitten, ja mikroannosteluilmiö on saanut paljon tulta purjeisiin juuri hänen jutuistaan.

The psychedelic experience is by Timothy Leary, and is a manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. On amazon here.
The pyshcedelic explorer's guide is by James Fadiman, found here.

The power of now is good too, it will certainly prime you for ego death. I definitely recommend reading Be here now too, the illustrated middle part that I used during the come-up are just fantastic, you see people mention it all the time here. So many great things to meditate on in there. Opening the doors of perception, I have not read this one, but I have had it recommended often. The joyous cosmology by Alan Watts is short but great too. He describes his experiences with LSD, and the world that you enter. He is amazing with language.

If you like to read.

If they actually want to learn, there is literally no better source than Fadiman's The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide

I suggest you do a little reading on psychedelics https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-Journeys-ebook/dp/B0051OHLVG#nav-subnav this is the book I read. You really want to do your first trip right the first time:)

LSD is a powerful therapeutic tool. With great power comes risks. Of course there's stories of people messing up their brains on LSD because there's a lot of stupid people who take too much, take it in the wrong setting, take it with the wrong mindset, or take it when they're predisposed to schizophrenia.

Proper education will prevent more harm than criminalization ever has. People who want to do a psychedelic need to be taught to respect the drug first, instead of taking it to "get fucked up" or "trip balls" or some other immature shit. There's entire books written on the subject of how to maximize the therapeutic value of psychedelic experiences. Using a psychedelic immaturely is like letting an immature 12 year old drive a car.

Still, the stats relating psychedelic use to mental health don't show too much overall risk.

21,967 respondents (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime psychedelic use. There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, lifetime use of specific psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote), or past year use of LSD and increased rate of any of the mental health outcomes. Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with lower rate of mental health problems.