A Guide to Psychedelic Preparation and Integration

Advice from Psychedelic Integration Coach and Entrepreneur Tracy Lawrence

Not a magic bullet

“The experiences [with psychedelics] have shown me the depths and heights of my mind, but they've also made clear that enlightenment, or whatever you want to call the insights arising from these experiences, is not something you download in one mind-blowing afternoon. The insights are like a figure in a carpet that fades as soon as you stand up and return to your life, leaving at most a faint watermark on your consciousness." — Michael Pollan in his book How to Change Your Mind

There’s a lot of hype regarding psychedelics. I’m a fanboy, having experienced essential healing from the thoughtful use of these mystical substances.

However, I’m also concerned about what I’ve been seeing on the street regarding how psychedelics are sometimes used and described to the broader population. Personally, I think it would be a disaster if psychedelics were made “socially available” in the way that cannabis has been. I feel the same about pill mills handing out SSRIs like candy. Mind-altering substances shouldn’t be so hastily dolled out to the masses.

That sentiment is also shared by my friend, entrepreneur, executive coach and psychedelic integration expert Tracy Lawrence.

Tracy as an AI superhero

That’s why we partnered up to share her expert guidance on properly preparing for psychedelic medicine and what you should expect when integrating the insights from the experience into your daily life. I highly recommend following Tracy’s substack as well.

Intentions

Setting an intention for the experience is essential, and it often takes months (sometimes years) to arrive at the purpose you feel is perfect for the psychedelic session.

For example, I arrived at my intention for my first psychedelic session after a couple of years of traditional therapy. It was therapy and its ongoing process of self-analysis that helped me pinpoint the precise issue I wanted to address and more deeply understand via psychedelics. I couldn’t quite “get there” with talk therapy alone, so I turned to alternative medicines in a guided setting to help me cross the river to a deeper understanding of myself.

Psychedelic researcher and author Dr. James Fadiman reveals the importance of setting an intention when he says:

"Setting intentions is like drawing a map of where you wish to go — it becomes a powerful psychological tool to navigate the psychedelic experience."

Research scientists may call this expectancy bias, yet that’s precisely what setting an intention is all about — we guide ourselves toward topics, memories, or emotions we hope (or expect) to confront and work through.

To assist you in designing your own intention, Tracy has developed a thoughtful approach to creating one. Here’s a TLDR for the process:

(1) Write down the full list of potential intentions for working on your well-being and self-knowledge. Try to frame these as intentions moving towards a state of being versus away from something you don’t like. For example, instead of “Stop people pleasing,” write “Prioritize my needs when making decisions.” Other examples could be:

• Increase emotional resilience

• Improve my relationship with a parent/partner/family member

• Become more present at work/with family

• Find the magic in the unknown

• Trust my emotional self and intuition

• Take better care of myself and my needs

(2) Once you have the full list of potential intentions written down, divide them into short-term (within the next 6 months) and long-term (a year or more from now). You can group them as shown in the table below. Now pick the top 3 short-term and long-term that feel the most important to you, and place them at the top of each category in order of importance.

To develop your intentions, here are a few additional questions to ask yourself:

• What would the world look like when your top short-term intentions have come true? What about your long-term?

• How do you feel when you contemplate each of these?

• What behaviors are you engaging in that you would like to change or understand better?

Get vivid and descriptive because this part should be both fun and scary.

(3) Finally, pick one word for each short-term intention. Then, string these together to create a mantra for your psychedelic journey. For example, if you wrote “Become more present with family,” you can reduce this to “Presence.” Now rank on a scale of 1 - 10 how you feel you are living up to your short-term intentions today. 1 means not at all, and 10 means extremely fulfilled.

Intention 1 word: __________ Score: ____

Intention 2 word: __________ Score: ____

Intention 3 word: __________ Score: ____

From there, you can narrow down the intention for your session. Whether you want to make it more or less detailed than that is entirely up to you. Follow your intuition on what feels right.

Preparation

The other thing Tracy emphasizes is the importance of proper preparation. When preparing for the session itself, let’s cover a few essential aspects:

• The two weeks leading up to the session

• The day of the session

• The powerful role of music

If you’ve ever run a marathon, you know much preparation is involved. The two weeks leading up to the race may be the most important. Adequate diet, rest, rehabilitation, and specific training in the taper down toward a race must be followed. The same can be said when preparing for psychedelic therapy.

For example, in the Amazonian shamanic traditions, particularly involving Ayahuasca, preparation is as crucial as the ceremony. Shamans emphasize the importance of 'dietas,' a term that refers to a diet but encompasses much more. It includes abstaining from certain foods and sexual activity and often involves isolation from the community. This preparation is believed to cleanse the body, heighten sensitivity to the spiritual realm, and foster a deeper connection with the plant spirit. The dieta can last for days or weeks and is integral to the healing potential of the psychedelic experience. (Source: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine by Eduardo Luna.)

Tracy has provided a list of guidelines to follow 1 to 2 weeks before the session.

The day of the session has a protocol of its own. For those of you who haven’t experienced psychedelic therapy, here’s a rough overview of what you might expect during the session itself.

Quick note: this is a generalization, as the phases of the experience will be different depending on whether you take psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca, or LSD. I won’t go into “The Toad” since that’s an entirely different experience.

• The Entry Phase: Initial Adjustment (Approx. 1 Hour). This is when the medicine sets in, and you begin to feel its effects.

• The Immersion Phase: Deep Surrender and Exploration (1 to 3 Hours). At this point, the medicine is in full effect, taking you where it needs to take you based on the intention you set.

• The Reflection Phase: Processing and Insight (3 to 5 Hours). The medicine begins to wear off, and normal waking consciousness returns, allowing you to begin reflecting on everything that just happened during your journey.

• The Emergence Phase: Gentle Reintegration (4 to 6 Hours). You begin to feel “back in your body” again with the medicine mostly worn off. Many describe this stage as feeling like “being born again.”

One thing that surprises people about the day of the session is the role of music. It essentially acts as the conductor of an orchestra. The music that is played intentionally changes pace and tone, sometimes shifting from light, whimsical, positive music to dark and somber music. When the music changes, so too do your emotions and whatever hallucinations you may be having.

Integration

The integration phase in psychedelic medicine is all about what happens after you've had the journey. It's when you take time to think about and make sense of what happened during your trip, which can be a lot.

Think of integration as putting together the pieces of a fairly complex puzzle. Although some of your experience may be instantly revelatory, it usually takes days or weeks for all of the pieces of your psychedelic experience to “click”.

Most importantly, integration is about how you’ll apply the insights from your session to your waking consciousness and your day-to-day life. What you do with the messages illuminated in your journey matters most.

To hear more about Tracy’s insights on psychedelic integration, I recommend checking out this podcast interview, in which she discusses them in detail.