Why I Don’t Believe in Bad Trips
If you’re in a life transition or things are kinda falling apart, this is your kind reminder that things can be going well even when they don’t seem to be.
🎧 And I recorded an entire podcast episode on integrating darkness, pain and confusion.
Here’s the thing.
At least 50% of being human is learning through pain, and darkness.
As Ryan Holiday wrote in The Obstacle is The way,
“failure shows us the way by showing us what isn’t the way.”
And I feel like breaking up with our attachment to things only being good, with our need (and desperation) to be right, to always succeed, to have what we think might happen be what actually happens, is a big part of growing up.
Yeah, life’s hard too.
You will be judged and misunderstood
Health will take a toll
Your loved ones will be in pain, or they will cause you pain (and that will be confusing)
Finances will cause survival anxiety
You won’t always be happy with your looks
You’ll feel like it’s too late and you should have started 3 years ago while feeling even worse for realising this, and still not starting this week.
And you can hold it.
You can walk in the darkness too. You don’t have to hide under your blanket like a child afraid of the monster under the bed.
And this is where psychedelics taught me how to do life better and integrating the lesson in life has made my psychedelic journeys better:
When I stopped running away from the pain of my childhood, from the endless ocean of tears and sadness, from the shame of my mistakes, when I said to the mushroom, I’m here, it’s okay, it’s sad, and I can hold it, show me all of it. I want to know all of it,
I don’t want it suppressed anymore, I want it felt!
When I remembered that if I’m shown it it’s because I’m ready to see it,
And if I want to get to the next level of growth I need to integrate the unfinished business of that one too, and fuck, my desire, my thirst for the next level of growth is so much bigger than the resistance or the fear of seeing what’s within me. After all, it’s within me.
If I don’t dare to look into my own darkness, how could I ever expect anyone else to fully do it for me? How can I request of anyone to accept me when I don’t dare to accept myself?
When my acceptance of myself is conditional?
Like, that part’s okay, but those ones no, never, I disown them…
It is scary to be disappointed by life, to feel alone and without a plan or support you can rely on, and since we’re in the ideals-not-met section of the conversation, I can also grieve the less than ideal childhood I had
and I can put my big girl pants on and be with disappointment.
No longer stuck in the game of duality:
this is good so I’ll do it, this is bad, so I’ll avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life.
As Robin Sharma puts it, “the fears that you don’t face become your limits”
This is why I don’t believe in “bad trips”.
I believe in growing up through the challenging, the dark, the painful, the dis-owned.
Most of the time, what makes “bad trips” bad is resisting the lesson, the vision, the pain, our expectation to have had laughter and light.
Resisting what is. What we are shown. Wishing for it to have been different.
And what makes bad trips even worse is to then deny what we’re shown, fight it, and wish for it to stop.
And just like in life,
When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.
— Byron Katie
This is when psychonauts will often go from repetitive thought loops, to fear spirals, panic and even paranoia.
So how do you help yourself?
Just like you learn in meditation (or journey preparation, if you’re preparing with me) you sit there with it, remembering it’s there and it’s not ALL that you are. You zoom out.
You’re not just the shame.
You’re not just the disappointment or the rage or the pain.
And my favourite, you’re not just the mind and its stories. Its grip on right and wrong, of “I am this” and “I am not that”. Its grip of knowing, defending what it knows, its desperation and need for validation to be right.
Let’s play a game.
What if I’m not?
What if what I thought was right may not be it?
What if I take everything my mind tells me as “guilty until proven innocent”?
What if I don’t need to be who I think I am, who I want to be,
what if I just sit in the unknown for a bit?
In no-thing. In being no-one.
Disengaging from every single identification.
Like, “oh maybe I am this”, No, what if I’m not?
Or “hey, maybe I could be that” No, what if I’m not that either?
Or maybe this is how it could turn out? Well, respectfully, no. What if it doesn’t?
What if instead of fearing the painful, the scary, the unknown (since I’ve tried that already and I know how it ends…) I try the opposite: what if I find comfort in the unknown?
What if I find safety in sitting here, by myself, in myself, —gosh, what if it’s safe, to just be… in my own being— without answers or expectations for the future,
without needing things to happen already,
without resisting what’s hard but letting. it. be. hard.
Letting it be unknown.
Letting it just be as it is.
What if what is, isn’t what shouldn’t be, but what should be, otherwise it wouldn’t be?
What if this is it working?
If you need something to hold on to while you sit in the unknown, here’s a prayer I’ll leave you with, inspired by David Ghiyam.
Next time you need clarity or inspiration, don’t just wait for your next ceremony or retreat. Don’t just be inspired by people, podcasts and books. Let guidance come from something much wiser than all that’s physical.
Ask: “Creator, what do you want me to do next?”
And if that word throws you off, my breathwork teacher, Dan Brulé, calls it the spirit of the breath. When you sit in meditation or breathwork, breathe until your inner critic gets out of the way (it often takes 10–30 minutes, depending on how consciously and continuously you breathe), then invite the spirit of the breath to come in and guide you.
