5 September 2025
Modern Psychedelics
The Handbook of Mindful Exploration (An Excerpt)
By: Joe Dolce
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV
Many therapists and MAPS members generally subscribe to the importance of intention and integration. They know that people can get excited by the insights they have while tripping, but that disappointment can set in without integration. What they saw as “meaningful” on the journey can too easily be dismissed as an illusion without deeper processing. As California based therapist Ido Cohen told me, “Integration should be about an opening, not closing. It should give you more questions about how to keep the conversation [you had during your trip] going.”
Until recently, the notions of set, setting and integration were “nice to have” theories. But the research of Dr. Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley, provides a neurobiological explanation of how these concepts are working in the brain. Her findings, which are far more complicated than the summary I’m providing here, suggests that the psychedelic opens a “critical period” of learning in our brains, a molecular and neurochemical transformation that allows intense periods of new learning to occur for a limited amount of time. And just as Leary and Metzner postulated, what one learns is dependent on the context. In Dölen’s framework, the intention you set prior to a trip primes neurons in the brain that hold memories and feelings to become malleable again. The psychedelic biochemically opens the critical period, which allows people to wander down the rabbit holes of their minds, stumbling across old memories or traumas, and seeing them anew. Follow up integration can help people integrate these insights into their lives. This is why, as Dölen says, “taking MDMA at a rave won’t do anything to heal your PTSD, but in the company of a supportive therapist over time, the same drug permits people to undertake the cognitive reappraisal needed to heal.”
This is a modern scientific understanding of what shamans have known for centuries.
But what if people can’t afford a therapist or simply prefer to hold their experiences closer before sharing them with others? The following excerpt from Modern Psychedelics, The Handbook of Mindful Exploration outlines a few ways that people can use self-guided integration to make more meaning from their journeys.
Integration: A Smooth Landing
In the days, weeks, or months following psychedelics, you may notice an internal shift or feel more sensitized to the world around you. Integration is the process of surfacing and interacting with feelings, images, and observations that emerged in the non-ordinary state of consciousness. It’s the work that ensures that the trip becomes more than just another memory. It is both an active and a passive process that relies on curiosity, exploration, and introspection. Don’t think of it as a conclusion: Think of integration as continuing the dialogue that started on the trip. And it doesn’t have to be a therapeutic process. It can be playful!
Integration is a nebulous process without guidelines that varies among individuals and cultures. To indigenous peoples, visionary plant medicines are used regularly as a part of daily life. Concepts of mind, body, spirit, medicine, and nature are not viewed as separate entities; they are part of a unified whole. Illness occurs when these elements go out of balance and these peoples use plant medicines to realign the elements and heal. They aren’t grounded in intellectual understandings of the world but instead rely on mythical and cultural references that help them make sense of the symbolic and often abstract content that comes up in a trip. Westerners grounded in the scientific tradition don’t have these understandings. We view the trip as an experience distinct from everyday reality, so integration or therapeutic support can help us expand our capacity for insight, healing, and perhaps change.
How you integrate pretty much depends on who you journey with, but definitely make time to do it. “After the ecstasy, the laundry,” is how renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield explains the need to do the hard work following the revelation of any ecstatic insight.
Some people integrate with a therapist. If you’re not comfortable medicalizing the mystical, if you have an existing spiritual practice, or if a journey has led you in a more transcendental direction, consider contacting a modern chaplain. Many are interfaith practitioners who hold a more flexible stance on the mysteries of the spirit than traditional chaplains affiliated with organized religions, and they are stepping into psychedelic counseling.*
* The term chaplain is sometimes used interchangeably with the term spiritual care provider or spiritual care practitioner. Chaplains in the US generally have a master’s degree in theological education, a year of supervised clinical training, and sometimes ordination. In addition to academic qualifications, chaplains are often endorsed by a religious or spiritual group, which adds another layer of accountability.
Integration Circles
If you’re not working with a practitioner but want to integrate with others, consider joining an integration circle. Some very experienced psychonauts believe that the power of psychedelics lies more in the community interaction following a journey than in the medicine itself.
“Hearing other people’s experiences can help you ‘de-shame’ what you’re struggling with,” says psychologist Ido Cohen. “When you hear a similar version of your story mentioned by other people, you realize that you’re not as bad, or lonely, or odd as you thought you were. Eliminating shame opens up space to get more curious about what happened to you. I think shame is the biggest hurdle to transformation. In our community circles, we talk about ‘the village model of learning,’ which means we’re all here to learn from each other.”
Some people who get psychedelicized can feel isolated from their friends who aren’t doing psychedelics. “So, it feels good to go to a space where you’re in the company of people practicing the same things.”
DIY Integration
Sometimes there’s a lag between the experience and the ability to make meaning from it, which is one reason it’s useful to have the tools to integrate on your own. Sometimes you want to hold things close before letting them out into the wild. Sometimes there are just no words to describe the ineffable. And sometimes you may not be able to afford a therapist. Any contemplative practice—meditation, journaling/writing, art, music, smoking your favorite cannabis and lingering with the experience, communing with nature, working with clay, dance, any form of play—can help metabolize your psychedelic experience.
Journaling
James Pennebaker, research scientist and author of Opening Up by Writing It Down, has shown that journaling can work as effectively as talk therapy to heal emotional wounds, lead to a greater sense of well-being, decrease stress, and improve relationships.
Step 1: Journal for Twenty to Thirty Minutes a Day for Four Days Maximum
To get the most from your journaling, make an appointment with the page at the same time for three or four days in a row. Sit in the same spot—a cozy spot, a spot you like to be in. Switch your phone to airplane mode and face the page. Limit your sessions to twenty to thirty minutes. No more, as overwriting can lead to rumination.
Even if you think you have nothing to write, put your pen (or pencil) on the page and record whatever comes to mind in the moment. Abandon yourself to the process: Words, pictures, doodles, physical sensations. Something. Anything. Everything. Just begin. Capture the details of your journey, however random they may seem, even things that don’t mean much to you at this point. Use the first person and present tense to increase recall and avoid analysis. Something like “I close my eyes and see a swirling rainbow-colored forest that pulses in sync with the singing of a robin.” At the very least you’ll have a record of harvested observations that will be with you for the rest of your life.
Try these probes to jog your curiosity:*
- What, if anything, has shifted?
- What images do you recall?
- Is there something you knew in your head that now feels true in your heart? Some newly revealed truth?
- Were you reminded of anything that you haven’t thought about in years?
- Were you able to get out of your old self-narrative? To reframe the story you tell yourself about yourself in a new way?
- What five words best describe your experience?
- What sensations are most alive in your body? Where?
- What parts of yourself did you let go of?
- Were there any parts that died or were reborn?
- What felt most challenging? Most rewarding?
- What was the One Best Thing that happened?
* Thank you, Julia Christina Reibelt, for your great Substack series, The Journey, and agreeing to share your thoughts on spiritual and emotional integration as well as intention setting in this book.
Step 2: Home In on a Few Essential Themes
Look at what you’ve written. What feels most alive? Pick three to five themes to prioritize.
Step 3: Make an Implementation Plan—but Hold It Lightly
What are two or three things you can do going forward? This can vary, from seeing more (or less) of certain people, to taking on (or dropping) a new challenge, to starting (or quitting) an exercise or creative routine, to sharing your writing with a therapist or spiritual guide. Some people develop a simple mantra, such as “I’m enough” or “I belong” or “I have purpose,” which they then practice throughout the day.
Don’t make any obligations, steadfast rules, or big changes at this point. Small steps only and hold them lightly. “An action plan can work great, but very often psychedelics are nonlinear,” notes psychedelic chaplain Daan Keiman. “Sometimes a psychedelic is showing you to get out of your comfort zone, and that can’t be planned. Strike the right balance between listening to what you need in the moment and sticking to your plan.”
Spiritual Integration
You don’t have to be religious to experience spiritual amplification under a psychedelic. The German word for “God,” Gott, is derived from the word for “to invoke” or “to call,” as in to invite a higher being to join you. Throughout time, even agnostics and atheists have noticed that psychedelics can offer a glimpse of some higher power. “I was struck by a woman who identified as an atheist yet described her psilocybin journey as being ‘bathed in God’s love,’” said Brian C. Muraresku, the author of The Immortality Key.
“When asked what an atheist’s version of ‘God’s Love’ felt like, she said, ‘Probably like your mother’s love felt like when you were an infant . . . ’ There are very few therapeutic modalities or technologies that can evoke the powerful bond between infant and parent. To me, that qualifies as a spiritual moment.”
Try these probes as you think about your spiritual integration:
- What transcendent quality has this journey invoked for you?
- Has anything that was hovering just outside your awareness become clear?
- What paradoxical or nondual understandings did you arrive at? What was Both/And?
- Did any images stand out? What might they signify to you?
- What core beliefs about yourself did you uncover? Which of these feed you or which do you want to let go of?
- Are there any relationships or practices you want to cultivate or relinquish?
- If you do have an existing spiritual or religious practice…
Has your journey led you to renew your commitment to it or has it pointed out things that you need to wrestle with? Was it guiding you to more deeply embody your spiritual beliefs? If so, is there a practice, or a community that shares your philosophy that you could become more involved with?
Joe Dolce
Joe Dolce is a journalist and the former editor-in-chief of Details magazine. He is also the author of Brave New Weed: Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis and CEO of Joe Dolce Communications, one of the premier presentation and media training companies in New York City. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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