I had a psylocibin experience on Saturday. It was not so good. It was unsettling and unenjoyable. I think I know why.
First, my dosage was off. Because it was a self-led experience, I played it safe and ingested an amount that is definitely on the south side of full journey dosage. As a result, I was in limbo land – neither here nor there.
But there’s another more conclusive reason. It’s because: Whoops! I forgot to curate the experience with “Set and Setting”.
There is a whole thing about SET & SETTING in the psychedelic community.
Newbie Note: SET refers to your mindset. An anticipated altered state of mind begs for initial reflection on things like fears, hopes, expectations, and intentions.
Particularly because I was having this shroom experience with a partner, a convo deeper than “whatever will be will be” needed to be had. Boy, was it sorely missing!
As a result, during the experience, my mind was troubled by unanswered questions, like: Hey, are we each dropping into our own solo experience or we are we sharing a wacky afternoon social? Or maybe we can plan for both? I was my biggest distraction.
The second missing element in my less-than-magical experiment was SETTING.
Newbie Note: SETTING, also sometimes called the “container,” refers to the physical and social environment in which you ingest a sacrament. The container includes things like music, environment, and relationship to others. It’s the kind of stuff we’ve all witnessed in religious services (sometimes more meaningfully than others): fancy dress and prayer shawls, songs and chants, candles and incense, bows and sways, wine and wafers, hugs and handshakes. All of that puts us in a state of mind…and readies us for a new state of mind.
I can counter that we did indeed ask Google to play trippy Liquid Bloom music during our experience. But still, we certainly did not create an energetic vibe conducive to revealing the magic.
So, was it a big fail? Nah – it was a learning.
