Grief Loop
The Tryp:
I sat with a woman suffering from alcohol use disorder and prolonged grief after the death of her husband over a year ago while she took a total of 4g of dehydrated Psilocybin cubensis mushrooms, unknown strain, I think Amazonian. For our preparation we walked through a wooded area in her town for over an hour after speaking for over an hour on the phone weeks prior. We went through her history, what she can expect from the medicine, and I reminded her the medicine always gives us what we need, which maybe very different from what we want. Early into the journey she began to weep. She cried about how she wanted to have a different journey and how all she was thinking about was more of the same. More grief, more feelings of hopelessness and loss of direction. She wanted visuals and her journey was dark and emotional. She was desperate for visuals and instead was met with profound darkness and amplified emotions.
How it was handled:
I sat close to her, I reminded her she was not alone. I wanted to press purge on her uncomfortable experience. Was she in a loop? How do I know? I trusted in the process, I trusted this was her journey. Although I wanted to jump in and navigate her in a direction other than crying for hours on end I held in and sat with her discomfort. It seemed as if she was in a grief loop.
What I wish I knew:
In retrospect I wonder if I interrupted the client’s process more instead of sitting there as she cried, holding the space could the journey have gone in a different direction. I still feel like she had the journey she was supposed to have, but dealing with a disappointed client is less than fun.
How the client fared:
I reached out to the client many times after the journey. Initially she responded and said that she didn’t feel like it helped with the alcohol cessation efforts, however she reported the journey had a positive effect on the overall sadness and that the process was continuing in dreams. The client reported her physical reaction to some of the sadness carried has been reduced and although the client had continued thoughts about the death of the spouse there was a new found relationship with these thoughts.
Lesson learned:
Check in with myself when I want to press purge on someone’s journey. Continue to trust in the medicine.