Unrelenting Abdominal Pain on Psilocybin

The Tryp:

A young man consumed 4 g of dried Amazonian strain of psilocybin cubensis in an individual ceremony. About 3 hours into the journey he started to complain of abdominal pain. He became fixated on this pain. He tried to move around and get comfortable, then asked for a tums. This client had recently tapered off of SSRIs.

How it was handled:

I asked him when the first time he felt this type of pain. He seemed to be open to being curious about its origin, but couldn’t put his finger on where it was coming from. It seems he was fixated on it and looping around it. I asked him to remove his eye mask when the pain seemed to be a significant focus of the journey. After he continued to ask for a tums, and removing the eye mask didn’t seem to help, I ended up taking him outside. This immediately lifted the discomfort.

What I wish I knew:

I wish I was able to sit with his discomfort for a longer period of time and not allowing my own discomfort to foster him outside. I still don’t know if I made the correct decision. Pressing purge on someone else’s pain due to my own discomfort is something I am working on avoiding in the future. With that being said I don’t know if I held out longer that he would have come to a deep insight.

How the client fared:

After going outside the abdominal pain hadn’t returned. I lost touch with the client after he returned to his home country. I set him up with an integration therapist there to continue his work.

Lesson learned:

Shifting the environment can help establish if a physical pain has a not physical origin.