Ceremony, Tradition, and Intent with regard to Psychedelic Sessions

I'd like to take a discussion that was started last night at our local spore and bring it online to be fully fleshed out.

There seemed to be a lot of interest in ceremony, intent, and creating a space where psychedelics can be used in an effective, safe, and spiritual way. It was generally agreed upon that having a spiritual intent when going into a psychedelic experience can in itself be a significant factor towards this end. Ceremony and ritual can serve as an outward manifestation of this intent. But it seemed to me that the unspoken question was "what rituals/ceremonies can we use? How do we do it exactly?"

I personally stopped tripping in groups (with the exception of music festivals) because my friends were not on the same level as me with regard to ceremonial tripping. So now it's mostly solo trips, and I've developed a few practices that I perform each time before my journey. Some of these have arisen naturally, like cleaning my house spotless, taking a bath, meditating (Mindfulness of Breath for me), taking every blanket and pillow in my house and creating a "launch pad" on the floor, etc. Others are somewhat contrived, like chanting, burning incense, smudging with sage, writing down my intentions on paper days or weeks beforehand, etc. Others fall somewhere in between, namely taking high doses in silent darkness (thanks for the advice McKenna!).

One thing that was brought up in the discussion at our Spore was post-trip peer support. Sometimes we have very difficult experiences and we need to be able to turn to our friends and fellow travelers to talk about them and get help integrating them. This is sometimes not possible. The last mushroom trip I had was very emotionally intense. I did a lot of deep shadow work, and when I came out I was VERY depressed (possibly from heavy serotonin fatigue combined with external factors and the nature of the trip itself). I didn't feel that I could talk with the people around me about it, and I ended up isolating myself in my apartment for a good two weeks trying to deal with it all.

Sometimes it's a real drag and a burden to have to listen to somebody else's troubles, but at the same time it's very necessary. Having a designated time after a trip for integration and peer support should become an integral part of any structured/ceremonial psychedelic session.

One last thing that I'd like to add before I turn this thread over for other people is about tradition and initiation. I feel that one of the biggest problems that the psychedelic community has is that it lacks an initiatory tradition for creating a safe space for young people to have their first experiences with knowledgeable guidance and support. It seems that music festivals are beginning to perform this function, but often lack ceremonial structure and community support. One woman at our spore was talking about when she was a teenager and having her first trips at dead shows in the 80's and how the older heads would view the young kids having bad trips as entertainment and even be callous enough to give them more doses just to make it more "entertaining".

I think it is our responsibility to put energy into events and social structures which resonate with our values, and this includes discriminating between profit-oriented drug smorgasbords and gatherings which combine a healthy balance of Joy/Fun and Personal Growth in order to foster healthy communities and traditions.