Beyond Traditional Recovery
How Psilocybin Became the Missing Piece on My Path
This is a personal perspective and a call to expand our thinking about recovery work. I’m a clinician who has walked this path and wanted to share a few words.
The Long Path of Traditional Recovery
For over fifteen years, I did the ‘work.’ I found the right expert. I committed to talk therapy and somatic experiencing, and I fought like hell to reclaim my mind and body. I was fortunate to have the skills and know-how to access good help, and thank goodness I had the privilege of paying for what wasn’t covered by government systems.
I found an expert therapist, and it helped incredibly. I got closer to my whole self. I learned how to process, release, and surrender. I kicked ass. However, there were still undercurrents, persistent beliefs, and deeply ingrained patterns that felt etched into my nervous system. These were the kinds of things that my subconscious resistance wouldn’t allow me to reach fully.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a talk-therapy type of helper myself. I believe deeply in the power of using our narratives to trace patterns and unearth the sticky or blind spots. But for some of us, that work only goes so far. And that’s why I believe science like this needs to be equally accessible and complementary. That’s when psilocybin entered the scene.
Enter Psilocybin – The Game Changer
When I started microdosing, it was like tuning a radio to a frequency I didn’t know existed. When I entered two guided macrodose sessions, the deeper work began. It was as if my system and the medicine synced up, dancing through old wounds and rewiring neuropathways, editing the default mode that kept me stuck. The emotional processing, the insights, the sheer undeniable truth of it all—life-altering. I saw things I couldn’t unsee. Pieces of myself. Pieces of love. Fragments of the architecture of reality itself. It felt like I was finally integrating every lesson, every release, every insight I’d spent a lifetime gathering.
Why Integration Matters
Yes, the experience itself was profound, and it is a gift that keeps on giving. This is where the integration process unfolds, intentionally weaving what I’d seen and felt into daily life. It was less about ‘work’ and more about aha moments, making sense, and remembering Self. For me, that meant:
Staying connected with a skilled practitioner who could help me anchor the insights without losing the thread.
Microdosing to keep the doors open, creating a bridge between the extraordinary and the everyday.
Discovering NLP as a parallel pathway. I found it after the psilocybin experiences, and the tools felt like a similar kind of rewiring, except now, I have added methods for guiding it consciously. As a trained clinician and now certified NLP practitioner, I’ve integrated those techniques into my practice to complement the medicine’s impact.
Why We Need Access – Now
I think about the marginalized communities I’ve served throughout my career the ones where generational pain runs deep, cycling through families and entire neighbourhoods. The ones doing their best to function under the weight of cyclical unprocessed trauma and unspoken patterns the kind that get carried forward, generation after generation.
I joke with friends that we should pump psilocybin into the water supply, but the truth is, the need is urgent.
So many adults are moving through life with old conditioned trauma responses driving their behaviour, and the existing systems aren’t built to reach that deep.
For me, psilocybin was the key to accessing those depths and clearing what felt unreachable. I don’t need it anymore. It served its purpose. That said, I remain a strong proponent of making these substances accessible to those who do.
If we’re serious about mental health and recovery, we must also take seriously the tools that can transform our deepest blocks into pathways of power—and the very source of our strength.
If you’ve had a similar experience with unconventional healing, what’s been your go-to? Let’s talk about the tools that work.
#PsychedelicTherapy #TraumaHealing #IntegrationWork #MentalHealthRecovery #NLP
