News Story: Reflections on the Reimagining Psychedelic Integration Workshop
Since participating in Tristan Angieri’s “Reimagining Psychedelic Integration” workshop at the Center for the Study of World Religion (CSWR) Psychedelic Intersections Conference, I’ve been thinking and moving differently. The workshop was about psychedelic integration, but the questions that arose apply to other areas of my life, too. What’s the point of “integrating” or “processing” something? What does that mean—and do we always necessarily need to do it? When might an experience stand on its own or even be the very integration we’re seeking?
Tristan started the workshop by asking each participant to share three words that, to them, align with the concept of “integration.” I said, “blossoming, dissolving, and evolving.” Others said things like: creativity, honoring, processing, beautiful, playful, cognitive, embodied, learning. Then, we discussed these words. Most people in the room seemed to think integration is a positive thing. However, I remember one participant said that, to her, “integration is the process by which the unpalatable becomes palatable for psychotherapists.” I felt a collective cringe at that notion. That’s certainly not what it should be, I thought.
The word “integrate” literally means: to combine parts together to make a whole. In the context of psychedelics, it implies that the psychedelic experience and regular life are two distinct entities, and that if we are to gain anything from the psychedelic experience, we must somehow find ways to mix pieces of that experience into regular life. People do this in all sorts of ways. Integration could look like a one-time action, like finally confronting an abusive family member. Another type of integration is to create a new habit, like exercising three times a week. Another type is making a piece of art, or dancing. Or researching a symbol that came to the journeyer in a vision.
In the workshop, I questioned the very dichotomy that integration implies: that quotidian non-psychedelic experience is “real” and psychedelic experience is somehow “other,” or even “not real.” What if the psychedelic experience is the very process by which we integrate our non-psychedelic, “regular” experiences? It must be the case that what comes up in the psychedelic experience is a result of our past lived experience, including deep-seated memories and traumas. And, can’t it be the case that what’s known in the psychedelic journey can simply be what it was—a type of knowing that is non-translatable into a confrontation, a new habit, or a watercolor painting? Couldn’t one way to honor the experience be to simply… let it be?
Tristan had us get into small groups to discuss and remix various definitions of “integration” that they’d printed out. I can’t recall my group’s exact definition, but it was something about turning unpleasant experiences into pleasant ones. We really didn’t like this. It was invalidating on the part of the journeyer and also, perhaps, upholding of toxic positivity. Instead, we wrote that integration is a process of recalling, moving through and with, and honoring the psychedelic experience. It can be easy to rush back into regular life and ignore what happened in the psychedelic journey. We thought that it’s important to remember the journey in whatever way feels important—either viscerally or through words and actions. It’s important not to ignore it, to not move on like nothing happened.
At the very end of the workshop, Tristan invited us to write our own definitions of integration, and to come up with a new word for it if we wanted to. Instead of “integration,” I wrote “honoring.” As for my definition, I wrote something similar to what my small group had come up with.
I am one of the facilitators of the weekly ecstatic dance at HDS. We always end the dance by coming together in a circle and offering dancers the opportunity to speak about what they just experienced. As a result of the Reimagining Psychedelic Integration Workshop, I’m no longer thinking of the circle necessarily as an “integration” structure, but rather, as a time to honor what just happened. Now, I use the word “honoring” when I introduce the circle: I say that one way to honor the dance is to speak about it. Another way might be to open oneself to listening to others’ experiences. Another way might be to sit in silence, to let what was known in the dance just be.
As my dharma teacher says, “Things are not one way.” What integration looks like, and whether it ought to happen at all, will look different for different journeyers. What’s important, I believe, is that sense of honoring. Something happened—something, likely, quite significant. Now, how do we honor it?
Story by Rebecca Carrol, MDiv '25