The New Psychedelic Revolution – Buckle Up, and Don’t Believe The Hype of Propaganda
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 19
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 20
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
Seven clients. I, at present, have seven clients undergoing psychedelic therapies. We’re not talking about my clients at EDM or jamband festivals, adorned in glowsticks and alien masks, spinning in a field, watching fractal hallucinations pulsating with the rhythms and the beats of the music. No, my clients are going into doctor’s offices and hospitals, and they’re being administered substances like Ketamine and Psilocybin under the close supervision of medical professionals. I’m doing the “integration” (the therapy session) the following day.
What am I seeing? Well, it’s hard to sum up with simple language, but if I had to choose a word to use, the word I’d choose is: “Profound”. I’m seeing profound changes with these clients in question. Most of them are taking micro-doses of either medication. A few have chosen to blast into the cosmos by way of a macro-dose, administered intravenously, and the reports about those trips are nothing short of extraordinary.
I won’t share those stories in this article, because they’re not my stories to tell, but they are mind-bending, and, more importantly, they are stories that indicate some serious breakthroughs with certain traumas or themes or roadblocks in their therapy profile that these clients have been “stuck” on for a matter of time, sometimes years. Be it stories of abuse, difficulties in relationships with their parents or their spouse, or guilt and shame from some of the choices they made when they were out using on the streets, these psychedelic therapies are helping them get through them, and get through them for real.
It doesn’t happen instantaneously. This isn’t a one-and-done story of taking a trip through one’s psyche, and suddenly “getting better”. It’s typically a story of months-long dosing, on a daily or weekly basis, whether it’s micro or macro-dosing respectively. Now, we haven’t had enough time to study what these psychedelic substances are doing to the brain’s circuitry, as they’ve been scheduled by the federal government as “dangerous drugs”, not to mention illegal to possess or distribute, or even study, but the tides are starting to shift.
Though the evidence at this point is anecdotal, doctors, scientists, and researchers are hypothesizing that the human brain, a veritable learning computer, is re-routing neural pathways in the human brain that once led to symptoms including, but not excluded to: anxiety, depression, panic attacks, cravings for alcohol and other dangerous substances, PTSD related reactions, and so on, these psychedelics are rewiring, in a sense, the human brain to go someplace else when triggered by an event or an experience that might otherwise send them spiraling into unpleasantry.
What I’m seeing, as the counselor doing integration with these clients, is as follows: more self-confidence, higher self-efficacy, less of all of those unpleasant aforementioned symptoms. These clients are walking into my office with their heads held high. They are more solid. It’s almost as if they have leveled-up, generally, and it’s something that I can feel viscerally and intuitively. It’s an energetic thing, and it’s real.
They’re healing.
I don’t mean they’re “feeling better”. I mean that they’re healing. This isn’t some “bandaid on a bullet wound” when it comes to the management of their disruptive symptoms, this means that the symptoms themselves are… poof!... gone. They’re not there anymore. Not, maybe they’re not 100% gone, but, let’s say 85-90% gone? That’s what I’m seeing, and that’s what they’re reporting.
I had one client tell me, a young man with treatment resistant depression, that after experiencing ketamine assisted therapy for a period of about 6 months, that his depressive symptoms have all but disappeared. When I say he had treatment resistant depression, I’m talking prolific depressive symptoms that were never stabilized by any medication, therapy modality, or even electro-convulsive shock treatments would make a dent in, he had tried them all: every medication, CBT, DBT, EMDR, everything that’s FDA approved, and he told me, “The best it ever got was that I just didn’t care about anything. I was completely apathetic and indifferent to life. I felt like a zombie. But since doing the ketamine, I feel like the chains of my depression have been broken.”
Think about that statement for a moment. The chains have been broken. No longer is he lugging around a ball and chain of depressive symptoms that in the past compelled him to attempt to take his own life on several occasions, and had convinced him that he was never going to be able to live or function in this world in an independent manner. His belief was that he would live with his mom and dad until they passed, and then likely spend the rest of his own life in a supervised group home at best.
He’s now working a 40 hour week. He’s gainfully employed. He’s saving money. Although he’s still under his parents’ roof, he’s saving his money, with his eyes set on restoring his credit score, and saving up for a down payment on a small condo within a few years, once he is able to prequalify for a loan for a mortgage. Amazing. Further, when he steps into my office weekly, the day after he receives his ketamine, he’s walking tall. When I first met him, he could barely make eye contact with me, and he would shrivel in his chair. Now he’s sitting upright, facing me, and confident in his dialogue during our sessions.
He’s healing. He’s not just feeling better. He’s truly healing. And even if I don’t know how it’s all happening from a neuroscience POV, the proof is in the presence.
We’ve been lied to about entheogens (plant medicines, though ketamine is a synthetic psychedelic treatment) much in the way that we were lied to about cannabis, for instance. Back in the 50s and 60s, movies like “Reefer Madness” convinced the American public that the use of cannabis would turn users into murderers, rapists, violent and psychotic individuals who would attack you on the streets, emerging from dark alleys. And the public bought in. Now, we have thousands of cannabis dispensaries across the country, comparable to Apple Stores, complete with “budtenders” who can tell you about the myriad products that they sell, and the benefits and drawbacks of each, depending on what the customer is looking to attain from the use of the plant. The irony is that the federal government still has cannabis grouped with drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and others when considering the dangers of its use.
Ridiculous.
They, the popular media, have done the same thing with psychedelics. If you drop LSD, take magic mushrooms, you’ll lose your mind forever. You’ll take a swan dive off a high rise. They will lead to “flashbacks” years later, you’ll find yourself walking around on an ordinary day, and then suddenly be in the midst of some horrifying psychedelic nightmare, unable to function and in the grip of psychosis. At which point you’ll probably run into oncoming traffic to end your suffering.
It’s BS. It always has been, and it always will be. Classic propaganda. The “Reefer Madness” of the entheogenic community. We must ask ourselves, why are so many influential people taking trips to Peru to engage in ayahuasca ceremonies, only to return reporting that they feel like they’ve been “reborn” and healed from deep-rooted traumatic experiences that they’ve had? Why is there such a demand, and waiting lists, for clients who want to incorporate psychedelic therapies into their mental health care.
Psychedelics don’t come without risks. Persons with more “exotic” mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder(s), schizophrenia, or other diagnoses that can lead to psychosis should steer clear from these substances.
But what the propaganda has been telling us about substances like LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, DMT, ibogaine, and other plant medicines (like they did with cannabis), has been a concerted effort to maintain the War on (people who take) Drugs, which with just a cursory 10 minutes of research will prove to you has been what the kids call an “epic fail”, is that these substances are, in fact, non-addictive, not habit forming (though some people might abuse them, but some people abuse benadryl, and they tend to be outliers), and they are no..t going to turn you, or your loved ones, into some kind of maniacal, dangerous character.
What they also aren’t telling you, legality notwithstanding, is that psilocybin and ketamine, the two most popular and accessible psychedelic therapies, are in fact safer than just about anything that you could buy at your neighborhood drugstore. It’s true. Magic mushrooms are safer for your body than Tylenol, but don’t expect to hear that reported on any television commercial anytime soon.
It doesn’t make it any less true, however.
We’ll know more after we’re able to study these substances for a few more years respective to how they are changing the brain’s circuitry, but the anecdotal evidence is already staring us in the face: Psychedelics are healing people. I’m one of the witnesses. Psychedelics are healing my clients. And for that I am grateful. Buckle up, and get ready, soon, for the new psychedelic renaissance. It’s bound to blow some minds, but in all the right ways.
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Addictions Therapist
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.
