🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We're the psychedelics newsletter that still doesn’t know what we want to be when we grow up. Maybe let’s just not. 🙃

Abbie Rosner spent her teens dropping acid and her next few decades pretending she’d outgrown it. After covering the cannabis boom for Forbes, she's now in her 60s writing a book about why older adults make some of the best psychedelic journeyers.

We asked Abbie what psychedelics can bring to the experience of aging, how older adults can work with psychedelics safely, and why she's dreaming up a new model for the elder community.

“I want to try psilocybin, but I can't afford it.”

Every time we hear that, a tiny dagger gets plunged into our hearts.

So, we're doing something about it. Althea's Pick is a group psilocybin experience (with prep and integration) for $500. You choose the state and timing, and we match you with a licensed facilitator and center.

We launched this offer on Friday, and the response has been overwhelming. Clearly we're not the only ones frustrated by the cost barrier.

Pay in full before June 1, and you'll also be entered to win a $500 stipend to help you get to Oregon or Colorado.

I grew up in the 1970s and wen through the Washington D.C. public school system. There were drugs everywhere. We smoked pot and dropped acid. It was just part of our scene. Then I got married and had kids, and all of that stopped.

It wasn’t until my mid-50s, when my marriage was ending and my kids were out of the house, that I rediscovered cannabis. And I found I had a completely different relationship with the plant than I did when I was young. Back then I didn't even particularly enjoy it. It was just a thing you did. But experiencing an altered state with the maturity of a lifetime behind me, including decades of therapy and a longtime meditation practice, was so much more enjoyable and meaningful.

As a writer, I thought, I'm probably not the only aging baby boomer out there rediscovering cannabis. So I got a gig at Forbes and started going to dispensaries, finding the gray-haired customers, and asking what they were buying and why. This was around 2018, right when I turned 60. For my birthday that year, I was gifted Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind. The book was revelatory. The chapter about psilocybin trials for people with terminal cancer especially stayed with me. And I thought, life itself is a terminal condition. If these experiences can help us overcome our most primal existential fear, why wouldn’t any older adult concerned about their mortality want to at least consider them?

That was the original motivation for writing a book: to destigmatize these experiences and explain them from the perspective of someone who comes to this work thoughtfully. But I hit a wall, because what did I really know about end-of-life? What I did know was exploring psychedelics as an older person. I’d read how the volunteers in those studies kept saying they wished they had done it ten years earlier. And it seemed obvious to me, why wait until you're at death's door? That's when the book pivoted away from end-of-life and toward aging.

Virtually all of the interviewees described themselves as seekers. These are people asking the big questions, not afraid to venture into unknown and potentially painful places for insight, regardless of whether they had any drug history. Older age has always been a time of spiritual deepening, of questioning what it all means and who you are. When you come to psychedelics with those questions on your mind, the experience can be very meaningful.

For a lot of the people I interviewed, the urgency was personal. Many felt like it's now or never. They were essentially saying, “I've been carrying this burden my whole life, and I really don't want to carry it anymore.” That burden may be the weight of decades spent supporting a family, working a job you didn't love, putting your own self-exploration last. It's also the psychic wounds that accumulated along the way, from a generation that didn't exactly grow up with enlightened parenting.

What they find is often profound relief, in ways the traditional healthcare system hadn't given them. Many of the people I spoke to had spent decades on SSRIs and in therapy. In older age, they're finally finding something that helps, and they're showing up for it with more maturity and genuine curiosity. That makes all the difference. To be clear, the work is generally incremental, sometimes with small but profound steps of insight to be built upon.

The first thing older adults often bring up is concern over the dreaded “bad trip.” I explain that in the fifty years since psychedelics were off their radar, a protocol for safe and meaningful journeying has been validated across hundreds of clinical trials, which covers set and setting, preparation, and working with a facilitator.

There's at least one study suggesting that the older you are, the less at risk you are of having serious psychological difficulties. That doesn't mean it can't happen. I include an account in my book of a woman who had extended difficulties after a journey. But there does seem to be something about the way older adults approach these medicines that makes them generally less susceptible to these problematic outcomes.

For physical risks, MDMA and ibogaine in particular carry cardiovascular considerations that matter more as you age. I always recommend doing extensive reading, research, and vetting before you even consider an experience, and make sure to talk to your healthcare provider about whether the medicine you're interested in is suitable to your medical and psychological history. If you're not comfortable asking your regular doctor, there are specialists like the Spirit Pharmacist who do consultations.

Aging boomers are de facto redefining what it means to be an older adult, and most of us are doing it without even thinking about it. We look different than our parents did at this age. We're meditators; we go to the gym; we carry a much more adventurous spirit into elderhood. My sister's partner is about to do a cross-country dirt bike trip. He went to a workshop for people interested in that kind of adventure travel, and almost everyone there was in their 50s and 60s. Instead of retiring to golf and cruises, the attitude is, let's go do the thing. The interior work of psychedelic journeying carries that same adventurous spirit.

The timing couldn't be more interesting, because as millions of boomers are entering older age, psychedelics are returning to mainstream culture at the same moment. We parted ways with these medicines in our teens and twenties, and now we're coming back to them forty to fifty years later. But for those who rediscover psychedelics in older age, the experience can be more meaningful (and less risky) now than it was back in the day.

One of the things that makes psychedelic journeying especially suited to this stage of life is when it’s done in community. Research shows that isolation and loneliness are serious problems for older adults, and communitas, that sense of belonging and shared experience, shows up as a more pronounced positive outcome of this work than almost anything else. Psychedelic ceremony is a built-in community builder.

For several years now I've been thinking about creating what I call elder vision circles, where groups of older adults come together to study, practice mindfulness, do community service, and periodically journey together. The goal isn't a ceremony followed by an integration call after which everyone disappears. It's a model that creates enduring communities of mutual support, because many people don't have the infrastructure to support them as they get older.

Before you consider any medicine, do your research, educate yourself, and sit with your intentions. Approached thoughtfully, these experiences are beautifully aligned to the psychospiritual work of aging.

Many older adults are afraid to break the law, and they shouldn't have to. Oregon and Colorado have legal frameworks now. In these states' models, a typical program includes a preparation session, the journey itself, and follow-ups with a trained facilitator. These programs also often have sliding-scale pricing structures and group models that bring the cost down further. The legal option is more accessible than they realize.

If you're feeling curious, it may be worth pursuing. If you're not, it's a hard no. Don't let anyone tell you that you need to do this. At this stage of life, the desire should come from you.

Pre-order her new book, Psychedelics and the Counterculture of Aging, out this summer.

That’s all for today, Cyclists! Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.