🫠 Ask a Guide Anything

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We're the psychedelics newsletter that’s happy to let you vent. Reply and unload your best primal scream. (Caps lock encouraged.) 🤬

Oh you thought psychedelics were all love and light?

Just wait till you’re two hours in, and you notice a sudden tightness in your chest and heat in your face.

Next thing you know you’re thrashing around like a fish out of water, and no amount of box breathing can curb your impulse to scream.

Hey, it happens. And it’s perfectly fine.

For today’s newsletter, we asked our network of licensed psilocybin facilitators: How do you work with anger or rage that comes up during a journey? 

They tell us how they really feel after the jump.

Our most popular experience is getting even more perks.

At $750, Althea's Pick is already the most affordable way to have a legal psilocybin journey with a licensed facilitator.

Every booking includes the journey itself, plus prep and integration support. And the facilitators leading these groups are some of the most sought-after in the space.

Now, you heard it here first… We're building something new on the integration side.

We're not ready to share the details just yet, but anyone who books today gets early access.

Society tells us certain emotions are more acceptable to feel or express than others. Not the case in a psilocybin session. Clayton Ickes treats rage like an invited guest: “Hello anger, welcome. I'm glad you're here and I trust that you have something important to tell us.”

So when you feel your blood boiling, that’s a good sign the container is doing its job. Ann MacKenzie finds that these feelings have often been waiting for a release valve: “What emerges may not be ‘new’ anger, but anger that the nervous system finally feels safe to express.” 

Rachel Snitowsky explains how we all got so emotionally constipated backed up: “Many people have a hard time accessing their anger or rage, believing that it doesn't belong or needs to be locked up and controlled.” Now’s the time. Blow that gasket.

There’s no wrong way to rage. Char McKendrick says expressing anger “might look like yelling, screaming into a pillow, punching a cushion, moving the body, speaking truths that have long been held back, or simply sitting with a silent, simmering rage.”

But nobody's prying it out of you. That won’t work. So Denise Vargas stresses that it’s your own process to follow: “The client remains in full control throughout, deciding how much they want to feel and when to pause.”

Okay, maybe there’s one wrong way to express yourself. Terry Turner draws a hard line: “Part of the contract made between a facilitator and client in the regulated space is to do no harm either to oneself or others or to the physical environment in which the journey unfolds.”

Anger rarely shows up alone. Poke at it enough, and something softer usually comes out. Masha Steiner-Renoir’s version of poking involves asking pointed questions: “Where do you feel it in your body? If your anger could speak, what would it say? Often, anger is protecting something more vulnerable underneath.” 

Benjamin Dancer sees anger almost like a center of gravity: “We can learn to harness that energy in order to mobilize collapsed parts, grief, or self-protection.” But first, you might have to change how you relate to it. Monica Ramunda acknowledges that “many people have been taught that anger is bad or unacceptable, especially women.”

Psychedelic journeys are strange in general, but the ones that introduce unfamiliar emotions can be especially confusing. Kate Schroeder reminds us nothing has to make sense right away: “The meaning of the anger often becomes clearer during integration.”

Ok yes, anger is often guarding something more tender, like sadness, grief, or trauma.

(Man, why is it always trauma? 😭)

So do what you gotta do, and peel back those layers.

But before you go minimizing anger to a stepping stone toward something more “important,” let’s give credit where credit is due. Anger is valuable, useful, and powerful in its own right.

This emotion can signal that your boundaries have been crossed, that an injustice has gone unresolved, or that some part of your life feels out of alignment. You might be angry at another person, the world, or yourself.

And you can do something about it. Rage is fuel.

Take Tricycle Day, for example. We were pissed frustrated that psychedelics kept getting demonized despite all the ways they’ve helped us, so we created this newsletter.

Now we’re less mad. Still get triggered when people troll us on Instagram though.

Reply to this email to shoot your shot. If it’s a juicy one, we may select it for a future issue.

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.