Blog
Psychedelic Safety: At The Heart of the Matter
Our trip guide April did a deep dive into psychedelic safety research after a prospective client emailed worried about heart health. Here's what we learned! Dear Trip Guide, I’ve been doing some research on guided trips and the potential benefits of intentional psychedelic use followed by supported integration. I came across an external page linked on your website that mentions that ‘a person may also experience seizures from taking the drug, and they have a higher chance of heart [...]
I’m Kevin, a 36-year-old IT professional. My guided trip radically changed my approach.
Every Guided Tripping trip guide is all about setting productive intentions and integrating helpful discoveries to co-create supportive and fruitful psychedelic experiences. (Note: ‘Kevin’ is a composite of multiple client experiences and pieces of feedback we’ve sourced with clients’ consent. Clients’ personal information, the contents of sessions, and information divulged to a trip guide during the course of a session are kept strictly confidential.) We’d like to introduce you to Kevin So let’s meet Kevin, the IT guy. [...]
Inverse Dream Interpretation & the Bad Trip
Our trip guide April helps clients find that solitary image worth a thousand words. Guided Tripping’s guide April has documented her personal experience with black holes and bad trips on this blog before. The image of the black hole has come to represent multitudes for her in personal growth, her life’s journey with psychedelic experience, and in her work with clients. “I know a lot of psychedelic trip guides who mystify ‘the bad trip,’ or don’t believe it’s a [...]
Psychedelic seabirds, intentional experience
Our trip guide Miriam likes to collaborate with clients to create moments that are “auspicious.” As we reintroduce ourselves and Guided Tripping’s mission to our readers through this hardcore indoor winter, we’re taking this opportunity to introduce (dun-dun-DUN)... a metaphor! And because we like to think bigger, look closer, and nerd out on language too... we did some digging into the unexpected history of the word auspicious. Auspice comes from the Latin for ‘bird watcher’, and is related to [...]
Guided Tripping is OPEN!
We are so happy to announce that Guided Tripping has re-opened and we're doing one on one sessions again! We made a video with a few updates on: How we're working while protecting health in the age of social distancing Reintegration sessions April's upcoming new video series: "The Bottomless Bag: Unpacking psychedelic experience and other pathways of personal growth" We loved coming together (digitally) and feeling re-energized about sharing deep personal exploration with you all again! [...]
Guided Tripping – Our Most Asked Question
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash As a guide, one of the most common questions that I’m asked is, “I’m afraid of having a bad trip, how do I not have one?” From that starting point, I find that what we discuss is what isn’t a bad trip. A challenging trip is not a bad trip. One of the “stories” that live in the stigma around psychedelics is that the bad trip is a ticking time bomb [...]
The Bad Trip
It's time to get real: Bad Trips happen. This special blog introduces April, one of four amazing Trip Guides Miriam is now working with. It is a deeply personal and haunting 'trip report', so if you're looking for a breezy and fun read I wouldn't read on because this isn't it. Reading this cautionary tale highlights why Guided Tripping takes such care in preparation, set and setting, and other aspects of the intentional use of psychedelics: it speaks to almost all the [...]
“Happy Trips” – Guided Tripping in Dutch Vogue
So I got published in the Dutch Vogue this month. Which, I must admit, feels like a thing. I'm so grateful to be part of the positive wave of publicity psychedelics are (rightfully) getting. Not just for treating serious mental health issues and addictions, but also as an option for what in the lingo are called 'healthy normals.' I’ll translate the article here to the best of my ability, because I can't wait to share it with my non-Dutch [...]
Lift as you climb
Last week, I had an intake with a man dealing with what he is reluctant to call his second burn-out. He is smart, heartful and gentle. We had a beautiful conversation about what he wanted, what attracted him and worried him about having an intentional psychedelic session. Right when he was about to leave, the conversation flowed back to the main thing he’d love to do. How he has more experience with it than many people his age, but [...]
When the flowers hit the fan
That title just came out of my mouth in a beautiful conversation with one of my oldest friends. We laughed, and I wrote it down. Because I knew that somewhere down through the crevasses of that sentence, laid a tiny but beautiful world waiting to be painted in words. This particular mini-world is not about psychedelics, but about things that can happen with or without them: allowing 'negative' parts of your life and experience to tell their surprising story, [...]
Push on, give in, and chill out: becoming my post-burnout self
My life burned to the ground two years ago. Within the space of a week I lost my job, my relationship of 9+ years and my house. Ok, ok: I called in sick, broke up with my boyfriend and left him to stay in our house & with the cat. But still, you know. Overnight, things changed considerably. Until that moment I’d say I was pretty friggin' uptight. A smart, perfectionist, über-busy, nit-picking, judgmental procrastinator, to rattle off just [...]