024: "Families that trip together, stay together - confessions of an underground psychedelic therapist" with Noah H.

The demand for guided psychedelic journeys has continued to grow in the U.S. in recent years, and "underground" work has become increasingly mainstream. In today’s episode I had the chance to interview my first guest on his work as an underground psychedelic therapist - his name is Noah.

Like most people I know, he felt some kind of lack of meaning and purpose in his own life which led him to his first ceremonial psychedelic experience. It revealed the lack of his father’s presence in his life, and their lack of connection. Over the years he was eventually able to explore plant medicine healing in a group ceremonial setting with most of his family members.

Through this he realised the benefits and the potential of a more slowly opening arc in this kind of work vs. the current therapeutical model that fosters mystical experiences in one or two sessions to heal a specific psychiatric disorder or trauma.

This has informed the way he now facilitates his own ceremonies for groups - largely with families - which focus on shared multi-generational plant medicine work that is supported and held by the safe container of a community on an ongoing basis.

We talk about his PHD thesis on the topic and dig into his experiences and knowledge around the facilitation of these underground ceremonies and how he tries to create spaces for connection and what he calls “role dissolution”, where the structures of social reality are softened and where it becomes possible to re-articulate these structures so people can relate to each other and self in new ways.

When I asked him about WHY he does that and why he takes so much risk in doing so his answer was quite simple. He said the results just speak for themselves and that it is the right thing to do.

For me, our talk shed some new light on the phenomenon of people coming together as groups to do psychedelic work, acting as catalysts for each other’s development over a longer period of time vs. one time use to treat a specific symptom or issue.

I learned a lot in this talk and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

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