Interview on Our Experience Guiding Wealthy Clients — Part Two

Q5: What's the hardest call you've had to make mid-session?

I try to let the experience unfold naturally, but there are moments where I have to step in and make a judgment call.

One of the hardest calls I've ever had to make mid-session was when a client, who was known to have allergies, started coughing. They were coughing a lot and I was unaware of what was causing it. It startled me because I wasn't used to someone coughing in a way that sounded almost like their airways were closing up. That's what I was thinking — perhaps something had triggered an allergic reaction. I had to consider: do I call an ambulance or do I let this play out?

I approached carefully and talked the client through their experience. I brought water. I first made sure they were breathing. They were responsive. They were able to speak back to me, and once they started to speak, the coughing subsided.

It was a beautiful experience, because what had happened was that when they were keeping themselves silent during the experience, they were actually holding down and pushing down the words that were coming up — and this was causing the coughing. Once they started to speak to me and slowly open up mid-session, the coughing completely subsided. From then on, for the next several hours, they just spoke through their entire ceremony and let it all out. It was wonderful to see.

In that moment it was one of the hardest calls I had to make: do I get medical help to intervene, or is this part of the process? I had to follow my training, follow my instincts, and first and foremost put their safety first — make sure they were in a non-life-threatening situation so that the ceremony could continue. Their breakthrough that followed was one of those moments where fate and destiny all aligned in one place and being a part of that moment was really quite special.

Q6: What's something a client has said or done during a session that's stayed with you?

This is a good question because there are a lot of moments that have stayed with me. I've done many ceremonies, and if you bring up the name of a certain client, I will have memorized their experience — because each one is so profound. Every single one of them has had breakthroughs, and seeing each breakthrough happen is so unique. It's like a fingerprint to that person.

If I were to pick one of my favorite sessions, it was a session where a client had come to sit with me. He was so unsure about his place in the world with his family. He had recently been cheated on by his wife and he had internalized it as his fault, so he was really beating himself up over it. He believed that everything bad happening to him was something he deserved.

During the experience he got up and started walking around the room and having a conversation with the mushrooms. It was quite fascinating because it was the first and only time I've ever seen anyone do this. For the entire six hours straight he was up, preaching to himself about how wonderful a guy he was, how he does deserve love, that he is a good person, that he's a wonderful guy who makes the people around him very happy.

From an outside perspective people may think, "Oh, that's so egotistical." I don't see it that way. How I saw it was that the mushrooms were telling him those words and reassuring him — letting him know: you are a good person. This wasn't your fault. You need to stop being so hard on yourself. Don't take the negative things around you and turn them into something you deserve or something you caused.

I just thought that was quite beautiful. It was very inspiring to see someone who went in completely beat up by the emotional relationships in his life come out with this wonderful energy, this wonderful excitement, and this love for himself that he absolutely did deserve.

Q7: When this becomes a managed, premium experience — beautiful setting, careful preparation, professional in the room — does something get lost? Or does the container actually make it work better?

A million percent the premium container makes it work better. In fact, It's the only way I've seen it work consistently. And when I say premium container, I'm talking everything involved with coming to the ceremony, experiencing the ceremony, and what happens after. It is all part of the container because it all affects how you experience the psilocybin itself. I have seen it time and time again, and this is the reason I got into the work that I do.

Before this, when I was in the ceremonial space as a mentee of someone else, I saw the failings that happen when the experience is not carefully curated from start to finish. I saw that there are so many break points in the journey that interrupt the experience. If those things had been taken care of, people having these massive breakthroughs could actually hold on to them years later, rather than simply going back to the way that they always were because the experience wasn't allowed to be transcendental through and through.

I couldn't stress more that absolutely nothing is lost when the container is a beautiful setting, careful preparation, and a professional in the room. That doesn't mean clinical. My ceremonial room is absolutely not clinical in any way. It's very homely, but it brings this comforting luxury feel to it. I believe this is how it's supposed to be. This is how it's meant to be.

I believe that the amount of effort someone puts into their wedding or their baby shower — any major, important experience in their life — is how much effort should be put into their mushroom experience. Instead of requiring the individual to go and prepare their ceremony space and get everything in order for themselves, I do it for them. It's like having a wedding planner. I've created the most beautiful, magical ceremony possible for you. Now — does anything get lost from your marriage because you hired a wedding planner to create a gorgeous ceremony space? No. It elevates it. It celebrates it. We are celebrating your mushroom experience. That's why it is set up the way it is.

Not only are we celebrating it, but we are concretizing it — because the more effort and intention that goes into your ceremony, the more likely you are to hold on to that experience and remember it. Do you remember the mundane experiences of your life? No. You remember the ones that moved you. The ones where the scenery was memorable and the people were memorable and the experience was full of love. Those are the moments that change people, and they concretize the experience well after the ceremony has ended.

Q8: Have you ever seen the experience change someone's relationship to their wealth or ambition in ways they didn't expect or intend?

Let me address the relationship to wealth first. When it comes to wealthier clients, money is simply a tool. It's almost a second thought in life; it doesn't really cross their mind.

It's like asking them, "Did the experience change your relationship to the pool in your backyard?" It's so habitually there that more times than not, this is not an aspect of the experience that ever gets touched on. Why would the experience affect the way someone feels about something they don't even have an emotional attachment to? It's just a tool in their life that they have because they built their way there, or were given it, but it's just there — like your pool in the backyard. You're not going to feel any differently about your pool because you did mushrooms.

Now, with regard to ambition — there have been very life-changing experiences, and yes, usually in ways they don't expect. Their ambitions can soften in the sense that their perspective shifts. Perhaps their ambition was being driven by a lack of self-worth. That gets reassessed, so the lack of self-worth is no longer the engine behind the ambition. They've figured out why they were feeling that way, and now the ambition is being driven from a cleaner place — an understanding of where that lack of self-worth came from. With that understanding, it's like removing baggage so you can be ambitious without it.

Or their ambitions completely change and realign with the new person they are evolving into. Perhaps rather than solely focusing on their next project, they focus on familial relationships, or taking time to meditate and take care of their body. Ambitions can shift if they align with the new wirings that the brain has come up with after the ceremony.

Cover photo: Rolex Stock photos by Vecteezy