Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration Therapy:
Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration (PHRI) is a therapy model that includes harm reduction, psychedelic assisted therapy, mindfulness and psychodynamic therapy. PHRI is a framework that examines working with the psychedelics experience, including clinical therapies, spiritual practices, with peers or on their own. PHRI does not provide the actual psychedelic experience as part of treatment. However, it is an invitation to explore, make meaning and problem-solve experiences and insights acquired from a past or a future psychedelic journey into daily life.
PHRI consists of a total of 6 to 10 sessions
3 Preparation Sessions
Medicine Session (elsewhere)
3 to 6 Integration Sessions
PREPARATION
Preparation sessions explore the desire for a psychedelic experience, hopes, concerns and expectations of the journey; the perceived problem, how and when it takes place, how it affects a person’s life and how such a situation becomes a problem; psychoeducation about the different compounds and plant-medicines; research, respect for wisdom traditions, indigenous and alternative treatments. The individual process and the collective process run in parallel and consideration to ancestral trauma, racial trauma, past and current trauma.
It is useful to set an intention for your journey, it is also important to hold it loosely, as sometimes a different idea or issue can arise that is actually more important or useful during your experience. Flexibility and acceptance will make it easier to see where the medicine takes one.
It’s important to understand that there are some possible common physical and psychological responses to the psychedelic experience. Some of the physical effects we might experience are increased heart rate, muscle relaxation or tremors, digestive upset, dilated pupils, dry mouth, sweating and chills, numbness, and jitteriness or drowsiness.
Some of the psychological effects that can occur are heightened awareness of normal physiological processes like our heartbeat, heightened senses such as visual acuity or synesthesia, trouble focusing, confusion or disorientation, inability to discern reality from thought, tension, paranoia, euphoria, visual illusions, proprioceptive changes, a feeling of merging with the environment and/or the universe, feeling connected to or identifying with other people, animals, plants and/or objects, changes in sense of time, concern that the current experience may never end, highly symbolic mystical/spiritual experiences, regression to a younger age, reliving of birth, sensations related to past disease or surgery, loss of identity/ego dissolution, experiences that transcend time, space, and the senses, and the projection of strong emotions from the past or present onto the self or the environment. You may have one or more of these experiences, but you also may have none of them. Each person is different and each psychedelic experience is unique. Being open to the experience with as few expectations as possible can be very helpful and useful toward having a fruitful experience.
There are some mindset preparations that can assist you in being ready for these experiences should one or more of them occur. One is to adopt an accepting attitude toward discomfort. Openness to experience is not only helpful but rather necessary in order to derive the most benefit from your experience. It is extremely helpful to remember that an experience that seems negative is not “bad” and can be very useful toward gaining insights into your own psyche. Acceptance of not knowing is also very helpful in this regard. It is also useful to recognize fear and know that it is normal and acceptable to feel it. Allow whatever emotions come to the forefront to exist as they are so that you can examine them.
MEDICINE SESSION
Dr. Cohen focuses on the preparation and integration of psychedelic work, not the administration of psychedelics or conducting psychedelic sessions. She provides professional services, including Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration that are within her scope of practice to the public in ways that are aligned with all applicable laws and regulations.
INTEGRATION
What we do with the psychedelic experience may be more important than simply having the experience. PHRI starts from a belief that healing and learning reside within each of us. This inner intelligence can help us resolve inner conflicts and acquire greater knowledge and spiritual awareness.
The following days, weeks, and months of a psychedelic experience are fertile time for integration. Whether the psychedelic experience was blissful, smooth or complicated with integration one can open up new ways of understanding ourselves and the world around us making us more psychologically flexible.
In addition to rest, hydration and nutrition, creative arts and somatic experiences offer an environment for new insights, and understandings. Activities such as meditative states, breath work, being in nature, listening to music and the musical program of the journey, sharing experiences and analyzing challenging aspects, writing, drawing, dancing, yoga, sculpting may be folded into the integration process. Each individual will choose activities that invite opportunities to unfold and evolve the material brought up from the journeying.