Drawing on Gabor Maté: how a psychedelic experience brings buried childhood pain to the surface, what happens when the ego dissolves, and why the real work begins afterwards.
See the retreat →Psychedelic substances have been gaining recognition in recent years for their potential in the treatment of various mental health issues. The unique effects these substances have on the mind and their ability to provoke profound experiences of self-exploration and introspection can provide therapeutic benefits in addressing psychological challenges. However, their use should be under the guidance of experienced professionals to ensure safety and effectiveness.
How can a substance you ingest heal addiction, depression, or anxiety? If you examine it at the pharmaceutical level, there’s no clear-cut answer. Modern medicine is amazing, but it operates in specific ways: it kills a bacterium, suppresses a virus, chemically interacts with the cell mechanism. But what’s the healing process after you consume Ayahuasca, eat mushrooms, or ingest Iboga? How does a depressive mind transform into a mind of possibilities? Why does a person quit cigarettes, sex, drugs, or alcohol after a few mystical experiences with medicinal plants? You cannot understand this at a biochemical level. You can only understand this process if you understand how these conditions, which we call mental illnesses, originate.
Life’s traumatic experiences plant in people a particular way of seeing themselves and behaving, which are adaptive solutions to stressful situations they are undergoing. However, these can later become the cause of psychological problems. Certain social, physical, or cultural environments threaten a child’s development due to stress or instability. They can lead to physical and psychological adjustments necessary for immediate survival, an adaptation that may carry a significant long-term cost in the individual’s harmonious development process.
People adapt in certain ways when responding to apparent traumas like sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or subtler forms of trauma, like neglectful parents unable to meet the child’s emotional needs. These deviations establish patterns of behavior that help the child cope with stress in the moment. But once these become ingrained in the mind, body, and personality, they create issues in adult life. What should be a temporary solution for the child becomes a permanent state that causes long-term problems for the adult. The interactions between genes and physical experiences shape the brain’s developmental circuits, meaning the mind is in constant interaction with the external environment. It’s not just genetically programmed but is critically influenced by the child-adult relationship, particularly in the early years of life.
Good brain development depends on healthy interactions with parents and how they respond to our needs. A lack of receptivity from adults can lead the child’s brain to adapt and create behaviors to compensate for the loss of connection with parents. The ego is our invented defense mechanism, with all the programs we learned throughout our lives, which we identify with and believe to be us. So what happens when these mechanisms dissolve for a moment, and the truth of what happened to you and your authentic self surface? Healing does not occur due to the chemical effects plants have on the body; it happens due to the experience of the inner child.
All addictions are rooted in trauma and involve a complex physiological and psychological process that manifests in any behavior where a person craves, finds temporary pleasure, but struggles to give up, and their health and relationships are affected due to compulsive consumption. Through these behaviors, we seek love, belonging, connection, fulfillment, escapism from life, or relief from pain. Addicts want to feel like normal people, and there’s nothing condemnable about that. Addictions are not the problem; they’re the solution for the wounded individual. Addiction acts as a disease, with remission and relapse, affecting the brain and other body organs, causing physical and mental deterioration. You can call it a disease, but that is a very narrow and ignorant view of what is a solution to life’s problems faced by children.
Everything that troubles us and we push down to our subconscious level governs our lives. We may not be aware of what’s stored there, but we continually endure suffering and often attribute it to fate. However, this isn’t fate at all. We are, in essence, puppets of our subconscious, prisoners of our childhood. When subjected to the effects of psychedelics, two significant phenomena can occur: firstly, you may come into direct contact with the memory or the emotional resonance of a past childhood event. Often, this encounter can be deeply distressing, even traumatic. This intense and startling experience underlines the importance of the environment and facilitators during psychedelic experiences.
During such experiences, you unearth deep emotional pain which you have spent your whole life running from and repressing. Yet you do this with the consciousness of an adult who can efficiently travel back into your childhood, especially when you have the right support and guidance. What is depression if not the act of suppressing feelings, pushing them deep down as a response to childhood trauma? People bury their feelings when they feel alone and can’t bear them any longer because they feel too vulnerable, too small. During a psychedelic experience, people are given permission to venture back into those dark corners of their minds. That’s the first thing that happens.
The second phenomenon is the disintegration of the ego. When you allow the dissolution of your self-image, you can experience your true self and tap into an immense amount of love, gratitude, and courage. All the things that were impossible when you were a child now become accessible. Now, you understand why you’ve been running all your life, and you experience a self who no longer needs to run. This dual experience prompts profound changes in some people, but for most, it just marks the beginning. It opens doors, provides opportunities, raises awareness, but it’s followed by hard work and integration to achieve long-term positive results.
After a psychedelic experience, you can reset all your punishment-reward channels, effectively allowing you to be reborn as a new person. Once you’ve brought the pain to the surface, you need to understand it, accept it, and find new ways to live with it without reverting to old, toxic habits. Whether it’s the Generation Y, who was raised through physical punishment, or Generation X, who grew up with work-absorbed parents trying to provide their children with everything they didn’t have, many young people today are lost. They spend their time overeating, binge-watching Netflix, spending excessive amounts of time on pornographic sites, gambling, playing computer games, smoking marijuana excessively, abusing alcohol and drugs, engaging in extreme shopping sprees or frantically chasing after multiple sexual partners.
In conclusion, the journey into our subconscious through psychedelics, as proposed by Gabor Maté, presents a unique, transformative potential. However, it is not a cure-all. The real work lies in continual effort post-experience, understanding our pain, and finding healthier ways to cope. Society too plays a crucial role in supporting this process, acknowledging the mental health challenges we face and fostering environments conducive to healing. Psychedelics are a tool, not a solution, offering an avenue to understand our deepest selves, fostering a more conscious, authentic existence. As we navigate the complexities of life, let’s remember this potential for transformation and aspire towards a compassionate, mentally healthier future.
This piece draws from the teachings, books, and ideas of Gabor Maté.
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