Spiritual Emergency Support

It can happen that people who experience psychoactive substances are very disturbed for days or weeks after the experience, no longer understanding the world or their lives, and no longer able to function. This occurs particularly with spiritual experiences, usually when the substance-assisted therapy is new and unfamiliar territory, as the person lacks understanding of how to interpret and integrate an experience.

This is not a consequence of the substance itself, but rather of the environment and circumstances in which it is consumed (the setting). In very rare cases, it is due to overdosage or improper mixed use; more often, however, it is related to the intended, but deeply misunderstood, purpose: namely, that we (want to) reach states that we have never consciously experienced before – and which therefore frighten us or cause us to panic because we believe we are losing our identity, our ego, or our self, precisely because these states are so different from anything we have previously experienced.

For such people, it is helpful and often urgently necessary to discuss and process the experience afterward with experienced and trained people. Using a metaphor, one could say: the psychedelic experience can lead to a shattering of self or identity (disintegration). Integration then means that the pieces of self are put back together to reform a whole. Growth is possible when the pieces no longer have to be put back together exactly the same, but the overall assembly can change – perhaps only slightly.

The Institute for Substance-Assisted Therapy offers support in spiritual emergencies and draws on a network of therapists, all of whom have many years of relevant experience. Notably, the IST does not, unlike many other therapeutic approaches, dismiss encounters with other beings as purely inner psychological fantasies, thereby contributing to the devaluation and further destabilization of the client, but takes them seriously.