Here's a question I want to float to the Nexus:

Integration is obviously important when taking a psychedelic, at any dose, really, and I've been wondering: is the importance of integration something that is specific to the psychedelic experience, or is it just a manifestation of the fact that pretty much any extreme experience should be integrated?

Example:
If I have a traumatic experience (say I get shot), that is something that I need to integrate, in a way that is productive and healthy, or else I'm at higher risk of anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc (this is pretty well accepted in the cog. sci. literature).

We say the same is true of taking, for example, 4 tabs of LSD.

Is the integration we do somehow specific to psychedelics, different in some unique way from the integration you do on other experiences not associated with drug use, or are psychedelics just, in general, very intense experiences that need to be integrated like anything else.

Blessings
~ND

I believe they are very intense experiences that need to be integrated. However, I feel that I would have a harder time coming to terms with being shot than I would being blasted into hyperspace and back (I have been to hyperspace, I have never been shot). Perhaps that is because there was/is no physical trauma...?

That and I think all humans have at least a little fear when it comes to dying painfully (not necessarily dying in general) which is slightly ironic seeing as taking higher doses of psychedelics can lead to what feels like "dying". Often times the "Am I dying?" thought that crosses our mind is the source of the trauma. In both real life and psychedelic experiences. Once that thought comes into your head, it is hard to get it out!

All integration needs to be managed somehow and I am sure each person must find a way because as you stated earlier, if these intense traumatic experiences are not integrated it can lead to some harmful after effects. But is one different from the other? I am not sure and doing a side by side experiment isn't really feasible. All I can do is try to compare a traumatic event in everyday life to a profound psychedelic trip...

@ND - I think you hit the nail on the head

Everything in life needs integration - how often in life do we find ourselves learning the same lesson for the second, third, or fourth time? Psychedelics just present these lessons in a more profound, and visual way. By the same token, they aren't always 'psychedelic experiences' that need integrating, more like life lessons presented in a psychedelic setting. Personally I make a distinction between decoding the psychedelic message, and the actual integration of the experience.

I think that's where conscious living comes in as well - or rather, for me integration = conscious living = integration.

To me it seems like 'integration' is just a one-word way of of saying "to make meaningful." We try to derive meaning from an experience be it rationally or irrationally. A rational integration would entail analyzing the experience. An example of irrational integration would be to create artwork. We do both of these things on a daily basis with much of what we do. I think the reason why emphasis is put so heavily on integration here at the Nexus is because if one repetitively engages in high-dose psychedelic experiences without trying to make them meaningful, then one becomes prone to other sorts of trauma, not to mention that the seeming intelligence of hyperspace does not always favor one who journeys so carelessly. If there's no integration, then the point is reduced to "another good high."

creating Art and Music is like super-rational integration

Integration is part and parcel of the actualized human experience. Sure, it's easy to NOT do the work, blow it off, have another drink, another toke, tell another racist, sexist, homophobic, hate filled joke among your friends. Or for the really severe stuff (believe me I know) descend into the illnesses of modernity such as depression and PTSD, act out, and here is what I feel is key. . . . . don't grow.

Integration to me equals growth. My body stopped growing 35 years ago. My mind shall never stop growing if I'm lucky. But I need to nurture this growth. Treat it gently, like it's fragile at first. Later on do the really hard work of looking it unflinchingly in the eye, then like the Fear Mantra in the Dune stories, come to realize that once it has passed through me, I remain.

Often I remain as Pandora did after she opened the box. Spent, burned out, used up. All the furies are released and the world shall never be the same from this day forward. But then she takes her last little bit of strength to take one last look in the box and she finds . . . . . HOPE. . After all of that - after all the horrors of both consensual reality and rough rides in hyperspace. This to me is what integration is.

If I do it correctly, I cannot force it into a time frame. My really rough ones took six months to over 10 years (family members burning to death). The work is hard, there is no denying it. And if I do it correctly, I am integrated, but I am not the same. Growth has occurred.

Integration to me is comparable to digestion. We eat food because we need nourishment but if the food can't be digested, we can't receive the nutrition. Tripping without integrating is like cosmic masturbation and why would you want to jerk off when you can make love. I think the main purpose of integration is to help explain the unexplainable, translate the ineffable, and then share with others, its a way to handle shock on our own, whether it be trauma or psychedelic induced. I hope this makes SOME sense.

And while we are on the subject, does anyone feel like dreaming is a way that we subconsciously integrate everyday occurances?

Very much in the sense that entheogen related issues are occult. I can talk freely with my colleagues or family about any hardship of life, and just telling is sometimes already a relief on its own. But for integrating an experience with plants, I can't do that. Even if they are open minded, they can't really comprehend as they weren't never there. A tree might be a better listener. Integration of such matters is still taboo to the mob, sadly. Luckily sites like this exist.

I agree with this.

For me an experience only registers as an experience (psychedelic or non-psychedelic) if I can grow from it. If it opens my eyes a little, if it makes me understand a bit more about the workings of my mind, the nature of reality or something else, if it makes me see well known concepts in a new light, if it makes me reevaluate my emotions and my relationship with them, etc. My consciousness is transformed through every experience. But this transformation does not take place in one instance, it's a slow process sometimes. If I ignore (or fail to grasp) the opportunity to transform, the experience becomes meaningless or worse. Worse because I may find myself in a mental limbo, neither the same as before, nor fully transformed and I will feel dissonance within. The same can happen if too many experiences occur without enough time to process them properly.

The more transformations we reject or miss, the more confused we may become. Our minds, are pushed and pulled but we draw no conclusions, find no ends, only tangles. Neither ignoring this situation nor seeking out more and more experiences to fix it, seem to be good solutions. Integration on the other hand does - analyzing and seeking out the move we missed, the step we didn't take, the lesson we didn't want to learn, etc. and then making that move, even if it's done slowly. And then we grow.

Indeed I think integration should be a general life-practice and not just limited to the terminology of psychedelic users.

And as for the occult part - there's many things in life that we cant talk about with our co-workers, many experiences they could not relate to or that are kind of taboo to talk about or just too private, but still need to be integrated. It's not just limited to psychedelics.

Thank you Enoon for the completing of the picture, but even a trusted shrink can't help much with trip integration.

May I offer in return:
Is it ever possible to completely miss out on integration?

I do believe there is an internal integration machinery in constant active modus, one we're not having much say over, a bit like the Autonomic Nervous System does. Animals also integrate their experiences to avoid future suffering in recurring analog situations.

Often in the heat of ceremony when I reach for a straw of support, I call out on my body's autonomous intellect and deeply believe that it knows how to handle what's happening, much more than my brain/mental powers which have proven to be a slippery companion.

Same goes for after-integration, I give it to my/the system in whole, trying to avoid that the experience will dabble more than actually necessary in an vicious circle type of mental and/or emotional warping. I believe that integration is not a mental/emotional effort only, which makes me believe it is not solvable with only those means. I suggest to distribute the task at hand which boils down to relieving some pressure off mental/emotional part. The idea "If I do not integrate this properly I am in (deep) trouble." can cause on it's own a new problem which wasn't there before. Just want to suggest we are systematically supported, help we can rely on, and that takes some weight of possible integration performance anxiety. No reason for laziness though. I think living healthy & wisely increases the autonomous integration potential.

^^^I totally resonate with this...

I see integration as a process that continues, with or without our conscious knowing, lifetime after lifetime...Slowly creating a soul similar to the way a crystal grows naturally, little integration by little integration over long spans of time until you've got one big, beautiful crystal that is fully integrated.

I contemplate this quite a bit, however it is rather difficult to put into words...or at least a linear language.

I see what you're saying but honestly don't see the relation between a life-threatening traumatic experience and a deep psychedelic experience ( which yes can be very much traumatic in it's own right). Perhaps I'm reading too much into the metaphor but what I can relate from my own life experience "integrating" both, I'll try to answer your question from my perspective.

Integrating a psychedelic experience for me is somewhat synonymous with the term "practical" as used in magical or mystery traditions. It is taking the theory of the practice combined with the gnosis, the insight or wisdom, or perspective, or whatever you want to call what the psychedelic experience gives you. In other words, when one enters a psychedelic state, they often receive deep insights relevant to various areas of their personal lives upon which change could be focused. Taking this and applying it is a type of integration. This is mostly characteristic with visionary experiences that remain in the realm of the personal, the psychoanalytic trips.

A shattering psychedelic experience of the type characterized by Shulgin as a ++++, the ineffable state that can only be related to dying to make any sense of it, is definitely traumatic and integrating it takes a mighty feat of will and intellect. One doesn't take anything back from a trip to the void, they are lucky to have something to come back to. Re-entering a world that suddenly makes little sense takes a lot of work, and luckily there are communities like this one in the age of the internet to help connect minds that have been through these experiences successfully, becoming greater humans in the process.

I don't think integration is the term really for learning how to place a life-threatening experience in one's life, it's more like "deal with". I ran across the country after having nearly been murdered in my own home by a burglar I had walked in on. To this day, nearly 30 years later, I still catch myself sort of disassociating when it comes to mind. It's not so much environmental triggers but memories that get me. I'm much better though, now I don't kick doors in to empty apartments when coming home, and spending however long to go into every room and check behind every door with a knife before I can take my shoes off. I don't know about being a better person, I never learned how to love the world any better from my "lesson in terror" as the guy called it before he knocked me out with the butt of a shotgun. It is only through intense shattering psychedelic experiences that I've been able to forget what I took from that lesson and it's immediate aftermath- that the world is full of rapists- and learn to love myself, let alone the world or the people within it en masse.