After the rich experience of your psilocybin journey there's a good chance you'll do one or all of the following: sleep for twelve hours, take a long hike in the woods, journal for nine hours straight, watch a sunset or two, and enjoy a couple of plates of your favorite comfort food. After all of that is when the real work begins. That’s when integration starts.
A psilocybin journey will change you. Just you. It's doesn't change the world. Not your circumstances. Not your husband or wife, your kids, and definitely not your job. You will be different. Everything else will likely stay exactly the same.
Integration is the work of dealing with that differential.
What does integration look like?
Everyone learns something unique during a psilocybin session. For me, I was given a clear, almost objective view of myself—like hearing a recording of your own voice for the first time, but for every aspect of your behavior and personality, and with vivid colors for emphasis. It helped me see that I needed to change the way I interact with others at a fundamental level.
Integration means navigating those kinds of changes and the disruption they can cause to your life. Integration is the process of merging the “new you” into the life the “old you” built over years and years of living. As an example: After my journey, I found I could no longer give energy to one-way relationships. I tolerated them before. They didn't seem like such a big deal. Now, I simply couldn’t tolerate them. I was now far more aware of how much they drained me, and made it harder to connect with people who genuinely cared. So, I had to let go. It wasn’t easy saying goodbye to several relationships, and it wasn’t casual—but it was right. And doing so gave me the energy to welcome new people and new opportunities into my life.
It’s not a simple process, and it takes some courage to accept what may come of the changes you make. But it’s worth it.
Some insights are clear. Others need translation.
Not everything from a psilocybin experience is easily explained, or even described in words. Some things arrive as color, emotion, sound, or sensation. Or, all of the above at once. Some parts may never make sense. Others may feel like comical interludes to break up the different acts of some grand cosmic play. Still others feel so profound that trying to describe them would miss the point. Perhaps the magnitude of the insight itself is the insight. Sometimes the message is a powerful and beautiful sorting of priorities in your heart, or the release of the unimportant. That's a particularly nice one, letting go of the unimportant.
Still, to understand what happened—and to grow from it—you’ll likely spend time interpreting, reflecting, and writing. You’ll brainstorm. You’ll question what you’ve always believed. And that’s all part of integration.
Talking about it can be hard—and important.
One thing common to many psilocybin experiences is an expanded sense of connectedness and desire for community. Combine that with earth-shaking personal insights and you’ll probably want to share your experience with someone: a friend, family member, therapist, or someone who knows you well. That can be hard—especially if they haven’t gone on their own journey.
You should talk to people, but sometimes the words are hard to find.
Here's an example. How do you explain that a vision of a dancing monkey in a cowboy hat and spurs gave you life-changing advice? That little guy showed me how to stop trying to control everything. He showed me how to relax and let life flow a little more, to let things evolve on their own without my interference.
And honestly, I trust that monkey.
His example changed my life.
My wife? She’s not quite sold on the monkey message.
Still, integration doesn’t have to be a solo mission. You’re not alone, even if it’s hard to explain what you experienced. Support helps.
At Unstuck, your facilitator will help guide you through your first one-on-one integration session. They’ll be available afterward too. A year later, my facilitator still responds to my emails with thoughtful replies. The facilitators at Unstuck are professionals and very, very good at what they do. They want to help and they're effective.
Group integration sessions are also fantastic. You get to share experiences, explore ideas, and find the vocabulary and language to talk about your journey—including with people who haven’t taken one themselves.
Integration is also about facing the unexpected.
I entered my journey hoping to learn how to survive what happened during my childhood. What I got instead was something more nuanced: I already had survived. I wasn't destined to keep feeling those events like they’d just happened, either. What I needed now was to survive the aftershocks—the person I became to survive my past, and specifically the habits of thinking that formed along the way.
Since I’ve been in survival mode for several decades those habits of thought and following patterns of behavior are deep. Changing them will take time. But now I have hope, and a path, and support, and a much larger community in my circle.
So while I walked away from my session with clarity and purpose, support and community, I’m still figuring out how to act on what I've learned about myself. Even with big insights, the work is mine to do.
And maybe the biggest lesson?
The psilocybin session itself is just one small leg of a much longer journey. You started this journey before the mushrooms. You’ll keep going long after the effects fade.
You’ll walk with more purpose. You’ll carry more insight. You'll look at yourself and the world from a new perspective. And if you stay open to the process, you’ll keep growing.
Integration helps you move forward. Just remember to expect the unexpected—and roll with it. Oh, and trust the dancing monkey. He knows what's up.
