Ep8: Shame, Insecurity, & Sacred Disorder
5-MeO-DMT journeys #2 and #3 - The Intestines of the Divine Trickster
Disclaimer: This post is a personal account of my ongoing encounters with 5-MeO-DMT. It is intended for reflection and educational purposes only. I am not a medical professional, and this is not medical advice, nor a recommendation for the use of any substances. Psychedelic experiences can be profound and unpredictable. Everyone's journey is unique, and what I describe here reflects my own path, emotions, and interpretations. Please approach this topic responsibly, and always seek guidance from qualified professionals if you are considering exploring altered states of consciousness.
OK that’s the serious right bit out of the way.
We take life too seriously.
By serious, I mean we bury it under the weight of protective importance. Things become so concrete and heavy that we are willing to argue, fight, cause harm, and even kill one another. That's too serious. That's not how the universe works.
“Something can be held as sacred and divine and beautiful, but it can also be light. It can be free. In fact, when we love things, we let them be.” - Me, Aug 2025
If you’ve not read the 7 proceeding episodes in this series let me catch you up.
March this year I had my first encounter with the world’s most powerful psychedelic medicine 5-MeO-DMT, aka, The Void, The God Molecule, Bufo, or Toad. It is derived from the venom of Bufo Alvarius; commonly know as the Colorado River Toad or Sonoran Desert Toad.
5-MeO is unique amongst psychedelic medicines for several reasons.
Not least is that within seconds of inhalation your body and mind can dissolve completely, your ego might die, and all that remains is conscious awareness expanded to the size of the universe. It can be simultaneously terrifying and ecstatically beautiful.
To offer a little more precision here’s a summary of the recurring qualities that have defined my encounters so far. These qualities are consistently reported by people from all around the world that have journeyed with this medicine.
The Infinite: A sense of vastness that has no beginning and no end. Boundless. Limitless.
The Eternal: An experience outside of time where past, present, and future dissolve, and all that remains is now, endlessly present.
Outside Time-Space: The ordinary rules that govern physical life such as linear time, location, and separation no longer apply. Something else, something much larger, frames the moment.
Cosmic Love: The scale of the experience feels galactic, universal, not confined to the small self but opening into something unimaginably vast, and filled with unconditional love.
Super-Intelligence: There is intelligence here. Immense, profound, ancient. But it’s not cold or mechanical.
Personhood: Despite the scale and intelligence, there is a deep feeling of relatability. This presence is personal, not abstract. It is not an “it”, it is a “Thou.” You might call this God, the Divine, Mother Nature, Source whatever name you give it the experience is not merely conceptual. It is relational.
You can see the temptation to use 5-MeO as a means to explore philosophical and metaphysical questions about the nature of consciousness, the numinous, and the meaning of life.
However, at least at this stage my reason for working with the medicine is for my psychological and emotional health. I don’t just take it and see what happens. I approach each encounter with a profound respect for the power that it contains.
Intention
With any psychedelic medicine it is wise to define your intention before you begin. What do you wish the medicine to help you with? What questions do you hope to have answered? What would be your blue sky outcome if you could receive it?
Defined intentions act like a compass, when crossing the veil its important to have a sense of where you are going. They focus your mind like aligning yourself with a specific frequency, opening a dialogue with the medicine so it knows what you are ready to work on. They also guide integration, the longest and most vital part of the psychedelic medicine work is the months of integration that follow each journey.
I never work alone with medicine. I’m fortunate to have a very experienced guide and therapist named Eir. Preparation for a ceremony takes weeks. During which I train physically, control my diet, practice breathwork, and journal and reflect daily on a serious of questions specific to my intentions.
Which brings me to the specific intentions for these ceremonies. Throughout my life I have struggled to fulfil my potential and I couldn’t figure out why. I worked hard, studied hard, had therapy and coaching, and despite successes I have always known that I was falling short. I couldn’t even be content with what I had achieved.
This year I had a breakthrough. I have been cultivating self-awareness through mindfulness and I became astutely aware of my shame and insecurity.
Much of my life I have put others first just to feel safe. I never felt I was good enough to be accepted for who I am. I never felt loved, or safe. I have been plagued with thoughts and feelings of insecurity and shame.
“Will they love me if I give them what they want? Will they at least like me? I can’t ask for what I want, what if they say no? Will they leave me?”
It’s pretty f*cked up what childhood can do to you.
I’ve been ashamed of my own needs, afraid to ask for what I want in case I get rejected and have to acknowledge that I’m simply not good enough. I learned to suppress my resentment and anger at feeling like I’ve been treated unfairly. I’ve suffered like so many others - in silence, hidden behind a fake smile and the fragile façade of everything’s fine.
Worst of all was when I realised that I was the one maintaining these patterns of shame, insecurity, and anger. It was me, not them. I was the one that kept telling myself I wasn’t worthy of wanting, of asking, and definitely not of receiving. I didn’t even know what I wanted, let alone how to get it. This crushing realisation finally freed me to acknowledge what has been holding me back in life. Don’t underestimate the power of self-awareness!
So I set my intention, Eir helped me prepare, and when the day arrived I knew what I wanted.
“To know clearly in my heart what I want, and be brave enough to follow it.”
Preparing The Ground
Toad 2 - 20 mg
The first dosage was small, only 20 mg, I was aware this could be more challenging. With a high dose you simply can’t hang on - you get pulled apart so quickly there is no time, or capacity, to even panic - this time I wanted to maintain some sense of myself, to see how much I resisted.
I’m immediately aware of the melting, twisting disorientation. The “I/ego” wants to hang on, letting go only takes a little willpower, I’m surprised at how quickly I surrender. I don’t completely dissolve - there is both me and the medicine present. It’s warm, wrapping me up in unconditional love. I try to go further but this is as far as I can go.
Love becomes the ground.
“The ground is prepared now,” - The Divine Intelligence speaks. “All emotions can be met with love. Bring anything.”
This pleases me immensely. I soften more. I know I’m still in the room. I can open my eyes but what I see makes little sense. The sound is immense, the crystal bowls, the music, Eir’s voice anchoring me to this realm, its all so powerful. The music helps me let go of any remaining resistance, the ego is fine. We ride together.
There is something else present here, there is the medicine of course, the “I” that grasps, and pure awareness.
However, the “I” that grasps is no longer grasping, it is now witnessing. The ground is love; all difficult emotions are welcome here. To be met with love. I feel tears of joy and gratitude streaming down my face.
I sit up and look at Eir. “We go again.”
The Storehouse of Shame
Now I was ready, the ground prepared, it was time to do the work. The second dose.
Toad 3 – 53 mg
As I lay down, my lungs still filled with vapourised medicine, it begins.
I’m unfolding over and over and over. Turning inside out, expanding, melting, collapsing back and starting all over again. My body is being devoured. It’s so beautiful. I surrender completely.
This is the most visual experience I have had so far. My eyes are closed but my vision is filled with beautiful black and white patterns, endless fluid motion, twisting, unfolding, incomprehensible curved geometries, galactic in size and power.
The "I/ego" ego is here, just about. Awareness is here, the all-knowing Presence, powerful and unshakeable. The medicine is very strong. Now my body is gone, I am pure consciousness.
Release, release, release. Go further.
There is no body, no mind, no boundary or barrier. I am medicine. I am love. I have become fields of liquid energy, expanding to the size of the universe. Bubbles rise like supernovas inside me, bursting and reshaping me. I don’t know how long I am gone, flowing through infinite space, outside of time. This is beyond ecstasy.
I am still in rapture but slowly there is a sense of my body.
I smile so strong the corners of my mouth move past my eyes, there is tension everywhere and love is healing it, massaging it out of my bones and tendons. The medicine has laid the foundation of love; and now I’m immersed in it. Melting into it.
Then the realisation that the body is the storehouse of shame. We know this from somatic therapy, EMDR, and other techniques, the works of people like Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine.
But right now, I am experiencing this with utter clarity. So much shame and insecurity locked in my hips, my pelvis, my lower back. How can I have children or create anything when there is so much shame locked in my body? How can I manifest the life I wish to have?
I writhe in the release, ecstatic, erotic, pure intimacy, feeling my body as if for the first time. My face stretches, my hands explore myself in loving embrace. Holding me, cuddling me, massaging the tension out of me.
Self-attunement. Intimacy. Ecstasy.
I’m being born anew. I am love.
I’m flowing now. Shame and insecurity are released. The grip of "I" has let go. My body directs my attention to specific tension. Here, here is shame, here is insecurity, here is frustration, let go, let go.
I feel myself being born again, but this time into my own loving arms, received with gentle celebration, the tension melts and the laughter begins. I am both the baby and the parent holding myself. Spasms of diaphragmic release, belly-rolling laughter.
Inconsequential
The familiar blend of grief and joy. As the medicine heals and releases my shame and insecurity, my heart unlocks the grief of having suffered. At the same time, there is the joy of release. Laughter and crying are unified.
"My brain pours water out my tear ducts to heal me" – Jay Electronica, Better In Tune with The Infinite
The spasms continue as deep deep catharsis takes place. I’m both spirit and body, aware of oneness and of Self. Once again I become the sounds, all is energy, fields, and waves within fields. The sounds carry me away and bring me back again and again.
As I return I realise Eir is in the room and I know now that before this moment shame and insecurity would have stopped me from healing. Specifically from releasing through touch, from writhing like a serpent shedding skin. To do so in front of another? The horror of shame!
Society says no, conditioning says no. “How will I be judged?” Shame has held me back from everything where this one question arises. “How will I be judged?”
“IT IS INCONSEQUENTIAL” - the now familiar voice of The Divine fills everything.
These are not just words. This is TRUTH. This is physics, biology, chemistry, the voice rewrites the atomic structure of who I am. There is no going back from this understanding. I get it now. It doesn’t f*cking matter!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Toad has opened the door again. The Divine/God/The Sacred is always present, beyond the veil. Awareness, and love patiently waiting to heal.
Slowly I return to my body, to the room, I lie relaxed, content, free. It is miraculous how quickly the medicine heals. I know the integration lies ahead of me now, but I am ready.
Sacred Disorder
A note on healing: The process of healing requires disruption. To heal, grow, transcend you can't remain the same. This is why it is never comfortable, and often deeply painful, this is why we avoid the work.
To be healed by 5-MeO-DMT is to be devoured, taken into the intestines of the universe, swallowed whole by a power that twists and distorts you until you no longer recognise yourself. This is the belly of the divine Trickster, the guide who moves between worlds. Hermes awaits you beyond the veil.
Inside, the rules of form are bent and broken. Shapes twist. Identities blur and dissolve completely. What you thought was fixed unravels. The Trickster is not here to comfort you, to console you, but to reshape you, to rebirth you.
You are digested in his realm, stripped of what is no longer needed, purified through love, mischief and sacred disorder.
Then, without ceremony, you are spat back into the world, the same yet utterly altered. Reborn. It can feel like chaos but it is a level of order and meaning beyond our comprehension. This is the Trickster’s process.
Time for a sauna and an ice plunge!