"Let's [expletive] do this, Mike"
What a mini documentary shows about psychedelic therapy in action
Important update on weekly meditation:
The calendar link to the weekly meditation I sent last week isn’t working. Please use this Google Meet link to join at noon on Tuesdays — you can make your own calendar event to remind yourself ;)
The New York Times released a short documentary last year about a fire chief from Idaho who is using ketamine-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.
It’s 17 minutes long, which is a near-eternity these days. But I highly recommend it.
Rob, the subject of the documentary, doesn’t emerge from several rounds of assisted ketamine therapy with all the answers. If anything, he seems to come out with a whole new raft of questions. That’s a more honest and authentic portrayal of psychedelic therapy than a lot of media coverage would suggest.
The documentary is optimistic but not triumphant. It shows how these substances can help us, but only if we’re at a point in our lives where we really want help. For example, after avoiding a painful topic during his first treatment, Rob tells his therapist before the second, "Let's fucking do this, Mike." Meaning: Let’s do the hard work.
That, to me, is the most important element of working with psychedelics: The willingness to “fucking do this.” To confront the issues we’re trying to avoid.
Window of tolerance
It’s one thing to know we need to leave our comfort zone. It’s another thing to find the motivation to actually do it.
Many people get serious about psychedelic work when they either:
Hit rock bottom.
Experience a major loss, such as a breakup or death.
For those of us doing OK, it can be hard to gin up the desire to “fucking do this.” Why make ourselves uncomfortable when life is already hard enough?
Mindfulness can help. Regular meditation practice can expand our “window of tolerance,” which is a psychological term for “what we can handle.”
For example, we might feel a pain in our knee while sitting in meditation. Under normal circumstances, we’d adjust our position to relieve the discomfort. But in mindfulness meditation we’re encouraged to use the pain of the knee as another object of experience — just another thing to be with. Often, we realize the pain isn’t that bad and doesn’t require adjustment. Voila! Window of tolerance expanded.
For me, the trick is reminding myself over and over that it feels good to get out of my comfort zone. Maybe it’s meditation. Maybe it’s trying something new. Maybe it’s a cold plunge.
The specifics don’t matter. I’m just trying to keep my “let’s fucking do this” muscle limber.