Online Psychedelic Integration

For more than ten years I have worked in ritual contexts with ayahuasca, and I know from my own experience how much, and how little, can be carried forward from such journeys. What actually becomes part of a life seldom hangs on the experience itself, but on what happens before and after.

The settings in which people have psychedelic experiences today are varied: traditional ceremonies, underground sessions, clinical treatment with ketamine, upcoming regulatory approvals for MDMA and psilocybin, personal experiences outside of professional frames. As different as these paths are, so is the integration each one calls for.

My posture toward psychedelic experiences

I see psychedelic experiences neither as miracle cures nor as inherently problematic. What interests me is less a particular ideology than the question of what is sustainably helpful for the individual person over the long term. Some experiences become an important part of a life, others remain episodes, and others again take time before they can even be placed. All of that is allowed.

Three areas of focus

Preparation

If you are planning an experience, whether a ceremony, a clinical treatment, or another frame, and looking for clarity about your motivation, your safety, and your setting. Preparation is not advice on a substance, but a clarification of your own approach: What is the concern? Which contraindications need to be checked? What do you need in order to enter protected?

Integration after ceremonial settings

After ayahuasca, psilocybin, or other experiences in traditional or retreat-like contexts. This is the area in which I have the longest personal experience and where most of my clients arrive.

Integration after clinical treatment

After ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, in the frame of clinical studies, or future regulated MDMA or psilocybin treatments. Integration here is often part of an overall therapeutic process and can take place within therapeutic treatment or as independent accompaniment.

What it looks like

• We take time to bring what was experienced into words, without explaining it away.
• We notice the resonance of the experience in body, relationships, and everyday life.
• We work with what became difficult. Sometimes a journey brings more material than can be processed at once.

How a process unfolds from your first message to a conscious closing is described under How a process unfolds.

When integration is especially helpful

Some experiences resolve on their own and become part of life. Others remain open or carry something with them that doesn’t easily settle without a frame. From working with clients and from my own practice, I recognise some recurring patterns in which integration accompaniment becomes effective:

When the experience was too big or too sudden. Those who go into an intense experience without sufficient preparation sometimes return unsettled. What really happened? Was that real? What does this mean for my life? Here it helps to sort through what was experienced step by step, place it in context, and understand what can belong to such experiences.

When something has come along that won’t settle. Sometimes material surfaces in an experience that touches strongly but couldn’t come to a close during the session. In the weeks that follow, images return, emotions press in, or certain situations trigger again. That is not failure but a sign that processing needs time and a reliable frame.

When old memories arrive that weren’t there before. An intense experience can bring biographical material to the surface that one didn’t, or didn’t in the same way, remember before. Such memories often create pressure: do I now have to believe something, do something, decide something? The honest answer is usually: nothing for now. The point is to give these memories space, not to interpret prematurely, and to learn to live with not-knowing.

When everyday life feels different than before. After particularly intense experiences, ordinary life can feel foreign: less tangible, distant, sometimes unreal. Such states usually settle with time, but they need embodiment in everyday life: movement, relationships, familiar structures. What rarely helps here is the next extraordinary experience.

When the search for ever more experiences finds no end. For some, a pull arises: another ceremony, another substance, in the hope that the next one will bring the breakthrough. Often this is a sign that material from earlier experiences hasn’t been sufficiently integrated, or that the question of what actually wants to be addressed has been lost in the experiencing itself. What is needed here is not the next experience, but ground.

When particular care is required

Particular care is required with psychotic experiences, bipolar disorder, mania, severe depression, acute suicidality, strong dissociation, epilepsy, severe cardiovascular conditions, or with certain medications, particularly psychotropics. In such cases, medical or psychiatric assessment is central.

My frame

I do not work with substances and not in acute altered states. I accompany before and after the experience. If I have the impression that another form of help would be more fitting or safer, I say so clearly.

Transitions

Some integration processes deepen over time into longer therapeutic accompaniment. When the material is clinically relevant (trauma, lasting depressive or dissociative symptoms), I can continue within my Heilpraktiker licence as psychotherapy. Other integrations lead to life questions outside the clinical, and then individual work is the more fitting frame. What makes sense we work out together as we go.

When I am not the right contact

Integration accompaniment is not acute crisis care. With currently destabilising psychological symptoms (for example psychosis, lasting dissociative states, suicidal thoughts), medical or psychiatric care comes first. In acute situations please reach out to your doctor, a psychiatric clinic, or your local crisis service.

Fees

The regular rate is around €100 per session. If that is financially difficult, we’ll talk about it and find a workable solution together.

My background

Psychology, Gestalt therapy, Heilpraktiker für Psychotherapie, and over ten years of personal experience with ayahuasca in traditional contexts in Brazil and Peru. Since 2024 I have been accompanying people in integrating such experiences. I do not offer substances and do not give recommendations for or against psychedelic experiences. My work begins when someone arrives with an experience they want to understand or to bring into their life. More about my path under Who am I?.