Plant Medicine, Spiritual Communities and the Wild West Feelings That Come With Them

A few years ago, I started noticing how many of my colleagues, friends, and clients were leaning on plant medicine to help them through symptoms. Some were processing trauma, some were processing life stressors, and some seemed to be looking for something outside of traditional therapy. I am not shy about my personal experience with trauma and healing. I wrote a memoir about it, but I didn't touch on the times I leaned on plant medicine and spiritual communities to heal because that part is still so raw. The damage done when I went into certain circles trusting they had my best interests in mind is life-changing, and life-challenging. When you already struggle with trust, and a place of healing breaks that trust, it is life-changing. It eventually led me to look more closely at how we, as a Western society, handle such sacred medicines. The research also led me to now, where I can finally write about it. Writing is a strong tool in my healing tool box, and I use it often. So, here I go. 

I attended a “church,” and I stress the quotation marks around church because, as I understood it, calling it a church was connected to how the organization operated within the laws of the state where it was located. At first I felt at home. They had all the same trauma healing books I have; they stressed that they were not “shamans,” but that they practiced what they were trained in from Indigenous people, and the first ceremony was beautiful. I was sold. I should back up and mention that in that first ceremony, when I was first served the medicine, I had a funny thought: this tastes like Robitussin; am I being scammed? I smiled to myself as I drank it. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that was my intuition warning me, but at the time I didn't think much of it. The medicine, at least, was real.

Flash forward and a lot of spent money later, I was “in.” Somewhere along the way, the gatherings started to feel like a competition over who was more “in” than others. I kept noticing how much people fanned out for the leaders, bringing gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan dishes to impress them at events or ceremonies. A lot of abandoned souls expressing the “look at me” energy that ego-centric spiritual leaders feed off of.  I kept telling myself it was merely community love, and maybe some of it was. But my body had other impressions, and I didn't really know what to do with that at the time. I had come across a community that talked constantly about listening to your intuition but, at the same time, told many how wrong their intuition was. I began to notice how often the “leader” argued with people until they caved and agreed that she was right and they were wrong. I started to notice that my body didn't feel comfortable there; so many things were just off.

After came the ceremony that changed things for me. Right before the ceremony, the leader's son loudly expressed his conspiracy theories about how COVID was fake and the government was trying to control us. I was sitting next to an ICU nurse, who was also the only person of color in the room. He looked at me and asked, “Is this person serious?” I was so uncomfortable, but I wanted him to know he wasn't alone, so I told him maybe it was best to ignore it and get what we needed out of the medicine, or we could leave. We should have left. I try not to ‘should’ on myself, but here was a moment where I should have left.  The ICU nurse talked about how much time he had taken off work for this ceremony and how much he needed this after the peak of COVID, and yet there stood the very thing that triggered him the most. People denying his very raw, extremely true and traumatizing past few years working ICU units during COVID.  He surprisingly decided to stay, but not without vocalizing his perspective, which almost developed into a fight with the leader's son. He experienced what he experienced, and that's his story, but he eventually left as soon as the sun came up, well before the rest of the group did. I wish I had followed him.

I questioned this exchange, observed it with others, and saw how unsafe the circle felt before we jumped into a mind-altering experience. The way the leader spun this into something necessary, something positive, was evidence of her narcissistic, masterful spells of manipulation. Before I knew it, I was sold snake oil again. They invited me into a special training for a workshop series they were working on. “You are so talented; be our space holder,” they enticed me. I questioned, again, what happened in the ceremony. They gave me more explanations and excuses. I wanted to be a part of something that helps others so badly; I bought it.

Writing this and putting it out there scares me. During this experience, I felt the entire time that I knew better, but something kept me going. After years of processing this time in my life, I have been able to connect it all back to early wounds, mostly wounds related to betrayal and feeling left out, so them picking me was something I had been secretly chasing all of my life. It was hard to let go; my somatic self was screaming “GO!” and at the same time, feeling chosen was so new I kept convincing myself to stay. Two feelings can exist at the same time, however, one feeling was definitely my gut and I really should have ran. 

At first, the program I was supposedly handpicked for seemed harmless. That changed during one of their workshops, when I witnessed the leader reenact a rape someone had experienced—forcing them to re-experience their trauma by being physically held down. The participant was distraught and wide-eyed. I tried to intervene, but they insisted they were fine. Later, they disclosed to me that they were not fine. Their desperation to heal, combined with the leader’s manipulative strategies, made them believe there might be value in the experience. So they returned to the program. Afterward, they met with me to process what happened and to decide whether to quit or continue. I encouraged them to leave, but they chose to stay. Each time I saw them, they looked more frail, lost, and unkempt. I couldn’t lose the feeling that whatever was happening there wasn't healing.

I started canceling, pulling out, pulling back, and sought out my own therapy with someone who understood spiritual abuse. With the help of a therapist who walked me through some much-needed psychoeducation on narcissism, spiritual abuse, and cult-like behavior,  I dropped the shame.  Once cleared of that, I began seeing how much my past pain was driving the boat here. I exited the group in a very public way. I snapped during a Zoom call. I couldn't hold it in anymore. I don't remember much, but I remember saying loudly, “You aren't helping people; people are getting worse. How is this healing?” Then I announced that I was leaving and wanted no affiliation with them.  

Once I left, others started approaching me with their personal stories. I  heard from a colleague who had attended the same “church” for a psilocybin ceremony. It’s not my place to tell her story, but I can say this part: when she asked to leave because she didn't feel up to the ceremony, they wouldn't let her. Her car was blocked in, and everyone was very out of it. Eventually, she got them to move their cars so she could leave, but the retraumatization had already set in for her. Being trapped for them, and many, is a trigger.

There were so many other stories. People told me about sexual assaults during ceremonies overseas involving people connected to this same group, and about being told that these experiences represented part of the medicine. They explained how they were talked out of making a ‘big deal’ about their experience, hushed, isolated until it was time to fly home.  I can't independently verify every story I was told, and I don't want to pretend that I can. But I know what I experienced, what I witnessed, and what people told me. So when I heard these awful stories, fresh after experiencing the manipulative energy I did with the spiritual group leaders, the trauma stories I was hearing I never once doubted. This community, and many other unhealthy narcissistic-run spiritual churches, are very capable of committing these crimes, cover-ups, and narcissistic abuse.

This place started revealing itself more and more like a cult. There was money, hierarchy, spiritual authority, pressure, and people becoming increasingly dependent on the community and the medicine, and it was all being called healing, sacred, and revolutionary.

That experience sent me into my own research. I wanted to understand more about the Indigenous traditions surrounding these medicines and, specifically, what Indigenous healers and scholars thought about white Westerners taking sacred medicines and incorporating them into churches or their own healing practices. What I found was complicated, more complicated than I expected. I took Indigenous-led healing workshops myself and eventually taught how to bring these sacred healing forces to others. I was now questioning it all. I started with those leaders because I experienced firsthand their lessons being brought to a sea of white faces hoping to learn healing practices that have been around longer than grad schools in counseling or social work. I was curious about how they viewed things, and if they were truly okay with bringing their wisdom to people not knowing if it will be misused. They never answered my questions directly, but did give me a lot to consider when looking for a healing guide.

 The Indigenous people I spoke with were often incredibly generous and neutral. They weren't simply saying, “White people shouldn't use these medicines.” Instead, they talked about relationships with self and others, responsibility, and accountability. They talked about reciprocity, how important community is, how we need to always be mindful and in love with the land, and context- how we are in the mix of the circle, including how the leader is presenting and also how we integrate after. One Indigenous healer who I spoke with early on after experiencing that awful second ceremony said something to me that I still think about: “Jenny, if you aren't feeling joy while in a spiritual community, that isn't the community for you.” That statement helped me most. There was no complicated spiritual explanation for why I should override what my body was telling me. I had forgotten how simple healing could be, and how important it is to feel good when you can.  This wasn't my idea of a healing community. The mask was off, and it came off quickly, it just took me a while to see. They were causing more harm than good because of their egos, their unhealed trauma, their need to be needed. I could see that now and it took a reminder to be in “Joy” to help me get there. 

I also started reading articles about the growing Western psychedelic world and the ways Indigenous medicines are being taken into new settings. One Indigenous-led paper on traditional Indigenous medicine and Western psychedelic research and practice identifies eight principles for ethical engagement: reverence, respect, responsibility, relevance, regulation, reparation, restoration, and reconciliation. The authors also warn about Western practices taking Indigenous ceremonies, knowledge, and ideas out of their original contexts, lacking meaningful Indigenous participation and consent. That made me think about how often a Western spiritual community can say, “We were trained by Indigenous people,” without necessarily talking about what that training actually means, what responsibilities came with it, who the relationship is with, or who benefits financially. It made me think about the difference between borrowing a practice and actually being accountable to the people and culture from which that practice came.

Then I found an article by Indigenous women Nina Gualinga and Eli Virkina about ayahuasca tourism. They write, “Healing, in our worldview, is collective because we are all interconnected.” That sentence really stayed with me because so much of what I had experienced had become about the individual: your trauma, your breakthrough, your next ceremony, your next level, your relationship with the medicine, your spiritual development. Gualinga and Virkina also write that tourist-oriented healing centers can prioritize “individual experiences, self-growth, ego work and private revelations” while becoming detached from “community, land and reciprocity.” I kept thinking about that distinction. What happens when something that developed within a relationship to community and land becomes a product that an individual can purchase for self-improvement?

They use another word that I had been circling around for a while: extractivism. They write that without responsibility, it can become “nothing more than extractivism, another form of colonialism dressed in spiritual language.” I read that and thought, there it is. Not because I think every white person who takes ayahuasca is appropriating Indigenous culture. I don't believe that, and I don't think it is accurate to suggest that Indigenous traditions are one thing, frozen in time, or that Indigenous people have one universal opinion about Western participation. But I do think we need to be honest about what happens when sacred medicines enter a Western marketplace of healing, especially when the people administering those medicines also become the spiritual authorities defining what healing is supposed to look like.

That brings me to the question of frequency, because I have thought about this a lot. I don't think I can honestly say that taking ayahuasca more than once is inherently disrespectful. Indigenous ceremonial practices are diverse, and repeated use is part of some traditional practices. For me, the issue is what surrounds the medicine. What happens when someone begins attending a ceremony every other weekend? What happens when they can't afford it yet feel compelled to keep going? What happens when someone quits their job to remain immersed in the community? What happens when questioning the leader becomes evidence that you are “resisting your healing”? What happens when the answer to feeling worse is always more medicine, more ceremony, more surrender, more work, more money, more involvement? At some point I don't think the question is only about the medicine anymore. It becomes a question about power.

Anthropologist Alex Gearin has studied ayahuasca tourism and the relationship between healing, spiritual expectations, and money in a Shipibo healing center in Peru. His work examines what happens when Indigenous healing practices encounter international attendees seeking transformation, and the complicated relationship between spiritual authority and capital. Reading this kind of research helped me understand that what I had experienced wasn't happening in a vacuum. There is a much larger conversation happening about what occurs when Indigenous medicines enter a Western spiritual economy, and about what can be lost when those medicines become disconnected from the relationships and responsibilities that surround them.

I don't believe ayahuasca is inherently evil. I don't believe psilocybin is inherently evil. I don't believe spiritual communities are inherently dangerous, and I don't believe Indigenous people are saying that white people should simply stay away from all traditional medicines. What I do believe now is that a sacred medicine does not automatically make the people administering it sacred, ethical, healed, or safe. Someone might have profound psychedelic experiences and still have terrible boundaries. Someone can speak beautifully about trauma and still traumatize people. Someone can call themselves a healer and still need enormous amounts of healing themselves. Someone can genuinely believe they are helping people and still cause harm. That has probably been the hardest lesson for me.

Because I went looking for healing, and I found a lesson about power. I also

found my way back to something I had known before all of this: I am allowed to trust my own body. In my somatic therapy practice, I emphasize that healing doesn't always have to be “work.” It doesn't always have to be painful, and it doesn't always get worse before it gets better. Sometimes healing can be light. Sometimes it can happen almost undetected. Sometimes your nervous system changes because you laughed, because someone respected your no, because you were finally allowed to leave, or because you were with people who didn't need you to prove that you were healing.

The Indigenous healer who told me that if I wasn't feeling joy in a spiritual community, maybe it wasn't the community for me, gave me something I didn't know I needed at the time: permission to stop making excuses for what my body already knew. I had spent so much time trying to understand whether I was resisting the medicine, resisting the process, resisting my own healing. Eventually I had to consider the possibility that I wasn't resisting anything. Maybe I simply didn't feel safe.

I think about that now when people ask me about plant medicine. I don't tell people that they shouldn't do it. I don't think that is my place. But I do think we have to ask harder questions, especially when Western spiritual communities borrow practices from cultures that have carried them for generations. Who is teaching you? What is the relationship to the people and traditions from which the practice came? Where does the money go? Is there reciprocity? Can you say no? Can you leave? Can you question the person in charge? What happens when someone says, “This isn't helping me”?

And maybe the biggest question is whether the community is helping you become more connected to your own life, or whether you are becoming increasingly dependent on the community itself.

I spent a long time thinking that because I went there for healing, everything that happened there must somehow be part of my healing. I don't believe that anymore.

Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is recognize that something isn't healing us and walk away.