Trust: The Skeleton Key to Unlocking the Psychedelic Experience (Part One)
A neuro-spiritual philosophy to healing with MDMA and sacred medicine
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“A hard nut to crack,” I remember thinking after our first session.
A new client had reached out for support after a couple of very uncomfortable journeys with psilocybin. They were smart, driven, open-minded, and deeply committed to healing—but no matter how much medicine they took, nothing mystical ever happened. No insight. No visions. Just body tension, confusion, and hours of deeply uncomfortable energy stuck in their system.
On their first journey, they started with 3 grams of mushrooms. When they didn’t feel anything after 90 minutes, they took two more grams. What followed was not a breakthrough—but a near-breakdown. Chest tightness, abdominal tension, and waves of psychological discomfort that lasted for a couple of very uncomfortable hours.
It was as if their body went into lockdown the moment the medicine arrived and wasn’t going to relax till it new the coast was clear.
They tried again a few weeks later. A similar result. This time, the elevated heart rate and body discomfort lingered for nearly a day after the effects of the medicine should have worn off. Their system felt like it was resisting something, but they couldn’t name what it was. Based on their intake and history, I had a pretty good idea, but trying to explain that the cause of their experience was their unconscious need for control—something they couldn’t actually control—would only create more frustration and striving to “do better.”
But it all changed on the third journey.
This time, they started their ceremony with MDMA.
Within 45 minutes, dizziness arrived, but soon after, their body softened. Their breathing slowed. Their eyes welled up with gentle tears rather than panic. For the first time, they said, “I feel safe,” and an opportunity to connect with their inner child arrived.
Only then did we introduce a lower dose of psilocybin. The result? A complete transformation. Emotional insight. Gentle releases. A sense of clarity and connection that had never emerged before.
It was as if someone had finally opened the gates.
This was similar to my first experience sitting with ayahuasca. I drank the first cup and felt nothing. The second cup, nothing. Third cup, nothing. I was so angry and frustrated I had traveled all the way to Peru, and the medicine wasn’t going to work. My expectatations were high and I was feeling those expectations in real time. So finally I gave up, lay down on the maloka floor, and tried to fall asleep. The moment my mind unclenched, the medicine started working, I purged a mass of energy the size of a beachball and was shot to the stars for one of the most transformative experiences of my life.
Both of these journeys point to a challenge that many psychedelic newcomers experience: Without trust, a classic psychedelic cannot do what it is designed to do.
That’s the throughline of this essay (and the next one). When we work with powerful medicines like psilocybin, LSD, or ayahuasca, we often assume that the healing will just happen. That if we show up, the medicine will do the rest. But the truth is more complex. Some people—especially those with trauma, histories, neurosis, or high control needs—cannot access the medicine because they cannot trust it. Or they can’t trust the facilitator. Or the setting. Or themselves.
When that happens, the medicine doesn’t fail. The journey doesn’t misfire. The problem is simply that the system is not yet ready to surrender. And surrender is the ultimate currency of a psychedelic experience. In journeys like these, the medicine is showing us precisely where we’re stuck: we possess a deep lack of trust that needs to be addressed and healed. And without that trust, classic psychedelics will be challenging, if not painful and unuseful.
In this two-part series, I’ll explore a new way of looking at psychedelic healing—one that bridges neuroscience with spirituality, and honors trust as the gateway to transformation. In Part One, I explore the neuroscience of resistance, the role of the salience and default mode network, and how MDMA can act as a “Trojan horse” to build synthetic trust. In Part Two, I explore how facilitators can co-create trust somatically and relationally, and why the deepest healing may not originate in the brain at all—but in spirit itself.
Trust Is the Prerequisite, Not the Outcome
In the world of psychedelia, there’s a widespread assumption that trust is something that will emerge once the journey begins. “Just take the medicine,” people say. “It’ll open your heart.” But for many individuals—especially those with trauma—this couldn’t be further from the truth. Trust isn’t a side effect of psychedelics. It’s a prerequisite. In fact, the more trust you embody, the deeper into your healing you can venture.
Classic psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and mescaline work by dissolving our ordinary sense of self, loosening the boundaries of the ego, and surfacing long-buried emotional material. But this process requires a profound surrender—a willingness to let go of control and allow something unknown to unfold. And for someone whose trauma has wired them to equate surrender with danger, this is a near-impossible ask.
To the trauma-primed nervous system, surrender feels like death. Letting go of control isn’t safe; it’s threatening. The parts of the psyche that developed in response to early neglect, betrayal, or abuse exist to maintain a sense of safety through vigilance. These are the protector parts—the inner guardians who scan for threat, brace for impact, and try to manage or control the environment.
When someone like this ingests a psychedelic, those protector parts often don’t go away—they ramp up. Instead of softening into the experience, the person might find themselves hyper-aware, physically tense, emotionally closed, or trapped in looping thoughts. They frequently (consciously or unconsciously) ask, “Is it working yet?” every few minutes, or obsess about the music, the lighting, the sounds in the room, or even the facilitator’s expression. These are not signs of resistance in a moral sense—they’re signs that the nervous system does not feel safe.
What’s often misunderstood in the underground, clinical settings, and psychedelic retreat centers alike is that this lack of trust isn’t something a person can simply override with willpower. No amount of breathwork, affirmations, or good intentions can substitute for the biological safety cues that the body and brain require before they will relax their defenses. The body doesn’t respond to logic—it responds to felt safety.
And this is why trust must come before the onset of the experience. If the psychedelic is already taking effect and the system is still locked in hypervigilance, the experience may never open. The default mode network will remain fully online. The salience network will continue tagging every internal sensation as a potential threat. And instead of ego dissolution or spiritual insight, the person may feel like they’re stuck in a pressure cooker with no release valve. This often shows up somatically as severe headaches, the feelings of uncomfortable electricity in the body, intense pressure in the abdomen or center of the chest, or complete disorientation, dysregulation, or dissociation.
Many facilitators or seekers interpret this kind of experience as a “difficult journey” or a “healing crisis.” And while that may “feel” true, it’s likely that the journey isn’t difficult because of what it’s revealing—but because the system was never given the safety it needed to open.
That safety begins with trust. Trust in the medicine. Trust in the space. Trust in the facilitator. And perhaps most importantly, trust in oneself. But when a person has never felt truly safe in their own body, this kind of trust doesn’t emerge spontaneously. It must be cultivated. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes through repeated exposure. And sometimes with the help of pharmacological support.
When the Castle Shuts Its Gates—A Metaphor for Resistance
To understand why psychedelics sometimes don’t work—or worse, create distress instead of healing—let’s first explore this in metaphor. I often describe the mind and spirit as a castle. Inside the castle are the deepest parts of who we are: our wounds, our memories, our longings, our potential. The rooms hold grief, joy, shame, wisdom, ancestral stories, and soul contracts. The medicine wants to come in and help clean house, rearrange furniture, shine light in the dark corners.
But the castle also has guards.
These are the trauma-based protector parts that have stood at the gates for years—sometimes decades. They’ve fought off betrayal. They’ve weathered emotional storms. They’ve kept the system alive through chaos and neglect. They are loyal, fierce, and stubborn. And they do not trust easily.
When a classic psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD enters the bloodstream, it sends signals to the unconscious that something big is coming. And the bigger the dose, the stronger the predatory signals. The inner walls start to shake. The guards go on high alert. If there’s no preparation—no established trust in the medicine, the setting, or the guide—then the arrival of this healing force can look and feel like an attack.
To the castle guards, the psychedelic is not a healer—it’s an invading army.
What happens next is what many seekers experience as a “bad trip.” Not because the medicine itself is harmful or is doing something wrong, but because their internal system is not yet able to receive it. The guards start firing arrows. Panic sets in. The drawbridge is pulled up. And the healing that was meant to happen becomes a siege instead of a ceremony.
Some people, in response to this kind of inner conflict, decide to double down. If the first few grams didn’t work, they take more. If they don’t break through with three grams of mushrooms, they add another two to get to the proverbial ‘hero’s dose’. Another uncomfortable strategy that some facilitators and retreat centers employ is requiring individuals to take a minimum (and often high) dose from the start, hoping the medicine will be strong enough to penetrate the castle defenses. The logic is understandable: more force equals more breakthrough. But this approach is rarely effective. In fact, it can often lead to pain, retraumatization, and a desire to permanently run away from the healing potential of psychedelics.
Imagine trying to pry open a clenched fist with brute strength. The tighter you pull, the more the hand resists. Now imagine instead gently placing a warm stone in your palm, waiting, and letting the hand decide when to open. This is the difference between forcing an experience and inviting one.
In yoga, we use a concept I also apply to psychedelic facilitation: find the edge (of a pose), then back off an inch. When we push past the edge—into pain, fear, or overwhelm—the body contracts. When muscles are in contraction, they will never stretch, and no amount of yoga will allow them to lengthen. But if you soften just before that point, the body begins to trust, and the stretch deepens on its own.
This is what so many seekers—and even some facilitators—miss. Psychedelics aren’t about blowing the doors open. They’re about coaxing them to open from the inside. If the nervous system doesn’t feel safe, no amount of medicine will get in. Not in the way that matters.
Which brings us to the essential insight of this model: healing is not about taking more medicine. It’s about creating more safety. The body, nervous system, mind, and soul doesn’t yield to force. It yields to trust. And when that trust is absent, the castle remains closed. Not because the medicine isn’t working, but because the gates have not yet been opened from within.
The Salience Network—Neuroscience of the Guard Tower
Let’s now move from metaphor to mechanism. I am by no means a neuroscientist, so if you are and have additional understanding or corrections about what you read below, don’t hesitate to reach out. This is my layman’s attempt to connect a few dots regardless of your psychedelic orientation.
If the castle and its protectors symbolize the psyche under threat, then neuroscience gives us the map of what’s actually happening in the brain during these moments of inner war. At the center of this map lies a powerful trio of systems: the salience network, the amygdala, and the default mode network (DMN). Understanding how these systems interact may illuminate why some people cannot surrender to a psychedelic journey—and why certain medicines can help them do so.
The Salience Network: The Gatekeeper of Experience
The salience network is a collection of brain regions that act as a kind of gatekeeper for the mind. It constantly evaluates what’s happening both inside and outside the body and asks: Is this relevant? Is this important? Is this dangerous?
For people with trust issues, trauma, anxiety, or highly tuned control strategies, the salience network often functions like an overzealous security guard. It scans every bodily sensation, emotional ripple, and change in environment with suspicion. It is not just attuned to danger—it’s primed for it. This results in hypervigilance, where even neutral or positive experiences are flagged as threatening.
When someone ingests a psychedelic, the internal sensations that emerge—changes in heart rate, body temperature, perception, or emotional tone—are unfamiliar. For someone with an overactive salience network, these shifts may be interpreted as wrong or unsafe, even if nothing harmful is actually happening.
Instead of softening into the experience, the person becomes more alert. More resistant. More focused on controlling the situation. The result is often a feeling of being trapped or overwhelmed—we’ve now entered “bad trip” territory.
The Amygdala: Trauma’s Alarm Bell
Central to the salience network is the amygdala, a key structure involved in the detection and response to fear. The amygdala is deeply involved in storing emotional memories and scanning the present moment for anything that resembles past danger. The amygdala is a crucial source of brain activity relating to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
When the amygdala gets activated, it sends a loud and clear message to the body: You’re not safe. This triggers the familiar trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Heart rate increases. Breathing becomes shallow. Muscles tense. The person may feel overwhelmed by emotion or dissociate entirely.
This activation of the salience network and the amygdala keeps the system in a state of protection, not reception. The medicine may be in the body, but it never gets a chance to do its deeper work.
The Default Mode Network: The Seat of the Self
The third player in this neurological triangle is the default mode network (DMN). This network is associated with self-referential thinking, autobiographical memory, and the internal monologue—the voice in your head that says “I am me.”
Classic psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD are known to temporarily disrupt the DMN. This disruption is often associated with mystical experiences, ego dissolution, and a sense of unity or timelessness. In other words, the “I” relaxes, and something deeper emerges.
But here’s the catch: the DMN can’t dissolve if the salience network and the amygdala are still on high alert. If your threat detection systems are online, the ego stays intact as a defensive strategy. The psychedelic doesn’t carry you into transcendence—it slams you into the walls of your own resistance.
The Bottleneck of Healing
Think of it this way: the DMN is the locked door to spiritual experience. The psychedelic is the key. But the salience network is the guard standing in front of the door saying, “Not today.” Unless that guard is reassured—unless the body feels safe—the door never opens.
This is why people can take large doses of psychedelics and have no mystical experience. It’s not that the medicine didn’t work. It’s that the brain’s threat detection system blocked the medicine from doing its work.
This bottleneck is particularly common in individuals with PTSD, developmental trauma, high anxiety, neurosis, or complex control strategies. These people often report feeling more trapped, more uncomfortable, and more overwhelmed on psychedelics—not less.
They may also develop secondary shame: “I must be broken,” “I did it wrong,” “The medicine doesn’t work for me.” But these conclusions miss the core truth:
It’s not that you’re doing it wrong. It’s that your system isn’t yet ready to let go.
The Role of Preparation and Regulation
This understanding of the salience network has profound implications for psychedelic preparation. It suggests that traditional approaches focused solely on mindset (“set”) and environment (“setting”) may be insufficient for people with highly active defense systems.
In these cases, facilitators must work to actively down-regulate the salience network before the peak of the journey. This might include movement, music, breathwork, co-regulation, or—in some cases—pharmacological support like MDMA.
The goal is not to force the mind open, but to create the conditions where the guard can step down and say, “Okay, we’re safe. You can go in.”
Only then does the DMN dissolve.
Only then does the healing begin.
Only then does the medicine get to do what it was designed to do.
MDMA as Synthetic Trust—The Trojan Horse of Healing
When the gates are closed, the medicine can’t get in. But what if we had a way to walk through those gates without triggering the alarm?
Enter MDMA (or a similar heart-openers).
Unlike classic psychedelics, MDMA doesn’t shatter the ego or plunge you into visionary states. It doesn’t unravel your narrative self or dissolve your sense of separateness. Instead, it gently disarms the system. It quiets the internal guards. It helps the body and mind believe—if only temporarily—that everything is okay.
That’s why I call it synthetic trust.
MDMA isn’t fake, but it pharmacologically induces a state that mimics what earned trust feels like. It activates oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine—all the neurochemicals associated with bonding, safety, and pleasure. It reduces amygdala activity, dampening the brain’s fear response. It increases connectivity between brain regions involved in memory and emotion. The result? You feel safe remembering things you’ve spent your entire life trying to forget.
This is why MDMA is so effective in treating PTSD. In a therapeutic setting, it allows individuals to revisit traumatic memories without becoming overwhelmed by them. The trauma is still there—but the fear surrounding it is muted. The internal alarm bells don’t ring quite as loud. This opens the door for reprocessing, emotional resolution, and narrative repair.
But the beauty of MDMA doesn’t stop there. When paired with a classic psychedelic (colloquially referred to as the hippy- or candy-flip), it can act as the perfect precursor. This is where a “two-phase journey” can frequently provide the experience many cannot access without access to synthetic trust:
Phase One (MDMA): The synthetic trust is established. The nervous system settles. The body softens. The relational field becomes secure. The castle doors begin to creak open.
Phase Two (Psychedelic): Once the gates are open, the true medicine can enter. The seeker is now able to surrender—to be guided, unraveled, witnessed, and transformed.
This method is especially helpful for clients with high levels of control, anxiety, or trauma. People who have tried multiple journeys and never “broken through.” People who have had body-heavy, insight-light experiences that left them feeling discouraged or defective.
Let’s return to the metaphor: if psilocybin is a healing army arriving at the castle gates, then MDMA is the Trojan horse. But this isn’t a story of trickery—it’s a story of tenderness. The Trojan horse doesn’t sneak in with violence. It walks in with flowers. It’s the emissary that says, “You’re safe now. Let’s open the doors together.”
And once the doors are open, the medicine doesn’t have to knock them down. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It can move gently, precisely, lovingly—exactly as the seeker needs.
This approach is the opposite of the “heroic dose” model. Rather than taking 5+ grams of mushrooms and hoping for ego death, this method respects the pacing of the nervous system. It honors the reality that for many people, trust must be earned—either relationally, over time, or chemically, in the beginning.
Eventually, as the client’s system learns that expanded states are safe, MDMA becomes unnecessary. The synthetic trust gives way to embodied trust and feel healing. The body remembers how to open. The castle learns it no longer needs to defend itself.
This isn’t a shortcut—it’s a scaffolding. A bridge. A permission slip to feel safe in transformation. And it’s worth stating: this isn’t for everyone. Some people don’t need MDMA to access the medicine. Their system is ready. Their trust is intact.
But for those who have never known safety, this can be the difference between trauma and transformation. Between collapse and clarity. Between the medicine working—and the medicine bouncing off.
Too often, seekers assume that if a journey is hard, they must need more medicine. Or that their pain is the sign of progress. But pain is not always productive. Sometimes it’s just a signal that the body isn’t ready. That the timing is off. That we’re knocking on a door that needs to be gently opened, not forced.
MDMA helps us open the door.
Not by force. Not by performance. But by letting the system feel, maybe for the first time ever: “I am safe. I am supported. I can let go.”
And in that moment, the sacred medicine—the sentient plant spirits—can walk in and begin their work.
The Threshold of Real Work
What we’ve explored so far is the first gate: the biology of trust. Without it, no journey—no matter how potent the substance—can penetrate the deeper layers of healing. MDMA offers us a pharmacological bridge into safety, but ultimately, the goal is not dependency. The goal is embodied trust.
In Part Two, we’ll explore how to build this trust without MDMA—through movement, music, co-regulation, and space-holding. We’ll also explore a neuro-spiritual model of psychedelic healing that invites us to consider what happens beyond the brain, when the spirit of the medicine—Dr. Mushroom, Dr. Ayahuasca, or Dr. Wachuma—takes the lead.
When the gates are open, the real healing begins.