How Psychedelics Work (And Why It’s Not Just About the Brain)

A queer journey through control, trauma, and learning to feel safe in your own body.

When I first drank ayahuasca, my mind overpowered my body. It was one of those impulses: get the pain over with, suffer, and then get a window to breathe, which is how I normally operate in my daily life.

So I didn’t put too much thought into what was actually going to happen during the ceremony.

As expected, once the medicine took effect, my actions became automatic. I found myself apologising to people who had hurt me. These were the same individuals who had rejected, abandoned, and even abused me. I lay there under the stars, cracked open by the medicine, and the words “I’m sorry” poured out of me. It felt like surrender. It felt noble. But it was something else: my ego trying to keep me safe in the only way it knew how—by diffusing conflict, even if that meant betraying myself.

I wasn’t forgiving. I was performing forgiveness. I was still stuck in control—only now, it had a spiritual costume on.

That’s the paradox psychedelics revealed to me; it wasn’t just about what happened but the layers I built to survive it. I thought I was healing by saying sorry. In fact, the healing only started when I mustered, “I’m angry, I’m hurt, I didn’t deserve that.” The moment wasn’t just an insight; it was finally giving me permission to feel what had been long buried beneath performance, perfectionism and others telling me what I should and shouldn’t feel.

That’s why psychedelics work; it’s not all about brain chemistry changes. They don’t “fix you”, but they unmask you and soften the persona you have been wearing to survive, highlighting a simple truth underneath— you were always worthy of love.

Beyond the headlines about treating depression or resetting the brain, this piece explores the deeper potential of psychedelics—especially for queer people. It begins not in theory but in the moment the structures you’ve built to survive begin to soften—and what’s been hidden underneath finally gets a voice.

Control Is the First Illusion

For most of my life, I tried to be in control of everything. I tried to control how I looked. How others perceived me. I responded to pain in a specific way. I managed rejection effectively. Control, for me, was synonymous with safety. I didn’t know any different. Growing up as a queer child in a dangerous world, I quickly realised that showing vulnerability could lead to consequences. So I learnt to anticipate, be accommodating, and disappear.

Control became my drug. It helped me survive. But it also made joy impossible. Joy necessitates surrender. And I didn’t know how to do that.

Psychedelics don’t ask your permission to dismantle control. They confuse the ego, quiet the chatter of your default mode network (DMN), and create a neurological state where new connections can form—literally and metaphorically. Carhart-Harris et al. (2014) referred to these changes as "increased entropy" in the brain—a loosening of rigid mental patterns accompanied by creative insight and emotional release or deep internal quiet.

When control dissolves, you see what it was protecting: a wound that never got the chance to heal. The ego lays bare the part of you that crafted yourself to survive—not as a caricatured villain but as the frightened narrator.

Control isn’t the enemy. It’s a survival strategy that eventually makes your world smaller and smaller.

The Ego Doesn’t Die; It Just Gets Undone

Ego death sounds dramatic, but it’s actually often tender. It’s the moment when the inner narrator goes quiet—the one who tells you how to behave, who to be, and what parts to hide—simply… goes still. When the mind finally has room to breathe, control dissolves.

My constant, controlled self-monitoring just paused. And into that space came something I hadn’t felt in years:

Peace.

Presence.

Wholeness.

Naturally, I thought I was dying. My mind couldn’t understand how to exist without its familiar guardrails. But what was dying wasn’t me—it was the part of me that had kept me from feeling too much. Too deeply. Too honest.

Psychologists now refer to this experience as ego dissolution—a temporary loosening of the self-image we usually cling to. Philosophers and mystics have long described something similar. William James, writing in 1902, spoke of “mystical states” marked by unity, transcendence, and the collapse of self-boundaries—what he called a kind of spiritual unselfing. Stanislav Grof (1985) later described it more directly as “an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.”

But for me, it was simpler than that: it was the first time I had ever felt free.

What took its place wasn’t chaos. It was presence. Peace. A softening. I didn’t feel smaller. I felt vast. Not erased, but expanded.

And when the ego eventually returned—as it always does—it was quieter. It was less convinced that it had all the answers. Less interested in running the show. What replaced it wasn’t passivity but presence. A soft, steady awareness of the ego as something that arises—but doesn’t have to take over. That awareness stays with me now. It helps me pause before reacting. It makes space for reflexivity to occur naturally. And in that space, I can choose something different, hopefully in line with being at peace with myself.

Still, the DMN is only part of the picture. It’s a measurable proxy, not the full terrain. Psychedelics also open sensory gates (Vollenweider & Geyer, 2001), disrupt predictive beliefs (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019), and stimulate neuroplasticity (Ly et al., 2018). They invite chaos, but in a way that allows something new to emerge—emotionally, somatically, and relationally.

Science captures what it can: brain maps, receptor sites, networks. But what many of us experience can’t be confined to that data. It’s what happens when you stop identifying with the narrator in your head and start listening to the part of you that never had words.

But authenticity doesn’t flood in the moment the ego loosens. It arrives slowly—through safety, through time, through integration. It sometimes manifests itself through therapy. And for some, ego-softening can be destabilising rather than liberating, which is why psychedelic work must be professionally held in the right setting by those who understand how to guide someone back to themselves. Psychedelics open a door, but they don’t guarantee what lies on the other side.

I Gave Myself Away to Survive

Psychedelics helped me see something I’d never questioned: that the way I shared myself wasn’t vulnerability. It was a nervous system strategy. I wasn't opening up to connect; instead, I was surrendering to stay safe.

For years, I thought I was being real. I talked about my pain. I admitted my fears. I told the truth before anyone could use it against me. But underneath all of it was one belief: if I give myself away, maybe I won’t be hurt.

That pattern started early. As a child, I experienced sexual abuse, which taught me to negotiate safety by relinquishing control. This was not limited to physical abuse but also included emotional abuse. I learnt to disarm others by disarming myself. I learnt to appease danger by exposing myself first. I offered up too much: my trust, my boundaries, even my body. It wasn’t rebellion. It was survival.

Under ayahuasca, I saw the younger me—soft, frightened, clever. This was the part of me that had been balancing safety with self-sacrifice. I didn’t just weep for him. I recognised him. I had been dragging him through every relationship, every apology, and every performance.

Psychedelics didn’t just unmask me. They helped me stop rehearsing. I stopped being the “good” queer man—palatable, smart, healed, and polite. I stopped shaping myself to survive and started asking who I was when I wasn’t trying to manage someone else’s response.

Even authenticity became suspect. Because when it's used to pre-empt rejection, it isn't authenticity anymore. It's self-abandonment in disguise. The medicine helped me feel the difference.

Forgiveness Happens in the Nervous System, Not the Mind

People talk about forgiveness like it’s a decision. But for many of us—especially those shaped by trauma—forgiveness often shows up long before we understand it. We say “It’s okay” when it isn’t. We let things go so we don’t get left behind. We confuse appeasement with peace.

Sometimes, that kind of forgiveness is a stress response. It’s not resolution—it’s fawning. We forgive because we don’t feel safe enough to stay angry. Because conflict feels life-threatening. Because we’ve learnt that harmony, even if it’s false, is safer than honesty.

But that wasn’t what happened to me.

In one ceremony, I saw a vision of my mother sick in bed, my estranged brother by her side. It wasn’t a literal future. It was a story softening. In that space, I saw him as human. I saw myself as human. I didn’t send a text. I didn’t fix the relationship. But I let go of something I’d been gripping for years. I forgave—not to appease him, but to relieve my body of the burden.

There’s growing evidence that forgiveness activates brain regions involved in empathy and affect regulation—suggesting that when it emerges from a regulated nervous system, it has real healing potential (Ricciardi et al., 2013). But when it’s forced, especially when the body is still holding fear, it can deepen stress rather than resolve it.

Psychedelics didn’t teach me how to forgive. They gave me space to feel safe enough to stop holding on. They softened my system just enough to allow possibility.

Not certainty. Not resolution. Just enough space for something new to emerge.

And sometimes, that possibility is forgiveness—not as appeasement, but as unburdening. As the body is saying, we don’t need to carry this weight anymore.

Love Is What We Forgot

So many of us, especially those who are queer or carry trauma, don’t just lack love—we forget what it feels like. We forget that it can be unconditional. That it doesn’t have to be earned, chased, or proven.

Some psychedelic experiences, I felt something hold me. It wasn’t a vision. It wasn’t a person. It was a presence. Loving. Gentle. Steady. It told me that nothing needed to change. I just had to be.

Roland Griffiths (2008), a pioneer in psychedelic research, described this phenomenon as “a sense of open-heartedness and deep connection with others”—not a side effect, but a central feature of the experience. In one study, participants who combined psilocybin with meditation and spiritual practice reported lasting increases in prosocial traits such as compassion, gratitude, and interpersonal closeness—not just as temporary emotions, but as enduring ways of relating to themselves and others.

Michael Pollan—no spiritual idealist—called it “a cascading dam break of love (Pollen, 2018). I get it. Because once it starts flowing, it doesn’t stop with you. You want to love everything. Everyone. Yourself.

I didn’t trust it at first. That kind of love felt unfamiliar—almost threatening. I kept waiting for it to vanish or to reveal itself as a test. My nervous system couldn’t recognise it as safe because it had never been safe before. Healing meant learning to stay with that discomfort. It involved embracing the discomfort and allowing love to enter without retreating, trembling, or running away.

Love, after all, is more than a feeling. It's a state of emotional regulation. According to polyvagal theory, our bodies naturally seek safety through connection. When love is real, it’s not an idea—it’s a shift. Your jaw softens. Your breath deepens. Your guard drops.

For many queer people, especially those shaped by shame or early rejection, that shift doesn’t come easily. We learn to be on guard even in intimacy. We learn to brace for abandonment, even while being held. Psychedelics, in the right context, can disrupt that loop—not by forcing love, but by helping the body remember what it’s like to feel safe enough to receive it.

Trauma Lives in the Body — Psychedelics Set It Free

We often think of trauma as something that happened in the past. A memory. A story. But trauma doesn’t just live in the mind—it lives in the body. It shows up in breath that won’t deepen. In shoulders that won’t drop. In a jaw that never fully releases. In the urge to stay busy. To stay away. To stay small.

Bessel van der Kolk (2014) puts it plainly: “The body keeps the score.” Not in metaphor, but in muscle tone, hormone cycles, sleep patterns, and reflexes. When your nervous system gets stuck in survival, your body lives as if the danger never ended.

That was me. Always braced. Always managing. I thought I was resilient—but really, I was armoured. And psychedelics didn’t gently peel that away. They cracked it. With care, yes. But also with intensity.

In supported psychedelic sessions, I’ve sobbed from a depth I didn’t know existed. I’ve shaken, growled, and screamed. I’ve curled into foetal positions. It wasn’t performance. It was my body finally finishing something it never got to complete.

That’s the difference between catharsis and completion. Catharsis is explosive. Completion is cellular. It’s the body saying, We’re done. We survived.

Emerging research suggests psychedelics help make this possible by altering how the brain processes emotional material. Psilocybin appears to increase responsiveness in the amygdala while changing its connectivity with prefrontal regions—opening a window for safe, embodied processing of what was once overwhelming (Roseman et al., 2018).

But trauma doesn’t always feel like trauma. It can show up as restlessness. Numbness. Exhaustion you can’t explain. A quiet, daily effort to hold yourself together. You may not remember it—but your body does. Over time, you don’t just carry trauma. You become it.

I once held onto pain so tightly that I didn’t realise I was also blocking pleasure. Under the medicine, I remembered joy. The joy of being in my body without armour. Of singing with strangers. Of laughing from my belly. That’s what trauma steals. And that’s what psychedelics can give back.

Because the body remembers. But with the right support, it can also relearn. Not just to release, but to receive. Not just to survive, but to rest. To feel. To trust.

Because the body remembers. But with the right conditions, it can also relearn. Not just to let go—but to soften. Not just to function—but to feel. Safety isn’t a thought. It’s a sensation. And when the body finally recognises it, healing becomes possible—not as an idea, but as a lived experience.

Queer Healing Is Revolutionary

When you grow up being told—implicitly or outright—that your identity is dangerous or undesirable, you learn to adapt. You tighten your voice. You shrink your gestures. You study approval like a language. You get sharp, funny, and palatable. You build a version of yourself that might be tolerated.

You learn to read the room before you enter it. You watch for criticism on the faces of people who don’t even realise they’re giving it. And when you see it, you adjust—before they can ask you to.

That’s not just psychological. It’s physiological. Shame becomes posture. Hypervigilance becomes baseline. Softness becomes risk.

For queer people, psychedelics can interrupt that loop. Not by erasing the pain, but by offering something most of us have never felt: a moment of safety that doesn’t ask us to perform to earn it.

I’ve sat in ceremonies with queer men who met their inner child and wept—not because they were broken, but because they finally recognised the part of themselves they’d exiled to survive. I’ve seen people reclaim their queerness—not as a site of struggle but as a source of wisdom. A sacredness. A signal that they were never the problem.

In his 2024 dissertation, John Charles Sanders documented how ayahuasca ceremonies helped gay men confront and release internalised homophobia. Participants described shedding layers of Catholic guilt, letting go of gender-based shame, and reconnecting with parts of themselves they had long disowned. These changes weren’t just cognitive—they were embodied. Several participants reported an increase in self-worth, self-love, and the felt understanding that they were “supposed to be the person [they] were born into”. These weren’t abstract shifts. They were somatic, relational, and sustained over time

That’s what makes queer healing revolutionary. Not because it’s dramatic—but because it’s rare. Because it restores something that should never have been taken in the first place.

Integration Is the Real Work

It’s important not to romanticise this work. Psychedelic healing isn’t inherently safe. It isn’t automatically sacred. And it’s not equally accessible.

Access is shaped by privilege—economic, racial, geographic, and spiritual. For some, these medicines are part of ancestral knowledge. For others, they’re clinical interventions. And for many, they remain out of reach altogether. Even in ‘healing spaces’, harm can be reproduced—subtly, systemically, or explicitly.

Healing isn’t always psychedelic. It isn’t always ceremonial. It isn’t universal.

But when it lands—when it’s done with care, with cultural humility, and with integration—it can be transformative.

Because the ceremony isn’t the healing. Integration is.

It’s what you do after the visions, the tears, and the breakthroughs. Can you carry what you touched into your everyday life? Can you shift how you speak to yourself? How you hold boundaries? How you soften?

For me, integration meant unlearning the need to perform. It meant changing how I trained, how I rested, and how I listened. It meant therapy. It meant saying no. It meant letting my softness stay.

Without integration, the medicine fades like a dream. With it, the experience becomes a compass—not something you visit once, but something you live from.

Many Ways of Knowing — Science, Spirit, and the Self

Western science tells us that psychedelics work by binding to serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, disrupting the default mode network, and enhancing neural plasticity. These are important discoveries. But they don’t explain what happens when you feel your grandmother’s presence in a ceremony or when you forgive someone who never asked.

That’s where other ways of knowing matter—Indigenous knowledge, embodied wisdom, and relational healing. Thinkers like Basarab Nicolescu (2002), writing in the field of transdisciplinary philosophy, argue that no single system of knowledge—scientific, spiritual, or symbolic—can fully account for human experience. Instead, he calls for an approach that honours the coexistence of multiple realities and ways of knowing.

Not the brain scan. Not the prayer. Not the poem. But maybe all three, together.

In psychedelic spaces, that complexity is unavoidable. You might meet your inner child and a jaguar spirit in the same hour. You might process intergenerational trauma and feel God’s breath on your cheek. You might cry, laugh, puke, and pray. None of the above would show up on a brain scan.

Psychedelics don’t just work on the mind. They work on meaning.

Coming Home to Ourselves

Psychedelics don’t give you answers. They unravel the grip you had on the wrong questions.

They don’t erase your pain. They loosen it—just enough to look at it, to breathe into it, to finally touch what you spent years avoiding.

They show you how the stories you’ve told yourself—I’m not enough, I’m too much, I’m hard to love—were never yours. They were inherited. From culture. From family. From fear. And maybe, from survival.

In those moments of ego-softening—when the body unclenches and the old narratives go quiet—something else can emerge. Not just insight, but compassion. Not just awareness, but embodiment. You don’t just know your trauma. You feel its tenderness. You cradle it like a child.

And for queer people, whose identities were shaped in response to rejection, that moment is seismic. You realise your queerness was never the wound—it was the brilliance that kept shining beneath the hurt.

This is where all the threads come together—trauma, ego, control, body, love. Integration isn’t a checklist. It’s a way of living from what you remembered when the noise dropped away. It’s how you speak to yourself on the Monday morning after the ceremony, when everything looks the same, but you are not.

Psychedelics don’t save you. But they show you what becomes possible when you stop running. When the armour drops. When the nervous system says, We’re safe now.

And in that space, you don’t become someone new. You remember who you were before you had to become someone else to survive.

Final Reflection: Love Isn’t Earned. It’s Remembered.

Psychedelics didn’t give me love. They helped me remember it.

They didn’t fix me. They helped me feel the parts I’d disowned.

They didn’t replace therapy. They deepened it.

They didn’t erase trauma. They loosened its grip.

Most of all, they helped me stop trying so hard to be loveable—and start living like I already am.

Because I am.

So are you.

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