I tried 5-MeO-DMT and it gave me life
Two weeks ago, I attended a psychedelic retreat at Enfold, and what I experienced there was truly profound.
This retreat, which is aptly named Awakening to Life, takes place on a small island in British Columbia. It's run by a married couple, Steve and Austin, who’ve been developing and fine-tuning their healing protocol for decades. Steve is a modern-day Renaissance man, seemingly ever-ready to dole out psychological theory, spiritual guidance, and perfectly curated soundscapes. Austin is straight-up otherworldly, a real-life fairy queen. She’s exquisitely intuitive and radiates care into everything she touches, including the hauntingly delicious food that she lavishes on her guests.
People come to Enfold to experience 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine), a psychedelic drug that the people there refer to colloquially as “five”. While five is also produced by a variety of plants, its most concentrated natural source is the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, Bufo alvarius. Hence, its nicknames “toad” and “bufo”. (Note: A synthetic version is used at Enfold for practical/ecological reasons.) Like the other “classic psychedelics” (e.g., LSD, psilocybin), five is a tryptamine that activates serotonin receptors in the brain. But the psychedelic experience that five produces is distinctive in at least three ways:
Five has a short duration and rapid onset. You start breathing it in as a vapor, and you might be gone before you even finish your breath.
Five reliably takes people to a place that feels like the center of the universe. For me, this looked like an infinite ball of roiling energy. It was awesome in the truest sense of the word, simultaneously wondrous and terrifying. This is why five is sometimes called “the God molecule”.
Five is incredibly potent and is one of the most reliable ways to experience ego death, i.e., losing your sense of self completely and becoming one with “the infinite”. And while your ego is offline, some real exorcism-style magic can happen. Trapped traumas start bubbling up and out of you. For me, this looked a lot like a seizure (i.e., a somatic release). For others, it looks like yelling, screaming, and/or sobbing (i.e., an emotional release). Powerful shit.
The thing that’s truly remarkable about Enfold is the ingenious “container” that Steve and Austin have created for this mind-blowing psychedelic experience. There are three aspects of it that particularly wowed me:
The environment: Enfold is a surreal oasis of comfort, safety, and beauty. Its rooms exude minimalist luxury and are decked in ambient music, incense, and a signature blend of white/beige/tan. Mountains and ocean are virtually always within view. You hand over your tech as you enter the compound and suddenly find yourself with no access to the mind-numbing distractions of the real world (e.g., TV, social media, work, alcohol), with nothing to do but read, reflect, and be. I was repeatedly moved to tears by how deeply soothing it was to be there.
The protocol: Awakening to Life is five days long in its current format. On day 1, guests self-administer low doses of five in a ceremony called Meet the Medicine to start “loosening things up”. On day 2, guests take a “heart-opening” drug called 3-MMC (3-methylmethcathinone) before sharing their intentions (i.e., spilling their guts) in a group therapy session. Day 3 is devoted to the Full Release ceremony, in which guests individually receive a high dose of five and are blasted into another plane of existence. Days 4 and 5 are drug-free and are dedicated to integration practices that help to process the psychedelic experience, including meditation, sauna/cold plunge, and breathwork. It’s brilliant programming; each step of the protocol builds on the last to create a five day experience that feels so much greater than the sum of its parts.
The cohort: Enfold currently hosts cohorts of six guests at a time, meaning that most guests go through the process alongside five total strangers. I found this fact extremely daunting going into the retreat. I wasn’t sure I’d survive so much “people time”. Yet, by the end of the retreat, I wasn’t sure I’d survive without my cohort. The 3-MMC we took on day 2 helped us to really listen to each other and, by the end of the group therapy session, it felt like we had always known each other. We spent the rest of the retreat supporting each other through emotional releases and reveling in each other's epiphanies. It was solidarity at its finest, and it was powerful enough to make me like humans again.
I really didn’t know what I could reasonably hope to get out of taking five. There was a weary, childish part of me that was desperately seeking direction, a detailed prescription for what I should be doing with my life. But what I got instead was a thorough cleaning out. The convulsions that my abandoned body experienced seem to have shaken something nasty out of me. Since then, my inner world has been very different. I feel so much more, both physically and emotionally. It’s as if some protective but numbing bubble that I’d been living in has been burst. My lingering MBS symptoms are gone, and the constant hum of anxiety/depression that I’d grown accustomed to has been replaced with a peaceful quiet. Meditation suddenly kinda works; my thoughts are more distant and less emotionally charged. My body buzzes with new energy. I have curiosity, enthusiasm, and hope again; a “sparkle” that other people seem to sense.
The major lesson that I took away from this experience is that I need other humans to feel alive. I’ve spent the last five years (i.e., since the start of the pandemic) cloistering myself off from the world so that I could feel safe, and this has left me dead inside. But, while I was at Enfold, I felt an immense and unfamiliar joy, and I think it was a direct result of being part of a team of like-minded humans, working together to accomplish something meaningful. I’m antsy to leave my cloister and set off to recreate this joy in the real world.
While I could gush about the joy and the sparkle all day, you should know that “the process” is not all rainbows and kittens. Five can force you to feel all your deepest darkest feelings and to recognize misalignments in your life with change-demanding clarity. This can be uncomfortable, painful, and/or scary. But it’s only by doing this “work” (i.e., feeling the feelings, reshaping our lives) that we gain the full, lasting benefits of the experience. Or so they say.
My work began the moment I left the retreat. I was suddenly crushed by a tsunami of sorrow and grief. I let it out (as I was trained to) and it passed (as they said it would), and I was left standing alone by the sea filled with wonder. As time passes, big feelings continue to surface and the call for change creates turbulence. But this work is exactly what I signed up for, and Enfold has equipped me well to do it.
To learn more about Enfold, check out their beautiful website and podcast. And please reach out any time if you want to chat about it. There is nothing that would make me happier right now.
