Tripping God and Healing
In this candid and powerful reflection, Fiona shares the story of her April 2025 retreat with Numinous Ways. What follows is a raw, unfiltered account of transformation—one shaped not only by the medicine, but by deep personal inquiry, courageous vulnerability, and the profound bond formed with her fellow retreat participants. Fiona explores themes of addiction, childhood trauma, voice, and healing with clarity and honesty. Her words speak directly to those wondering what this work can truly uncover—and what it takes to come back to life.
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I attended a Numinous Ways retreat in April 2025. Having subsequently volunteered to write a report of my experience; I gave a lot of thought to what the re-counting should look like. What did I want to read before I signed up? I wanted to hear about how the experience could be transformational. I wanted to read actual trip reports that I could relate to, so I’d have an idea of what to expect, and maybe what to hope for. So, with no apologies for the length, and the self-absorption, this is my retreat story.
Before I start…..
……do not take a dearth of words about the accommodation, the food, and the wonderful facilitators as indicators of lack. All were superb……
…..my retreat group was split into small pods. My pod of five, along with Sam our facilitator, were my sisters and brothers. We sat in bare-knuckled rawness before, during and after our experiences. We cried, laughed, supported, and held space. My transformation is on them as much as the psychedelics.
Tripping God and Healing
What do you take to a psychedelic retreat? In my case it was a 50-year smoking habit along with the realisation that I had almost given up on life, and the remainder of my years would be spent primarily on my sofa, perusing social media, binge watching Netflix and satisfying my 20ish a day addiction.
The other important item to take is an intention. For me this was in the form of a question.
Why do I smoke?
Although this seems like an easy and obvious question, in reality I spent many hours reflecting and journalling. I didn’t start with smoking; I started with pointlessness. I peeled away layers, and discarded intentions, until all I had was the one unknown. I did not know why I smoked, but everything seemed to start and stop with that addiction and how it controlled my life.
So, if there is one tip I can give it is to put in the work before you come on the retreat. In my case it was proportionate to what I gained from the experience.
Actually, there is one other tip. Take curiosity and an open mind; for you will not be in control.
Trip 1
I anticipated this as comparatively gentle. As someone who had previous experience with mushrooms and considered three grams an easy sofa surf, I had no great expectations of this trip. I viewed it as an aperitif, a warm up for the main event, and was looking forward to some gentle visuals, some introspection and maybe a lightbulb moment. What I had not accounted for was the power of the shared experience and how the set and setting were to play such an important part.
Before I go any further, I should clarify that the facilitators discussed with us beforehand what body contact we would be comfortable with. For example, a touch on the shoulder, a hand hold or maybe a hug. When you are under the influence a light touch can be enough to completely change the direction of a trip, both in a positive and a negative way, so clarity here was important. My instruction was that I was comfortable with hand holding.
Back in my trip I cannot recall much of the early part (not uncommon) but found myself curling into a ball, and revisiting (for want of a better word) the time after the birth of my brother. Two years younger than me, he was born with a medical need which meant that I not only lost my place as the only child, but was also very firmly relegated to the chorus line on the family stage.
Curled in my ball, this two-year-old didn’t understand that I was teetering on a precipice with no knowledge of how to navigate myself over the edge. I had not fathomed that comfort was a thing that I could ask for, have a right to, or an expectation of. I had spent a lifetime not having my feelings recognised so it needed Samira, a facilitator, with an instinct that is beyond finely tuned, to kneel by my side, take my hand and nudge me off that cliff edge.
It is very, very hard to explain the emotional processing that takes place when you re-experience an event on psychedelics, but Samira’s touch, and, more importantly, permission to experience, allowed me to feel the pain of losing my place as the only focus of my parent’s love and attention. Not as an adult thinking about how it felt. Not as an adult perhaps shedding tears for that child, but I felt it AS that child. I felt the depth and breadth of that loss as if I was two years old. I bawled. I sobbed. I wailed and ranted at my brother for the theft of parental love. It was cathartic, profound and totally unexpected. This was not an experience I could have asked for, anticipated, or prepared for. When under the influence of psychedelics you have no control, you are not at the wheel and there is no map. You have the experience and hope to later work out what it means.
Now, with Trip 1 under my belt, I was beginning to understand that I smoked because I felt less than. Less than a person? Less than complete? I was unsure but was part-way to the answer.
From this trip until Trip 2, which were two days apart, I didn’t smoke cigarettes but I did vape
Trip 2
This was the biggie. A hero dose. As with Trip 1, I was lying with the rest of my pod group, all on mattresses, eye masks on, a couple of arm widths apart. The other pod groups were in the same large ceremony room. One instruction was that we should try and avoid noise and disruption; a big ask with 18 of us all tripping together. On my right was my pod brother, who, for this recounting, I will call Mark. As we lay back and the effects of the psychedelics hit, Mark started to intermittently hum. Not excessively loudly, but I found it annoying. I spent some time trying to keep my irritation in check and convince myself that I could ignore him, until my frustration that my trip was being ruined pushed me upright in search of a solution. Roger, one of the facilitators, came over and I mouthed to him:
“Mark is making a noise, and it isn’t fair.”
I was oblivious to anything but my simmering anger, but I was clearly back in the childhood arena.
Roger nodded and sat between the two of us; however, he didn’t actually do anything. Mark continued to hum and I escalated to impotent anger. Anger that Mark was being allowed to continue; that I was being ignored; that there was nothing I could do. I created a crawl space under my duvet, and silently vented my rage and frustration as an outraged five-year-old would, with tears, snot, and drumming fists, along with the occasional dramatic throwing back of the duvet in order to breathe. And also to make sure Roger knew I was upset, but being very quietly upset. Unlike Mark, who was still humming.
I hated Mark. I hated Roger. I hated the room. It was FUCKING UNFAIR. How long it was unfair for I’m not sure, but it was intense until slowly things quietened down under my duvet, the emotions passed, as they do both in childhood and during a psychedelic trip, and I emerged from my wounded corner.
Mark was still making an occasional noise and as I focussed on him without resentment and frustration, I realised he was processing his own emotions. My focus became laser like, and I found that my previous irritation and anger were gone and, in their place, I felt concern, empathy, and a desire to help. A desire so strong that I stretched out my hand, and we connected in a wordless exchange. He then went back to his experience.
And ten-year-old me was left with responsibility for him.
Responsibility because where were the adults? They were all otherwise engaged and it took some knocking on the floor to get a facilitator’s attention, and some gesticulating on my part for them to take over doing the adulting and to watch over Mark, who was oblivious to my concerns and his need for adult supervision.
And then it hit me. All the emotions I had just experienced I had felt during childhood. Mark was the conduit, the catalyst for those emotions to come in to my awareness. He was an innocent stand-in for my brother. The brother that I both hated and loved, the brother who was listened to and believed, where I was ignored and blamed. The brother who did his upmost to irritate, provoke and annoy. Who made my life so miserable, but with whom I had an unbreakable bond, a responsibility for, and for whom I would apparently lay down, if not my life, then my psychedelic trip.
I had just processed another huge part of my childhood. And I have endless gratitude to humming Mark and the part he played.
With Mark taken care of, my attention turned to the rest of the room and beyond. One of the other participants was sat outside, within eyesight, clearly processing strong emotions, and again my laser focus switched on. My over-whelming feeling was of wanting to take her pain from her. This feeling grew and grew into a compulsion I was not in control of. I believed, nay KNEW, I could heal her. In fact, I realised I could heal the whole world. I was working with God and he was telling me that my sole purpose on this earth was to take people’s pain from them, and the way I could do this was to take the words that they used to describe their pain and write them down.
So, I opened both my note book and my mouth and commanded the occupants of the room to give up their pain. We are talking town-crier, circus-ring-master, stage-actor level of voice. A voice I did not know was inside me.
Give me your pain.
I can heal your pain.
Give me your words, I will write your pain.
The whole room looked at me as I wrote and commanded.
I will vomit your words.
I will heal you. GIVE ME YOUR PAIN. It’s my job to heal the world.
I wrote page after page after page after page.
Sam came and gently asked me to come outside. I refused. In the same voice.
And I continued to heal the room, even as people wandered outside and my written words turned to scribbles, until time and events drifted and shifted. Now I was lying down. Now I had determined I was dead. Now I realised I wasn’t. Now Mark was sitting next to me patiently waiting to connect. Now the trip was over.
And I was back in the room and my over-whelming feeling was one of shame. Shame that I had disrupted everyone’s experience, that I actually believed I could heal, that I was working with God. Shame that I had found my voice and would not be silenced. Shame that I existed
It took a while, and the assurances of the group, to process the shame. I was told that when I became God-like, several people felt emotions that they were struggling to process, shift and clear. I choose to believe that in some way I helped and what, to me, was a monumentally enormous and embarrassing social faux pas, was just a passing, entertaining blip within their own self-involved experience.
I choose to believe that my voice, silenced in child-hood, needed to make the biggest, loudest entrance and the resultant shame needed to be processed and then left behind, along with the hurt, rage, and pain that belonged to my two-year-old, five-year-old, ten-year-old self.
And the smoking?
I realised that I smoked to feel better. About myself. About my life. I smoked because I was bored. I smoked because I needed to be motivated to live. I smoked for the dopamine high. I smoked to sooth, to pacify, to FEEL.
Or to not feel.
I smoked because I was not worth more. I had no value in this world.
I smoked because it was easier than not smoking and giving up was too fucking hard.
And here is the point. And the lesson. And the hard work.
Giving up IS fucking hard. It is hard from when I wake until when I sleep. It is hard when I drink tea, or look at my phone, or drive my car. It is hard after I complete a task, before a meal, after a meal, whilst talking to a friend. It is hard whilst writing this.
But it needs to be hard so I can prove to myself that I CAN DO THIS. The Fiona that had given up at everything in life, that had found it too hard, that had felt powerless and taken the easy A-road needs to do this. That Fiona is worth doing this for. Because with every cigarette I don’t smoke, I find my power. And I find what else I can do with my life that is not smoking, or looking at my phone, or Netflix, or waiting for my death because it is easier than living.
And for every day since the retreat (46 and counting) that I have not smoked, I find more reason to want to not just live but to LIVE.
I started this account with what to take to a retreat. I’ll end with what you take from a retreat.
Very simply, an experience that is beyond words and beyond measure. So, if you have stayed with me, and read to this point, then I hope you go further and book on to a retreat. It may change your life.
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