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Amber Lyon was a CNN investigative correspondent for over a decade, travelling to some of the most horrible and war-ravaged places on earth. Often seeing some of the most tragic conditions humans can be put through, this unsurprisingly led to terrible nightmares and all sortf of other negative side effects.
It was only after an appearance on the Joe Rogen Experience podcast that Lyon got turned onto the idea of using psilocybin mushrooms and eventually the fabled South American hallucinagenic Ayuasca to deal with and overcome her issues.
She's recently penned a beautiful article about her experiences over at spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com, here's some of my favourite exerpts, be sure to check out the full article HERE:
After several years of reporting, I realized an unfortunate consequence of my style- I had immersed myself too deeply in the trauma and suffering of the people I’d interviewed. I began to have trouble sleeping as their faces appeared in my darkest dreams. I spent too long absorbed in a world of despair and my inability to deflect it allowed the trauma of others to settle inside my mind and being. Combine that with several violent experiences while working in the field and I was at my worst. A life reporting on the edge had led me to the brink of my own sanity.
Because I could not find a way to process my anguish, it grew into a monster, manifesting itself into a constant state of anxiety, short-term memory loss, sleeplessness, and hyper arousal. The heart palpitations made me feel like I was knocking on death’s door.
Psychedelics were an odd choice for someone like me. I grew up in the Midwest and was fed 30 years of propaganda explaining how horrible these substances were for my health. You can imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when, after the Rogan podcast, I found articles on the prodigious effects of these substances that behave more like medicines than drugs. Articles like this one, this, this , this, and this. And studies such as this, this, this, this, this… and this … all gut-wrenching examples of how we’ve been misled by authorities who classify psychedelics as schedule 1 narcotics that have ‘no medicinal value’ despite dozens of scientific studies proving otherwise
If I had any reservations, doubts, or disbeliefs, they were quickly expelled shortly after my first ayahuasca experience. The foul-tasting tea vibrated through my veins and into my brain as the medicine scanned my body. My field of vision became engulfed with fierce colors and geometric patterns. Almost instantly, I saw a vision of a brick wall. The word ‘anxiety’ was spray painted in large letters on the wall. “You must heal your anxiety,” the medicine whispered. I entered a dream-like state where traumatic memories were finally dislodged from my subconscious.
It was as if I was viewing a film of my entire life, not as the emotional me, but as an objective observer. The vividly introspective movie played in my mind as I relived my most painful scenes- my parents divorce when I was just 4 years-old, past relationships, being shot at by police while photographing a protest in Anaheim andcrushed underneath a crowd while photographing a protest in Chicago. The ayahuasca enabled me to reprocess these events, detaching the fear and emotion from the memories. The experience was akin to ten years of therapy in one eight-hour ayahuasca session
After seven ayahuasca sessions in the jungles of Peru, the fog that engulfed my mind lifted. I was able to sleep again and noticed improvements in my memory and less anxiety. I yearned to absorb as much knowledge as possible about these medicines and spent the next year travelling the world in search of more healers, teachers and experiences through submersion journalism.
I was drawn to try psilocybin mushrooms after reading how they reduced anxiety in terminal cancer patients. The ayahuasca showed me my main ailment was anxiety, and I knew I still had work to do to fix it. Psilocybin mushrooms are not neurotoxic, nonaddictive, and studies show they reduce anxiety, depression, and even lead to neurogenesis, or the regrowth of brain cells. Why would governments worldwide keep such a profound fungi out of the reach of their people?
Five ceremonies with psilocybin mushrooms cured my anxiety and PTSD symptoms. The butterflies that had a constant home in my stomach have flown away.
Psychedelics are not the be-all and end-all. For me, they were the key that opened the door to healing. I still have to work to maintain the healing with the use of floatation tanks, meditation, and yoga. For psychedelics to be effective, it’s essential they are taken with the right mindset in a quiet, relaxed setting conducive to healing, and that all potential prescription drug interactions are carefully researched. It can be fatal if Ayahuasca is mixed with prescription antidepressants.
I was blessed with an inquisitive nature and a stubbornness to always question authority. Had I opted for a doctor’s script and resigned myself in the hope that things would just get better, I never would have discovered the outer reaches of my mind and heart. Had I drunk the Kool-Aid and believed that all ‘drugs’ are evil and have no healing value, I may still be in the midst of a battle with PTSD.
Amber has since gone on to found Reset.me, which provides journalism on natural therapies for depression, anxiety, stress, PTSD, addiction, and other health conditions, and strives to help expand consciousness, enhance spirituality and well-being.
Through the aggregation of content and production of independent journalism by experienced reporters, reset.me aims to create an outlet for consciousness journalism.
The team behind reset.me endeavors to build a community that connects like-minded individuals worldwide to promote the sharing of knowledge and experiences.
