Okay, this article isn’t exactly about dreams. But since we talk about shadow on this blog, I wanted to share my 2nd acid trip, how it helped me unearth and reintegrate an enormous personal shadow, and the insights I gained into our repressed side.

Disclaimer: The information here is strictly educational. I’m not responsible or liable for any damage you cause yourself while using psychedelics. These substances can potentially be very dangerous and even lethal. If you use them, please do so carefully and responsibly.

I’ve done acid and shrooms, not a whole lot, but about ten trips in total. We’ll cover my 2nd acid trip, which was back in 2017, and the insights I had into my shadow.

What is The Shadow?

We best discuss what the shadow is in case you’re not sure.

This is a Jungian and Freudian concept. It’s basically the part of you you can’t see, not just your own anger, but any and all traits. Think Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: we have the light side we can see, and the dark side that is underground. Shadow consists of positive qualities too, it’s not only dark. It’s dark in the sense that it’s hidden.

It’s often deeply repressed, and the deeper it’s repressed, the more pain it causes us. We all have shadows, many of them, unless we work to clean them up.

And let me tell you, REALLY seeing the shadow turned my inside out, for the better, and I can never go back to my previous ignorance.

This trip wasn’t about discovering my shadow. I just went in with the mentality that the acid would show me what I most had to see at that moment. I’d previously realized it’s too powerful to try to control what will happen.

My Acid Trip

Back in late 2017 I had just started my journey in lucid dreaming, personal development and contemplative practices like meditation, yoga and chanting.

Until then, the shadow seemed like a nice concept. I’d done some work to uncover it, but I didn’t feel like I’d really got it. I also didn’t realise just how deep it goes.

So I did one tab of acid, and it had been a long, exhausting trip. It was a very body-centered experience. A lot of tension and body habits being released. There was a lot of ego death, stripping back the layers of who I was to my essential self.

At the end of the peak, all of a sudden I had this amazing clarity into what the shadow was. AND I COULD SEE IT. I felt all my shadows being reintegrated into my personality. 

With this, I also realized how much of a bastard I was to people because of my shadow. Particularly repressed anger, which I had a lot of, and because I did, I was always getting on at people but not aware that I was.

I got really angry at myself, and went for a walk, and when I came back I just felt all of that repressed anger come out. I start punching a pillow as hard as I could.

But after that release, I felt this huge sense of relief. It’s like the feeling of having a clean house versus a dirty house. I felt lighter, more alive, more whole. This is the typical response to shadow reintegration.

There was other shadow material I became aware of, but most of it was the anger. Though I felt disgusted with myself for all of my shadow, I am very thankful I saw it so clearly.

I think shadow therapy, whether it’s DIY or with a professional, is more progressive and not so dramatic, but gets you similar insights over time.

Shadow Insights

Let me share some of the insights I had into the shadow. These are life-changing and have never left me since.

Shadow insights:

• it seems these traits are outside of you. You blame others for them, you judge them, you make villains out of them. It creates a lot of tension and unease inside you. “You hate in others exactly that which you hate in yourself.”
• They’re not outside of you, but because you’ve repressed it and project it on to others, you’re constantly bumping into it, yet it’s obscure to you.
• Your shadow does a lot of harm to you. I saw this. It has you making enemies, living in tension, living with tightness in the body. It’s known that repressed anger can lead to depression.
• We live in a very sterile culture that makes us shadow-ridden. I’m not saying we outright express all our anger, but when we condemn it and pretend it’s not there, the only thing we do is create shadow. We don’t solve the problem.

Ultimately I discovered that the shadow cuts you into two, makes you inauthentic, and causes you pain. It’s up to each of us to reintegrate our shadows. Nobody can do this work for us.

Yet dreams are an excellent tool for that, and on this blog we’ll discuss further how to use them to re-own our shadow material, among many other things.