113 | Psychedelics and Spiritual Emergence: Turning Crisis into Transformation w/ Kyle Buller
“Psychedelics can create profound transformation, but when new perspectives cause distress or destabilization, it may signal a spiritual emergence or emergency.”
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Many of us experience ego death through psychedelics, but what happens when someone actually dies and returns to share their insights? Kyle Buller, co-founder of Psychedelics Today, had his life transformed at 16 after a traumatic snowboarding accident left him with a profound near-death experience (NDE). In this episode, Kyle shares his journey from navigating his NDE to exploring altered states of consciousness through psychedelics, transpersonal psychology, and Holotropic Breathwork.
Kyle and Lana discuss how these extraordinary states can catalyze personal transformation, the critical importance of integration, and why taking time to slow down is essential for practitioners and explorers alike. In the meat of this conversation, they also explore the concept of spiritual emergence, a phenomenon where transformative experiences can lead to personal crises or growth, and how to navigate the fine line between awakening and overwhelm. Together, they examine the responsibility of psychedelic work and the need for cultural frameworks to support those undergoing these profound shifts.
Topics Covered:
Gaps in the psychedelic education space
Supporting individuals through different phases of psychedelic work
Why bother having an expanded state of consciousness
How to make the most out of challenging psychedelic experiences
Pumping the breaks on transformational work and grounding into the everyday
How Kyles NDE at age 16 changes his perspective on life and death
Spiritual emergence and emergency: when mystical experiences create crisis
Common symptoms, challenges and experiences during a spiritual emergence
Ego Inflation as Spiritual Emergency
Advocates of psychedelics need to be honest about the challenges
Kyle’s deeply destabilizing experience with LSD (depersonalization & derealization)
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LISTEN
Things Mentioned in This Episode
Show Links:
Vital Psychedelic Training: Learn more here
Psychedelics Today Podcast: Visit here
Books: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis and The Stormy Search for the Self by Stanislav and Christina Grof
Spiritual Emergence as Ego Inflation (Jules Evans article about Sowilo Retreats)
Where to find Kyle Buller
About Kyle Buller:
Kyle's interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began at the age of 16 when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. After this near-death experience, Kyle’s life changed dramatically. Kyle subsequently earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology from Burlington College, where he focused on studying the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, Reiki, local medicinal plants and plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has been studying Dreamshadow Transpersonal breathwork with Lenny and Elizabeth since October 2010.
Kyle earned his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology from Prescott College. Kyle is a Licensed Associate Counselor and offers psychotherapy services specializing in psychedelic integration, spiritual emergence, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Kyle’s clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early episode of psychosis and providing counseling to undergraduate/graduate students in a university setting.
@psychedelicstoday
psychedelicstoday.com
kyle@psychedelicstoday.com
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
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113 - Kyle Buller
[00:00:00]
Lana Pribic: All right. Hello, and welcome back, everyone. I'm here with Kyle Buller of Psychedelics Today. Welcome to the show, Kyle.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Thanks so much for having me, Lana. Really happy to be here.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting to know you a little bit more because we connected about a month ago or two months ago for you to interview me. And yeah, I feel like I'm really enjoying this rapport that we're building together.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): So yeah. If the listeners want to go listen to your episode on Psychedelics today, go check it out.
Lana Pribic: that was a lot of fun. You're a great interviewer. So I hope that I can return the great interviewing skills to you today.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah.
Lana Pribic: I'll try my best, no pressure. So yeah, can you please just introduce yourself to the audience, whatever feels relevant for you to share today?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. My name is Kyle Buller. I'm one of the co founders at psychedelics today, which is a media education program. I also direct and manage the our vital program, which is a 12 month training program, really in like psychedelic and foreign practice, harm reduction, integration. I have an undergrad in transpersonal psychology did some studying there around [00:01:00] psychedelics and also got training in breathwork through two of my teachers, Lenny Elizabeth Gibson.
That's how the other co founder of Psychedelics Today, Joe Moore, and I met was through that community. And then spent some time in the mental health field working with teenagers at risk teenagers and crisis stabilization, and then folks experiencing early episode psychosis and sometimes we call it extreme states.
And then Did my master's in counseling and somatic psychology had a small little practice under supervision, put that on pause because psychedelics today and vital took over my life. And yeah, I've been really just enjoying being in the education space. It's been really fun and just kind of love being in that role.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. So you're the VP of education at psychedelics today. What does that entail? What do you do? And I think, what are like some of the gaps that you see in the psychedelic space in terms of education? Like, where are we really, what's your mission around that?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. So it's like Alex today. We have like our different [00:02:00] focuses. We have the podcast, which I still believe falls under education because we do a lot of education there. So it's like we say we have our media arm, which is the podcast blogs the social media presence. And then we have the education section.
And that's really what I manage and direct. And so we have some smaller bite sized courses under what we have, our Psychedelic Education Center. And then where I spend most of my time is Vital, which is our, yeah, as I mentioned, our 12 month training program. As for gaps in education something that I like to say along with vital is that I feel like one mission is to help to create a cultural safety net for exceptional experiences like experiences and exceptional experiences could be a pretty broad term, but you know, these really powerful experiences that people have.
And so how do we really educate people in the harm reduction and integration aspect? And, I think a lot of the focus. In a lot of education is like, how do I facilitate? How do I do X, Y, and Z? I want to do this, [00:03:00] but we've always been so integration focused trying to take the substance narrative out of it, the substance and the experience is just one part, but there's a much larger process that starts to unfold when we engage in psychedelics, breath work, and these other as, Like Stan Groff's term, these technologies of the sacred.
So yeah, it could be breathwork, could be like yoga, meditation, psychedelics. People have spontaneous mystical experiences. And how do we help to create a culture that can really support that? And not just focus on, how do I, facilitate appropriately and whatnot, it's just one part of the experience.
I think if we want to create change here, we need to look at the bigger kind of cultural framework in which we're embedded in. And part of this really comes from my own experiences and feeling I had these really profound experiences from psychedelic experiences and also had a snowboarding accident when I was 16.
That really changed my life and just feeling like. Yeah, not knowing where to look, not having those support [00:04:00] networks to really process what the hell just happened to me. And so I think that's definitely been a huge focus of ours is trying to help people go out there and be supports. And it's actually funny.
Some people that have been through our program once they get to the end, they're like, wow. There's so much nuance here. I think I need a lot more time to even think about wanting to be a facilitator. Like I'm actually more interested in the integration aspect and supporting people on the pre and post side of things.
And so I think that's one thing we've really focused on over the years.
Lana Pribic: Congrats and being able to unlock that in people. I've personally gone through that process as well of engaging with medicine, wanting to dive into facilitation, seeing the nuance, taking a step back, really questioning whether it's what I want. So yeah, I applaud you for being able to just encourage that process within people and encourage people to really slow down and come into the space with intentionality.
Yeah.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): It's not a sexy, but I think it's [00:05:00] important. And I think I've been break checked a whole bunch by my teachers and like mentors and elders, and I've just been so appreciative of it over the years. I'm like, wow, I'm so glad to I had those people in my life. So it could be like, yo, slow down, just take your time.
And I'm like, because I have that energy. It's Oh no, I want to do this. And it's slow down, take a couple of deep breaths. Like really think about the power of these states and what we're opening up within people.
Lana Pribic: Thank you so much for saying that. Because, yeah, it is so powerful what can be unlocked under altered states. And as a facilitator or guide, you are dealing with people that are just in such Incredibly vulnerable positions and it takes such a high level of self mastery to be able to step outside of yourself and to really hold space for people in that way.
And yeah, I guess in saying that what has been your experience with that? Because I know that [00:06:00] you, it sounds like you support people in all stages prep. the journey and integration. So I'm curious what has that process been for you? And are you inclined to work with people in the integration phase more than the journey phase?
Tell us a little bit about that.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah, I think like when I started this journey, I really wanted to facilitate and, just getting the experience. I was always the person in college that, and even before college, like whenever my friends were using psychedelics, I was always their trip sitters. And I really enjoyed being there.
Being in that space with people and just, helping them or help, yeah, creating that space for them to explore. And then I started getting training and breath work and I really loved to facilitate, group transformation and the group process. But you know, I also have to be honest with myself.
How much energy that can sometimes take out of you. And how much can you actually do that? We ran, I [00:07:00] think, around 12 retreats over the past two years through vital. And while it's so nourishing. On a soul level. It's also like energetically, draining at times because you're holding space for so many people's traumas, vulnerabilities the stuff that they're really been holding onto that they don't always have spaces to really let go.
I'm trained as a therapist too. And obviously that's part of that job
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): training, right? Constantly holding space. But I think when you get in these amplified states, when you're working with psychedelics there's. Yeah. An interesting energetic thing that I think arises that we don't always talk about.
And I always ask that question, like, how much of this is a full time job of doing psychedelic guide work? And for some people, I think they have really good boundaries and maybe they aren't as energetic sponges as other people. And so I think that really comes down to Like your own self awareness and knowing how much that you can actually take on.
And do you have good self [00:08:00] care practices where, you can shake anything off and deal with your own stuff. And then I was doing some ketamine assisted therapy when I had my practice and, I only saw like a few clients and maybe it was once a week with ketamine. Maybe it was only one client.
And I think at the max, maybe I had three clients a week with ketamine. And I enjoyed it. Like I really enjoyed it and I miss it too. Cause I haven't been doing that stuff since I've pulled back to focus on the education. But, there's something interesting about ketamine from a clinical perspective that it's much shorter acting, right?
Like people are in and out of the office within two hours instead of, if you're looking at psilocybin, upwards six, seven, eight hours, depending on how it's created. And that's a much longer time of being in that space. So I guess saying all that, it's I really do enjoy the facilitation of those experiences, whether it's breath work or ketamine or psilocybin, but I really like the integration [00:09:00] side, when people come back and they're really trying to make a meaning out of their experience and trying to figure out what to do with it.
And I think that, That's where a lot of the work is and a lot of the richness kind of comes in. There's something about facilitating that one experience and you get to see the transformation. You get to see how it really impacts somebody, but I, yeah, I don't know. I really like that kind of longer term work with folks and watching them go through a process and being able to support them on the other side.
But right now I just don't have the time for it as much, but I am getting that through. Our program, because I run the study groups and, I'm with people for a year and I'm actually seeing the student transformation of them going through their own kind of critical thinking, they're having their own experiences coming back and being engaged in the group.
And so I really like. That group process. And yeah, it's not as like therapeutic as say like clinical work or whatnot, but there is something really nourishing about creating that container for people to [00:10:00] explore themselves and to question and to learn. Something new about themselves.
And again, just hearing some of those folks say, wow, I came into this having high expectations of wanting to be like a facilitator and then, six months to end of the year, they're like, wow, like I need to like really think about what I'm doing here. This is really potent. And I think I need more time.
And for me, that's people are starting to think about this in a much different way than say, maybe how. The mainstream talks about it or how, it's portrayed on social media and stuff like that from time to time, right? Maybe they see something like, Oh, I really want to do that. And then they have their experience and they go, Whoa, this is really powerful stuff.
Where are my limits?
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I feel like you were, I mean, you were speaking directly to me because we're recording a podcast, but I felt like you were really speaking directly to me. I just facilitated my first like retreat experience. It was a pretty deep dive. We got into a pretty expanded state of [00:11:00] consciousness with the guests and wow, yeah, it was so rewarding and so beautiful.
But. Being my first retreat like that, coming back home and jumping back into work, I was like, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was so much to integrate. I went through my own transformational process. I was like meeting all of the ways that I'm super like controlling and rigid and like how I need to release that.
And it was really powerful. And I think being a facilitator is almost like being a participant, like you need space to integrate after. And yeah, it hasn't even been a week since
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): crash afterwards, and I think that's like important for, for us to talk about it's so rewarding and for me, it's rewarding in the sense that it's so humbling, and it feels so sacred, and it's such an honor that, People are like, so trusting to come into a space and do that exploration.
And so it's wow, like this is such beautiful, sacred work, [00:12:00] but yeah, it does have I come back and I questioned stuff. I'm like, am I doing things correctly? Where are my blind spots?
Lana Pribic: Yeah.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): did I fuck up there?
Lana Pribic: It's serious business. Yeah.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): yeah, because, sometimes you do deal with the projections from folks.
And then, then I bring that in and I think about, I'm like, okay am I showing up a hundred percent and stuff like that? And how am I showing up? How can I change? How can I grow from this experience? And yeah, there is that decompression and integration time afterwards with self reflection.
Lana Pribic: Yeah learning that big time. And I love how you said that it's such a sacred space because I don't know if it's the same for you. But the deeper that I get on this path, I see that this is my spiritual path. And this is how I explore my spirituality and especially stepping into facilitation.
It's a way to explore something greater, something beyond maybe we could get into that a little bit, right? Just the impact of non ordinary states of [00:13:00] consciousness. What are your thoughts around just how these non ordinary states of consciousness can really guide healing, transformation, spiritual growth?
What I'm trying to say is, why bother? Having an experience with a non-ordinary state of consciousness.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): I'm going to come back to something my teacher Lenny said, and I appreciate this. But we asked him, how do you talk about breathwork? Like, how do you pitch it to somebody? Because sometimes talking about these these experiences can be pretty difficult. It's like, how do you talk about the ineffable?
How do you convey the mystical and also maybe without scaring people too, right? Because sometimes people can have those really intense experiences. And I asked him this and he said, We'll start with the question. Are you curious? Are you curious about your relationship and your relationship to the universe and everything else around you?
And if not, go watch a movie, go be part of [00:14:00] somebody else's story. But if you're curious about your own story and your place here in the cosmos, like that is why we would want to engage you. In these practices to get to know ourselves and our place a little bit more. But, you know, if we want to just completely tune out and not think about that, yeah, we could binge watch Netflix and be part of everybody else's story and go along with the flow.
And that's really for somebody to decide, there is that idea of informed consent around these experiences. And sometimes people will get excited about it cause they see, say they read Michael Pollan's book or this or that, and then they have an experience and it really shakes them up and they go, Whoa, I was not expecting that I was expecting something completely different.
And I think that's, again, comes back to one's own curiosity and knowing, the potential power of these states. And but you know, over my years, like I've had really intense experiences, things that really destabilized me. I never thought I would [00:15:00] actually be doing anything in psychedelics after some of these experiences because it felt a little traumatizing.
But even in the darkness and in those valleys years later, like there are the fruits from the experience that you know, even though I don't know if I'd ever want to go through some of that stuff ever again it's like that bittersweetness, it's what would my life be without it?
And I don't know it. I'm just so thankful that I did go through a lot of those experiences because it's taught me so much about myself about, everything. Um, And there is that thing of like, when you start to see things beyond you, it's really hard to shut off. And that's the bittersweetness of it's like, Oh okay, how do I show up now knowing this stuff?
And conforming into society that like, I think a lot of us sometimes disagree with, right? We see the harms, the violence, the greed, and we go, how the hell are we conforming? Continuing to act like this and participate. And that's hard to hold. Um, And so, but you know, I think it creates [00:16:00] deeper meaning in life.
And I know for me, it's like without some of those experiences, like I don't know where I would be and I'm thankful for them even though they were sometimes challenging, but the fruits have been really wonderful.
Lana Pribic: . Yeah. I love that. Are you curious about your own story and your place in the cosmos? That's so great because I think that. A lot of people come into psychedelics just wanting to feel better.
And they have honestly no idea what they're signing up for. And then, like you said, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
And there's like this, But there's this stage where every psychedelic explorer comes face to face with just like the vastness and the enormity of this work and the potential for it. And they decide if they want to keep going forward or not.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah, and I've been there. I'm like I think maybe I'm pumping the brakes and not going to follow this anymore. But something keeps showing up and says, Nope, you got to keep following it.[00:17:00]
Lana Pribic: yeah. Yeah, that and that's really that call of, the spirit or the higher self or whatever. There's a part of us that like, just has the strength to keep going forward, even when it's really hard.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah.
Lana Pribic: I know you really liked the episode I did on taking a break. And we talked about it on in the interview you did with me.
What are your thoughts around that? And how do you practice taking a break? And how do you know when to kind of like, Put on the brakes and back up.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah, so like in my early years I felt like I was doing a lot of exploration. I was really trying to process my near death experience that I had when I was 16. I got in a really bad snowboarding accident almost the same year. And once I found psychedelics, I said, Oh my God, this is a way to get back to that Bardo state.
And for me, it was like a place of home, a place of familiarity, a place that I wanted to keep returning to because I had a really hard time [00:18:00] integrating after my snowboarding accident. There was part of me thinking I shouldn't be here. And there's a reason why I'm back here. But. I don't want to be here.
I accepted my fate at that point and saying I'm going home this is it. And then coming back here and being so confused what the hell am I doing here? Like, why did the doctor save me? Like I accepted that I was going elsewhere. And so I spent a lot of time just being so depressed and dealing with a huge existential crisis.
And when I found psychedelics. I said, Oh my God, there's, yeah, this way to go back into this home state of Oh yes, like I can go back there. It's this is my ticket to go travel beyond this world. And there's, it just felt really reassuring of just being able to go back and go back.
And, over the years I started to get these messages of There's stuff to do in this world and you need to just pump the brakes. And I remember it came from a DMT experience I had where I was [00:19:00] like coming up to this door and these entities came out that I've experienced in various mushroom experiences and whatnot.
And they said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm just so damn curious. I just want to know. And they're like, And I was like, but I don't. And I really want to know more. And they said, just go back and do your work. You're not allowed in here until you start to do your stuff.
And I took that and I said, yeah, what does that look like if I do pump the brakes and start to focus on this reality instead of, really just trying to transcend. And I'd say that. Before I spent so much time trying to transcend this earth and this reality. And I got to the point where I'm, I started to realize that the magic is here.
And I think the work is here. And so I started to make a shift and this was probably around. My Saturn returned, so it was around like 28, 27, 29 that, I started to [00:20:00] see the magic in the world a little bit more, and said, I need to show up and really focus on what's important and what's in front of me.
I can do all this exploration and kind of spiritual bypassing and escaping. But it's only getting me so far and I kept it getting the same messages over and over again, it was like, go have a relationship with your family, go, be around the people you love, like focus on this, focus on that.
And, I'm like, okay, I keep getting the same messages. Why am I not listening to this stuff? Is anything in my life going to change if I don't actually go take action on this? Even though it's stuff we sometimes don't want to face, right? And so it's as Ram Dass said, especially when it comes to family stuff, you think you're enlightened, go spend a weekend with your family.
And it's sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to avoid some of that stuff. And, I think, This is stuff that just keeps showing up in all my experiences. I think I really need to not have these experiences for a while and focus on what's in front of me. And so I think it is important to take breaks and really [00:21:00] listen to those messages and implement those changes because there is the weird kind of transparent, I use weird in like a good way, not like weird as bad, but there is things that happen transpersonally when we go into these states, and I say, sometimes it feels like we're messing with the time wave a bit, it's like we go in there, we have an experience and then somehow it just starts to ripple out into this reality and I don't know, leaves me scratching my head going what's going on there?
And so that change can happen. But, I think it also comes back to Yeah, coming back here, being embodied, showing up in this world and trying to live your life purpose and, if you believe in karma or whatever that is starting to work towards that and yeah, and we can do wonderful work in the psychedelic space, but I think there's also wonderful work to be done here in this boring monotonous 3D reality. And I think that sometimes this is the work. It goes back to like the old, like Zen sayings, like before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Like, [00:22:00] how do you find the joy in those little things during the dishes, and just, Yeah, I think breaks are important because sometimes it's like we need those breaks to get perspective and sometimes when we're just constantly flooded with so many ideas and insights can leave us a little bit more confused at times of like, what, what is real?
What am I supposed to be paying attention to?
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah, especially when we get into kind of the more mystical medicines like DMT, ayahuasca, mushrooms, which can be like very confusing and loading your, your brain with, with, with, with those, but wow, Kyle such a touching story. Thank you for sharing that. 16 years old is very young to have a near death experience.
I, yeah, What was like your looking back on that? What was your I Think you might have touched on it when you said like the magic is here and the work to be done is here But yeah, like what is [00:23:00] your what was the takeaway from that? What did you? Grow into from that experience.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): , you know, the immediate thing that I thought about after I had that experience was, What if everybody could have these really powerful experiences? Would the world be different? And that's what really turned me on to psychedelics. When I first came across psychedelics, I said, Oh, here's a way to have these potential experiences without actually almost dying.
But uh, I mean,
Lana Pribic: when
you think you are
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): even when you think you are, yeah. Yeah. There's something about that psychological death. And I was talking to another friend who had a near death experience, and we've had plenty of those ego dissolution experiences on psychedelics, but there's something different like, so when I've had those experiences on psychedelics, there's like a little bit of fear that comes up because something is online.
And like, you're kind of be like, Oh my God, is this it? Is this it? When I was actually dying. That didn't even cross my mind. So to give a little bit of a backstory about this experience, it [00:24:00] was New Year's Eve. And I grew up in New Jersey Northwestern New Jersey, and I was out snowboarding in the Poconos and it was really warm that New Year's day.
And so slushy and the snow was getting kicked up. And so by the time night rolls around, you have these mounds of snow all over the place. It starts to get a little bit icier as it starts to freeze and the temp starts to drop. I was going around this turn and there is this mound of snow in this blind spot and I came out of it and said, time started to slow down.
I said, if I hit this, I'm going to die. So I tried stopping, I tried turning, but it was, everything was slow motion. It was like this thing just sucked me into it. And then I hit it. And time started to go fast forward and the nose of my snowboard hit, my shoulder hit and I heard a loud pop and I immediately thought I broke a rib.
I was gasping for air. I couldn't breathe and just immediately started groaning and just screaming. And my brother and his friend went down to go get first aid and, they [00:25:00] came back 45 minutes later saying, nobody's coming for you. And I was like, what do you mean? Nobody's coming for me.
They're like, I don't know. The Lifty just didn't really say much and didn't really care. And so thankfully it's a small mountain and a ski patroller did come by and they got me up to a toboggan and sent me down to the first aid and they're checking my vitals out and asked me questions. And they're like, are you usually this pale?
Are you usually. Do you usually have a low pulse? And I'm like, I don't know. And I'm not tracking my pulse every day. I don't know. I don't know what's normal. But they said, your ribs are fine. There's no bruising. There's nothing broken. It doesn't look like there's any fractures, but since you have really low vitals we think that you have internal injuries.
And I immediately heard that and said, Oh shit, I'm going to die tonight. And I didn't grow up very religious, but I started to pray. And I remember praying to God saying I don't want to die. I'm too young. So at that point I was afraid. I was thinking, this is it. Something really bad is happening to me right now.[00:26:00]
I'm in so much pain. The doctors are freaking out. Thankfully they got a medevac and got a helicopter. And my dad just told me like a few years ago, I guess when they left, they looked at him and said, your son's in his golden hours and he may not make it. And so thankfully they medevaced me out.
And by the time I got to the hospital and I was in the emergency room, they're trying to, check my vitals. Take off my clothes, do all this stuff. And at that point, death started to not cross my mind as much. I started to be outside of my body. I could feel the emotions and the energy in the room.
And I'm hearing the nurses saying I can't get a pulse on him. His veins in his upper body are collapsing. They're jabbing me with needles, trying to tap IVs into me. My uncle's there beside me. And I had this really interesting thought. I'm like, here's somebody that's family. That I'm like blood related to and where I'm about to go.
I can't take anybody with me. And here's somebody I'm like, so attached to [00:27:00] from like blood. I'm thinking I can't take anybody with me on this journey where I'm about to go. And they did a sonogram on me and they found that I had massive internal bleeding and they needed to figure out where it was coming from.
And they got me to a cat scan machine. And while I'm laying in there, I'm like, I'm starting to really lose it. I'm falling asleep. I feel like I'm submerged in a tub of ice water. I'm shivering. The doctors on the other side of the wall on the intercom saying, stay with us, Kyle, stay with us.
Don't fall asleep. Keep breathing. Stay with us. And I was just sitting there drifting off. I was in so much pain. I was so cold. And this voice came over me and said and it was like a voice. And then it was, I describe it. It was like this, orb of light that kind of came over me and said, you're going home.
You're going back to the stars where we all come from. And this physical life is going to cease to exist. But you'll continue onward. And this is just a transition. And the more that you struggle with this transition, the harder it's going to be. So the more that you can relax into this and not feel [00:28:00] all this pain the easier this will be, but you're going home.
And I remember just feeling so blissed out going, I'm going home. This is what we all wait for. This is beautiful. And on the other side, I'm hearing the doctors say, stay with us, Kyle, stay with us. And I'm just closing my eyes, just drifting off. And, but there's a sense of peace over me.
And I found out that I ruptured my spleen. And so I lost about five to five and a half pounds. So the doctor said if I came in five or 10 minutes later, I would have been dead on arrival. So it was just like, they said they were even surprised I was alive because typically people, depending on how much blood you have, this and that, like how resilient you are.
Sometimes people start dying at four, four and a half pints of loss. And yeah. So coming back from that the I really struggled with the return, as I mentioned, like there was a part of me after hearing that message, it was like, I'm not supposed to be here. And just really confused about what I was doing here and being so young too, like that's the [00:29:00] time when you're really starting to form your identity.
You're doing a lot of exploration. And all my peers are exploring with drugs and sex and, typical teenage things. And I'm sitting there going. What the hell are we doing here?
Lana Pribic: Wow.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): What does the human race doing here? How does all of this exist? Some of these like bigger questions and, I didn't really have anybody to really process that stuff with.
And I think the big takeaway. After some of that stuff started to subside was just so grateful to be here and how magical it is to be here. We wake up every day in this world. And, what do we know? Besides this, we, I, most of us can't remember what it was like before this.
And so it is really a gift to just wake up every day, even though. The world is just full of pain and suffering and all the bad that's happening in the world. At times, there's also a lot of beauty in life. And you know, how do we really appreciate everything that's unfolding at [00:30:00] times? And find the beauty, it's I, sometimes I think about like Victor Frankel's logos therapy.
If anybody's read a man's search for meaning, like. When he's like escaping the concentration camps and it's all muddy and there's a single kind of flower growing and somebody steps on it and it's this beautiful sign of hope and then it's gone. But it's like, how do you even find some of the meaning when things just don't seem to add up?
And yeah, I think that's been like one of the biggest lessons from this is it's a gift to be here. And so how do we really embody that and embrace it? And I say that and I struggle from, day to day, every once in a while, you know, life happens and it's really tough.
But it's like, how do we find those little glimpses of inspiration to keep us going? Cause some degree, it's. Pretty wild to be here. I
Lana Pribic: I Was at the edge of my seat while you were telling that story. Wow. That is so intense. What really stood out to me was the [00:31:00] voice that told you that you're going home. What was that? Was it like your intuition? Inner guidance?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): have no idea.
Lana Pribic: Yeah.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): There's part of me that feels like it was something external. It wasn't like an external voice that I could hear outside. It was an internal voice and it did feel like something internally was guiding me through that. And so. was it my higher self? Was it the universe communicating through me?
It's very similar as psychedelics, right? Like we go inward and we have these experiences and sometimes it feels like we're communicating with the universe, God, other entities, and it's a very internal experience and sometimes it does feel like it comes from us. We could maybe use that term that Stan Grof coined, that inner healing intelligence, right?
is accessing these non ordinary states where you get in touch with this inner healing intelligence. And there's something that guides us through life. And so, yeah, I don't know. I've done [00:32:00] a lot of thinking about it. I don't know how to answer that. It could have been me. It could have been something else.
It didn't feel like my voice, as a 16 year old, where would that come from? Maybe yeah, wisdom beyond my years at that time, but maybe it's part of the process when we start to get a glimpse of what's on the other side, something else comes in and guides us. But I don't know. I'm left with more questions sometimes than answers.
Lana Pribic: yeah. The more you know, the less you know. Yeah. Wow. So this is so relevant. And thank you for sharing the story. Because you had an actual near death experience, but I'm sure people listening, who dabble with psychedelics on the high dose side, have also experienced these ego deaths and these experiences where their perception of life on earth is just completely transformed after a single experience.
So I'm curious how did [00:33:00] that experience change your relationship to death and dying?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): My near death experience. It's constantly changing all the time, but I would say that it's relieved the fear of dying. That doesn't mean I'm not afraid to die, because I think what it's showed me is that. We have limited time here and time is our currency and how do we want to spend our time?
And so there's so many things that like I want to do. And I think that's like sometimes when I get depressed and I struggle, I'm like, ah, there's so much bullshit I don't want to do, but I have to do. And, I know my time is limited. And so it feels like death is always on my shoulder and I'm always meditating on it and thinking like, is this like what I want to be doing with my life?
Is this how I want to be showing up? And and then there's the battle of what's my ego versus what is more More of that, like higher self for the collective and it's okay to have sacrifices and not [00:34:00] always take care of my, my, my needs, right? Because sometimes life is pulling me in another direction where actually serving it feels better, even though, sometimes I'm like, I'd rather just spend my day snowboarding and biking and, doing all this other stuff and taking care of that part of me.
But yeah, so I think it's just raise the issue of time. We have limited time here and it goes by very quickly. And it's, I, there's a part of me that knows there's something beyond and that will all be okay at the end, even though it's scary to contemplate. And I still question I don't know what's on the other side.
Sometimes I have ideas and I sometimes meditate on that near death experience or some of my psychedelic experiences and feel very reassured that this is just one part of the process, this is just one kind of blimp in our experience and it will continue on in whatever kind of shape and form that is.
What that is. I'm not a hundred percent sure of I feel like I got a little bit of glimpse of it, but I don't know a [00:35:00] hundred percent of what that is. But yeah. And I think it just makes me more aware of yeah, I don't want to die anytime soon. There's so much stuff I want to do.
And then that gets back to the attachments Why am I so attached to that too? But there's something, I think it just in knowing that we just have a finite amount of time here, like there's just so much stuff to explore and do in this world. And so that's why I think there's a lot of magic here in this 3d reality.
And why I think sometimes taking those breaks is really important to focus on your time here. Cause the transpersonal and the mystical. It's just, it's right there. And that is something that we'll return to. And so how do we spend our time here a little bit more? And it goes back to that kind of cliche saying by Chardin we're spiritual beings having human experiences and like, how do we really embody the human experience if we are spiritual beings,
Lana Pribic: Love your take on that [00:36:00] because I feel like most people who reference that quote almost take like a spiritual bypass approach where it's like, yeah well, we're spiritual beings at our core. Therefore, all of this is made up and none of this actually matters. And I love how you've flipped that on its head.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): I've definitely had those thoughts that nothing matters. Why do anything? Cause it's all gonna, it's all gonna end. But then, when I get into those like nihilistic mindsets, I realized it's just not helpful for me. It's not helpful for the world. There's so many things that we could be doing.
But if we constantly have those thoughts and I think it limits us. But I'm guilty of it too. At times, you get into those minds who cares? It's all, it doesn't matter, but it does matter, like we're all here right now. And how do we spend more time?
Showing up for one another and trying to make this world a better place.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, wow, I don't know if I'm still like in a ceremonial energy right [00:37:00] now and like pretty raw but I'm just Feel like I'm holding back tears right now because we're just like really touching on just how sacred and precious our time here Is
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah.
Lana Pribic: in this weird place we call Earth and the mystery of it.
I don't know. This is like the kind of stuff I personally live for. So
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah.
Lana Pribic: think this will lead into What I want to talk about next nicely spiritual emergencies and spiritual emergence have not yet had a guest actually talk about this topic.
I'm very uneducated in this realm. Like I have a sense of what we mean when we say spiritual emergency, but can you introduce this topic to us? I know you're really passionate about educating on
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah, so that term spiritual emergence and emergency, and sometimes it's used interchangeably. But it was a uh, a term coined by Stan Christina Groff, and for those that don't know who Stan Groff is he's one of the pioneers in LSD research and psychotherapy. [00:38:00] And along with his wife, Christina, they developed holotropic breathwork at Esalen.
And what they were seeing was folks having these really powerful experiences whether spontaneously whether it was through breathwork, psychedelics and there's all sorts of different ways people have these spiritual emergencies. For Christina, it was through her use of alcohol that I think brought on her spiritual emergence.
And she's got a whole book About it. And so it was a term kind of It was a play on words in a bit. So it described this psycho spiritual crisis, but it also described this opportunity to emerge out of it to maybe a higher level of functioning, having more awareness. And sometimes we do see that with psychedelics, right?
People feel like they have this like really big transformative experience. It could produce a little bit of a crisis for them and they see the world differently. And so to some degree, that's beneficial, but what, what happens when they start to see the world in a different [00:39:00] way that starts to create more distress and it starts to destabilize them more?
And so that's when it starts to get into a spiritual emergence. And so spiritual emergence is something that could be held. And somebody's functioning isn't really disrupted. They're able to maintain their relationships. They're able to go to work. They're able to take care of their basic needs.
But they have this transpersonal crisis unfolding in their life. And then when it starts to get on the verge of emergency, that's when, things start to get more rocky. Maybe their relationships start to slip. Maybe they can't show up to work. Things really start to become destabilized.
And, we could say that, I've worked with folks where it feels like they have an increased sensitivity. And seeing energy, feeling energy, being overwhelmed by energy in their body where they're dizzy and they can't show up to do certain things. They might start to hear voices, right?
Like the universe is talking to me or like X, Y, and Z is talking to me. [00:40:00] So then from a mental health, psychological perspective from the Western paradigm, we might view that as like budding psychosis, right? Somebody who's having, starting to hear voices. And Yeah, so it really describes this crisis period.
And I went through mine when I had my near death experience. Like I would say that would definitely catapulted me into a spiritual emergence. And then also followed by some psychedelic experiences. I would say that it never went into a full blown emergency. I was able to show up to work.
I was able to keep relationships. I was able to continue to do the things I needed to do. But on the inside, I was really struggling and not knowing how to navigate the things that were coming up for me. So yeah, I think we might see a little bit more of this as people start to dive into these experiences and, they might not be fully prepared for it.
Lana Pribic: What's a book? What's the book that we should read on this topic?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): The Groffs have a book just called Spiritual [00:41:00] Emergence. There's another book the Stormy Search for the Self, which is also, I can't remember if, I can't remember if that was just Christina that wrote the book, or if it was Stan and Christina but you could look up those two books by the Grofts and that's probably a really great place to start yeah,
Lana Pribic: I can think of at least a handful of clients that I work with past and present that are navigating what you just described, mostly in the sense of spiritual emergence, because I Work with people who are in the realm of being able to function. So this is something that is obviously really common and this is something that is very commonly prompted by psychedelics.
Yeah. How do we support people who are in a spiritual emergence or a spiritual emergency?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah, it's so nuanced, right? And it's going to be really dependent on what's going on for somebody. I think on a high level, [00:42:00] how does the culture become more literate about these experiences? And so I think that's number one, right? So when we think about what somebody might need, it's Somebody needs to just be heard, to be seen, to be witnessed.
I'm really reminded about how taboo these topics really are. And, I think also in the terminology of spiritual, it is a loaded word. And so I sometimes wonder if there's a different term that we could use to, not have I've heard the critique of who are you to say that this is a spiritual experience for somebody?
Or why does this need to be a spiritual experience for somebody? And I think that's a valid critique and argument. And so I don't know. Lately, I've been calling them transpersonal crises instead of like spirit. And I'll use the term spiritual emergence, but, just trying to play with language and see what feels right for folks.
But I'm going back to the example of it not being so held and kind of taboo. I had somebody reach out to me years [00:43:00] ago and they were looking for some integration support after a really difficult psychedelic experience. And I'm sure, people are doing their research, they're looking up Backgrounds.
I sure would be if I'm looking for support and they probably, most of my bios, I have something about spiritual emergence and stuff like that in there. And this person started off saying, I don't know if I want to, I don't know how to tell you this without feeling like I'm crazy or you thinking I'm crazy.
And that really hit me. It's here's somebody that's seeking support. They're looking for somebody that's literate in this space. But there's still the fear that they're going to be coming off as crazy. And so I think more on a cultural level, we need to just understand how to be more accepting about these experiences without needing to label it right away.
So if somebody shares an experience and, oh, you're crazy, or that sounds like psychosis, or I don't know really what to do. You're scaring me, right? Like, how do we hold space for people to just share? Their [00:44:00] experiences without needing to give immediate feedback or advice or go into problem solving.
I know for me, it was just, I needed to be heard. And I remember. When I did my transpersonal psychology degree, I was taking this eco psychology course and my teacher, Michael, at the time was just sharing all this stuff and I was like, I need to share my story with him. So I went up to him and shared a little bit of my story and he looked at me and said, if you lived in a traditional culture, the elders would have stepped in and taught you this new way of seeing or being in the world.
But unfortunately, you grew up in the Western world, and we don't have elders, and we don't have these these frameworks. So you had to figure it out yourself. And that was the first time I ever felt heard and seen, and I said, Somebody gets it. This person gets what I'm going through. Maybe not to the full extent, but they're listening versus when I was in high school, I got in trouble one time.
I forget for what reason. I hated school when I went [00:45:00] back there, I went back, I just stopped doing all my work and I, again, it was like, what am I doing here? Why am I wasting my time here? And yeah, I got in trouble one day, ended up down to the principal's office. And I was explaining my situation and the principal just looked at me and said, why are you complaining about this?
You should just be thankful you're alive. And that just pulled me back going like, you have no idea what I just went through. And you have you feel like you're right saying, Oh, you should just be thankful you should be alive. My other high school teacher sent a letter to my mom And she said, I don't know if you know, Kyle's like new philosophy about life.
But it sounds like his near death experience, like really shook him up. You should probably give him another near death experience to make him do his work and um, you know, he's wasting his potential here. And so I I think you need to give him like another near death experience because he's just not doing the things that we're asking for.
And I was just like, [00:46:00] Wow. Again, from a cultural perspective, it was like, what was that like for you to go through something like that? What impact did it have on you? Instead of going, you should just be thankful. Like, why are you like, feeling upset about this? And that's, there's the difference here.
Somebody that like could meet me and say, if you grew up in a traditional culture. There's ways to deal with this. There's frameworks to help you understand what's going on. Versus, our culture, we don't really support these experiences. I think it's getting better. This was, years ago, but I think it is getting better.
I think people are starting to open up. We have more resources now. You can go online and find so many different support groups, so many different forums back then. That wasn't as easily accessible. And so we are in a different time and people are finding the others that can help them really, feel supported and feel heard.
And I think that's the first way to start is how do we just educate people around this and just create a little bit [00:47:00] more literacy. And then, the other thing is how do we create containers for the process to unfold? And that's a totally. Bigger conversation, and I worked at a place, a residential home for people experiencing early episode psychosis.
And that whole thing was creating a safe home environment for people to just be with their experience. Us as the staff members weren't trying to change anything. We weren't trying to diagnose them and quote unquote, treat them sometimes, they, they did need medication and, we had to intervene at times.
It was really just creating a respite place for people to explore. And I think about that often when people are having these really big experiences, where do people go to get that respite, to get that care to let the process start to unfold and be supported in that instead of just getting thrown right back into the daily stuff and maybe not having that proper support.
Because I think when it is properly supported and people have that space, They're able to really move through [00:48:00] it. And I've seen that, non psychedelic people coming to this place and having three months and, it's, that was the luxury of it being fully funded by the state where, all their needs were met.
They didn't need insurance or anything like that. I think it's changed since then, but yeah, we live in this capitalistic model of trying to take. Few weeks off can be detrimental to people, right? Not working, not being able to pay bills. And it's how do we find that time to create that space to support people?
I think that's a bigger thing that I don't, yeah, it's, I don't know how we create those systems or how insurance companies could want to pay for like a new system like that.
Lana Pribic: Can you give a couple examples of what it actually looks like to be navigating a transpersonal crisis or a spiritual emergence? What are some of those like themes or perspective shifts that people might be navigating through that, that you've seen?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. So I mentioned a little bit of it. So sometimes when people have these awakening experiences, You know, there's [00:49:00] their senses can start to become really sensitive, right? So like maybe they start to become very sensitive to sound to colors. People start to process information differently, right?
Might be hearing things that might be seeing things. We have those energetic changes. So people feel energies. they have energies running through their bodies. I had one person, they had to not show up to work for a while because they had this really intense energy in their hand. And whenever they did anything physical, it would get so intense and they didn't know how to work with it.
And I think they ended up trying to get training in like Reiki and some hands on healing. That's how they were trying to process that and said, I think I need to do some healing work with my hands. But, It's just so intense. Like it, there's just energy buzzing all the time in my hands.
And yeah, people can get flooded with these types of sensations. When I was going through my experience early on, I was having these dizzy spells all the time. I felt like I was having these outer body experiences where it felt like I was [00:50:00] outside of myself and I was watching myself just interact with the world.
And then, you I did have an increase of sensitivity around sound and stuff like that, where like being in places just felt really destabilizing. People can start to experience psychosomatic disorders, so different pains manifest in the body. And people feel like something might be wrong with them.
I personally went through that as well. So it can manifest in a lot of different ways for folks. And I think it affects everybody differently. But yeah, those are like some of the ways that people start to experience these experiences.
Lana Pribic: Okay, yeah, those are some really solid examples of symptoms of what it might look like. What about the paradigm shift that people are going through? What is the paradigm shift and the shift in perspective that you see commonly that can trigger that spiritual emergence?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. We could look at like symptoms like depersonalization, derealization, so not knowing who you are as a [00:51:00] person, questioning whether or not reality is real, questioning how am I showing up in this world and, you Again is this real? What's going on? Who am I? How? What's going? Am I living a dream right now?
I know for me in those early years, I constantly felt like I was in a dream. It felt like I was not living a real life. I thought I died. I thought I was in some sort of death Bardo, and I was just walking through the world. Yeah, so derealization is re. Yeah, derealization is like more reality, and I think they blend together, right?
So like depersonalization is more about the personal, so like that could be like, who am I? Am I real? Am I interacting? And so I think there's a lot of crossover there at times between the two terms. And people can go through that. I remember, that got triggered by some cannabis. And I remember they came in and going, is this ever going to end?
I feel like I just fried my brain. I feel like everything's a dream. I don't know who I am anymore. And that's [00:52:00] really scary for a lot of folks to go through that. You could also have the opposite where you become more grandiose and that big picture thinking of I'm God, I'm Jesus.
I'm, I'm going to save the world.
Lana Pribic: Oh my gosh. Did you see that report, that expose on the 5MEO retreat with that Jesus guy?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): was it on Vice or, I just watched a Vice documentary that got released a
Lana Pribic: I think actually it was covered by David. By Jules Evans, maybe? I
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Oh, okay.
Lana Pribic: oh, man. Yeah crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): that can happen. Ego inflation can happen. Um,
Lana Pribic: That would be considered a spiritual emergence.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Definitely. Yeah, because for example there's somebody that came through that. They wanted to drain their bank account, and they thought they were like Jesus or God or something like that, and they were just going to live [00:53:00] free, and they're just going to drain their bank account and try to save everybody.
And if we're using that term kind of spiritual, here's somebody with a higher sense of purpose and meaning in their life, and now they're taking really like rash actions towards that. And that. I think leans more on that spiritual emergence and the spiritual bypassing and ego inflation.
And then you have the spiritual emergence that creates more the destabilization in the sense of questioning reality, not knowing what's going on. So you can have like that. Disintegration. And then you can have the inflation as well. And I think they're like, yeah, two different types of ways to support people in that.
And yeah, I think, I think the, I don't know. Yeah, it's a generalization, but I think we see that inflation happened a lot more in the five MEO world where Yeah, the psyche gets so amplified and inflated that, nothing matters. Yeah, I was watching this documentary and the guy was like, they're talking about getting off of medication.
He's Oh I don't know. I don't think, you know, the dangers of withdrawing from [00:54:00] meds and the, the facilitator was just like, eh, and you're like, what, like that is dangerous. Like, how are you not like identifying that as dangerous?
Lana Pribic: As in like they thought they had the perspective that like nothing matters. It's all good
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah,
Lana Pribic: Yeah. I did 5meo about a year ago and derealization. I experienced that sometimes I have these moments where I'm just like, wait, what's going on? Where am I? What's going on? Is this all real?
They're fleeting. I wouldn't say that they're necessarily like at an emergency level, but there's definitely moments of it and yeah it's,
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Well, do you
find it to, it is okay. I was going to say, do you find pleasure in it? Because I know in the HPPD literature, we talk about like flashbacks and reactivation and some people find pleasure in it. And then other people find it to [00:55:00] be destabilizing.
Lana Pribic: I don't, I'm not super charged about it in either direction. It just feels a little supernatural almost like it feels a little bit like And it can happen like once or twice a week maybe and it's a small moment where? yeah, maybe it's a little mini reactivation, but it's just like where the fuck am I and what is going on and What is this place?
What is this? What is this reality?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): It can really be freaky when you get in those states in a sober state, and you're like, Wait a minute if I can bend reality like that, just like, spontaneously like, What's going on here?
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Warning to the listeners. Yeah. Proceed cautiously with expanding your consciousness, please.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): These are powerful substances. They're really powerful.
Lana Pribic: Very much. Yeah, let's start winding things down because we're Oh, we are already at an hour. Look at that. [00:56:00] Yeah, tell me about what you're excited about and what you're looking forward to in the future of the psychedelic space and how your mission is aligning with that.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Great question. I'm excited to see more of the integration of exceptional experiences, whether that is psychedelics, breathwork, these technologies of the sacred, as Stan would say what type of impact is that going to have on society and culture? And I think that's just an open ended question.
Sometimes we don't know where that's going to go. But it's exciting and, I think And I'm excited about the policy change that's happening, right? I think we're all a little upset about the FDA decision around not approving MDMA. That was going to be a very kind of like pivotal moment in history.
But on the other side, we have Oregon that legalized, we have Colorado up next. There's a bill in Massachusetts. There's a bill in New Jersey. I know California has looked at bills and that's probably [00:57:00] still in the works, even though it was vetoed a few years ago. There's policy change coming and really excited about the shift, right?
We just had our class in vital yes, yesterday was today, Thursday on Tuesday, and it was about the legal aspect of things. And, there's a question that I proposed to the study group. And it's do you see yourself as a criminal for ingesting these substances? Because To operate in this, we're all taking legal risks.
And, there's so many people that are coming into this for healing. And, do you see yourself as a criminal for engaging in these medicines to try to heal? Most of the time people are going to say no. But the reality is that a lot of people are breaking federal law to engage in this stuff.
And so I'm more excited. Yeah. I'm excited to see policy shift because there is a lot of healing that happens and people are looking for alternatives. And so as that changes, our mindset can shift around these things to create a more [00:58:00] integrated culture around exceptional experience. And. Yeah, just also excited, I think a mission alignment with what we do at Psychedelics Today and Vital is just getting people more educated about these experiences, just being like safer around it, understanding like the informed consent around it, better practices, because, that's what's, unfortunately, media will Shift the narrative and they'll point blame.
Like before we got recording here, I was saying I was watching this New York times presents on Hulu. And it was about the pilot who took mushrooms a couple of days prior before flight, and then tried to crush the plane in a sense. Because he was dealing with depersonalization and it's I remember when that first hit.
That is a great way to try to say, this is why this happened. Mushroom should not be legal, right? You had somebody here that, had this really intense experience and is like looking at multiple, like manslaughter charges. And it's but you know, we have to look at the [00:59:00] context, right?
Like how would this person do it? Where were they? Did they have the proper support? And so just. Yeah, being honest about the risks and having people educated. And it's if people know that ahead of time, will they be making the same decisions? If there is more education around it, instead of just seeing, the headlines saying, Oh, I'm just going to do this.
And we have to be really honest. Like we, we have to, even though we're advocates and I think we wouldn't be doing this work if we weren't impacted by, the transformation that we've been through, but we also have to be really honest about our own experiences, our own challenges, our own struggles.
And so people know what to expect and to prepare and be safe.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. There was a story I wanted you to share before we started recording. I was like, you started telling me about it. I was like no, save it for the interview. Did you want to share it? It was about
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): if, yeah if you have time, if you want to keep going I have time.
Lana Pribic: I just remembered it and I didn't even write it down.
So I'm having a hard time remembering [01:00:00] what it was, but I think it was around a challenging experience that you had.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): yeah. And so this also really catapulted, this, my near death experience catapulted the spiritual emergence, but this experience that I had with LSD when I was 20 going on 21 really catapulted it. And I took some, it was my first time with it, I took it with two friends. We decided to go hiking that day and I took it with wanting to have a spiritual experience.
I've always approached this stuff with intention. And I said, I want to have a spiritual experience, so let's be in nature, let's go on a hike. And I was sitting there meditating on this rock. On top of this small little mountain overlooking this lake and I remember sitting in meditation.
I heard this voice and it said, you never have to take this ever again. Once you walk through the door will always be open. And from that moment on, it was like, I never came up from it. I never came down from it. I just existed in this. It felt like, there's times I was like tripping really [01:01:00] hard and then there's other times I'm like completely sober.
And it just felt like it never, yeah, it was, I don't know how to explain it. It was just such an interesting and weird experience. But just kept going and kept going. And, I got stuck in this thing for three to four months. And this is like when I was explaining some of my spiritual emergence symptoms of having these dizzy spells, having these outer body experiences really struggling with like depersonalization and derealization.
It was really brought on by this experience. And it felt like it was just never ending. And I'm like, what's going on here? I sought out help. I went to the doctors. I think I went to a therapist. And it was a really intense experience, but it was also the experience that got me on this path.
I talk about like my, some psilocybin experiences I had and the near death experience, but this was the experience that really tossed me in the hot water and I really needed to find a way out. I would never want to go through this again and it scared me so much.
I never thought I would ever touch [01:02:00] psychedelics again. Like I was just thinking I played Russian roulette with my brain. I have no idea if I took LSD, it could have been something that was contaminated. I'll. And did I fry my brain? I feel like I'm stuck in this perma trip. And so, you know, it's having these outer body experiences, these dizzy spells.
I was really struggling with depersonalization, derealization. Anytime I smoked cannabis, it brought me right back into a full on like trip and just questioning everything really struggled with and we, they talk about like static snow in the HPP D world hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder or perception persisting disorder.
I always confuse the
Lana Pribic: always confuses those two.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. Yeah. And so like, You know, trails move my hand and just see the trail. So I had really hard time driving at night. There's times where like I would see a car past me and then the light trail would just trail on forever. And so sometimes I didn't know where the car was.
Yeah, I started to have really increased light sensitivity. [01:03:00] And yeah, it feel, it really felt like my life was never the same after that. And there's times where I really regretted ever experimenting with that. And I doubled down on my whole kind of ideology that. Synthetics bad only do stuff with plants, right?
Cause I never had that experience with mushrooms and I'm like, what the hell just happened here? But it lasted pretty solid for three to four months where I was really destabilized. And I had no idea what the hell was going on. But you know, that was also the time that I came across Ram Dass.
I started reading the Tibetan book of living and dying, be here now. And I came across the work of Stan Grof, and that was really the start of my journey to actually want to study this stuff more intellectually and got me to apply to school and start to go down this path was because of that, how intense that experience was and so to some degree, it's bittersweet I feel like that was an initiatory crisis [01:04:00] that I needed to go through.
And it took me about five years to really process that. Like it took me a really long time to wrap my head around what the hell was happening. And I think I read Stan's book and he said, sometimes in the clinical setting, we would see people get stuck in these loops or these experiences for days or weeks.
And, our the idea was that the unconscious is starting to come to the surface and if you're distracted and not paying attention and you're not in the place to properly support that, it starts to go back down into the unconscious and continues to spin like a record player. And I might be paraphrasing that I don't remember the quote, but I remember reading that going, holy shit that is really interesting that there's an unresolved a dynamic that's going on.
And so his whole thing was. Just give people more LSD. And I said, there's no way in hell I am taking LSD after that. But I did about maybe two years later and it helped to resolve that process. And then by engaging in breath [01:05:00] work and being more semantically oriented and processing that trauma, it really helped me to work through a lot of that stuff.
But that was really, really, it was a really scary time in my life. I don't talk about it much just because of I think like how intense it was. But I think it is important to share that these experiences do happen and they can really leave people really destabilized and, there was something inside of me.
And, again, I think maybe my near death experience helped me out with this to some degree. Since my near death experience, it felt like this inner voice was guiding me. And when I was going through all this stuff, there is this voice saying, you don't know what's going on. But stick with the process and so there is something comforting about that and kept reassuring me that I would get through it, but I know not everybody like has that kind of I don't know that relationship with that inner healer or whatever it is.
And it can really destabilize them. So as scary and crazy [01:06:00] as it was, there's something also inside of me saying stick with it. And so I really tried to listen to that. And I'm glad I did, but there's times where I'm like, Am I going to get institutionalized? I have no idea what's going on.
Sometimes I feel like I can't even show up and do my work or drive and get in my car and without thinking everything's not real and where am I in the cosmos? Yeah, it's just, it got really intense.
Lana Pribic: Wow. It sounds like you really resource yourself.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): yeah.
Lana Pribic: well as you possibly could to get through it. And it sounds like maybe that voice was the same voice that
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Could have been, yeah.
Lana Pribic: Your near death experience. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like we covered so many good unsexy topics today about psychedelics, which is just, I think we need more of that, right?
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): We need to talk about the valleys. We can't always talk about the summit and the peaks. We need to talk about the descent and what's happening in the valleys.
Lana Pribic: It's all part of it,
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): It's all part of
Lana Pribic: it's all part [01:07:00] of the journey. It's all part of life. Yeah. So yeah. Thank you so much. I had such a good time chatting with you
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Likewise. Thank you. And yeah, amazing questions and conversation and yeah, it went by so
Lana Pribic: you. It did. Tell people about just Vital before I let you go. When's your next cohort? How can
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. So you can find out more about vital at vital psychedelic training. com. You can also get there. If you go to psychedelics today. com, there's some links on our main website we're going to be launching our fifth cohort in February. So I think the dates are February 17th and 18th. And yeah, if you're interested in taking a deeper dive in, psychedelics, it the certificate, it's a certificate and Psychedelic integrative studies.
And we're going to get into all these topics from, the preparation, the harm reduction, the law, the ethics to navigating experience, challenging experiences focus on integration. It's a huge part of it. And then also on your inner work, we really focus on one's own inner [01:08:00] work and really try to foster that.
And so there's something I like to say about vital too. It's we're trying to help to create a cultural safety net for exceptional experiences. So again, people can go out and be a support and be part of that change And, the other part is really rooted in transformative education.
We rely on the didactic theoretical, but it's also about your own transformation and your own journey. And so again, we could start with that question. Are you curious about yourself? And if you are maybe vital as a way to start to develop that curiosity some more because it's an educational journey, but it's also transformative.
Lana Pribic: We talked about it a little bit more when I interviewed Joe, which was I'll link the episode in the show notes. But yeah, if people want to learn more about that, check out the episode with Joe, it sounds like you're doing great work with vital, though if you're creating these like transformations of helping people slow down and just realize the responsibility of doing this work.
For me, this is like, yes, it's work. It's my vocation, but it's also [01:09:00] very much my spiritual path. And it's, It's serious work. So
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): very serious. Yeah. I think to be an like an ethical practitioner, we need to really dig into a lot of these nuances and not just say, this is the protocol. This is how you do it. We need to really explore the whole landscape and really think about what we're doing here.
Lana Pribic: Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you for that. So glad to yeah, just connect. And thank you so much for everything you've done and continue to do. And yeah, I hope we get to connect again soon.
Kyle Buller (Psychedelics Today): Yeah. Likewise. And thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. It's fun.
