Testing My Psychedelic Retreat Formula Using Psilocybin and LSD

In this episode of The Inner Trip, I share the behind the scenes story of finally testing the full formula for my international retreats. Even though this is my work and I guide women through psychedelic experiences all the time, I almost talked myself out of doing it. I had resistance, excuses, and the same fears that so many people experience before a journey.

I walk you through why I believe it is so important for facilitators to go first, why mushrooms and LSD serve different purposes, and why the order matters. Psilocybin supports deeper emotional healing and heart work, while LSD is more cerebral, energetic, and expansive.

For this week’s integration, notice where you are giving energy to worst case scenarios. When your mind starts spiraling, pause and ask yourself what the best case scenario could be instead. You do not have to fully believe it yet. Just begin giving that possibility some space. Share this episode with a friend who is letting fear hold them back from something they know they are ready for. Make sure you are following the show so you never miss a dose. Until next time, trust yourself, follow your intuition, and keep asking, how good can it get?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi kittens, I'm Julie Savone, psychedelic facilitator, integration expert, and your guide for this wild ride, the Inner Trip. 365 days with plant medicine. I've helped hundreds of people use plant medicine, primarily psilocybin, to heal, expand, and step into their next level. But this year, I'm taking it even deeper. For the next 365 days, I'm bringing you with me. I'll be microdosing, journeying, integrating, and exploring what it really means to live a limitless life with plant medicine as a tool, not a crutch. So if you're ready to feel more alive, more clear, more limitless, and you're down to do it with mushrooms and a little bit of sass, you're in the right place. Let's take the inner trip. Kitten, I almost didn't do it. I had every single excuse in the book that I almost use. And I'm the one who is the expert in this field. This is my work, but my intention here today is to share with you that I finally, successfully tested the entire formula for my international retreats, and my god, is it good. So if this is the first episode you're ever listening to, well, first of all, hi, I'm Julie. I'm a psychic analytic facilitator, high performance coach, and a former lawyer. And something that has been uh a recurring theme on this podcast is me talking about how I have this new formula for my international retreats where it's not just a psilocybin ceremony, it's also LSD. And it's really important that I go first. I think that's a core foundation for every facilitator of this work, and I think it's so interesting because in many professions that's not the case, right? We think about an anesthesiologist, and I've been put under eye surgery, and an anesthesiologist anesthesiologist did it, and obviously they did it well because I came back. Or if you're someone who's not about me, first of all, why you're listening, but you might be thinking they did it wrong. Anyway, an anesthesiologist puts people under, but they haven't necessarily been put under, right? That's not like a uh requisite, a prerequisite of their training. And to me, that just it's a little bit of an integrity bump. Because if I'm going to tell someone what to do, and and here's the thing like I never makes anyone do anything that they don't want to do, right? I would never, if someone, I you know, you maybe you've listened to the last episode with Clarita. If not, great episode, I would go back and listen to it because she was a real retreat participant who almost didn't uh move forward with the psychedelic experience because she was very nervous. So I would never force someone to do it, but if I'm going to instruct you and tell you and like guide you through this experience, to me it would be a huge lack of integrity had I not done it first. So it is extremely important to me that I go first. That I test the formulas, that I give someone only a grandma that I have actually done because I need to be able to understand and hold the energy of that experience. So I always go first, and there's I'm taking Spanish lessons. I just hired a new um a new EA, and she is also giving me Spanish lessons as part of our work together, and she told me this phrase, you know, COC. It's like yes or yes, right? And my international retreat in Mexico was coming up. Actually, as you oh my gosh, no way. As you listen to this episode, if you listen to it the day it drops, you are probably listening to it while all the women in my retreat are in their own mushroom journey. The ceremony's already started. I mean, maybe not, maybe listen to me first thing in the morning, in which case no. But if you're listening to me like late morning, afternoon, evening of Wednesday the 6th or later, then you are listening to me while these women are in the journey. So send them some love. Those little pings through the ether. They feel them, right? And because it was so close, it was like it was C or C for me to do this journey. Like, I gotta get it done. Um, but that's the thing, like, even I have resistance. You know, first of all, I'm in my home, which I don't know for my work from home cuties, if you feel this way, but I really feel this way for sometimes like I just need to leave the house because I'm like, oh well, I could be doing laundry or the dishes, or I could be picking this thing up, or it's just sometimes hard to do things to work in the house for me. Um, same thing with a journey. It's like, oh, I could be working, or oh, like, do I really want to do that now? Or oh, I have three pets, right? There are so many things that come up for me, and like to be completely honest, it's also there's a lot of resistance to a psychedelic experience. I think people have the misconception, a couple misconceptions. One is generally that like psychedelics are how we think of drugs, and meaning they're like very addictive, right? When that is could not be further from the truth. A few things. So a psychedelics, LSD, and psilocybin are the only Schedule 1 substances that are absolutely non-habit forming. So we look at tests with rats, and rats will come back to little levers, and they will press the lever for more cocaine, for more alcohol, for more nicotine. Right, but they will more heroin, they will not press the lever for more psychedelics. There's actually a real tolerance that well, there's a tolerance that builds up that makes it harder to get to the next level of an experience, but there's also a big resistance that builds up. And in fact, when mushrooms were first brought to the United States in the 50s, the intention behind the research and what the research was focused on was actually helping people break addiction. They're great for helping people overcome addiction, specifically with alcohol. So um, it's that's a huge, huge misconception, a big piece of propaganda that has been played out by the United States government. Um, that's just not true. So I have resistance. It's like it's not, I'm not going to a rave, right? Like, I do mushrooms for the healing experience. I do mushrooms to see what's coming up in my linear inner landscape and to see what like is ready to be processed and healed and you know moved through. Um, so I do have a lot of resistance to it. Uh, and it's not just it's not that it's scary. Well, it kind of is scary. Okay, so I I want to think back about like Clarita's um podcast. And again, if you haven't listened to it, I I think it's an amazing episode where she really shares her experience because for me, like I've been in this work for so long. So, you know, I think I kind of hmm, I I sort of have lost that, you know, beginner's mindset or yeah, mindset, uh, beliefs toward it or fears or feelings. Um, but she talked about how she was really scared of like what she calls the monster under the bed. She was scared that something big would come up, that she wouldn't be able to find her way back to herself, that she wouldn't be able to deal with it, that would kind of consume her. And so for me, you know, I have the same fear. Not that like I would lose myself because I've facilitated so many journeys, I've been on so many journeys. I know that you come, you always come home, right? You always come back to whatever your normal waking consciousness is. It was more that um I was just like, ah, damn. I don't really, I don't really want to deal with anything right now, you know. Like I wasn't super jazzed to deal with whatever might come up, whatever it was. Um, and I so that was my fear. I was like, oh gosh, what if something comes up? I just I you know it's energy, it's energy to deal with these things. I knew that I could, it was just like I didn't really want to. And Clarita says this in her podcast episode where she shares her experience, but like nothing happened. The thing that was actually scary was her thinking about the fear, and same thing for me, the thing that was actually scary was like this idea of whatever it was that might have come up, but actually nothing came up, and we'll talk more about this. But I had one of the best trips of my life, I had one of the best freaking trips of my life. It was so pleasant. There was only one unpleasant thought, which you know, I'll I'll just say it now, and it happened on both of my trips. It was that everything I feel is that it's coming or going on right now in popular culture, right? Or even like as I record this last week is when Trump signed in to you know, all these was an executive order, I believe, about like psychedelic research, right? And people are sending me this, like, oh my god, this is so great, this is so great. And I'm like, I really hope that this helps people, particularly veterans, you know. And all of this to me is a distraction from the Epstein Files. Like, what the hell are we doing? I don't care, life, left, right, or center, like there needs to be an investigation, people need to be held to account. And I just kept having that thought of like everything is a distraction from the Epstein files. So that was the only little like turn I took down another road. Um, but I quickly like brought myself back because at the end of the day, like, that's not my thing to process. Like, I'm not in the Epstein Files, I have never done anything to children, right? Like, I can't that's not something I can solve, and I certainly wasn't gonna solve it in the middle of my trip, and I knew that. So I was able to be like, Julie, let's think about like what can we actually do right now, right here? Like that, what are the things that like are actually mine, right? The Epstein files are not mine. So I was able to let that go. Um, but everything else, it was just one of the most pleasant, beautiful trips in my life, and and so the formula that I was testing was you know, if you again, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that like this is not my first rodeo in attempting to do this. Because I have like I've set aside other weekends and other times where at first I was just going to do in my mind when I first started planning international treatment, and the whole point of the international treat was it's just gonna be longer, so I want to like there's more opportunity for more ceremonies because if someone's traveling internationally, like I want them to feel like they have more time, I don't want it to just be a four-day experience, so um, you know, I I opened it up to six days, like I can have another ceremony. So originally it was just going to be mushrooms, LSD, other stuff, like meaning like fun activities, integration, inshallah, enjoying the environment. But then when I tried to do that, I just could not get to the LSD on the second day. And I tried a few times, was like, okay, so like clearly something has to give. So let's do mushrooms break, full day break, LSD. Tried that, couldn't quite get there, but I'm so you know, I'm so happy I got there this time. And and the reason for that formula, the reason the mushrooms go first is because mushrooms are medicine for the heart, and LSD is like medicine for the brain. And so, what I mean when I say that is mushrooms are are plant medicine that you do for the deeper healing, right? Whether that's looking at a childhood trauma or things you've experienced as an adult, or I mean grief, loss, it's that deeper emotional processing. I'm gonna take a nice big sip of my Zevia here. It's that deeper emotional processing. Whereas LSD, you don't you don't have that. Mushrooms are also very mushy, they're more introspective, like even physically, you're kind of like curled up within yourself, you're laying down. LSD is more energetic, it's more cerebral, it's medicine for the brain. So when we look at people, like whether it be the Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, which undoubtedly brilliant minds, but also, and I'll just speak for myself and kind of like what I have observed about them and you know, read assholes, right? Not very nice people, megalomaniac type vibes, not gonna armchair diagnose anyone, but that's like the vibe that I get from them, right? It's because they've done all these psychedelics that are really consciousness expanding without first working on their emotional body, and everyone has shit, right? I don't care if you think you had like a perfect child, everyone has that. That's just the nature of the human experience, and so until you do that more like you know, oneness, um yeah, oneness, healing, forgiveness work, it's not appropriate to move into LSD. So, mushrooms first and then LSD. Um, and you know, so I was uh obviously a little bit more nervous um for the mushrooms because it is it just is more emotional, but I'm so happy that I I win for it because again, like the scariest part was what I thought might happen versus what actually happened, which was absolutely freaking amazing. I was just so so so happy. This is reflected in Clarita's story as well, and you know, just such a good lesson. Like, let's always pull this through because to me, psychedelics are the most potent mirrored, like directly for for life lessons of like this is being shown to you in a psychedelic setting. For instance, the only way out is through. I always tell people if you're coming up against a hard moment in the trip, like you have to meet it and like face it head on and run toward it, and how true for life as well, right? The things that we avoid they only grow. The only way we can kind of like let something go is to fully meet ourselves in the emotional experience of it. Um, and so this fear of like what might happen versus actually doing how often do we let that stop ourselves from you know, maybe going all in on our business or giving a relationship a chance or sending the email, even right? So the idea of the trip being scary was so much scarier than the trip itself. And this was also again shown up for Clarita. Um, and you know, I feel like everyone who's scared really needs to hear it. I guarantee you your fear of whatever's going to come up in the trip is a thousand times more intense than whatever happens in the trip itself, especially if you can really listen to that instruction and meet things instead of running away from them because that really is the secret sauce to having a good trip. So the mushroom trip the first day was like one of the happiest trips I've ever had. I had this very like intense power of deep visualization of putting myself in the experience of everything that I'm creating in my life. I felt so much love um for so many different people. Um, I even like I took my w dog for a walk. Um, and you know, I also say I have a different relationship I feel with psychedelics at this point because you know, at this, I mean there probably is a mushroom in me at this point. So we're growing. But I just when I say that, what I'm saying is that instead of feeling really taken away by the experience or like overcome by it, I am in much more of a dialogue with it. So I totally feel I mean, I would never drive, right? That's so dangerous. I would never drive, I would never operate heavy machinery, but going for a walk or something, yes, I'm totally capable. You can see sight looks a little bit different, but it's not dangerous. I mean, like I wouldn't not see a car or whatever. Um, it's interesting. I was playing around, I was thinking about like what amount do I want to take? And I decided to like look at Brian Johnson's recent psilocybin experiment. You know, I'm gonna let Brian Johnson do his Brian Johnson thing because I really feel like that's his zone of excellence, but I was just interested in it. I'm like, I have my whoop tracker, you know, and he obviously looks at a lot of different measurements. He's hooked up, but too, he's hooked up to machines and taking readings of things, right? Um, but I looked at at his, he did like this three-week break experiment, you know, so cyber journey, three weeks, another one, and he shared his precise dosages. And I was like, you know what? Let's just do this. It was a lot more than I would normally do. Another thing that came up on the podcast with Clarita, again, really think you should go listen to the episode. Uh, was this uh overall idea for her and for the other women on the journey that more is not more better, and how that shows up in in your real life. So, a quick recap. One of the women wanted to re-up at an hour, which is an option. I never personally do it. Whatever I start with is whatever I end with. I'm not re-upping anything, I just don't want to, I don't like it. Not my personal preference. And she wanted more, and she was having a really, really pleasant trip. She's like, Yes, more, and then her trip started to get more difficult, and this issue came up that had been like a long-standing conflict with a friend, etc. And it it took a turn for her, right? It became a difficult experience, and you know, she shared that as like part of the integration circle, and it's interesting, more is not more better. Because we always think like I want more, I want more money, I want more followers, I want more prestige and acclaim and love, and I mean, can you ever have too much love? But you know, more is not more better. I just come off that land for a second. It's really not, and so she had this idea that if I took more mushrooms, it would be even more magical, and then it wasn't, right? So I'm a big, I'm a big lover of three grams. I know everyone also, maybe not everyone, but a lot of people want to get to this five grams. I wanna have a hero's dose. I mean, okay, if you want to get there, I'm happy to help you. You know, but like, and I've taken more than I took 4.7, I've taken more than that. Um, but I just I thought, why not? Why not experiment with Brian Johnson's and see what his is all about? So I did. And um it was beautiful, it was really beautiful. I just I had so much love, and even though it was more than I usually take, because normally I would take three, which is, you know, when it's only you know 4.7 versus 3, well that 1.7 is a pretty big difference, right? It's over 50% more of what I usually take. Um, but I I did it and I had such a beautiful power of visualization and really being in the experience of all that I'm creating, like living in the end game. I took my dog for a walk and then I recorded myself on mushrooms. My coach has been telling me to do this for forever. So I just set up my tripod, I set up my camera, and I just yapped. And my whole point of yapping and and the series is going to actually, as you're listening to this, the series has has already started dropping. I don't know if all the episodes are out yet, but it's a six-part series of me on mushrooms, recording myself, and I just like I yapped for like 10 minutes. I sent the video to my EA and I was like, cut this up for me. But the whole point was to show you like what that I'm so like cogent. Is that the word I want? I think so. I I'm not howling at the moon, I'm not rolling around on the ground. Like I'm again, I wouldn't drive. But I'm fine. Like it's it's not this like losing yourself or like entering a state of psychosis, and that was my whole intention to show you. Like, this is what it's actually like. Uh so I'm excited to share that soon. Uh, that'll be really it'll be really I say it in the video, but I feel like the most exposed I've ever felt and like obviously like I've been in my swimsuit on the internet, you know, I've done all these things, I've shared other parts of my life, but that felt really scary. So vulnerable but good and important to share. Um, but then oh my gosh, it was so funny, you know. I uh I do a lot of research, I really like the research, and you know uh so many people, me, other retreat participants, sometimes experience this headache, and so I've learned like I've I've looked at it, and yeah, a headache after a journey is a fairly common side effect in in the research, and like magnesium could help that. And so I told myself to take magnesium before I went to bed, and I didn't listen to myself, and then the next morning I literally got sick, like I had a such a bad headache, I was so intense that I got sick, but thankfully I hadn't eaten anything, so you know it was all well that ends well, but it was very, very painful. Um, so take magnesium if you're gonna go on a journey with mushrooms in particular. Um, or man, will you pay for the next day? So I had that like rest day to kind of just like calibrate, and then I went the next day um and did a trip for with LSD, and LSD is really my favorite psychedelic. I love it so much, it's like such high energy, it's so fun. Um, but you know, the thing about LSD is it's a longer trip overall, it also has a longer onset. Whereas like the mushrooms I felt within the first 20 minutes after taking them. LSD I didn't really feel until an hour, and then you don't really peek until two. And what I will say is like my normal dose for LSD, which is fine on its own, definitely like was something I wouldn't have driven on it, and I didn't, but it wasn't quite what I consider a full LSD journey, so it's I'm just gonna start everyone off with like a higher dose because tolerance builds so fastly in psychedelics, you know, like it's it's scientifically proven, it's anecdotally shown for being my experience, so everyone will be starting at a higher um higher dosage, and I love like what I really got out of that journey was like the the power of presence and the beauty of just being. Like, how often do we just allow ourselves to be? We're so used to like picking up our phone or doing something or being stimulated in some way, and I was just being, I was being outside with my dog, I was being laying out, I was being in the sun, I was like, we went for another walk, and it was just like we also a really good lesson, you know, that's shown to you in psychedelics that is hardcore mirrored in your real life that Clarita and I broke down as well of like the power of being bored, allow yourself to be bored. Oh my gosh, people don't let themselves be bored, people want the constant simulation, and it's like, no, babe. The the the magic is in just letting your brain kind of power down because you know, we live in and it's such an interesting time where we have more dopamine simulation than ever before, and I just really wonder like, what's this doing to our brain long term? I think I think stillness is very important, and so that was a beautiful, a beautiful lesson I got out of that. Um, something really cool where again I'm gonna let Brian Johnson live in his zone of excellence with all the data. Like, I like the science, but the data and and like the all that longevity, like that's definitely more his thing. My thing is more about like how can we, how good can life get? Right through, and and the mechanism of life getting really good is being able to process, I believe, our emotions as they arise in the moment and to not like carry them so much over time. Um, but I did notice that my HRV, my heart rate variability was over a hundred, and it had to be over a hundred all year. Um, after. My journey, and then one other night it was over 88. Actually, I can tell you all my HRVs, they've been crazy this week, they've been so much higher than usual. So last night my HRV was 78. I had another 100. Oh, yeah, on Friday, my HRV was 102, an 88, a 107, like highest. I had two days over 100 in this week, and I haven't had a 100 in like since this year, but like probably closer to nine months. That's crazy. So when we look at HRV and we hear so much about nervous system regulation, it's kind of like, how do you really measure that? It seems like a very wishy-washy, amorphous buzz feature. But HRV is one of the best ways to actually measure your nervous system's rest or digestness, right? So um when your heart variability is really high, that means your body is truly in rest and digest, which means your nervous system is really strong. Um and so like this isn't woo, this is really measurable, and to see that was so crazy. I was pumped. I was very, very excited for that. Um that was a huge win for me. And you know, I'll also say, like, not a lot didn't really come up for me in the mushroom journey. Like, I didn't have this thing that I was working through, and I also want to say, like, I have before, right? Like, I have had those journeys that have been really, really emotional and and hard, and I've worked through grief and loss and heartbreak and fear, so much fear. So I'm not saying I've never had those journeys, and I'm also not saying I'll never have them again, right? Like, people I love will die. I probably like I might get my heart broken again, maybe you know, not romantically, but maybe like in another way. Um, you know, things things can and will happen because that's life. So I'm not saying I'll never have a difficult journey again, but what I noticed about this journey and how pleasant it was is like that really to me speaks to my ability to tend to my inner garden moment to moment. And I didn't have some big monster come up in the trip because whatever monsters come up for me, I deal with them in the moment. Like every day, I look at the monster, I face the monster, I feel my fear, I rewrite those stories, and so the work between the journeys really is the work, and the fact that my journeys were so pleasant signaled to me that like I've been doing it, and that's just to me, it's it's it shows me that I like walk the walk that I talk about, and it's really important to me kind of tying the thread all the way back to the beginning from an integrity POV. I just always integrity is really important to me. I always want to feel like I'm I'm living in integrity. Um, I feel like it's just a deeper sense of alignment and cohesiveness and peace. When you're in integrity, I feel like you have a deep sense of peace. So it is a very big core value for me. Um, and that was just a really, a really beautiful sign. And you know, I'll also say, like, I have been really it's been really easy for me lately, specifically after the journey, to like edit my own thoughts. So I know so many people feel like their thoughts are kind of happening to them or they're at the mercy of their thoughts or they have no control over them, but that's not true. You are you can select your thoughts, and whenever you participate with a thought and you give a you know volume and credence and you think these worst-case scenario thoughts, you are feeding them. So for every moment that you spend thinking about bad things happening, I challenge you, I invite you, my integration for you this week is to take the a pause and to think about what would the best case scenario thought be. And maybe you don't fully believe it, and right, maybe it's not fully like a yes for you, it doesn't feel true, but just like allow yourself the time and space to think it. Like, what would the best case scenario thought be? Instead of like, um, you know, my car's going to break down and it's gonna cost me thousands of dollars, thinking about this car is gonna run perfectly for a hundred thousand more miles, and in fact, you know, I am going to get an even better car. Um, and it's I'm gonna have like all these blessings financially, and whatever else it is. So it's it's not to say, like, I want you, you don't have to feel like, oh, well, if I don't believe it 100%, this isn't working. It's just simply giving the energy to it, right? You're giving so much energy to the worst case scenarios. So edit your thoughts and give some time to the best case scenarios. You are not at the mercy of your mind, your mind is actually at the mercy of you, but you don't realize you have that power and you give it away to just like the initial impulse. Uh, so take back the power. Take back the power. That really is my integration for you this week. And you know, the the whole premise of this podcast is how good can it get, right? I tested this formula, I feel freaking amazing. This is how good life can get. It's through the and it's not, but it's I also want to say it's not just like my psychedelic use, it's everything that I do in between, right? It's everything that I do in between. And and psychedelics are a beautiful springboard, and they can help with so much with the processing piece, but you also have to be willing to do the work, but it can get really fucking good, and I want you to know that. And I feel so just alive and excited about my choice for the formula and and to do this experiment, and to even have this podcast with you, and it's like don't don't miss out on this, right? Come stand in the sunshine with me. And you know, this episode drops with five days left to sign up for my VIP retreat wait list. Um, this is where you get VIP exclusive pricing. And if you've been thinking about experiencing this work in in person with me, this is your experience, this is your window because the wait list members get an exclusive price that I'm not going to be offering publicly, like on Instagram. I'll only be offering it to those people on the wait list. And you know, once uh it's May 11th through the 15th. So if you want to get in, that is your final window to do so. Um, you in the show notes there is the link to sign up for the VIP wait list. So you can go ahead and do it down there, or you can DM me um wait list on Instagram, which is also linked up for me in the show notes to get on the list before um this window and and this offer goes away. Um, because I only have three more, I only have three more retreats for the rest of the year. Tahoe at the end of July, I have Vermont at the end of September, and San Diego at the beginning of November. So go ahead, hop down there, hop on the wait list. Um, I'll send you all the info to apply and the exclusive offer for pricing. And yeah, my integration for you once again is to really start giving some time to the thoughts of best case scenario. Even if you don't believe them, when you catch yourself thinking about these worst-case scenarios, pause and give some energy to what it could look like the best case scenario. Okay? I love you so much. I'll catch you on the next episode. That's the end of today's trip. But remember, the real magic has always been inside of you. If this episode landed, send it to a friend who's ready to step into their next level. And make sure you're following the show so you never miss a dose. I'll be back again soon with another day on the path to your most limitless life. And until then, trust yourself, follow your intuition, and keep asking, how good can it get?