Having selected music for psychedelic sessions and designed playlists since 1963 for use with many different people, here are some of my impressions/biases. I am a classically trained pianist and organist who sings bass in choirs, as well as a clinical psychologist who continues to pursue research with psychedelics. I appreciate many different genres of music.
We should note at the outset that we all tend to treasure whatever music happened to be playing when significant experiences occurred in our fields of consciousness during the action of psychedelics. Re-hearing those selections sometimes helps facilitate the integration of whatever insights, painful or ecstatic, occurred.
My impression is that the choice of music is most important during the onset, ascent and peak periods of medium or high-dose psychedelic sessions. Here I suggest it is the structure of the sound itself that is most important irrespective of the usual musical preferences of either the person who has received the psychedelic substance or the therapists/guides who may be present to offer support. Especially for people having their first psychedelic sessions, just learning how to “navigate in the inner world”, I favor music that “goes somewhere” rather than music that may be viewed as “wandering aimlessly in the meadow”. Thus, it provides strong nonverbal support as consciousness opens up, sometimes as attention shifts through different strata of experiencing. Especially when transpersonal realms of consciousness are being encountered and the everyday self (ego) may feel as though it is relinquishing control and courageously affirming trust, my impression is that carefully selected music may provide the support required to go “more deeply” into the experiential world than otherwise may occur. One may no longer “hear” the music and may claim to have become it, or entered into it, even into the mind of the composer or the ephemeral knowledge that the composer may have sought to express. Now music is a language beyond words and concepts.
I do not feel that music “causes content”, except perhaps occasionally with very low dosage. If one hears guitar music, one is unlikely to visualize a person playing a guitar. Rather the content encountered emerges, is choreographed, by the wisdom of one’s own psyche in the process of personal and perhaps “spiritual” development.
It is common for persons during psychedelic sessions to discover appreciation for music they usually would devalue or reject. When one is encountering challenging psychological content and experiencing resistance with an urge to try to control the emerging experiences, it is common to complain about the music. When support is offered and the person is encouraged to “hate the music with passion”, the conflictual content is often resolved, and the same music will be reported as beautiful. Generally, it is unwise in my judgment for therapists or experiencers to “play disc jockey” as a session is unfolding. A well-designed playlist will include a rich variety of different musical genres, all carefully selected to follow the arc of a medium or high-dose session.
Music may be viewed as akin to the net of a trapeze artist. When all is well, one may forget that it is there; should a crisis occur, it is immediately present to provide safety and support.
When consciousness is centered in realms beyond the usual ego that we may label “transpersonal”, there is no one listening anymore. A simple sustained reverberation of a gong or the hum of a singing bowl, for example, without any structure or time signature, might be fully appropriate. However, for a person moving through anxiety and personal struggle, that same sound might be experienced as aimless and non-supportive.
During the exploration of alternative states of consciousness, it is important to “turn off the intellect/rational mind” and simply “collect experiences” for verbal categorization at the end of the day. Thus, it is generally considered wise to avoid music with words in languages known to the experiencer during the intense parts of a psychedelic session. Trying to decipher words can easily become a defense and a way to avoid the emerging content in a particular session. In contrast, as the end of the day approaches and consciousness is “returning to earth” the words of one’s favorite songs might be experienced as “welcome home”. Near the end of many sessions, all genres of music can be explored, often with a new openness and appreciation.
It might be noted that significant experiences in alternative states of consciousness can occur in silence without any music at all. Yet true silence is hard to find as people sneeze, doors and chairs creak, heating and air conditioning systems cycle on and off, etc. Often during silence, people experiencing psychedelic effects will tend to “come out of the experience”, recalling that they’re lying down in a specific place on a specific day in the company of specific people, etc. My recommendation is to keep periods of silence brief, perhaps before or after a trip to the bathroom, especially during the height of a medium or high-dose session. Music Is likely to draw the person into experiential realms that are significantly more profound and that are likely to be of greater therapeutic import and meaning.
Ph.D.
Dr William A. Richards (Bill), author of Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, is Director of Therapy at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland (USA), currently focused on the implementation of psychedelic-assisted therapies in palliative care.
Bill also is the co-founder of research at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research where he contributed to the rebirth of research with colleagues from 1999-2023, and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies and for MMA’s Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies™. Bill’s graduate degrees encompass the psychology of religion, theology, comparative religion and clinical psychology.
Bill’s involvement with psychedelic research originated in Germany at the University of Göttingen in 1963. From 1967 to 1977, he pursued research with LSD, DPT, MDA and psilocybin at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.
