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Why Modern Psychedelics Fail (and what to do instead)

The Problem With Western Shamanism (and what to do instead) In this powerful conversation, neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Hill breaks down why modern psychedelic culture often fails us. From ayahuasca ceremonies to heroic mushroom trips, many seek healing but come back with zero integration. Instead of blowing open your brain with macro doses, Dr. Hill shares gentler, more sustainable alternatives like alpha-theta neurofeedback, morning rituals, deep meditation, dance, and even kettlebell training. These tools unlock transformation without frying your circuits. If you’re craving real growth (without needing to “trip your face off”), this episode is your guide to grounded, accessible, daily transformation. 🎙 Watch the full episode on YouTube @cameronedwardbenton #WesternShamanism #PsychedelicIntegration #NeuroscienceAndSpirituality #AndrewHillPhD #AlphaThetaTraining #ModernShamanism #NeurofeedbackForGrowth #DailySpiritualPractice #CameronEdwardBenton 🎙️ Don’t miss out! If you enjoyed this episode of Getting to Know You, hit the Subscribe button and turn on notifications 🔔 to stay updated on our latest deep-dive conversations. 💬 Join the conversation! Drop your thoughts, questions, or favorite insights in the comments below—we’d love to hear from you. ✨ Discover more: Explore untold stories, unique perspectives, and thought-provoking interviews. Check out our playlist for more inspiring episodes. Stay Connected with Us! We’d love to hear from you and share more amazing content. Follow us on our socials for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and much more: 🌟 Instagram: Getting to Know You Podcast 💬 Facebook: Cameron Edward Benton 📖 Threads: @camedwardbenton 🎥 TikTok: @camedwardbenton 👉 Don’t miss out—click the links and follow us now to join our community! Your support means the world to us! Let’s get to know each other better. Stay curious! Keywords: Cameron Edward Benton, Getting to Know You podcast, neurofeedback benefits, tproblem with western shamanism, psychedelic integration, Andrew Hill neuroscientist, alpha theta neurofeedback, neurofeedback for transformation, meditation vs psychedelics, healing without drugs, spiritual practices for growth, modern shamanism issues, ayahuasca problems, trip integration tools, burning man neuroscience, dance as ritual, ecstatic experiences explained, brain healing alternatives, alpha theta training podcast, better than psychedelics, western shamanism myths, mindful rituals daily, morning routine spiritual, cameron Edward benton podcast, grounded spiritual growth, psychedelics without integration, brain friendly spirituality, ketamine vs neurofeedback, ritual vs trip, non-drug transformation, yoga and brain health, mind training tips, healing through music and dance, spiritual neuroscience, neurofeedback explained, shamanism western critique, Cameron Benton Andrew Hill

Episode Summary

I had this conversation on Cameron Edward Benton's "Getting to Know You" podcast, and the question that anchored it is one I get constantly: people want the transformation they hear about from ayahuasca circles and macro-dose mushroom trips, and they want to know whether there is another way to get there. Watch the original conversation.

There is. The states people chase with heroic doses are accessible through gentler routes, and those routes leave you present enough to actually keep what you learned.

Why do Western shamanism weekends leave people empty-handed?

You go out, you trip your face off, and the next morning you have an experience you can describe but cannot use. The growth that should follow a transformational state requires presence during the state and metabolization afterward. Heavy psychedelics strip both.

Mircea Eliade, who gave us the classic description of shamanism, framed it as the shaman traveling to extraordinary reality and returning to ordinary reality. The whole point is the return. The harvest is coming back with insight you can apply.

A heroic dose of LSD, a strong ayahuasca brew, a high-dose mushroom journey: these distort consciousness so completely that you are along for the ride rather than present in it. You had the experience. Whether you were available enough to learn from it is a separate question, and often the answer is no.

I am not saying these compounds have no clinical use. There are real therapeutic use cases for psychedelics. The narrower point is that most of what people are reaching for in those experiences can be reached without blowing the doors off the brain.

What does alpha-theta neurofeedback produce that a psychedelic trip cannot sustain?

People who want a transformational, introspective experience tend to find their way to a category of training called alpha-theta neurofeedback. It produces a hypnagogic state, the place between waking and sleep, and holds you there for twenty minutes or so. That borderland is where surges of nonlinear awareness, insight, and what people describe as healing tend to occur.

The mechanism is a shift in dominant brainwave activity. Alpha (roughly 8 to 12 Hz) is your cortical idle and your attentional brake. Theta (roughly 4 to 8 Hz) appears at the edge of sleep and during deep internal states. Alpha-theta training raises theta until it crosses above alpha, and that crossover is the doorway into the hypnagogic space. I cover the underlying rhythm in more depth in Decoding Alpha Waves.

The clinical lineage here is the Peniston protocol, which combined alpha-theta crossover training with temperature biofeedback and guided imagery, studied originally for trauma and addiction. It is the framework a lot of long-running deep-state programs are built around.

The difference from a heavy trip comes down to presence. You open the door inside yourself, step through into the place where things feel meaningful and strange, and then step back through without having been forced there by a compound. You stand up after a session, loopy for five minutes, and then walk around the rest of the day grounded, having had a rich internal experience you can remember and metabolize. Access without surrendering presence is the integration problem solved at the level of the nervous system.

The broader picture of how this training works is in Is Neurofeedback Legitimate? and the neurofeedback topic hub.

What is happening neurologically at a music festival or a sweat lodge?

I will be honest about the evidence here. The mechanism question for festivals, Burning Man, sun dances, sweat lodges, and Phish concerts is partly sociological, and I do not have a clean circuit-level answer. This is observation and extrapolation, not established neuroscience.

What those environments share is structure: a container and a set of permissions to act inside it. Ritual expression is the construction of a bounded space and then behaving within it. That is set and setting in its oldest form. The festival, the lodge, the ceremony each give you permission to loosen the linear shape of the mind.

You move out of pure transactional thought into the receptive, creative, insight-driven, spiritual mode. Some people dance for hours. Some sit on a blanket. The ritual is whatever lets a particular person step out of the linear groove.

There is an old speculative idea worth knowing here. Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, proposed that early spiritual experience came from the non-dominant hemisphere generating language that the dominant hemisphere experienced as an external voice. Temporal lobe epilepsy produces auditory hallucinations, and the bicameral hypothesis is that hearing God was, in part, one hemisphere speaking to the other. I do not present this as proven. I find it a useful frame for why the non-linear, receptive mode feels like contact with something larger than the self.

Why does the ecstatic mode matter beyond individual experience?

For any given person, the ecstatic mode may or may not be central to their life. At the species level, I think it matters a great deal, because that non-linear mode is where deep learning, art, emotion, and healing live.

Most of us spend our days in a linear, transactional posture: solving problems, watching screens, earning, consuming. Think about the physical version of that posture. Sitting at a desk, curled into a cashew shape for hours. We turn to kettlebells and yoga precisely because they load the body in the opposite direction, pulling the posterior chain open so we are not permanently folded forward.

The ecstatic states do the same thing for the mind. Living permanently curled into a linear position, never spiritual, never abstract, never emotional, leaves capacities unused. Irrigating those tissues, exercising those capacities, produces a richer human experience and creates a space to do healing work and release what you have been carrying.

How do you reach these states without drugs or a brain-training clinic?

The honest list is short, and most of it is ancient. These tools produce some of the same access without completely distorting consciousness, which means you stay present enough to learn:

  • Concentration and absorption meditation. Deeper absorption practices where attention collapses into a single object, not simple awareness practice.
  • Dance. The festival mechanism in a form available in your living room.
  • Intense exercise. The same posterior-chain logic pushed to cardiorespiratory intensity.
  • Playing music at a high level with other people. A rich, non-linear communication you participate in rather than direct. You are inside it, not deciding where it goes.

When something is actively blocking access to those states, neurofeedback can clear the obstruction so the basics work better. For most people, the more pressing move is meditation, which is the most underused tool we are essentially born with. The practice is anchoring attention voluntarily and returning to the same anchor again and again. I go deeper on the mechanism in the neuroscience of mindfulness training and in Mindfulness: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.

What is the single most useful daily practice to start with?

A morning routine. A minimum viable practice, an MVP. You wake up, hit the bathroom, brush your teeth, and then do a five or ten minute self-care ritual.

Size matters here. If it feels like a burden, it is too much. The target is a ritual that flows naturally from brushing your teeth into five sun salutations, or walking the dog a little farther than the corner, or covering a quarter mile on foot to pick up something your partner loves. A little movement before food, before caffeine, before the day's stress accumulates.

The timing has a circadian mechanism behind it. In the morning you are woken by a rise in blood sugar and cortisol. Cortisol is a wake-up signal, a functional part of the arousal system. When you push caffeine into that system immediately, you are pressing on receptors already occupied by the cortisol your body just produced. Burn that cortisol off with light movement first, and you actually feel the lift when caffeine arrives later. The biohacking crowd's advice to wait an hour for coffee traces back to this mechanism. I lay out the full protocol in Biohacking Your Morning, and the broader sleep and circadian picture in Biohacking Sleep.

Getting started

The transformation people associate with heroic doses comes from loosening the linear mind enough to access the receptive, creative, healing mode, and then returning grounded enough to use what emerged. Alpha-theta neurofeedback produces this through a controlled hypnagogic crossover. Concentration meditation, dance, hard exercise, and group music-making produce it through behavior. A five-minute morning ritual, completed before caffeine, sets the whole system up.

Build the morning practice this week. Time your coffee an hour later than usual. Notice what your attention does when you give it an anchor and keep coming back to it.

Full Transcript
The big problem with like western shamanism is that we go forth and trip our balls off and then don't have any growth from it the next day. People that are interested in that thing will often get into a different category of neuro feedback called alphatheta which creates this hypnogogic access brings you to the place between awake and asleep holds you there for 20 minutes or so and that creates huge surges of healing nonlinear awareness. This is of course what Dave's program is built around 40 years is built around alphatheta alpha synchrony. It's a very very interesting experience and that particular category alphatheta alpha synchrony training I find serves the the goals of a lot of people that are these psychonauts seeking the transformation the next step the esoteric knowledge alphatheta tends to give you that access where you can open the door inside yourself and step through into that place where things are sparkly and interesting and weird unusual and then step back through having not tripped your balls off. So like you're, you know, you come out of an alphatheta session, you stand up and you're a little bit loopy for 5 minutes, and then you're walking around the rest of the day, chill, having experiences that are relatively grounded. And so you have this wonderful access into that state, but you aren't being forced into that state the way you might with a a heroic or macro dose of a psychedelic. So while I think there are use cases for those drugs, I think that the stuff people want to get out of those drugs can be gotten without them. generally that's one of the questions I wanted to ask about was you know are there other ways to access these these spaces I had another guest on who talks about like even like you know music festivals and stuff which I'm a big fan of and have gone on a ton like act as these sort of like liinal spaces where you know we go on this like sort of interpersonal and extrapersonal like adventure that leads to a sense of transformation and goes into it. So like can you share with whatever you know like what is going on in the brain in these kinds of experiences even without psychedelics and then like what are some of the other ways that we can access this without substances or even without neuro feedback. Yeah that's a that's a great question. I'm not sure I have an answer. I think it's a sociological uh answer to some extent but you know really what you're doing there is creating a container and engaging in ritual expression right and so ritual expression is essentially creating a sacredness and then acting within it and I think that that is the set and setting you are creating it can be a fish concert it can be burning man it can be a sun dance ceremony a sweat lodge and you know Each will serve different purposes, but when we go into a music festival, we're going with certain perspective around what we're going to get out of it and what we like like to do there. Some folks are never stopping moving and dancing. Some folks are taking drugs. Some folks like to relax and, you know, sit in a blanket and that is the ritual for that person. So I'm not sure I know what's happening in the brain, but I would argue that the reason that we tend to be drawn to those environments is because of the opportunity to practice the ecstatic experience where we loosen the the linear shape of the mind. We're allowed to kind of move away from the the pure linear thoughts into the more expressive, the receptive uh the insight driven space, the creative space, the spiritual space. I think that's why those are so attractive at the very least even if I don't know why what's actually happening during them. Yeah. Why why is that ecstatic experience so important to us as a as humanity? Well, I mean it's sort of I don't know that it is uh for every individual. I think as a species it's really important um because it there's deep learning there and there's deep you know art and and emotion and healing and all the the deep stuff. I mean some of that to get back to some of the idea of brain laterality there's some early ideas in how laterality developed that posits the question that well maybe the reason we had spiritual experiences because the non-dominant hemisphere was sending language in and hearing God was our non-dominant hemisphere. the uh Julian James the origin of the bicamal mind is a good book on that uh the idea that the two hemispheres have this linguistic capacity that temporal lobe epilepsy creates audiary hallucinations and so we were hearing God because our non-dominant hemisphere was talking to us via an epilepsy phenomena essentially. So I think that we spent a lot of time in in a linear environment. We're solving problems. We're watching TV. We're being sold to. We're fighting. We're getting money. We're consuming. It's a very linear. It's a very transactional way to be. And kind of like, you know, think about all of us who sit at desks and we're in this cashew shape, all curled up all the time, right? And then we find that kettle bells in yoga become super important because of the opposite because they pull the body out and they teach the the posterior chain to become really powerful so that you're not always curled up in a fetal position as a human. And I think that the ecstatic stuff becomes important for those of us for whom we are curled up in a linear position to butcher the metaphor where we're always in that like non-spiritual non-abstract non-neuance non-emotional non you know non-aware state some education some irrigation of those tissues of those abilities can give people a lot of more rich human experience but also as a place to go to do healing to release trauma to release uh crap. Mercedes Eliata who described shamanism shamanism talked about the shaman goes to extraordinary reality and then comes back to ordinary reality but again the problem is harvest coming back with insight especially because a lot of the things we use historically to get to those states are very altering you know if you're doing your combo or your iawasa or your you know heroic dose of LSD or something yeah you're going to have an experience but are you going to be present enough to come like to learn from it or is it going to be like wow I had a cool experience two days ago well I I know I learned something and if you do something that's not completely distorting but get you some of the same access which can be dance meditation with absorption practices not awareness like simple medit mindfulness but like concentration absorption practices neuro feedback intense exercise um I would argue if you're a musician playing music at a high level with other people becomes one of those things as well because it's a rich nonlinear communication that you're just participating in instead of you know deciding how it goes. Um and I think these are really important things that we may under emphasize in this modern western linear world. Yeah. So what what are some of the ways I mean I know you mentioned a few but what are some of the ways that you recommend accessing those states on a more regular basis? Well, if there's things in the way then do neuro feedback and get those out of the way. But generally I'm a big fan of the basics. You know all the ancient stuff we've been told for 5 10,000 years. Guess what? It works. So doesn't take a lot though. You don't have to become a monk or or a guru on a mountaintop to like have your together. You you know you can there is a middle road. So meditation or yoga I mean yoga being a form of meditation really. Um I think meditation is about the most underutilized tool set that we have and we're basically born with you know just the act of anchoring the attention in a voluntary way and then coming back to the same anchor again and again. That's what meditation is. So I think that among the most powerful things any human could do would be to develop a morning routine. I call it a minimal viable practice, an MVP where you hit the can, brush your teeth, and then do a five or 10 minute self-care ritual. If it's a lot, if it feels like a burden, it's too much. It should not be, oh, I have to go work out. It should be like, "Okay, I just naturally moved from brushing my teeth into my five sun salutations or walking the dog to that place on the corner that's a little farther away or my life my my my wife loves tea from a place that's a quarter mile. I'm going to go get that every day." Like, find that ritual, the movement and a little bit of activity before food, before caffeine, before stressing in that moment because in the morning you're woken up by blood sugar and cortisol. So, it's a circadian event. You want to burn off the cortisol and blood sugar before calling for any more. Otherwise, you're just trying to slam uh things into receptors that have recently been occupied. So, this is why, you know, the biohackers say to wait an hour for your coffee. It's let the cortisol burn off naturally so that you actually feel the increased cortisol from that when you take it again. So I think the morning routine is about the number one thing people should be finding a way to construct a supportive morning uh strategy.
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