From Ayahuasca to Psilocybin: Missy's Journey

What happens when a mental health professional who has spent her career helping others reaches a point where she can no longer heal herself through the tools she has always relied upon? In this deeply candid episode, we sit down with **Missy, PhD, Counselor Education and Supervision**, whose career was built around caring for others. At the height of her practice, Missy was seeing as many as 60 clients a week while navigating her own major depression, health challenges, and multiple antidepressant medications. Then she lost both of her parents. Her grief opened a deeper exploration of the wounds she had been carrying, and eventually led her to ayahuasca. What began as a search for healing became a profound journey into complex PTSD, generational trauma, grief, and the parts of herself that conventional approaches had not been able to reach. Missy began writing a book about that journey, but eventually came to recognize that the book, and perhaps she herself, was not yet ready for its final chapter. Then came another message from her ayahuasca work: **psilocybin was the next step.** That path ultimately brought Missy to Eleusinia. In this episode, Missy speaks with remarkable honesty about the realities of living with significant mental health challenges while being a mental health professional herself. She shares what she discovered through ayahuasca, how her experience with psilocybin differed, and why those differences mattered to her healing. We also have an important conversation about psychedelic retreat ethics. Missy openly discusses experiences in retreat environments where she did not feel adequately safe or supported, and what those experiences taught her about the responsibility that comes with working with vulnerable people in psychedelic spaces. Her story offers an opportunity to examine what meaningful preparation, professional support, safety, boundaries, and integration can look like, and why they matter. At Eleusinia, Missy found a different kind of container for her psychedelic work. With the support she needed, she was able to continue processing the trauma and experiences that had shaped her life. And eventually, something extraordinary happened. **She finished the last chapter of her book.** A deeply human conversation about depression, grief, complex PTSD, generational trauma, ayahuasca, psilocybin, psychedelic ethics, and what it can mean to finally feel ready to finish the story.