Catchy title, right?
A few years ago, an Instagram reel with this exact title went viral — multiple times. In it, a woman was “exposing” the dark side of plant medicine. Ironically, the video itself was a pitch for joining “spiritual programs” run by an actual cult (no exaggeration)… but that’s beside the point.
The woman was speaking about a very real phenomenon: people who enter a cyclical relationship with plant medicines.
They sit in a ceremony, have a powerful and profound experience, and believe they are healed. Their life feels back on track. They’ve received the miracle they were hoping for.
But then time passes, and that feeling fades.
So, they go back to ceremony. They experience another catharsis, another wave of transcendence or emotional release. Once again, everything feels aligned. Until… it fades. Time for another ceremony, right?
And so the cycle continues — to the point where, from the outside, it may appear that the person has become dependent on the medicine just to function. Sometimes, you’ll even observe that their patterns are becoming more deeply entrenched over time — those unhealthy tendencies that are holding them back.
They have started using the medicine as a way to bypass.
So, what’s actually going on here? Is this the fault of the medicine?
This is not “the dark side of plant medicine”. This is the dark side of human nature.
Any spiritual practice can be misused or distorted. We’ve personally observed a widespread trend that we jokingly call “the enlightened asshole” — someone who’s spent years in deep devotion to meditation, study of spiritual texts, or the practice of austerities, and yet… they’re still unkind. Still steeped in ego patterns and unresolved trauma. Often very difficult to be around.
Others develop obsessive neuroses related to their practices — to the point that they can’t function without them.
Sound familiar? It’s not all that different from the plant medicine example we just explored. It’s simply less visible.
And we tend to judge it less harshly, because meditation is more socially acceptable than plant medicine, which can activate subconscious stigma around “drugs.”
And usually, the “obsessive spiritual practitioners” make less of a spectacle of themselves than the people who are overusing plant medicine (… not always, though…).
None of this means that meditation and other spiritual practices have a dark side – it means humans are imperfect, and that outcomes depend on the individual person, not the tool they are using.
We each have the choice to engage with these tools (including plant medicine) in a holistic, integrated way that lifts us up, helps us grow, and pushes us to become better people… or not.
Another piece that many people overlook is the fact that most plant medicine is just one thread that comes from a much larger cultural fabric — one woven from community, spiritual cosmology, and interconnected ways of living.
As Westerners, we often pluck the medicine out of its cultural context, relating to it as a single experience — whether we sit with indigenous shamans (even in the jungle), or with other qualified facilitators — and when we do, we usually miss the crucial pieces that help make our experience meaningful, sustainable, and embodied over time.
Does that mean we shouldn’t be working with the medicine at all?
Of course not.
It simply means we need to place a real emphasis on integration and seek out the right support for that process.
We need to show up for the work in between the work.
We need to ask ourselves — honestly — whether another ceremony is truly what we need.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn’t.
If you’re not sure, or if you’re looking for guidance, consider booking an integration session.
Ultimately, it’s not about judging another person’s journey of healing and evolution – regardless of what it looks like from the outside.
It’s about how we walk our own path — with self-awareness, integrity, and a willingness to do the deeper work, as the sovereign and empowered beings we are.
