Do You Realize Psychedelics Make You Cry?
Examples of When a Trip Breaks the Emotional Dam
As I delve deeper into learning about the somatic effects of psychedelics, I now understand that crying during a psychedelic trip may be the most prominent effect. I can’t recall how many times psychedelics have made me cry, and I know it has been a lot. Psychedelics provoke crying for a variety of reasons. Above all, the cathartic release always feels like a dam breaking that allows a river of emotion to run its original course, or for social constructs to crumble enabling the raw beauty of the sovereign human spirit to triumph.
A Cry for Understanding
Despite stunning, scientific advancements, like mapping the human genome, crying is still a relative mystery. The physiological processes pre-cry and post-cry are unknown. In a cultural context, we associate crying with deep pain and suffering. Although, in reality, crying makes us feel better.
There are 3 types of tears: basal/lubricant, reflex/irritant, and lacrimal/emotional.
Basal tears lubricate your eye when you get something in it, to flush out the unwanted intruder.
Reflex tears are an involuntary response to an irritant, like when you cut an onion for example.
Lacrimal tears flow when we feel something emotional.
Lacrimal tears offer a suite of benefits. In fact, crying releases various hormones which include endogenous opioids (endorphins) or what I call “happy brain chemicals.” Crying also releases oxytocin, which has been nicknamed the “love hormone” or “cuddle drug.”
In addition, tears may stimulate the release of prolactin, or prolactin might produce tears. The scientific jury is still out on this one. Prolactin is an interesting hormone, as it promotes milk production. I just learned that mescaline stimulates the release of prolactin, so the Huichol/Wixárika people relied on peyote to assist breastfeeding. If you see a woman nursing her baby and she’s crying, this could be a good thing. As noted above, those same tears contain the “cuddle drug” and what’s better than cuddling your baby?
In any case, crying seems to help soothe and calm us. In a way, crying might be viewed as self-cuddling. Furthermore, crying appears to shed cortisol (the stress hormone) through tears, while signaling to the body to decrease cortisol production.
For the most part, psychedelics stimulate lacrimal tears. Yet, my last post about psychedelics and yawning hints at reflex tears. Without a doubt, I have yawned so hard during mushroom journeys that my eyes have teared up.
Regardless, emotional crying serves a critical, physiological function, and perhaps that effect is most pronounced during psychedelic use.
The Different Types of Psychedelic Crying
I’m sure if a study hasn’t already researched the distinct types of psychedelic crying, there will be one soon. That said, my own personal experiences with psychedelic crying don’t need a peer-reviewed journal article to confirm them. Here are some types of psychedelic crying I have experienced.
Psychedelic Crying Due to Laughter
As some brilliant person said long before me, laughter is the salve of the soul. If laughter is soul salve, then mushrooms are stand-up comedy for the soul, because psilocybin makes me laugh my ass off, more often than not.
I recall a time when my best friend and I were tripping on psilocybin. A plastic garbage can used for recycling in my kitchen caught our attention. My friend and I imagined a pro-environmental, marketing commercial and children’s television show based on the garbage can.
We named the garbage can, and the garbage talked to kids, to help promote recycling and being friendly to the Earth. The garbage can was a little grumpy and mean, and sometimes scared the kids, even though the kids loved him. We created a whole show in our heads, and stood around that garbage can for at least an hour, laughing our faces off. I laughed until I cried, and my face and stomach hurt from laughing too much.
The next day, my face and stomach still hurt a little bit. If something as mundane and stupid, like a plastic garbage can, can make you laugh that much, then crying by way of psychedelic comedy heals more than we even know.
Psychedelic Crying as Catharsis
Aside from psychedelic laughter, psychedelic-cathartic crying must also be quite common. When I did psychedelic-assisted therapy using psilocybin, I cried my eyeballs out. Again, I must have cried for at least an hour. A lot of visions, thoughts and feelings of my deceased mom, as well as my dad and brother surfaced. I cried so hard, I had to take the eye mask off, or it was going to get soaked. Besides, my tears needed freedom to flow.
Another time, I was at a Nine Inch Nails concert. Trent and the band were performing behind a translucent curtain. Projected onto the curtain were images of a watery abyss, with the silhouettes of the band members behind it. I was on MDMA at the time. A few weeks prior, a cousin of mine who was a toddler, died in a tragic drowning accident. I burst into tears at the concert and felt like I had an out-of-body experience. The moment seemed to be a hauntingly beautiful message from beyond.
Psychedelic Crying Due to a Bad Trip
In both of these cases, the bad trip wasn’t anything internal, or any trauma or psychic disturbance surfacing. I found myself in circumstances dictated by the outside world that made me feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. Moreover, I was between 19 and 20 years old at the time, so I wasn’t a psychonaut as much as a greenhorn.
The first was at a Grateful Dead show in the parking lot. I had a head full of LSD, and as thousands of people spilled out of the stadium, I couldn’t find my friends. As I sat on a grassy median in the parking lot, my mind filled with dreadful thoughts that I was doomed and would never find my friends again. I began to cry, and a kind, random stranger came by, reassuring me that I would find my friends.
In the end, I found my friends. But the thoughts of doom and gloom played horrible tricks on my mind. In reality, what would be the worst thing that could have happened? That I sat on the grassy median in a parking lot for 2 or 3 hours before my friends found me? Nothing bad was going to happen at all, but the fear swelled in my mind.
I had a similar experience at Woodstock ‘94 in Saugerties, New York. Again, I had a head full of LSD and got separated from my friends the entire day. After half a million people stormed the gates, and the skies drenched the farmland with rain, the entire festival grounds transformed into a medieval battle ground. The temperature dropped, and people ripped down any wooden signage to burn in bonfires. Whole swathes of tent cities got destroyed by mini-mudslides.
As day turned to night, a smoky haze wafted over the grounds, and I couldn’t identify a single landmark to gain my bearings. Again, I thought I was doomed and would shrivel up and die in a mud puddle somewhere. I sat down on a muddy hill and cried. I wandered the chaos, and saw a bonfire dancing far off in the woods. The light, heat and warmth attracted me, so I headed to it. My friends built the fire at our campsite. I was reunited, and once again learned an invaluable lesson. Often, psychedelic fear is false evidence appearing to be real.
Awe Induced Psychedelic Crying
Awe is a huge theme of mine, both in regards to psychedelics and life in general. Two times come to mind when I experienced psychedelic awe and I cried as a result.
The first example was at the end of a psilocybin journey in San José del Pacifico, Mexico. I was out in the woods, and towards the journey’s end, a brilliant double rainbow appeared over my head. The ethereal rainbow seemed to appear on cue, as if the universe bestowed me with a cosmic gift at the perfect time. There was only one other person around, and he was in a cabin. So the rainbow had to be delivered to me, right?
The rainbow symbolized the fleeting truth and beauty of life to me, like the impermanence of Japanese cherry blossoms. I cried right on the spot, as the world overwhelmed me with its mysteries and splendor.
Speaking of mysteries and cosmic splendor, smoking the toad did the same thing to me. In this video, I discuss my bufo experience. As soon as I returned to baseline reality, a fountain of tears burst forth. Again, the awe overwhelmed me, and I didn’t feel worthy to experience such immense and potent, truth and beauty.
Do You Realize Psychedelics Make You Cry Due to Happiness?
My all-time favorite band is The Flaming Lips. I’ve seen them at least a couple dozen times, in a number of states and countries as well. At one point, I saw them in concert once a year, for 10 years straight. This song, may be my favorite song ever:
I have seen them perform this song many times while using psychedelics, in particular MDMA. The song touches on various themes like death/dying, the brevity of life, the illusions we create to mislead ourselves, and the fleeting nature of love, truth, beauty and everything you hold dear in life. Nothing and no one lasts forever.
When I’m enjoying MDMA and I see this song performed I download furious jolts of joy, happiness, cosmic bliss, tenderness, kindness, compassion and love. I think of best friends who passed away, and my deceased mom. It’s the only song I’ll sing along with in public, and it always involves chantepleure.
I rejoice, I sing and I cry all at once. My heart overflows with gratitude to be alive, and for all the Love, Truth and Beauty I’ve been able to experience while living on this tiny rock speeding through space at 67,000 miles an hour.
I don’t care who sees me cry during this mystical anthem. More often than not, if women see me cry, they get it right away. They see my smile and feel my jubilation streaming out of my tears. Women will return a smile or exchange a hug, or start singing along too, as no words need to be exchanged. The experience of being human never feels better than moments like this. Rejoicing the wabi sabi nature of human existence makes me feel alive like nothing else.
If you’re listening out there somewhere, I love you Wayne!
Cosmic Masculinity
Perhaps the antidote to toxic masculinity is cosmic masculinity. I feel I’ve done a decent job actualizing or integrating the Divine Feminine. On average, I cry a handful of times each year.
I cry alone, I cry in the company of others, and I cry in public on occasion. For the record, I cry without psychedelics too. I don’t need psychedelics to cry. Psychedelics do wring my heart out like a wet rag though. Crying is a healthy part of being human, and too often our illusions and cultural framing don’t allow men to be anything but stoic.
I’ve cut down trees with chainsaws, shot guns, hiked mountains, scuba dived, explored ancient ruins and caves, played poker in Las Vegas wearing a tuxedo, and have even engaged in tug-of-war with an orangutan once, believe it or not. I think my man card is intact, regardless of how much I cry, or who sees me get emotional.
Legendary psychonaut Terrence McKenna often opined that “culture is not your friend.” Crying provides a perfect example. Due to social conditioning, men who cry are perceived as weak or flawed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is women cry 60% more than men and that may be due to men having higher testosterone levels (which inhibits crying) and lower prolactin levels, which may promote crying. Of course men are allowed basal and reflex tears. However, men who display lacrimal tears get their man card revoked. As a culture and society, we have a lot of work to do. We need more balance between the archetypes of the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine in all of us.
To be certain, if there’s toxic masculinity, there’s toxic femininity too. As a matter of fact, an acquaintance of mine just admitted that his wife punches him sometimes. In a private moment alone, that’s something that might make a man cry.
Cry Me a Psychedelic River
A well-lived life takes us on a long, arduous journey down a powerful river, and we can’t avoid the whitewater rapids. Psychedelics allow us the freedom and liberty to explore the depth and breadth of a true, and profound human experience. The next time you hit those rapids, and the tears flow, ask yourself a simple question- do you realize?