🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s starting to wonder if Bruce Lee was a psychonaut. “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water.” Sounds like some mushroom wisdom, if you ask us. 🌊

Acacea Lewis discovered her first star as a teenager. But even the mysteries of astrophysics couldn’t satisfy her bottomless curiosity once she found entheogens. Now, she teaches an interdisciplinary approach to psychedelics through her own school.

We asked Acacea about overcoming the limits of academic psychedelic research, why journeying with psilocybin is a martial art form, and what ancient wisdom traditions have in common that Western science can’t seem to grasp.

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You began your academic career as a physicist. How did you end up studying consciousness and entheogens?

My mom named me after Acacia, one of the oldest psychedelic plants in history. From age five, I was looking up info about Acacia online, which led me to learn about dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. I've been curious about tryptamines ever since.

I was homeschooled in Texas and started going to college with my dad when I was seven or eight. Being around nature and having access to tons of library books sparked my curiosity about the natural world. My parents let me study college-level material way earlier than most kids, so I dove into mycology, plants, and esoteric topics like Druidry and Paganism.

I ended up in physics partly because I had a tween crush on someone, but also because I wanted a challenging subject to keep my mind occupied. I came out around 13 or 14, which caused some family issues, and by 16, I was living independently and studying astrophysics at a major university. As a high-achieving student, I got to work on various research projects across different departments. I even discovered my first variable star before I was 17, which was a big deal for an undergrad.

When I eventually ran out of scholarship money, I joined the military. Around that time, I was dealing with severe depression, and someone compassionately introduced me to mushrooms. That first trip was mind-blowing. It helped me visualize scientific concepts in new ways and made me want to study consciousness. I tried to get my professors to combine theology, philosophy, and physics for a new research project, but they weren't ready for that kind of interdisciplinary work. So I decided to pursue it on my own, and that's what I've been doing ever since.

The integration system you teach is fairly unconventional. Can you walk us through the five nexus points of your method and explain how they fit together?

We're starting a community-based effort called the Nexus Community Center to link multidisciplinary subjects to psychedelics. Instead of just looking at psychedelics through one lens at a time, we're bridging hard science research with anthropology, history, and theology.

The five nexus points we study are medical science, ethnobotany, bioethnobotany, anthropological history, and spirituality. In medical science, we use peer-reviewed articles to understand how psychedelics and other substances affect the mind and body. Ethnobotany explores why certain plants or practices are fundamental to different cultures. Bioethnobotany connects biological reactions to cultural uses of plants. Anthropological history focuses on verifying historical uses through artifacts and written records. Finally, spirituality involves asking questions like why certain substances are considered sacred and how mystical experiences are processed by different groups.

This approach gives a more comprehensive perspective by bringing together compartmentalized fields of study. We're creating spaces where scientists, metaphysicists, spiritualists, and elders can share knowledge and learn from each other.

As for integration, I see it as more than just applying the insights from a psychedelic experience to improve your life. It's about accepting a new view of reality and acknowledging there's always more to learn. Your perspective can be fluid and evolve as you go through different life stages, similar to how indigenous traditions treat rites of passage. In that sense, a holistic view of psychedelics—the kind we’re trying to cultivate—does more than bridge gaps in understanding. It also validates experiences that Western psychology might pathologize.

What do you mean when you describe journeying with high doses of psilocybin as a form of martial arts?

Journeying with high doses of psilocybin requires incredible discipline and self-fortitude, just like martial arts. If you're just doing it because someone said you should, that's as stupid as picking up a sword to fight without training. Deep consciousness exploration is dangerous and needs to be approached with respect.

A lot of people misunderstand lectures from my teacher, Kilindi Iyi, and think high doses are always the way to go. It’s like the MMA fighter who wants to learn deadly skills on day one. Moving too fast can handicap you or even be fatal. This isn’t a video game where you're trying to beat the "level 20 boss" mushroom to boost your ego.

I encourage people to start small. Think kids' karate camp. Start with learning how mushrooms grow and their cultural traditions worldwide. There's an incredibly rich history that many people know little about. They might have heard of Maria Sabina but be totally unfamiliar with the Zapotec tradition. People often go in hoping to fix their anxiety and depression, which I get, but diving in too deep too fast can do more harm than good.

In martial arts, you need to customize your moves to your unique physiology and psychology. You have to learn how to de-escalate emotions and feel comfortable in your body before any of these tools are useful. It's the same with psychedelics. Until you can regulate your emotions and stabilize your mind, you're not ready for the large doses.

What similarities and differences have you found in your research into the use of entheogens among the Mazatec, Zapotec, and Aztec cultures in the West and the Buddhist, Hindu, and Daoist traditions in the East?

The main similarity is this idea of curanderismo—getting to the root cause of spiritual or physical ailments. Both Eastern and Western traditions talk about the link between physical, spiritual, and emotional energy. A Taoist might say you lost a piece of your soul when they're talking about kidney energy. Modern medicine just calls it a kidney disorder, but Taoism links it to a spiritual concept while still getting the physical side.

You see these mind-body-spirit systems in Aztec, Chinese, Ayurvedic, and African traditions. They're all engaged with the whole body, including the spirit body. In indigenous communities, you've got doctors taking mushrooms to get hyper-focused on patients, picking up on subtle stuff like pulse, blood pressure, body heat. It's very effective.

There are of course differences between the ancient traditions, too. Aztec philosophy has this idea of Teotl, like a universal energy in everything. It's not about a god judging you; it's all energy and motion. Buddhism is similar, but it's more about practicing good behaviors for future lifetimes. Tibetan Buddhists are planning lifetimes ahead, not just within this one.

You can even see differences within certain traditions. In Theravada Buddhism, for example, Buddha's just a man. In Vajrayana, Buddha is the smallest, indivisible subatomic particle. So you've got this range of perspectives, even within what we might lump together as "Eastern" traditions.

I think we're on the edge of bridging these different ways of thinking. It’s interesting to me that the Western materialist view is actually a minority globally. Most traditions include some idea of consciousness as fundamental to reality. I think we’ll see some big changes in the academic consensus over the next few generations.

What about you personally? How has your view of reality shifted as a result of your experiences with entheogens?

I was a philosophical skeptic in college. I loved the calculus-like logic of philosophy. If something didn't have a clear "if this, then that" structure, I'd dismiss it as fallacious reasoning. Now I'm more intuitive, which I think psychedelics amplified.

Before, my life was all about getting the prize—the accolades, the PhD, the military rankings. I thought that'd make me happy. But I found out helping people makes me happy, and it doesn't have to come from the top of an institution. Realizing my humanity isn't tied to a paper degree was really freeing.

Now I do things I love, like carving jade, pouring tea, and teaching. In my classes, students get time to verify their research and get as many questions answered as possible. I prioritize their goals and how they'll apply what they learn. For career-oriented folks, I focus on harm reduction, cultural diversity, and thinking outside the box rather than just how to sit for someone else. It brings me joy to help people feel more confident entering the psychedelic field, knowing they're not just stumbling in aimlessly.

Want more from Acacea?

Enroll in the Divine Master Alchemy School to join her in studying the cultural anthropology of entheogens. Use code TRICYCLE15 for 15% off any of her courses.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.