A personal account of a journey of breaking the cycle of addiction and depression through the therapeutic use of psychedelics. Including a discussion of the science and philosophy of addiction, depression, and cyclical, intrusive, or obsessive thought patterns and how psychedelic medicines can assist us in breaking our current mental and behavioral patterns to create new ones.

Addiction presents itself in many forms. From chemical to physical, to emotional and psychological. Sometimes, addiction can be formed around a substance, and sometimes, around a state of mind. Many times, an addiction becomes a larger issue in our lives when it starts manifesting detrimental cycles, patterns, and outcomes that we don’t agree to and can’t escape from. Like a well-worn path travelled too many times, our habitual paths can become grooved, and the grooves can become ruts, and the ruts become more and more difficult to free ourselves from the deeper they become, even when we desperately desire to find a new direction.

A “pattern interrupt” is an unexpected act or occurrence that jolts someone into a new state of mind and breaks their usual habits by altering their mental, emotional, or behavioral state. When used with intention and care, psychedelic medicines can facilitate a type of intentional pattern interrupt: a novel and unexpected experience that disrupts the mental cycles and behavioral patterns which no longer serve us. A disruption from which we can allow ourselves to create new directions and intentional paths on our journey.

Brendon Lund serves on the leadership board of the Sierra Psychedelic Society and facilitates their monthly addiction support integration circles. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s in business administration.

Brendon will be sharing insights gained from a mixture of his philosophical training and his experience discovering and studying the therapeutic use of, and transformational value in, psychedelic medicines. He will be presenting a testimony of his personal experience of falling into a cycle of addiction and depression and how psychedelics have informed and shaped his understanding of pattern-forming behavior allowing him to discover a world outside of one which he believed there was no escape from.