Whether or not you’ve had freaky deaky entity, angel, or extraterrestrial interventions to help point your way, you have enough power inside your mind to open up channels that will blast your ideas, creativity, and experiences to the mutha fuckin’ moooooon, Baby. It doesn’t have to come by eating 5 grams of psilocybin magic mushrooms and face planting in the fetal position naked in the middle of a forest during a rainstorm.
Although it’s easy to turn directly to drugs to create these mind-altering states, it’s unnecessary. Sure, psychedelic drugs have played a mega role in my life in opening me up to different planes of reality and experiences, but there are plenty of other ways to alter your state of consciousness and access different expansions of yourself. I certainly don’t condone the use of drugs to stimulate your creativity.
I firmly believe we all have an inward desire to break through the limitations of ordinary consciousness. We crave peak experiences and transcendence, whether we are getting those experiences from deep meditation or dropping a large tab of LSD and going to get a spray tan. We search for what exhilarates us, but often overlook the excitement that starts within us.
How to Get High Without Drugs – Never Stop Peaking Podcast
Drugs and Alcohol Come with a Hefty Price. You Don’t Need Them.
Drugs do not contain the experience that they trigger. The high you experience comes through you internally, and the drug simply helps you release that experience. We often believe the chemicals and compounds in drugs create our highs, but these drugs only activate the human nervous system to respond in a particular way, which is what actually causes the high. You are the high.
When you get high using drugs and alcohol, you must come down. Depression, mental clouding, lethargy, and dependence frequently offset the upfront euphoria and stimulation of the drug. The more you use a drug to induce a high state, the less effective that drug will become. It’s similar with any type of external stimulation, like the first time you have sex with someone versus the 100th time. If you aren’t working on opening up internally to explore different positions, energies, connectivity, environments, intimacy, and flavors within that sex, then the sex by itself will get boring pretty quickly. Nobody wants to hump in the same position for the same amount of time over and over. The climax loses its zest, and the high eventually becomes mundane.
If experimenting with drugs is your thing, that’s totally an avenue you have the right to explore with your own choices. I’ve had euphoric and deep magical healing journeys with psilocybin, and I’ve also ended up face down in a field with strangers around me throwing frisbees at my face as I chewed on cigarettes while trying to light them. Even drinking a few glasses of wine has helped me drastically open up my writing pathway and connect to my muse. However, it usually doesn’t last long. My body starts to crave more, and eventually I end up crashing and passing out without much creative work accomplished.
The Power You Seek From Drugs is Already Within You
Plant medicines and psychedelics have guided me through so much trauma, and I’m eternally grateful for the pathways that they help open up within my body. However, I am very serious about approaching these medicines in the right set and setting, making sure my environment and the people helping facilitate are all working toward the greater good of healing in the world. This is unbelievably important. When you use a drug or medicine to open your channels, or to get high, you open your channels to both good and bad stuff. I cannot stress enough the importance of making sure you are with the right people, in the right place, and fully protected from letting negative or harmful energies into your channels. Don’t do anything illegal either, mmmk? ;0
The main thing I’ve learned from external drugs, mostly psychedelics and plant medicines, is that the power is already within us. The creativity we long to make a relationship with in life is strapped to our souls and fueled into action by our physical bodies. The highest we can ever get is simply within us, without the need for drugs.
So- How Do You Get High and Access Your Ideas, Creativity, and Expanded Self Without Taking Drugs?
After my experience with breathwork, deep meditations, hypnotherapy, and lucid dreaming, I started exploring all the other ways I could induce altered states of consciousness to help expand my mind and creativity. I want to share a handful of these methods with you, so you can start exploring different avenues that can help you never stop peaking. Not all of these experiences are comfortably euphoric, as there are lessons and highs in even the harshest experiences and pains. There is something unique about non-ordinary experiences, whether they are pleasurable or terrifying. Oftentimes the harshest situations in life are still lined with positive potential for growth and change. I think this is why some people find so much pleasure in things like BDSM. There is something that gets us high when we are forced out of our comfort zones and control.
The message I’m trying to convey isn’t that you need to constantly “search” for ways to get high, but to realize that the traditional methods aren’t actually reliable methods for staying high. What if you explored all the different pathways and joys inside of yourself from a focus perspective instead? How would this help you expand your consciousness naturally and keep peak performance?
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Each of the methods I am going to share revolves around focusing on the awareness of a certain unusual sensation or experience foreign to your ordinary habits or patterns. Through each process, the practice of concentration on these sensations and experiences is vital to experience the high. It may seem weird, hard, or uncomfortable at first, but trust in your dedication to expand yourself. There is so much magic that awaits.
The ways to get high without drugs below are at least somewhat accessible, as opposed to unplanned ones like near-death experiences, sporadic hallucinations, or deja vu. While I could write pages on each topic, I’m going to leave most of them to brief descriptions. I encourage you to take a ride on your boyfriend Google’s wang and explore whichever methods tickle your fantasies deeper. Get uncomfortable and spread those wings. Explore freely and at your own risk. You’ll be opening up channels to your higher self in no time! Creativity will flow like the great flood.
How to Get High and Expand Your Mind Without Drugs
1- Meditation High
Although there seems to be no ceiling for the intensity of this practice, the basic foundation of how to meditate is simple. Essentially, you’re chilling out, closing your eyes, and quieting your mind. Thoughts, worries, ideas, fears, and oodles of other chatter from your mind will continuously flow in and try to disrupt your concentration, but noticing them and letting them float on by is essentially like cleaning out a closet. You are clearing the clutter and making space for more beneficial thoughts, ideas, and focus points to come through. In a world where we are all constantly distracted by immediate external stimulation, meditation is perhaps the most important practice we can implement in our lives. The meditation high is clean and peaceful.
“If you don’t have time to meditate for an hour every day, you should meditate for two hours.”
Zen Proverb
There are endless ways to practice meditation, from taking five deep breaths to silent Vipassana retreats to living in a cave with the monks for 30 years. You can also play meditation games to build your awareness, like pausing and taking 10 big breaths whenever you see a yellow car, or repeating an “I love you” mantra under your breath every time you see a flower. I am certain that if I never started meditating in 2014, I wouldn’t be here conveying this message to you right now. It’s a habit you can consistently build on and grow with for the rest of your life, each step unlocking more powers in your journey. The more you meditate, the higher you’ll get.
Free Meditation Tool:
Download the Insight Meditation Timer and add me (Heath Armstrong) as a friend so we can meditate together! I'll share some of my favorite meditations and binaural beats with you.
2- Sound Baths and Sound Healing High (Singing Bowls, Crystal Pyramids)
No matter how many kinky experiences or brilliant ideas you’ve engaged within your normal hot bubble bath, if you haven’t taken a bath in sound then, Baby, you haven’t lived.
A sound bath is sorta like a meditation mixed with various ambient sounds. These sounds can be notes at different frequencies, which can be much more intense than normal everyday sound. Usually, an instructor plays a variety of different powerful and meditative instruments like Tibetan or crystal singing bowls, cymbals, gongs, crystal pyramids, didgeridoos, flutes, chimes, tuning forks, buffalo hide drums, maracas, harps and more. Most of the time you lay flat on your back with your head closest to the instruments and allow the sound to “bathe” you while you drift into a meditative, lucid dreaming, or sleep state. These states can feel really trance-like and most definitely alter your state of consciousness and get you high. The energy and frequency of the sound is believed to break up negative emotional blocks and increase balance and peace.
If you open your browser and search for “studies with sound therapy” or something alike, you’ll find that sound baths have an incredible number of health and healing benefits, including a huge reduction in stress. Personally, I’ve broken through some mega physical, spiritual, and creative blockages within sound baths, especially in combination with breathwork. I’ve become so fancied with sound therapy and the way it has shaped my journey that I actually invested in my own set of crystal singing bowls, pyramids, and other various instruments.
If you decide to go by your alias, Peeping Tom, and end up gazing through my window, you may catch me in solid gold bell-bottom pants, covered in glitter, chanting abundance mantras and OM’s while softly caressing my bowls until heaven has relocated in your ears.
Now go take a bath, you big smelly goose.
3- Breathwork or Psychedelic Breathing High
Breathwork is the act of consciously using the breath to alter your mental, physical, or emotional state or experience. This can be an overwhelmingly euphoric experience in the right set and setting, as I’ve personally overcome physical blockages and illnesses by using breathwork. As with meditation highs, there are a wide variety of breathwork styles that can get you high. Essentially, within the breathing practices you will elevate the level of oxygen in your body which can reduce stress and increase energy. I also believe there is a Universal agreement that the breath is pretty fucking important, so how could it not be powerful?
Wim Hof Method Breathwork App
Every day I make it a goal to do 3-5 minutes minimum of deep breathing, usually following Wim Hof’s simple breathing practices. Wim argues that breathwork drastically increases immune response, especially in combination with cold water therapy, which we will cover later. If you wish to get started, download The Wim Hof Method free mobile app. He has videos that walk you through the practice, and timers synced with calendars where you can time yourself and track results. Also, search locally for yoga or meditation studios that offer deep breathing classes. The energy of being around others who are also pushing deep into the practice can help you push beyond your limits. Maybe you’ll even stumble across a breathwork/sound bath meditation.
Rise of the Phoenix Shamanic Breathwork Meditation Practice by Dakota Earth Cloud
If you are already somewhat familiar with deep breathing and meditation and want to explore a gnarly guided meditation at home that will rock your world and get you high, check out Dakota Earth Cloud’s Rise of the Phoenix Guided Breathwork Meditation.
4- Singular Concentration High
Singular concentration is a building block of meditation, but it can really bring an altered high experience when approached with dedication. The idea of singular concentration is to focus on one thing, with your eyes open, for an extended period. By doing so, you may notice the thing you are focusing on starts to warp and your experience starts feeling super weird. For example, try staring into your own eye in the mirror for 3 minutes. Set a timer and don’t look away until it’s done. Things will start to get wobbly! Or, go outside and stare at a flower bloom for five solid minutes. Your mind will most likely wander at first, but try to keep your attention focused as with any meditation. You can expand this practice to anything you want, as any object can be the direct focus of this practice. But please, try not to make it a stranger in public. I don’t want you to end up as the object being stared at by Big Earl in a jail cell.
5- Sensory Deprivation or Zen Float Tanks to Get High
Sensory deprivation tanks, more commonly known as float tanks, are like giant covered bathtub chambers that provide a soundless, lightless environment. The water is set to body temperature and concentrated with Epsom salt so you will float. Basically, you float on your back in a black nothingness type environment with no sound or lights to deprive the experience of your senses. The experience replicates what it would be like to be in a womb, or floating in dark space. It’s common to lose touch with time while in these tanks, as 90 minutes can sometimes feel like hours. I know people who have panicked and thought the float center staff had forgotten about them within just 20-30 minutes, pushing the door open and realizing it hadn’t been hours like they thought. It can feel pretty trippy.
A sensory deprivation experience will help you drift deeply into a safe, relaxing meditation that can feel very out-of-the-world. Plus, the magnesium your skin will absorb from the Epsom salts has incredible health benefits. Sometimes the tanks even have trippy strobe lights if you really want to get high.
6- Skydiving High
I know skydiving isn’t for everyone, but I’m sharing it because it’s an obvious rush that will blow your adrenaline out of your crown chakra and straight to the heavens. My entire life I was terrified of heights, and I used to have reoccurring dreams of myself falling off cliffs when I was little. Although I do love climbing mountains, there seems to be something very different about an edge with a sudden drop off that makes me squeeze my butt cheeks and run.
When I turned 30, my girlfriend at the time surprised me by driving straight to a skydiving center without warning. She knew I wouldn’t do it if I had the option, so she didn’t give me the option. When we pulled up, my body just slowly started shutting itself down in this weird, panic state. Honestly, I’m not sure if the preparation and plane flight with the door open up to 20,000 feet was more trippy, or if it was the actual free-fall. My body literally just shut me down, as I felt practically paralyzed on the way up. My tandem instructor gave me a few jobs, all of which I completely ignored as I felt 100% sedated as if someone had just juiced me up with pain killers.
I remember falling, and I remember the unbelievable adrenaline rush that took over my mind and body. However, when the instructor pulled the parachute, I couldn’t even talk. The instructor kept asking me questions to make sure I was alright, and apparently I only mumbled something about my mom. I haven’t yet been back, but I would do it 100 times again after experiencing the rush. It truly is an altered state of consciousness that will rock your world.
7- Sex High
Obviously, sex is a quick direct method to alter your state of consciousness and get high. But whatever kind of sex you are having now (if any), you can always explore it more deeply. Because of how much shame has been splashed into the world over the act of sex, sexual preference, public displays of affection, etc., it can be hard to express what truly intrigues or excites you within a relationship.
Whether you’re into vanilla missionary, bondage, role playing, swinging, golden showers, squirting fests, or running a pound-town-pain-train bang session out in the woods, you have the right to be into it and should feel free to explore it safely without criticism. Sexual energy is remarkable, and if you want to really explore the power, slow down and build up the energy slowly.
There are deep highs waiting within the entire sexual journey, not just the release of the orgasm. Tantric practices, prolonged sex, authentic relating, and full-body foreplay can help establish robust intimate connections capable of channeling the most potent of sexual energies. Now, take off those pants.
8- Alternative Masturbation Methods to Get High
Yeah, you knew this section was cumming. I mean coming. Anyway, no matter how you are normally pushing your buttons or slapping your slapstick, there is always room for exploration into higher experiences with masturbation. Just like sex, masturbation allows you to experience divine energy highs through building, controlling, and releasing an orgasm. You could try prolonged masturbation, which involves a continuation of the process after you’ve already orgasmed. This can be painful and unpleasant at first, but will certainly take you on a weird ride if you dedicate to the cause.
Or perhaps you could explore “edging,” which is the consistent buildup of energy in an orgasm without releasing it. Essentially, controlling yourself so that you stop your orgasm right before it’s about to happen. Yes, the thought of not releasing sounds miserable after getting so close to that euphoric feeling, but that energy that doesn’t release then recirculates throughout your body and can create many beneficial effects. Try edging for a week straight and see if you notice a shift in your energy and highs.
Last, try masturbating to yourself in the mirror. I know that sounds weird, but there is something dark in the way we avoid self-love. We constantly find things on our body we aren’t happy with, and we store those thoughts in our minds, allowing them to leak out in the form of insecurities, jealousy, etc. Seriously, look at yourself in the mirror and notice every beautiful wrinkle, curve, freckle, hair, or whatever while you masturbate. You are sexy as fuck and worthy of orgasm, and no matter how hard or weird it is at first, it’s a healing practice I believe will help you. You might find yourself in tears or resistance, but keep trying. When you love and accept yourself, the whole world loves and accepts you too. Your external world is a mirror of your internal world.
If you want to get really cray during sex or masturbation, start combining these methods and maybe even throw in a little breathwork at the same time. Bananas.
9- Animalizing High
Have you ever had a rush of energy that made you want to assume the role of a wild animal and start acting like one? One time when I was in college, one of my professors choked me out in a Vegas hotel room because I made some comment he didn’t like. He then beat his chest like a manic gorilla and bounced around the room, flipping mattresses and hooting like an ape. Although he was dead serious, and it was actually super creepy and completely inappropriate and I’m pretty sure he’s a serial killer, sometimes acting like a wild animal can be a great way to release energy and alter your state of mind.
My friend Moneyshot loves to turn into a wolf and howl at the moon. I’m a fan of running like an antelope out of control. If you ever get the urge to hop through the fields like a Kangaroo, I encourage you to do it. It can feel incredible to release energy in such a wild way. Just don’t get black out, lose all your money on roulette, and then choke out some random student.
10- Naked in Public High
Last year I went on a little weekend getaway with a girl I was dating up to Orcas Island in Washington. We were staying in a yurt, and there was an outdoor spa overlooking the bay close by. We went over to do some soaking one night, and I was absolutely shocked to see 30 people hanging out completely naked, most not even in the tubs. We got a total grand stare when we walked in. Now, there is absolutely nothing weird about being naked in groups if you remove the shame that has been taught to us since birth (and also the perverts), but I immediately started having a mild panic attack. It sent me into a super wacky mind state. I was battling my comfort zone, and I wasn’t able to take my shorts off until an hour or so into the soaking. It didn’t help that a dude covered in full body tattoos sat on the tub trying to talk to us, with his wang hanging directly in my face. By the time we left, even though I was only publicly naked for maybe 10 minutes max, something drastically shifted in my energy. I felt like I overcame something I had been terrified of my entire life, and I felt insanely high.
Nudity isn’t really that strange. It’s actually primal. It’s how we arrive into this world. We’ve just built so many standards in our minds as to how something should look, or how we should react around it. As long as you’re not near a bunch of creepers, I think trying out public nudity is a really intense way to alter your state of consciousness. There are dedicated beaches, hot springs, spas, and even events like The World Naked Bike Ride (which I’ve done) that can help make the process feel more natural. It’s a great way to get over personal insecurities and any jealousy within your relationships. Again, it’s probably not a good idea to go streaking through your residential neighborhood, but seeking out safe zones for public nudity can be remarkably freeing.
11- Cold Water Therapy (Ice Church) High
Cold showers, polar bear plunges, ice baths, and cryotherapy are just a few common methods to using cold water to alter the mind and body. Just like with the breathwork section above, Wim Hof has been a Guru in bringing these types of therapies to the mainstream world. Some benefits reported by Wim and other studies (which I’ve experienced myself) are reduced stress levels, increased alertness, stronger willpower, reduced inflammation, improved mitochondria health, and stimulated immune response. And ultimately, if you take a two-minute plunge into a freezing cold ice tank, you will be high as heaven.
Please proceed with caution and always work with a specialist when using cold water therapy any more extreme than cold showers.
If you are ever in the Denver area, check out Justin Weiss and his Ice Church.
12- Body Inversion High
Whether laying on your back and throwing your feet up on the walls for ten minutes, or doing a crazy ninja headstand with your robust muscles, inverting the body is a great method for moving around energy. Basically, when you invert yourself in any method, you increase your blood flow and heat your body. When more blood flows to reach your brain, the results can invigorate you. Your energy and mental stamina will shoot to the moon. You also open up your perception to a different view of the world, which can blast open creative pathways.
I can’t walk on my hands or any of that fancy jazz, so I generally throw my legs up on the wall or use my FeetUp Inversion Stand. These stands are incredible for helping anyone who can’t do headstands do headstands. I’ve also spent time on those hanging table thingamajigs which feels great for the spine, but I have no idea where to find those beasts. No matter the method, ten minutes a day will spook all the demons away.
13- Yoga High
This is an obvious one. Yoga is basically the practice of aligning your body with your mind through a series of exercises, stretches, postures, asanas, mantras, etc. Your body is your spaceship, and it carries your sacred soul on this planet. Creating a yoga practice will help deepen the connectivity between your mind, body, soul, and yes…chakras. Even in its most basic form, slow and deep stretching in a yoga practice can drastically help reduce body tension, stress, and inflammation. When you feel good and aligned, your energetic and creative blockages disappear. Plus, we all want to see you in those tight pants that show all the creases of your private parts and butt sweat lines.
14- Physical Exercise High
Alongside yoga, endurance and blood flow of any type is beneficial to health and creative flow. It’s so beneficial that your resistance gremlins will do everything they can to try to stop you from partaking. Nobody can deny the glorious feelings and lowered stress levels that arrive during and after physical activity. Everyone is different, but you gotta find what types of movement you love and create a habit for kicking your laziness in the jugular while you do cartwheels across a field.
Maybe you don’t love doing cartwheels, so here are some other ideas: Walking outside, trail running, riding your bike, SEX, pilates, yoga, ecstatic dance, playing sports, rock climbing, SEX, mountaineering, backpacking, deep stretching, SEX, weight lifting, body-weight, kayaking, SEX, paddle boarding, stair climbing, surfing, swimming, snowboarding, SEX, squats, lunges, tossing frisbees, sprints and more.
Do something you love and enjoy. There are enough exercises in the world for everyone to find something they love. It also helps to track your progress and keep momentum. For me, I do something a little different every day. My habit tracker shows “sweat” and I go with whatever feels the most exciting to me that day, whether I be biking, pounding weights, or rocking a sweet Jazzercise class with your grandma. I’ll see you there.
15- Acupuncture High
According to my angelic acupuncturist, Danielle Lombardi, “Traditional Chinese medicine is a complete holistic medical system that has been practiced for more than 5,000 years. Acupuncture is one of the five branches of this medicine, in addition to Chinese herbal therapy, nutrition, meditation and massage.
Acupuncture reduces pain and helps restore balance by promoting the body's natural healing process. The practitioner inserts sterile, hair-fine needles at specific points on the body to treat a variety of conditions. Because each person is a unique individual, the practitioner bases diagnosis and treatment on that person’s specific presentation.”
I’ve entered some of the most intense trance-like states during acupuncture sessions, fully dropping into serene relaxation. I zonk out hard and start having visions as my body is rebalancing and detoxifying. It’s important to find the right acupuncturist to work with, perhaps those who have studied Ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine. I’ve had to weed through a lot of shit in the chiropractic and acupuncture fields to find the right fit, but it’s magic now that I have. Danielle sometimes combines acupuncture with cupping, Gua Sha therapy, tuning forks, and even sound therapy with her Tibetan singing bowls. It’s pure magic.
16- Gua Sha, Cupping, Massage, and Fascia Therapy Highs
While you have organs that work to remove toxins from your body and blood, Gua Sha and cupping are also parts of ancient Chinese medicine practices. Your fascia, or the band of connective tissue beneath your skin, is massaged through these various methods to help focus and move blood flow to help flush built up toxins throughout the lymphatic system. Gua Sha is generally done with a round-edged scraping tool, like a jade stone. Cupping usually involves glass cups that apply negative pressure to create suctions on certain areas of the skin, which increases blood flow to the area, reducing muscle tension and inflammation.
Every time I can sneak in for any type of acupuncture or fascia work, I feel like it’s the greatest gift to myself in life. Not only do these practices help me reduce stress and release toxins, but they help stimulate the flow of my Qi. Qi is the free flow of vital energy throughout the body and the world. If qi is disrupted, it can become stagnant and create physical and emotional blocks in the body. For ultimate health, creativity, and highs, allowing the qi to flow is crucial.
17- Flow State High
As woo-woo as it may seem, I believe the anchor of creating happiness and prosperity in life all comes down to how well you flow within the experience. Essentially, it’s learning how to identify and follow your intuition at all times, no matter how many resistance and fear gremlins try to disguise themselves as ‘logical’ or ‘realistic’ thoughts. To put it in the words of one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met, Justin Faerman, the cofounder of Flow Consciousness Institute, “Flow state is how our individual (and collective) consciousness interacts with and ultimately shapes reality in conjunction with other forms of consciousness/quantum information systems from the macrocosm to the microcosm.”
When you live in a state of flow, everything feels good. It’s almost like you are being guided by the highest power of all (and maybe you are). It’s the voice that taps the mother and says “get the kids and drive to Grandma’s house immediately; something feels wrong” just an hour before a tornado destroys the home. It’s what makes you feel so depressed and miserable that you have no choice but to leave your well-paying job, so in the darkness you can find the light that creates an opportunity for you to feel alive, purposeful, and happy. Living in a flow state is like being high all the time.
Mapping the Evolution of Consciousness: A Holistic Framework for Psychospiritual Development
Read one of Justin’s amazing papers on flow here for free.
18- Creative Experience High (writing, art, craft, paint, poetry, etc)
I’m just gonna say it. If you aren’t doing some sort of creative process regularly, whether you feel you are a “creative person” or not, you need to start right now. Even if it’s getting a piece of paper out and drawing a heart, do it. As a human, you have a power you share with the Gods: the power to create. You are here to experiment, explore, and bring new types of creations to life. Your creations will influence the world long after your physical passing. Your muse wants to play with you. Are you listening?
I have one of the driest educations and work history in concrete engineering and construction. However, I’ve completely transitioned my life from depressed alcoholic to author and entrepreneur after tapping into my flow. Even by being around creative processes, like concerts, plays, art shows, etc., you can start connecting with your creativity. There are no excuses. Write some poems, slap some paint on a canvas, go to the valley and yodel, get some bathtub crayons and draw out your vision on the tiles. It’s not entirely about what you create, but mostly about the act of creating itself. Get moving, Baby. It’s why you’re here.
19- Digital Detox High
To step into a flow state, there is no easier way than removing all the disruptive distractions that fight for your attention. In today’s world, these distractions most often take a digital form such as messaging apps, social media, and television. Their engineers designed them to give you a little dopamine drip of instant gratification, all while disguising the impossibility of you ever even placing in the marathon race, let alone winning.
I urge you to read Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now if you want to explore the deep dark world of how these platforms are manipulating your life and removing our ability to experience being human, even if it wasn’t the intention of the creators early on. Jaron is one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley, virtual reality, and the systems that created the problem. He’s not asking you to remove yourself from the digital world completely, but he presents arguments on why you should at least take an extended digital break to rediscover yourself in a natural way.
Your productivity and awareness will absolutely explode if you take a digital detox. I’ve shared programs through my email list before and the results always make me melt. Those who take extended breaks from social media, the toxic news, and other forms of digital distractions seem to end up expanding awareness, increasing creativity, and sustaining happiness.
For me, it’s baffling how much time appears when I’m not stuck in infinite scroll mode on Instagram. I crush books, spend way more time outside, and truly dial deep into relationships and conversation with people (and pups) I value. It doesn’t have to be hard. Start with turning your phone off for 3-4 hours one day. Then, turn it off for an entire day, maybe a week. You can still use your phone to make calls, but remove the distractive apps and keep it off when you aren’t dialing. Perhaps you can post a message saying you are taking a hiatus on your social media accounts, and then log out for a set period of time, say 60 days.
Almost every creative project I’ve completed came off the back of me turning off my digital distractions for extended periods of time. You won’t miss out on anything, I promise. If anything, you’ll gain back yourself. And, when you find yourself, you can align with your purpose and stay super high all the time.
Check out Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism if you want a practical guide on how to remove distractions and optimize your life away from the digital world.
20- Brief & Extended Nature Submersion High (Go outside)
Although it's hard to remember since large parts of society have evolved to be so disconnected from the natural world, you are in fact a natural being. It breaks my heart to think of those who are born into a concrete jungle and never make it outside the box. If you have access to the outdoors, are you taking advantage of this prime medicine? Not only is nature beautiful, but it heals. It’s the human recharge station. It affects health, happiness, gratitude, and every other aspect of life.
You are a child of nature. Your body charges and heals in the mountains, lakes, forests, oceans, and grasslands under the Sun and the Moon. You are not electronic. You cannot plug into a wall and re-energize. Your battery depends on the great outdoors.
While technology has definitely added some serious magic to our lives, it’s not the only source of magic. If you feel like you’ve blasted out some great work on the computer, take a moment to walk outside and be one with your habitat, your creator.
Imagine what it’s like to be electronically disconnected, taking a fresh back-stroke inside a glacier lake on top of a mountain, gazing over the endless blanket of green forests and natural beauty. Maybe afterward you’ll roll around naked in the woods, absorbing antioxidants for natural healing. What if you had absolutely no idea that our politicians just shit their pants again, and you were completely unaware of how angry you should be at the drama happening on your Facebook wall? The birdies chirp. The sun smiles. You bask in the glory.
When submerging yourself in nature, you become one with the Earth, and you learn that the likelihood of both thriving and suffering is directly in sync with your awareness and respect for the natural world. Whether spending ten minutes outside standing on the grass with your shoes off, or doing a complete through-hike over four months on the Pacific Crest Trail, this medicine is important. Please don’t take it for granted.
You didn’t come to this glorious, natural planet to miss it entirely. The great mother provides.
Look up Local Meetups to Join Others in Nature
Check facebook groups, meetup.com, or ask your friends to see if you can find groups to visit nature with if you don’t want to go alone. My sister runs a company here in Tennessee called ReLeaf Outings where we gather in groups and explore the magic healing of nature together. You’ll have new best friends in no time! If you are in our area, come on out!
21- Foraging Edible or Medicinal Plants and Fungi (Treasure Hunts) + Loving Awareness Walks to Get High
Next time you’re making love with your digital detox and submerging yourself in nature, start bringing your awareness to all the different elements, plants, animals, insects and fungi surrounding you. Pick something that interests you the most and start educating yourself on it. If you love flowers, see if you can find a local flower identification guide and start searching for wildflowers on your hike. If you think trees are the bees’ knees (they are) perhaps do the same with them.
One thing I’ve fallen in love with is mushroom foraging in the Pacific Northwest. Mycologists estimate there are around 10,000 known mushroom species, and this is just a fraction of what really exists. I get crazy high for the opportunity to dial in awareness to the outdoors and see if my intuition and the great earth can combine for some edible or medicinal finds. Along with gardening, foraging and gathering are some of the most naturally rewarding activities ever. But don’t just take. If you go out, bring a trash bag along with you and help keep Earth healthy. It’s all part of the abundance cycle.
22- Contagious Laughing High
This may seem bonkers, but an interestingly unique and effective way to pull yourself out of a funk is to push yourself into a self-contagious laugh. Stand with your hands on your hips and force yourself to start laughing. At first it will feel awkward because you aren’t happy and things probably aren’t feeling funny, but as you force a loud external fake laugh, it can easily domino into a few legit laughs. It only takes a few real laughs to start a chain reaction internally, sending out a self-contagious rampage of laughs. Do it right now, seriously. Pull your eyes away from this screen and spend the next few minutes laughing like a maniac.
There are also many studies (if you want to go deeper) on how laughing is contagious to others. If you start laughing, the light-hearted and fun energy can transfer to those around you, and it may increase the beauty of their moods, too. If you really want to start your days on a stellar note, put a little note next to your bed to laugh and start doing this every day when you wake up. I’m high AF laughing like a creative maniac with nipple clips on as I type this.
23- Alternative Light and Sound Experience High
The combination of unusual visions and sounds can create some trippy experiences. In the most basic form, simply placing yourself in environments outside the norm will allow alternative experiences to expand your consciousness and create a high state. Aside from submerging yourself in the infinite ever-psychedelic world of nature, there are many tools and creations that can help create expansion too.
You know how wacky you feel when you step into a black-light room with strobe lights, disco balls, some sweet jams, and your tie-dye undies? Well, there are masses of other experiences that parallel, including playing instruments, attending concerts, silent discos, virtual reality systems, the “psychedelic bathtub”, ecstatic dancing, planetariums, kaleidoscopes, laying under the stars naked, binaural beats, and more. Also, go watch a Disco Biscuits concert if you want your skull blown off.
24- Conscious Eating & External Flavor Sensory Deprivation High
Salt and pepper and hot sauce, OH MY! It seems like everything we eat these days needs to be covered in some spice, condiment, or fried to a crisp to get down our throats. While flavors can certainly be delicious and addicting, natural foods also have unique exquisite flavors of their own. Somehow we’ve created a world where we drown out the actual flavor profile of foods as they are meant to be, in exchange for an artificial topping. We have become so addicted to these toppings, we choke down our food at jet speed like we will never have food to eat again.
External flavor sensory deprivation is the act of removing all external spices, condiments, and external flavors from your food for an extended period so the natural flavor profiles flourish. When you consume anything in excess, your body and senses become numb to those things. As with drugs, the effect of the stimulation lessens over time. To fully experience the magical flavors that natural food has to offer alone and when mixed together, cut yourself off from pouring the salt all over your plate. Your senses will actually heighten and you’ll start to taste the true profiles of what you are consuming.
Conscious eating is the act of paying gratitude to your food source for its support of your health and the experience it creates for you. When combined with flavor sensory deprivation, you can create alternate consciousness experiences every time you eat. Instead of rushing your food down your throat, slowly add small bites to your mouth, close your eyes, and visualize as you chew. Where did this food come from? How grateful are you that this food sacrificed its life to nourish your body and pass its energy on so you can continue to live and carry energy? Who was involved in transporting this food to you? Did it come from the rich soil outside your home, or was it shipped through multiple states or countries to arrive on your tongue? What emotions come up when tasting and savoring? How does the first bite differ from the last?
If you implement conscious eating into your life, you’ll not only find happiness and gratitude in your meal experiences, but you’ll also carry that awareness to other areas of your life. And heightened awareness is one big beautiful way to never stop peaking.
25- 24-72 Hour Water Fasting High
Again, I’m not a doctor so I cannot tell you what will work for you, but water fasting has played a huge role in detoxing my body and allowing me to enter higher states of consciousness. Once a week I aim to carry one 24-hour period where I consume water and nothing else. For me, it’s easiest to start after dinner on Thursday and hold it until dinnertime on Friday. Nothing feels out of the ordinary for the first half, as I am eating and sleeping per usual. However, throughout the first 12-15 hours of Friday I enter a very altered state of mind, as my body isn’t absorbing the foods it is used to getting. I start out feeling very irritated, but once I push through my cravings for a certain amount of time, the hunger fades. I enter a very serene and calm high with clarity out the wazoo, and my energy levels feel fantastic. Colors are more vibrant and my awareness is more focused. Within this process, the body and organs have a chance to detox. I often receive clear downloads on my goals and visions during this time.
View a post on The One Day Water Fast here on Yogic Way of Life
Here is a great video from Dr. Zach Bush on Fasting and Finding Pause
26- Lucid Dreaming High
Lucid dreaming is essentially a dream where you, the dreamer, are aware that you are in a dream. By having this awareness, you can somewhat control the characters, journey, and direction of the dream toward something you are trying to manifest or learn. Some people naturally have an ability to lucid dream often, but if you are like me, it doesn’t come so easily. You have to train your brain.
Most of my life I didn’t remember dreams other than monstrous visions that woke me up with their power. Once I started keeping a dream journal, my intention was to try to remember what I was just thinking about when I woke up and write it down as fast as possible. By doing this, it became easier and easier to remember my dreams, like building a muscle.
There are many “techniques” that have been researched to help lucid dreaming, including The Reality Testing Method, Mnemonic Induction Lucid Dream (MILD), and Wake-Back-To-Bed (WBTB). There are also incredible natural herbs that can help induce more vivid and wacky dreams, including calea zachatechichi, ginkgo biloba, valerian root, mugwort, burdock and more.
More Ways to Get High Without Drugs
As you navigate your journey to expand your consciousness and welcome a new heightened awareness, you’ll journey into deeper experiences with profound expansions. If you find some methods you love, I urge you to continue your expansion to other methods that may seem foreign or strange to you. The more you explore, the more you’ll discover. Your happiness and understanding of the internal and external world is imminent if you keep expanding your mind.
Without creating an entire book on this subject alone, I wasn’t able to expand upon all the methods I have found helpful or still wish to explore, including hypnotherapy, ecstatic dance, reiki energy healing, tarot reading, excessive spinning, sleep deprivation, deep repetitive practice, the Zen power yell, commune living, music festivals, BDSM, extensive solitude, travel to ancient ruins and differing cultures, Vipassana, spontaneous gatherings, strag life meetups, infinity rooms, dream machines, Zen or stoic studies, orgone boxes, intergalactic space laser blasting, and more!
What are some ways that you’ve gotten high and expanded your consciousness without using drugs? I’d love to know in the comments below, or hit me up on instagram @heathfistpumps.
How to Get High Without Drugs – Never Stop Peaking Podcast
