Welcome to Psychedelic Healing with Will Siu MD
Introducing my newsletter
Hello and welcome. I am excited (and touch nervous) to be sharing my first newsletter, Psychedelic Healing with Will Siu MD, with you. I’d like to cover three main things in this initial post: who I am, what I am aiming for, and what you can expect to find.
Who Am I?
My name is Will Siu and I live in upstate New York. I am an Oxford- and Harvard-trained psychiatrist and while I am proud of my academic accomplishments, it feels important to share with you that nearly all I know about real healing and how I practice with clients today, came after my time at these institutions. In fact, I had to unlearn most of what I was taught in my formal education to begin to understand what is really at the root of our suffering and to help people to find healing for themselves.
2012 was a critical year for me, I had just completed my first year as a physician at Harvard and found myself in crisis. I had been struggling with my mental health for a number of years since my father’s death. While undergoing the rigorous training of a junior doctor, I was prescribed numerous medications and tried various forms of therapy, which provided no relief. It also became clear to me that these treatment approaches were failing my patients. Although I didn’t fully recognize it then, the fragile sense of self tied to my academic accomplishments and professional pride that had kept me going for years, was crumbling. It had taken me 14 years of non-stop education since high school to get to that point. I had the painful realization I am a psychiatrist at Harvard and I can’t do anything to find relief for my suffering or that of my patients. Miserable with my work and unable to think of any way out, I became depressed and suicidal.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
At the same time I was going through this, my childhood friend living across the country began experimenting with psychedelics and suggested that I try them. I was conservative and afraid when it came to drugs, having been raised a Jehovah’s Witness and being exposed to the 80’s War on Drugs propaganda. I thought all drugs were addictive or could kill me. Eventually my mental health struggles amplified to the point to where I considered that if I was going to take my life anyway, I might as well see if psychedelics might be helpful. I had nothing to lose.
In 2014, I started trying psychedelics, and while they didn’t heal me, I had powerful experiences that shifted my perspective on who I was and the life decisions that had led me there. I also began to trust that if I was willing to honestly reassess my life and make different choices, there was good reason to believe that I could carve a different path forward for myself. Soon after that, things began to change quickly for me, and while I won’t go into full detail now, I’ll share that it’s been an adventure. Along the way, I met Rick Doblin, PhD and Gabor Maté, MD, who would become mentors (you can listen to a project I created with them on Audible). As trust in myself grew along with my experience with psychedelic healing, I was asked to speak about psychedelics widely to public audiences around the world, to teach and train mental health professionals, and I was even featured on a Netflix show with Gwyneth Paltrow (The goop Lab).
Throughout it all, I remain most grateful for what I’ve learned about healing, living, and being able to help others transform their lives. In creating Psychedelic Healing with Will Siu MD, I hope to share what I’ve learned in the past decade, with you.
Goals of Psychedelic Healing with Will Siu MD
The main aim of this newsletter is to create a central space to share my writing about healing with psychedelics. I hope to provide wise, accessible, and practical educational material to help those curious about incorporating psychedelics into their healing journeys.
I also hope to grow alongside you. For some time I have wanted to take steps towards sharing more of my writing more regularly and eventually, through books. I see this newsletter as a way to experiment, encourage myself, and learn more about writing as an expressive method. So I look forward to having this be a place to also learn from my community of readers.
What You Can Expect
-Receive a weekly newsletter from me in your email, each Sunday.
-Articles will alternate between two categories: Psychedelic Lessons and Reflections.
Psychedelic Lessons will include accessible and practical educational content designed to help you learn to incorporate psychedelics into your healing toolbox.
Reflections will include my insights into a topic, recommendations, personal stories, and more.
-All newsletter subscribers will have access to free articles each month. While paid subscribers ($5/month) will have access to all articles and archives, in addition to my gratitude for you support of my writing.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
As a psychiatrist and colleague of Will for over a decade I've long considered him one of the preeminent thinkers in the world of psychedelics. Transcending beyond the world of double blind trials and manualized therapies Will explores and discusses the application of psychedelics to the deeply human part of psychological suffering. I look forward to him sharing these insights that I've come to know personally with a broader community. Anyone who is a serious student, practitioner, or simply an enthusiast of psychedelics should subscribe and follow along.
I am an art therapist in New York who just finished psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy training from the California Institute of Integral Studies and am very glad I found your newsletter. Looking forward to reading more!