It’s 106 miles to Tripville. We’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

You’re preparing for liftoff – gathering your essentials for an embryonic voyage into the shimmering unknown of a psychedelic experience. Sunglasses? Check. Playlist woven with inter-cosmic frequencies? Check. Trip toys to bend and melt your perception? Hell yes. 

Your fellow space cadets are set. Munchies to fuel the mind, body, and soul are fanny ass packed. You’ve got everything on hand to swim in Saturn’s rings like an intergalactic playground of Disneyland Tripiness. 

But wait — there’s something missing.

Something ancient. Something alive.

Herbs.

Smokable herbs are not just extras — they are allies, secret keys that can deepen your journey, harmonize your energy, and guide your spirit through the swirling landscapes ahead.

If you’re stepping into the portal of the unknown, herbs deserve a sacred place in that fanny ass pack of snacks, right alongside your music, your talismans, and your sense of wonder.

Here are five reasons why herbs are essential for your embryonic psychedelic grand ass adventure.

In the 1960s, Harvard’s Psychology Department famously dismissed Timothy Leary and Ram Dass for their controversial psilocybin research. Yet through their pioneering work, they revealed a crucial truth about psychedelics: the experience is profoundly shaped by set and setting.

Setting is the physical environment — the room, the objects, the sounds — and Ram Dass emphasized creating a space that radiates healing energy, filled with images, music, and objects that evoke life’s interconnectedness.

Set refers to the inner environment — your emotions, expectations, and most importantly, your intention. Preparing the mind requires reflection, clarity, and purpose. Rituals and rites of passage, Dass noted, can help anchor intention, offering the symbolic grounding young people deeply yearn for — a “marker stone” to honor the sacredness of transformation.

One powerful, often overlooked way to shape both set and setting is through smokable herbs.

Herbs weave themselves into the very fabric of the experience, setting the mood, grounding the tempo, and inviting a deeper connection to the moment. Their aroma, ritual, and presence can turn a room into sacred space and help attune the mind to the unfolding journey.

By consciously working with herbs, you invite deeper presence, intention, and spirit into the vast landscapes of psychedelic exploration.

Herbs are a living bridge that connect us back to nature — to our ancestral roots and our sacred place within the Earth’s rhythms. They ground us, calm the mind, and awaken the divine spark within by attuning us to the natural world’s silent language.

We are not separate from the Earth; we are part of Gaia, the living, breathing spirit of our natural Mother. Herbs offer a path back to this ancient kingdom. When we smoke or commune with them, we open our mind, body, and soul to the subtle intuition of the Earth itself.

In the midst of a psychedelic experience, herbs provide spiritual grounding. They weave the journey back into the living soil of our origins, reconnecting us with our herbal heritage and reminding us that all true visions are rooted in the wisdom of nature.

As the stoner-folk bard Todd Snider once mused in one of his rambling tales of LSD adventures, “If you take too much acid, a banana helps. And if you eat it, it really helps.”

In that same spirit, a fat spliff of smokable herbs can be your banana – a small, grounding ritual that gives your mind something tangible to hold onto as it launches into the stratosphere. It centers you, steadies your breath, and reminds your body how to be a body: inhale, exhale, heart beating in rhythm, feet stepping one in front of the other.

And yes, if you smoke it, it really helps – but even that part is optional. Sometimes, just holding the spliff is enough to tether you gently back to Earth.