About Carola Marashi M.A.

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My Journey back to psychedelics…

I woke up on Tuesday October 16^th 2017 with my usual ritual of starting my day with espresso and scrolling Facebook. Within an hour the floor from underneath me opened up and I fell into a dark chasm of depression.

Let me say that I woke up that auspicious morning intending to bask in my afterglow of birthday celebrations and public debut of my In2it Card Deck and Book.

Usually depression is experienced alone. Solo. Alienation, disconnection, isolation feeds the white knuckled grip of depression. Paradoxically, within the first 24 hours of the Me Too movement more than 4.7 million people were impacted. The massive exposure of unleashed repressed despair hijacked me. For the first time, with the courage of millions of women, I faced the repercussion of sexual violation. Before the Me Too Movement, for me, sexual violation was part of being a woman this lifetime. “Get over it” was my mantra. Witnessing hundreds of ‘friends’ share their personal ‘first time spoken’ experience of being raped, abused, and violated spilled literally in my lap, broke through a dense wall of denial. I faced my own personal experience of being date raped at age 15 and sexual abuse that I perceived as ‘normal’ of my chaotic childhood.

My beloved partner came home the evening of October 16^th to a ghost of me. Days later he introduced me to microdosing psychedelics. Along with seeing a therapist, I started microdosing 2-3 times weekly with psilocybin mushrooms. I can attest now over a year later, that for the first time in my life eating disorders and body image distortion  has loosened it’s grip on me. The depression doesn’t debilitate me now. I don’t get caught up in the loop of obsessive ruminating. Now I breathe and discover other ways to respond to the familiar thought processes.

Living in Portland Oregon where the ‘alternative psychedelic therapy’ network is vibrant and dynamic is another synchronistic blessing. Now there is an open forum to share alternative approaches to our current cultural mental health crisis.

I’m in the third act of my life at 60 years of age. Who knew that in the middle of global crisis, psychedelic medicine would become the antidote? Crawling out of depression with the aid of Psychedelic Integration Therapy I’ve made sense of my life in a way that’s of service to humanity. Soul searching with the eyes and ears of wisdom and tilted perspective I’ve awakened the courage to graciously receive the magic and synchronicity that’s held me since birth.

Growing up was (for me) like riding on a merry-go-round. First of all-I was born breach. Literally I entered this world feet first. Starting when I was 3 years old, I changed families like clockwork. After my parents divorced I moved from family to family about every 2 years. I lived in orphanages, in children’s homes, as a run-away, homeless, and eventually finished high school living in a foster home.

It was a miracle that I landed in foster care. At age 14, running away from a children’s home, I was hitchhiking to Corpus Christi from San Antonio in the middle of the night. A police officer picked me and my friend up. My friend spent the night in jail (he was 18 years old) and I spent the night with the police officer and his family in Karnes City. He said as he put me on a Greyhound bus to Corpus Christi “If you ever need a place to stay, you can live with my family.”

Months later, homeless and lost, I hitch hiked back to Karnes City. I knocked on the front door of the Police officer’s house. His wife opened the door. I said “Hi, remember me? I want to finish high school.” That became my first foster home.

My mantra that I held onto was “when the world spins, hold onto what stays the same”. Intuition became my compass as my outer world spun like a top on a glass surface.

Despite a chaotic childhood I was blessed to encounter psychedelics in my youth. In the absence of belonging to family, home and consistency, I found an abundance of synchronicity and Spirituality.

Auspiciously, I completed a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology. My core courses of Non-traditional Psychotherapy included Holotropic Breath work and Shamanism. This led me to Psychodrama as my internship and Ecstatic Dance where

I learned about ‘containers’. In Psychodrama, the therapist literally casts a spell by setting up the stage and leading a ‘warm-up’. Through enchantment, participants drop into their bodies and new stories unfold and become animated. Later in developing Body Choir Ecstatic Dance, we integrated psychodrama fundamentals within the form of expressive dance.

Paradoxically the more grounded I became, the more chaos churned inside me. I groped to grasp meaning and purpose.

Between the grunt and growl I discovered a purr of contentment.

Eventually, dance helped me stand still. Movement calmed me. Catharsis brought contentment.

I’ve become the Integration therapist I’ve always wanted.

As a trained Transpersonal Therapist, I help you melt fear and resistance for rapid evolution. As an Ordained Minister, I understand that being human is a spiritual practice. As a published author, I advocate speaking your truth.

Click HERE to schedule a session with me. You can schedule a FREE introductory call and see if we’re a good fit.