Cancer, Psychedelics, and Self-Compassion

When I was diagnosed with cancer at twenty-six, I remember the guilt more than the fear.

Guilt for being a burden to my fiancée. Guilt for derailing our wedding plans. Guilt for interrupting the healthy future she'd imagined. Guilt for needing so much care. Guilt for not being strong enough. Guilt for being sick at all.

Twenty years later, after countless surgeries and endless treatments, much of that self-lacerating guilt continues. Every scan. Every relapse. Every moment when my body or my mind fails to do what it should—more evidence that I'm failing the people I love.

And beneath all that guilt sits something even more fundamental: I don't feel safe in my own body. How could I? My body is literally trying to kill me.

This realization hit me during a recent psychedelic journey: Of course I feel anxious and unsafe in the world, because I feel anxious and unsafe in my own skin. The enemy isn't out there. It's in here. In the cells that won't stop dividing. In the tumors that keep growing. In the body I inhabit but can no longer trust.

Cancer patients talk about ‘batting cancer’. And our government talks about the ‘war on cancer’ With all of this militant framing, it’s no wonder I've spent two decades fighting myself.

But here's what I'm slowly learning through psychedelic medicines: the war itself might be the problem. The self-judgment. The harsh internal voice. The belief that my body is an adversary rather than the only home I have.

Psychedelics won't cure my cancer. They won't eliminate my physical pain. But they're teaching me something I couldn't learn any other way: how to have compassion for myself.

Even for the body that's trying to kill me. Especially for the body that’s trying to kill me. 

The Second Arrow We Shoot at Ourselves

During my recent podcast conversation with Angela Amirault, a psychedelic-assisted therapist at Altered Healing, she shared an observation that stopped me cold.

"We judge other people by their behaviors. But we judge ourselves by our intentions," Angela explained. "So we have a bad thought, then we're like, ‘Well, that makes me a bad person.’”

We have no idea what's happening in other people's minds. But we know every harsh thought, every moment of weakness, every flash of anger or fear or resentment in our own. And we often judge ourselves harshly for it.

This is what is known as the ‘second arrow’ in Buddhist teaching. The first arrow is the suffering itself—the cancer, the pain, the fear. We can control the first arrow of suffering. But the second arrow is what we do to ourselves in response. The self-criticism. The shame. The belief that we should be handling this better. We should be able to control the second arrow, but often we cannot.

For cancer patients, the second arrows are often endless: I should be more positive. I should be braver. I shouldn't burden others with my needs. I shouldn't feel sorry for myself. I should be grateful just to be alive.

The cancer is hard enough. Why do we make it harder by attacking ourselves for how we experience it?

When My Body Became the Enemy

Living with cancer can create a particular kind of bodily alienation.

Early in my diagnosis, I told myself: "My body is sick, but I'm not sick." It was a coping mechanism—a way to preserve some sense of a ‘healthy self’ separate from an ‘unhealthy body’. But it also created a dangerous split. A war between "me" and "my body" as if they were separate entities.

And the longer I've lived with cancer, the more alienated I've become. My body won't do what I need it to do. It produces pain constantly. It grows tumors. It fails. It betrays me.

How do you have compassion for something that's literally trying to kill you?

This question haunts me. And it's one that psychedelic medicines are helping me approach differently—not by resolving it, but by creating space to sit with it without the usual defensiveness or despair.

What Cannabis Taught About Turning Toward

Angela described her own journey with cannabis in a way that resonated deeply with my experience.

She had used cannabis recreationally for years, often to numb anxiety. Angela shared, "I would get home and be like, ‘I would love to smoke a joint. I'd really love to dampen down the emotion. I would really like to chill it out a little bit.’"

But in her first intentional cannabis journey—done with therapeutic support, with proper set and setting—something different happened. "I turned towards that feeling. And saw that the anxiety was just on top of deep grief and wells of sadness."

The anxiety wasn't the real problem. The anxiety was what she could tolerate feeling. Underneath was the grief she'd been avoiding.

"It wasn't until I felt safe enough to sit with it and that could come up," Angela explained. "And instead of the anxiety, which was just the emotion I was comfortable with, there was the grief I actually needed to process."

This distinction matters tremendously. The surface emotion—anxiety, anger, irritation—is often protecting us from something deeper and more vulnerable. Something we don't feel equipped to face alone.

Cannabis can temporarily numb those surface emotions. But when used intentionally in safe containers, cannabis can help us turn toward what we've been turning away from. Not because the medicine forces anything, but because it creates conditions where we finally feel safe enough to look.

Psychedelic medicines can numb. Psychedelic medicines can heal. The difference is in the intentionality of how we use them. 

The Compassion That Emerges

"One of the most important things about all psychedelic medicines is compassion for self," Angela reflected on her work across cannabis, ketamine, and psilocybin. "We can sit so deeply with our experience and we're like, ‘Man, that was hard. That was really difficult. But I survived it.’"

This is what I'm slowly learning. Not that my body isn't sick. Not that the cancer isn't real or dangerous. Not that I should pretend everything is fine.

But that I've survived something incredibly difficult. That carrying this disease for twenty years while trying to live, work, love, and be present for others—that takes strength I rarely acknowledge.

That my body, even while sick, has kept me alive through eleven surgeries. Has healed after each one. Has tolerated seven months of chemotherapy and kept functioning.

That maybe my body isn't my enemy. Maybe it's doing the best it can under really difficult circumstances.

During that recent psychedelic journey where I realized I don't feel safe in my own body, something else emerged too: grief. Grief for the body I used to have. Grief for the future I won't get. Grief for all the things cancer has stolen from me.

And beneath the grief, something softer. Something that felt like tenderness toward this broken, scarred, tumor-riddled body that has carried me this far.

Not absolute acceptance. Not perfect peace. But something closer to compassion.

The Ongoing Practice

I want to be clear: one psychedelic journey didn't fix my relationship with my body. Psychedelics aren't magic. They're not cures. They're catalysts for work that continues long after the medicine wears off.

"What if healing could be easy?" Angela asks her clients. "What if it could be much more simple than we were led to believe?"

But she's also honest about the ongoing nature of it. The integration. The practice. The returning again and again to insights that are easy to forget in daily life.

I still feel alienated from my body most days. I still struggle with the guilt. I still shoot second arrows at myself constantly.

But now I notice when I'm doing it. And sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I can pause. Can recognize the harshness. Can ask: would I talk to someone I love this way?

Would I tell someone else living with terminal cancer that they're not brave enough? That they should handle it better? That they're a burden?

Of course not. I'd have compassion for their struggle. I'd honor their strength. I'd witness their suffering without judgment.

Maybe I can learn to do that for myself. Maybe that's what psychedelic medicines are teaching me. Not how to eliminate suffering—that's not possible with cancer. But how to suffer with a little more kindness toward myself.

How to carry the burden with a little less shame. How to inhabit this failing body with a little more grace. How to live with a little more self-compassion. 

Let's journey together.

To connect with others exploring self-compassion in their cancer journey, reach out to community@healingcancerjourneys.org