Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook — New Series

Radiant Beast explores metabolic healing and spiritual growth, reframing psychosis as an altered state of consciousness.

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When the Altered State Finds You First

Altered states of consciousness are having a pronounced cultural resurgence. From psychedelic-assisted therapy to breathwork and dreamwork, people are actively seeking to explore perception, deepen healing, and access experiences beyond ordinary awareness. But what happens when an altered state finds you first—before you’re ready, without a container, and without a process for integration?

Today, carefully facilitated psychedelic experiences are increasingly treated with reverence—emphasizing "set and setting," trained guides, and post-experience tools as essential to success—while spontaneous altered states continue to be pathologized as "psychosis" and approached solely as conditions to be eliminated.

Those hospitalized for psychosis are often given no meaningful guidance about their experiences, during or after. They frequently emerge feeling traumatized, ashamed, and broken. These extreme states are seen only as symptoms to be suppressed and forgotten, with no potential hidden wisdom or value of any kind.

But what if these states exist on the same continuum as those sought-after healing experiences, just more intense, unregulated, and, for now, unsupported by the standard of care?

I have experienced three manic psychotic episodes and was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder. After discovering metabolic therapies and the emerging science of metabolic psychiatry, my life has completely transformed. I have been using metabolic therapies as my sole form of treatment for over four years now*, and am only just beginning to look back on my experiences of mania with a sense of fascination instead of fear.

I don’t wish to romanticize psychosis—it is overwhelming, dangerous, and profoundly destabilizing, and I remain optimistic I’ll never have to endure it again. But when we begin to see those prone to psychosis as energetically sensitive, new possibilities emerge. Supported and grounded by metabolic strategies that help stabilize and regulate energy, this sensitivity can become a source of strength. Approaching psychosis through metabolic psychiatry allows us to see energetic sensitivity not as a flaw to correct, but as a meaningful signal, one that can guide prevention, treatment, and long-term stability, and support individuals in flourishing and continued self-development.

Metabolic psychiatry tells a new story—not just about how we treat symptoms, but about what might be causing them in the first place. It reframes psychosis as a form of energy dysregulation rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction.

This article marks the beginning of Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook, a new series exploring metabolic healing, altered states of consciousness, and transformative recovery. I’ll invite a reimagining of what the modern medical system calls “psychosis”—not merely as a pathology to suppress, but as a form of energetic overload that, when supported with the right tools, can become a catalyst for meaning, creativity, and ongoing growth. This is the first entry in a living workbook, an unfolding exploration we’ll undertake together.

(*Tapering medications can be dangerous and should be done gradually with provider support. Patients should also research safe practices and stay informed. Visit Metabolic Collective’s Safe Tapering for more resources.)

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I wrote The Beastly Girl poem during my first hospitalization for psychosis in 2012. It arrived seemingly out of nowhere, during what had appeared to be a promising chapter of my life. One month, I was a young social entrepreneur and MA student enrolled abroad with a full scholarship. The next, I was involuntarily committed to a psych ward, restrained by multiple people and forcibly injected with antipsychotics. I thought for sure they were murdering me. But I defied death and was reborn in another form.

The Beastly Girl

How did the story begin? I can’t quite remember. The ending is almost clearer than the beginning.... when there was just the word. What word? A word so sonorous that no one would dare speak it. A word that burns so brightly it almost appears violent, though in reality, its sheer, pure benevolence washes people clean of their most dangerous and inappropriate thoughts. The word is a spoken word that anyone could say, but it can only pass through the lips of the most courageous. Speaking the word is almost punishable; it leads to a conversation between two hallucinating people...a dangerously open, perhaps even vacuous space; a horizon too distant, a glass too full.

This is the story of one girl who dared to try and speak the word; not because she was courageous, or anything so grandiose, but because she was terribly sad. She looked around at the horror taking place at the abject corners of the world and felt, somehow, responsible, for all the crimes taking place there. She was born into a comfortable life, a home with beautiful clean bedsheets and all sorts of toys chosen with love just for her. She always felt entitled to this life.... until, one day, she decided to step beyond its beautiful, sparkling boundaries into a foggy place where the unknown loomed large and stretched out like a parachute, pulled taut from all sides. She had no idea what she was going to find there. It was like flying through the Bermuda Triangle. She shut her eyes and clenched her fists so tightly it felt like they would burst.

For when you speak certain words, they seem to take you away from yourself to a deep dark sea of metaphors where you must fight hard to merely keep a float. In this state, there seems to be big noises coming from small things. For example, the sound of air passing through a vent is like a roaring thunderstorm... one that could unleash a flurry of cold, lovely rain that would soothe the skin and feel amazing. But that rain never comes.

-Hannah Warren, 2012

Held against my will in a facility that reeked of disinfectant, I was told I couldn’t even go outside into the secure outdoor courtyard where other patients went for smoke breaks because I was a “flight risk.” And I understood what they meant. I had transformed. I no longer felt like a mere girl. I had become part celestial creature, a radiant beast. My mortal form had been shedding layer by layer. I had grown wings and a magical tail—invisible, made of electromagnetic goosebumps—pulling me toward adjacent, more vibrant dimensions. I was sure I had developed extraordinary strength and the ability to fly. If they let me into the courtyard, I would most certainly escape into the sky.

I still remember my first episode, and the two that followed, with visceral clarity. Mania, while terrifying, was also electric and expansive. The intensity, the symbolism, the overwhelming sense of cosmic significance: it felt like I was being written into an exhilarating mythic story. Unforgettably epic.

But for nearly a decade, I was so traumatized by my experience of hospitalization and subsequent “treatment” that I could find no beauty or silver linings in any of it. No meaning whatsoever. Only the most nightmarish elements stood out, and I saw it only as a void that had swallowed me whole, spinning me into a cruel consciousness blender. My episodes shredded my sense of self, distorted my understanding of reality, and left me decimated—unrecognizable to myself and others, plagued by deep depression and suicidality.

I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder: a black-box label that offered no meaningful explanation. No one could tell me what, exactly, had malfunctioned in my brain. Only that antipsychotics might keep me anchored to reality. But that reality felt much bleaker, darker, and more lifeless than the one I had known before.

I couldn’t tell where the illness ended and the medication side effects began. It all just felt like brain damage. And I believed it was permanent. That not only were the ambitious dreams I once held now unattainable, but my love of life, my creativity, intellectual curiosity, physical health—everything—would be numbed out, an excruciating but necessary trade-off for my sanity. I spent much of the next decade in a kind of suspended grief, a shadow of my former self—punctuated by two more episodes, triggered when I tried to discontinue medications due to intolerable side effects including substantial weight gain, cognitive impairment, fatigue, and emotional, cognitive, and creative blunting.

But everything changed in 2021, when I discovered the website of Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Christopher Palmer and first learned about ketogenic therapy—a year before the release of Brain Energy, his groundbreaking book linking psychiatric symptoms to metabolic dysfunction. I had no idea what to expect, but I gave it everything I had. That decision marked the beginning of a radical transformation.

Now, over four years later, I live with robust physical and mental health, with a vitality and mental-emotional-spiritual coherence I once believed impossible after my diagnosis. Metabolic healing hasn’t just stabilized me. It’s allowed me to reclaim my life, rebuild my sense of self, and reimagine what’s possible for my future. Perhaps most surprisingly, it’s also given me the strength and perspective to begin reinterpreting my past.

A Magnetic Future as a Gateway to Reconciliation with the Past

In 2022, the first year of my healing through ketogenic therapy, I came across a book by organizational psychologist and self-development writer Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Be Your Future Self Now. I discovered it at exactly the right time, just as I was beginning to feel alive again after years of feeling sedated and stunted.

One of Hardy’s core ideas struck me deeply: while it may seem like our present is shaped by our past, in truth, we’re pulled forward by the magnetic force of our future. We are goal-driven beings. Everything we do is, in one way or another, directed by a vision—conscious or unconscious—of who we are becoming. And the past is not static but malleable: something we can reinterpret and transform, even when traumatic, through the prism of our most compelling future.

Within a year of adopting a ketogenic diet, it became undeniable: my past had been pulled out from under me by a future more magnetic than I’d ever imagined. I already felt like a different person and sensed that an even brighter reality was just around the corner.

I was stunned that so few people were talking about ketogenic therapy for mental illness, that there were essentially no resources to help people like me. How could something so effective remain so unknown?

That changed in October 2022, when I discovered that Dr. Palmer would soon be releasing his book, Brain Energy. It was the first book I ever pre-ordered. I left a brief comment on one of his social media posts, sharing a bit of my story. To my surprise, he responded. That exchange led to a virtual meeting and an invitation to join a small group of volunteers helping spread the word about the emerging Brain Energy theory.

Through that work, I had the opportunity to regularly hear Dr. Palmer discuss the scientific nuances behind his theory, which links psychiatric symptoms to impaired mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are the organelles that perform complex functions in our cells, including the vital role of converting food and oxygen into energy. I came to see that the healing power of ketogenic therapy likely lies not only in the immediate shift from glucose to ketones as a fuel source, but also in the gradual process of improving mitochondrial quality and increasing their quantity over an extended period of time. I also learned that metabolic therapy is a broad term encompassing interventions that help the brain and body more effectively transform, regulate, and utilize energy. Without realizing it, I had already been practicing a full metabolic therapy regimen—not only ketogenic therapy, my cornerstone intervention, but also fasting, exercise, and breathwork.

Through this collaboration, in addition to gaining a foundational understanding of the Brain Energy theory and why ketogenic therapy has been so effective for me, I found purpose and community—people like me, using metabolic therapies to recover their lives and help others do the same. For the first time, I had a word for what I was experiencing: remission. And I came to realize that many others were experiencing it too.

In 2023, I shared my story publicly for the first time on the Brain Energy website. The experience of offering hope to others was deeply meaningful. It nurtured my own healing and ignited a lasting commitment to advocacy.

Radiant Beast: The Mitochondrial Pathway, “The best laid plans”

I then began outlining an idea for a book: Radiant Beast: The Mitochondrial Pathway. I built a website and wrote about the themes I wanted to explore—envisioning a hybrid of science-informed self-development memoir and literary journalism. I imagined it as a cathartic project that would present the fundamentals of metabolic psychiatry in a practical way for patients on healing journeys.

Not long after, I had the chance to meet Jan Ellison Baszucki, bestselling author and founder of Metabolic Mind. Inspired by her son’s transformative recovery through ketogenic therapy, she has since dedicated herself to advancing the field of metabolic psychiatry, helping countless others find hope and healing. I was grateful for the opportunity to thank her in person for her commitment to this vital and visionary work. That serendipitous encounter led to freelance writing opportunities at Metabolic Mind and, eventually, to a full-time role as Communications and Advocacy Manager in November 2023. The book had to wait, as my time and energy were quickly drawn into work that carried a sense of urgency.

My writing took the form of shorter articles on metabolic therapies and the healing process for the Metabolic Mind blog. I also had the exciting opportunity to help co-develop THINK+SMART, Metabolic Mind’s free email course with an eBook and worksheets, that offers a practical, metabolic framework for mental health. This one-of-a-kind tool was spearheaded by Jan and shaped by experts by experience like me: individuals who have used metabolic therapies to improve our brain health and mental wellbeing. It’s the blueprint I wish I’d had when I began—a practical guide to diverse metabolic strategies, their wide-ranging applications, and the essential role of individualization and clinical support, especially amid the uncertainties of an emerging field still rapidly taking shape.

Out of my original work with Dr. Palmer, I partnered with fellow volunteers to co-found Metabolic Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to grassroots movement-building in metabolic psychiatry and neurology. I now serve as its board president. I’m grateful every day for the chance to build meaningful connections with peers, families, clinicians, coaches, and scientists.

I’ve come to understand that healing has no fixed endpoint. After surviving severe symptoms of metabolic dysfunction, many of us—experts by experience—undergo a profound identity shift, a search for meaning in what we’ve endured. I’ve realized I’m not alone in my desire to revisit the past again and again. But rather than seeing this as stuckness, I’ve come to view it as a sign that my future is growing more magnetic: pulling harder, reshaping the past with greater force. In that urge to revisit and reframe, I see the powerful force of post-traumatic growth at work.

Redefining My Future: Writing Radiant Beast Now

Lately, people have been asking, When will you publish Radiant Beast? The short answer: I’ve been fully immersed in the urgent work of this movement, with little time for longform writing. But the upside is that my vision for the book has continued to evolve and I couldn’t be more excited about the new path I’m taking to bring it to life.

For a long time, I imagined writing Radiant Beast alone in the woods, a contemplative hermit relishing her newfound peace. But now, I see it differently: not as a solitary project, but as a living manuscript that will unfold here, through this blog—a co-created workbook, shaped by shared exploration of metabolic tools and the deeper questions at the heart of healing, transformation, and consciousness.

Four years into this journey, I look back at The Beastly Girl poem and see something I couldn’t before metabolic healing: not just chaos and trauma, but symbolism. Not just suffering, but invitation. Only with the clarity and stability metabolic therapies give me can I begin to excavate rich meaning from those surreal experiences. They no longer invoke only terror or feel like merely the dissolution of self. Now, I can see how they were attempts—expressed through crisis—to carve out a spiritual place in a world that often felt too brutal to survive in.

I can now see how those destabilizing episodes catalyzed deep shadow work, and how revisiting them with greater wisdom and understanding can support my continued evolution toward a more fearless, integrated, and actualized self.

And, increasingly, I see the importance of engaging in conversations that challenge and reimagine the language we use to describe and understand psychosis.

What Will Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook Actually Be About?

The spark for Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook emerged as I wrote an article, A Metabolic Awakening: Reframing Psychosis from Breakdown to Breakthrough. In that piece, I explored something very obvious that surprisingly had never occurred to me before: Dr. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and esteemed sleep researcher, points out in Why We Sleep that we all experience a form of temporary psychosis each night when we dream. For the first time, I realized that altered states aren’t anomalies—they’re an essential component of the human experience. Every morning, we emerge from a fantastical, soupy subconscious dreamworld. We all navigate a continuous dance between dissolution and reassembly of self on a daily basis.

My own prolonged altered states—triggered by energy dysregulation rooted in impaired mitochondrial biology—forced me to confront the fluidity of consciousness more directly than most.

In a conversation with Dr. Martin Picard, who is pioneering the new field of mitochondrial psychobiology, I learned how mitochondria as energy modulators may shape our very perception of the world. He describes the mind as an energy pattern—and reminds us that the only thing separating the living from the dead is the flow of energy.

Reflecting on the energetic upregulation that led to my symptoms of psychosis, helped me understand why my episodes felt so vivid, colorful, and electric. Energy isn’t just fuel: it’s the fabric of consciousness itself. My experience was dysregulated, yes, but also intensified: primal and divine, feral and luminous, terrifying and sacred. I was alive, immersed in an altered state with heightened voltage.

Throughout Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook, I will now refer to these episodes as prolonged altered energetic states of consciousness. When supported with tools to stabilize and regulate energy, I believe these states can offer profound insights—helping us grow into more resilient, integrated, and actualized versions of ourselves. I also believe we can learn to entrain our inherent energetic sensitivities—recognizing them not as pathologies to suppress, but as gifts that, with the right tools and guidance, can be carefully harnessed.

It’s been striking to realize how many of the metabolic interventions I rely on mirror ancient traditions designed for seekers: methods for remaining grounded while enabling exploration of altered states and deeper layers of consciousness.

In this emerging paradigm of mental healthcare—one rooted in energetic understanding—we need both metabolic tools for stabilization and frameworks for integration.

Learning to swim

Throughout this journey, I keep returning to a famous quote—often misattributed to Carl Jung but more likely adapted from Joseph Campbell:

“The difference between a madman and a mystic is that the mystic swims in the same waters in which the madman drowns.”

Our current medical model is akin to dragging someone to shore with a life vest, locking them in a room, and forbidding them from ever returning to the sea. Metabolic healing, by contrast, is about teaching people how to swim: how to safely explore the vast ocean of their own consciousness—its depth, mystery, and wonder—with the capacity to return to shore at will.

Some of history’s most influential mystics, scientists, artists, and visionaries are believed to have traversed altered states. Had they been overmedicated and sedated, their contributions might never have surfaced. We need a system that nurtures—not flattens—this potential, for the sake of both individual healing and collective progress.

I sometimes joke that I don’t need ayahuasca: I have my own endogenous plant medicine. My episodes contain both beauty and terror, and I’ve come to recognize all their messy contradictions. I hope never to feel trapped in an uncontrolled altered energetic state again. But I’ve found tremendous benefit in intentionally inducing brief, self-guided shifts in consciousness through practices like meditation, breathwork, lucid dreaming, and creative flow.

I’m not sure how to name the way I am— whether it’s neurodivergence or some form of cellular divergence, a biologically heightened energetic sensitivity that shapes how I move through the world. What I do know is that what once appeared as illness now feels like a gift: an innate part of me, and the source of both deep joy and a growing strength, as I learn to wield it with greater skill and care. My aim with Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook is to share metabolic therapies as powerful tools—equal parts cutting-edge science and ancient wisdom—that help people stabilize, integrate, and safely unlock their creative, philosophical, and spiritual capacities without fearing for their sanity.

This living workbook will:

• Share practical tools for regulating energy: ketogenic therapy, fasting, movement, and sleep optimization

• Explore non-substance practices for self-guided altered states: meditation, self-hypnosis, breathwork, dreamwork, and creative flow

• Reflect on ways to work with energetic sensitivity—how to manage and direct it with intention, rather than suppress or pathologize it

• Track emerging insights from the frontiers of metabolic psychiatry and mitochondrial psychobiology

Radiant Beast: The Open Workbook isn’t just for those with diagnoses. It’s for anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by sensitivity, emotion, or existential longing—for seekers, clinicians, mystics, scientists, philosophers, and artists. It’s for those who have walked the tightrope between breakdown and breakthrough in search of meaning. And it’s for all who long to understand and influence the energetic roots of experience through mindful, intentional practice.

Through metabolic psychiatry, we are shaping a new understanding: not just of mental illness, but of consciousness itself. And this is only the beginning.

Workbook Invitation: Join me!

I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it... We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. -CS Lewis

I began writing as a personal journaling practice—to define my healing modalities, stay accountable to them, and reflect on outcomes. I’ve recently realized this is still my favorite form of writing: an adventurous, generative practice that gives shape to my life in real time.

This blog will reflect that spirit. It will stay raw, exploratory, and grounded in experiences. I’ll share ongoing insights from my own metabolic therapies, as well as stories and reflections from others in our growing community.

But more than anything, I hope you’ll join me on this journey. Not just as a reader, but as a co-creator. Writing is a powerful tool for healing and self-discovery—and together, I believe we can also help build a new model for mental and neurological healthcare grounded in an energetic paradigm.

Whether you’re someone who has experienced an altered energetic state of consciousness, a clinician, coach, scientist or a seeker, I’d love your help exploring these questions:

• Have you ever had an altered state—through dreaming, meditation, or prolonged energetic intensity—that changed how you see yourself or the world?

• Do you believe insights from metabolic psychiatry and mitochondrial psychobiology should influence how we approach acute care for altered states? Why or why not?

• Has understanding the metabolic roots of brain function changed how you relate to your identity, your past, or your future?

• Are there ideas in this piece that resonate with you—or trouble you? Are there areas you’d like me to explore more deeply, for your own growth or to support others?

• Does this bring to mind any thinkers, books, or frameworks you believe should be part of this conversation?

You’re welcome to use these prompts in your own journal, in conversations with others, or as a launch point to share publicly. If you feel inspired, tag @Metabolic_Mind and @Radiantbeasing on X, or @metabolicmind and @radiant_beasting on Instagram, leave a comment on this blog, or record a video to share your reflections here.

The story’s not over. Let’s rewrite the ending, together.