Psychedelics and Creativity in Older Age

Psychotherapist Jayne Gumpel on Poetry, Permission and Taking Up Painting in her 70s

All artwork by Jayne Gumpel

Someone on the Signal group of psychedelic practitioners recently shared a poem that very elegantly captured the work of integration. You can read the poem here.

I wanted to learn more about the poet, Jayne Gumpel, and discovered that she is a psychotherapist in her mid-70s, who works with ketamine. She also publishes a poem every day on Substack.

A woman so creatively prolific in her elderhood is someone I want to know. Happily, I found that she was willing to connect. We spoke over zoom from her home in Woodstock, New York – where she’s lived for the past five years.

I have to say that my psilocybin trip when I turned 70, almost 5 years ago, was a game changer. What got downloaded to me was that I had a right to live my own life and I didn’t have to take other people with me. That I could just enjoy life for the sake of it – which was of course a big message for me because I’ve always been a caregiver and have always had to put others in front of me. That was such a beautiful experience – letting go of those attachments. There was so much spaciousness. Right after that, I moved from Manhattan to Woodstock.

On her poetry writing practice, Jayne explains:

My poetry comes more from sitting for 40 years listening to people in their suffering and holding space for them. Getting out of my own way. Not letting my ego interfere. That’s a practice that only time can give you as a therapist.

Read this recent poem about Ketamine

Jayne was also happy to share that she recently started an abstract painting class at the Woodstock Art School.

I hadn’t taken an art class since the Girl Scouts. It’s just not anything I thought I was good at. I had no skills that I’d learned or been taught…

Painting is a release. And I don’t care what it looks like. It’s not about the end goal – it’s about the process. I wake up in the morning and I’m so excited. I want to paint! I want to write poetry and I want to paint!

In a subsequent email, Jayne described how her experiences as a psychonaut have informed her creative process, particularly now in older life:

I used LSD in my youth, and as an elder I microdose it. I also use mushrooms 2 to 3 times a year for the past 7 years. There is a particular kind of flowering that can happen later in life using psychedelics….. not loud, not urgent, but deeply alive.

Creativity, for me, has become less about striving and more about allowing. After years of doing, achieving, and organizing a life, something has softened. The mind is still sharp, but it no longer grips in the same way.

Whether through poetry or abstract painting, I find myself entering spaces that feel less constructed and more discovered. The work is not about being good-it is about being honest. And in that honesty, something opens.

I care a lot more about what is real, and a lot less about what is expected. It feels, quite simply, like coming home to a part of myself that was always there, waiting.

Aging, I am learning, is not a narrowing -it can be an expansion. There is a freedom that comes when you are no longer trying to prove yourself. The edges of identity loosen, and curiosity returns in a quieter, more enduring way.

I notice that I care a lot more about a lot less, and a lot less about a lot more.

What matters rises naturally: connection, expression, presence. What falls away is the noise—the comparison, the urgency, the need to be seen a certain way.

Creativity becomes less about output and more about relationship—with the moment, with the materials, with the mystery itself. And in that relationship, there is balance, joy, and a kind of ease I could not have forced earlier in life.

So as an older person, creativity is actually what makes me feel most alive. And really probably as happy as I’ve ever been in my life.

---

BOOK LAUNCH Updates: Soft Launch July 7, 7 PM at Busboys and Poets, Takoma, DC, then July 9 in New York City, hosted by the Psychedelic Assembly. More details to follow!

And it’s not too late to sign up for the webinar I’ll be offering on Psychedelics and the Reimagining of Aging. It’s free to attend!