#80 Sex, Psychedelics, and Relationships as Tools for Healing with Rici Liliya#80 Sex, Psychedelics, and Relationships as Tools for Healing with Rici Liliya
Call To Courage Podcast
Gareth Pickering and Rikki Lillian talk about using conscious relationships, sexuality and psychedelic medicine as tools for deep personal healing and growth. They share their own experiences with radical honesty, sex addiction, trauma and San Pedro to show how intention and structure can transform intimacy into a powerful healing practice.
30:57•31 Oct 2026
Sex, Psychedelics and Radical Honesty: Using Relationships as Tools for Healing
Episode Overview
- Radical honesty in relationships needs courage, a safe container and non-judgemental receiving to prevent small breaks of trust from accumulating.
- Clear agreements, boundaries and a shared vision help couples treat their relationship as a space for growth rather than expecting “happily ever after”.
- Understanding each partner’s wounding allows for spacious, compassionate communication instead of reactive behaviour and repeated conflict.
- Sexuality and lovemaking, when approached consciously and with clear intention, can support healing, intimacy and even manifestation instead of fuelling shame and addiction.
- Psychedelic medicines like San Pedro are framed as helpful when used with preparation, intention and integration, especially in combination with tantra and body-based work.
“Your relationship is a soul contract for personal growth. And growth is never easy because your relationship is going to mirror all the parts of yourself that are ready to come up and be healed and integrated.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation between Gareth Pickering and his partner, Rikki Lillian, brings a raw look at sex, psychedelics, and relationships as powerful tools for healing long-held wounds. Gareth and Rikki talk openly about building a “conscious relationship” where honesty, safety and clear agreements come before fairy-tale ideas of romance.
They share how practising radical honesty in everyday moments – even around money fears or emotional triggers – can either build trust or erode it slowly over time.
As Gareth puts it, “those small little paper cuts will eventually kill the energy in the container because I'm suddenly not the person that I really am inside.” Rikki, a women’s coach, transformational guide and tantric practitioner, explains how understanding each other’s wounding and creating shared visions and boundaries has helped them turn their relationship into a space for deep personal growth.
For anyone dealing with addiction or compulsive behaviours, Gareth’s story of sex addiction and his explanation of how shame can drive addictive cycles (including around alcohol) will feel very familiar. Sexuality and intimacy are treated as serious healing tools here, not throwaway topics. The pair talk about intentional lovemaking, using sexual energy for manifestation, and why “never waste an orgasm” has become a mantra for making sexual energy work in service of healing, rather than shame.
They also talk about working with the psychedelic medicine San Pedro, stressing intention, preparation and integration, and how combining it with tantra and lovemaking has helped unlock trauma stored in the body in ways talk therapy never touched for Rikki.
This is a candid, sometimes playful, sometimes intense conversation that might get you asking: what would change if your relationships, intimacy and even your use of substances were treated as conscious tools for healing instead of sources of guilt and secrecy?
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