More importantly: How can you legally access psychedelics for mental health?
What you need to understand about the difference between psychedelic guides and psychedelic therapists is twofold:
- Most psychedelic guides are not licensed psychotherapists.
- Most licensed psychotherapists are not psychedelic guides.
Over the next few years, this pretty-simple distinction is going to get a lot more complicated. That’s because some states are now in the process of creating legal categories for psychedelic guides who aren’t therapists.
But for now, the BIG difference between a psychedelic guide and a psychedelic therapist is that psychedelic guides usually haven’t undergone in-depth training in how to provide psychotherapy. They also haven’t necessarily gone through training informing them about the laws and ethics of best practice.
Translation: A psychedelic guide can use whatever standards of practice they want when working with you, and you have no idea what those standards might be. By contrast, a licensed therapist will be abiding by a standardized set of rules determined by the state where they practice and by the ethical codes of their professional associations.
Now, I’m not at all suggesting that using an unlicensed psychedelic guide is a bad choice. Many of these guides are reasonable, ethical people.
More importantly, lots of therapists have no experiences with psychedelics. You don’t want someone who doesn’t understand psychedelics—read: ALL the ways a psychedelic experience can unfold—to be sitting with you through your experiences.
Does this mean you can’t hang on to your regular therapist if they aren’t a psychedelic veteran?
No, but (you knew there’d be a but): This does mean that your regular therapist needs to be totally on board with using psychedelics to expand your journey of self-awareness.
If they’re enthusiastically supportive, you’re probably in good hands. Though many therapists have not had mystical or out-of-body experiences with psychedelics, some have indeed had this type of experience without psychedelics. The ability to integrate wisdom from these experiences into your daily life is one of the core competencies you’ll want your psychedelic therapist to have. If your therapist can’t delve into this realm comfortably, you might need to change therapists.
What makes for a good sitter?
Whether they’re a guide or a therapist, the one thing you’ll absolutely need from the person sitting with you during your psychedelic experiences is: total comfort with the wide variety of physical and mental phenomena that can arise during a psychedelic experience. (It’s preferable, but not required, that this comfort comes out of their own personal experiences.)
The best sitters…
- Have put into perspective the intense mental aspects of their own psychedelic experiences
- Have seen and felt the complete range of physical intensity that can come from high-dose psychedelic experiences
If your sitter doesn’t have such experiences under their belt, they could get anxious when your own experience becomes physically intense. When the going gets rough, your sitter’s own experiences with psychedelic intensity will give them the confidence and competence that you’ll be needing from them.
So, why aren’t more therapists trained as psychedelic guides?
It’s pretty simple. Most psychedelics are illegal in most places. As a group, we therapists tend to like following the rules.
Even if a therapist were interested in becoming a psychedelic guide, they’d be in a predicament. There are certification programs out there to train therapists in guidance for MDMA and psilocybin. We therapists love certification programs. Those pieces of paper make us feel extra legitimate!
Unfortunately, the content of most of these programs is focused on the ethics and legalities of being a psychedelic therapist. This is all great and important info.
But guess what doesn’t happen in those trainings?
Therapists don’t get to actually experience the psychedelics they’re “learning” about because, well, said psychedelics are illegal. Instead, therapists spend the training watching videos of other therapists working with people who are taking the psychedelics. (In these videos, both patients and therapists are legally in the clear as participants in research studies.)
Yes, you heard me right.
The very thing that therapists really need experience with—i.e. the psychedelic—is exactly what they don’t get trained in. Instead, they receive more training in laws, ethics and how to be a “trauma therapist.” They don’t get training in entering the unknown that is a psychedelic state with the psychedelic in question—and in using their therapist skills to integrate those insights into their daily lives.
This all begs the question: How are therapists expected to get actual psychedelic experiences in order to legitimize these certifications?
We’re supposed to get them through workshops in intensified breathwork or hypnosis.
Both of which can be stopped at any time, and neither holds a candle to the physical intensity that comes from mental-health doses of MDMA or psilocybin mushrooms.
Or we’re supposed to gain experience through ketamine therapy, which is a completely different physical experience from MDMA or psilocybin.
“Psychedelically-trained” therapists
“Psychedelically-trained” therapists will be totally supportive of your choice to use psychedelics.
They’ll perhaps help you talk about, and integrate wisdom from, these experiences into your daily life.
However, they’re not particularly qualified to sit with you during a mental-health dose of a traditional psychedelic—because they don’t have any idea what that’s really like.
Most therapists don’t want to pay thousands of dollars for a training where they don’t get experience with the psychedelic in which they’re supposed to be gaining competence.
Most therapists don’t want to be trained in a practice that’d put them in a legal gray area.
Deep down, most therapists don’t want to know that they’re ethically out of bounds in portraying themselves as competent in psychedelic guidance—without actually having had extensive psychedelic experience.
What if you want a competent psychedelic guide who’s also a therapist?
You can explore the community of therapists who work with the only federally-legal psychedelic available. That psychedelic is ketamine.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can grab my book, The Beginner’s Guide to Ketamine Therapy for Mental Health.
