The climate crisis has seen, in response to it, a worsening of many people’s mental health. Climate anxiety (distress related to climate change and its effects) and eco-grief (mourning the damage and loss seen in the natural world) are on the rise, and mental health professionals are noticing that more clients are experiencing these forms…
View Post
Things don’t always go smoothly in psychedelic-assisted therapy or during a psychedelic retreat. In an ideal world, a psychedelic experience would unfold as one hopes. Perhaps there are difficult moments, but they are easily worked through. More generally, people hope the experience will result in catharsis, resolution, and transformation. However, the reality is that psychedelic…
View Post
When participating in a psychedelic session becomes legal – in the form of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy or a retreat – this doesn’t open up this experience to everyone equally. In the psychedelic industry, there remains the issue of access inequality. Legal, regulated psychedelic sessions are typically expensive. The cost of psychedelic therapy differs depending on the…
View Post
On his site Ecstatic Integration, the writer Jules Evans published a post titled ‘Are you a psychedelic cultist?’ It features a ‘Psychedelic Cultism Questionnaire’ to help readers assess how ‘culty’ they are when it comes to psychedelics. It consists of eight statements – all in the vein of a rosy, utopian, ‘no bad vibes allowed’…
View Post
‘Inner healing intelligence’ is a term derived from Stan Grof that is frequently used in the context of MDMA- and psychedelic-assisted therapy. (The central idea behind the term certainly predates Grof, however.) The MAPS Manual for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (2015) – authored by Michael Mithoefer – places great importance…
View Post