Fireside Project (FP) partnered with clinicians and researchers in the psychedelics field to develop a follow-up survey of its psychedelic peer-supported helpline.
Results indicate the positive impact that just “having someone to talk to” has on people experiencing a difficult or bad trip.
The nonprofit’s peer support line was originally born out of Joshua White’s view of the psychedelics field. Scanning it through, he found several issues:
People need support throughout their experiences and their integration toward reducing risks “so they can fulfill the healing or potential of transformation of psychedelics.”
Also, it’s expensive and the U.S. mental health system is, as White puts it, “a disaster by many accounts.”
There will be an increasing need for psychedelic support professionals in the coming years, but current training programs usually don’t include experiential chapters because of psychedelics’ legal status.
The field is currently white-dominated, and “it’s no secret why that is, with 50 years into the War on Drugs that has targeted people of color and from other marginalized communities,” White says.
A support line could potentially be “engineered” to, with a flip of a …
