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Guide for Guides: Ethical Trauma-Informed Psychedelic Support
One of the most powerful aspects of psychedelics is their capacity to help people access and work with deeply buried trauma. Yet this capacity is a double-edged somatically- and psychologically-stored trauma responses can overwhelm psychedelic journeyers, and/or catch them off-guard if they are imbibing recreationally.
Recently, calls to make various realms of care (such as medicine, spiritual communities, and personal development work) “trauma-informed” have fortunately taken root. Surprisingly, the psychedelic community has only recently fully embraced the need for trauma-informed practice, and the ethics that go along with it.
Organizations such as MAPS have developed important ethical guidelines for psychedelic practitioners in a professional therapeutic context. Nonetheless, professional therapy is only one of the four contexts in which someone might space-hold (guide, facilitate, or care) for someone in a psychedelic experience, in which trauma reactions might arise.
Guide for Guides makes a unique contribution to the literature on psychedelic spaceholding by delineating these four different
(1) professional (including therapy and paid guiding experiences)
(2) peer-to-peer space-holding (“trip-sitting”)
(3) co-imbibing with friends
(4) “in the wild”: psychedelic risk reduction and emergencies at festivals, concerts, etc. (This category includes professionally-trained psychedelic first responders, and non-professional "good samaritans")
The first context has thankfully received a great deal of attention. However, it is also the context with the most clear-cut and formalized ethical boundaries already developed as best practices. Trip-sitting, and/or co-imbibing with friends are more informal contexts, which are more common than therapy or first responding, and allow for a wider range of interaction between participants.
This wider range presents both promises and perils. Many things that would be likely inappropriate in a therapeutic or first-responder context (such as extensive physical contact, co-imbibing substances, or highly active co-creative guiding) might be appropriate and even beneficial among friends. Furthermore, there is a vast difference in the way that therapists might respond to trauma issues arising in psychedelic space, versus trip-sitters, versus co-imbibing friends, versus a first-responder helping someone with a psychedelic emergency “in the wild.”
Until now, there has not been a guide that helps psychedelic explorers distinguish between the different types of space-holding they might offer or receive, compares and contrasts the ethical requirements of boundaries of each, and educates people (including non-professionals) about appropriate responses to trauma issues within each context.
This discussion of the four different contexts allows for a much more detailed and nuanced discussion of the ethics of spaceholding than has previously been shared.
This depth is possible because the ethical issues and questions are vastly different depending on which context one is in. In addition, a great deal of ethical issues arise in the process of determining which context one is in and which qualifications and obligations one has within each context. Thus, books that do not discuss multiple contexts of spaceholding miss the high proportion of ethical considerations that arise in the contrast between and selection of spaceholding contexts.
At a time when psychedelics are becoming corporatized, and legions of “suits,” “tech bros,” and “weekend shamans” are coming into the field with profit in their eyes and little experience with the
Recently, calls to make various realms of care (such as medicine, spiritual communities, and personal development work) “trauma-informed” have fortunately taken root. Surprisingly, the psychedelic community has only recently fully embraced the need for trauma-informed practice, and the ethics that go along with it.
Organizations such as MAPS have developed important ethical guidelines for psychedelic practitioners in a professional therapeutic context. Nonetheless, professional therapy is only one of the four contexts in which someone might space-hold (guide, facilitate, or care) for someone in a psychedelic experience, in which trauma reactions might arise.
Guide for Guides makes a unique contribution to the literature on psychedelic spaceholding by delineating these four different
(1) professional (including therapy and paid guiding experiences)
(2) peer-to-peer space-holding (“trip-sitting”)
(3) co-imbibing with friends
(4) “in the wild”: psychedelic risk reduction and emergencies at festivals, concerts, etc. (This category includes professionally-trained psychedelic first responders, and non-professional "good samaritans")
The first context has thankfully received a great deal of attention. However, it is also the context with the most clear-cut and formalized ethical boundaries already developed as best practices. Trip-sitting, and/or co-imbibing with friends are more informal contexts, which are more common than therapy or first responding, and allow for a wider range of interaction between participants.
This wider range presents both promises and perils. Many things that would be likely inappropriate in a therapeutic or first-responder context (such as extensive physical contact, co-imbibing substances, or highly active co-creative guiding) might be appropriate and even beneficial among friends. Furthermore, there is a vast difference in the way that therapists might respond to trauma issues arising in psychedelic space, versus trip-sitters, versus co-imbibing friends, versus a first-responder helping someone with a psychedelic emergency “in the wild.”
Until now, there has not been a guide that helps psychedelic explorers distinguish between the different types of space-holding they might offer or receive, compares and contrasts the ethical requirements of boundaries of each, and educates people (including non-professionals) about appropriate responses to trauma issues within each context.
This discussion of the four different contexts allows for a much more detailed and nuanced discussion of the ethics of spaceholding than has previously been shared.
This depth is possible because the ethical issues and questions are vastly different depending on which context one is in. In addition, a great deal of ethical issues arise in the process of determining which context one is in and which qualifications and obligations one has within each context. Thus, books that do not discuss multiple contexts of spaceholding miss the high proportion of ethical considerations that arise in the contrast between and selection of spaceholding contexts.
At a time when psychedelics are becoming corporatized, and legions of “suits,” “tech bros,” and “weekend shamans” are coming into the field with profit in their eyes and little experience with the
322 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 27, 2023
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