Who Guides the Guide? The Wild West of Psychedelic Coaching
In the race for enlightenment, what safeguards are in place to ensure your psychedelic coach has the skills & experience necessary for the task at hand?
Indigenous cultures required years of experience and training to initiate a shaman, teacher, or psychedelic guide.
Today, the booming psychedelic scene welcomes a new generation of psychedelic guides and coaches — ranging from qualified psychotherapists to underground “guides” in sketchy settings.
In this rapidly changing space, there are often more questions than answers: Who is really benefiting from these certification programs? Do we really need them? What makes a guide underground? What makes a guide at all?
As the market — and prices — continue to grow, evaluating these questions is crucial for efforts moving forward.
My 5-MeO Story
I found “Frank” on Instagram through a mutual follower. I found his status as a yin yoga teacher intriguing — I’d always wanted to take yin yoga instructor training myself to help deepen my practice. I started following him for no reason other than to just observe the comings and goings of someone living a radically free lifestyle.
One day, a single 24-hour Instagram story offering dimethyltryptamine (DMT) ceremonies caught my eye. Feeling the call of the drug (and not knowing where else I could find it or a trip sitter to guide me,) I reached out.
Frank charged $111 for the ceremony — a fair price, in my opinion, for a somewhat obscure and illegal psychedelic. After weeks of stomach aches and nerves, the windy March day came and he was in my house, leading me through breathwork practices to prepare.
We started with the less powerful N,N-DMT before moving on to a higher dose of the 5-methoxy-N,N-DMT (5-MeO-DMT). As a non-smoker (I quit!), I found vaping challenging — it would catch in my throat and I struggled to breathe it out.
I won’t go into a full trip report here, but I came out blissful and somewhat emptier. The whole experience lasted around two hours from his arrival to his leaving.
At home with my partner, I fell asleep early and had strange dreams. In a few days, Frank messaged me to ask me how I’m integrating and coping.
Some professional facilitators would find this experience “unethical,” but it was exactly what I wanted — a private ceremony at home. I had time alone to integrate and process the experience however I want to, with just a gentle reminder to do so.
Underground Guides
My experience, simplified and affordable, may have worked for me, but for others, it may not be ideal. Guides, drugs, and experiences vary greatly in the underground world and it’s important to research whoever you go with.
Dario Guiffrida straddles the line between the underground and the medical. An Italian-born traditional medicine man, Sundancer, and Vision Quester with over 15 years of training in Ecuador, he is also an organizational psychologist with a degree in Psychology of the Workplace and Organizations from Sapienza University in Rome.
Guiffrida facilitates ceremonies and experiences like sweat lodges, sacred pipe rituals, and vision quests. He states, after over a decade of practice, his training is still not over.
His journey to becoming a spiritual facilitator involved a minimum of eight years of spiritual fasting and ritual tribal training in the mountains of Ecuador — four of which were in isolation on a vision quest.
“After these eight years, you start to prove if you have the fabric to be a healer.”
Guiffrida recalls shadowing his teachers, watching how they worked, and integrating himself with the local community. Until they started to trust him and come to him and saw his commitment to the work of the elders of the community, he watched and was thankful to observe.
“I didn’t change the tradition as I received it,” he says. “In my lineage, we do what we always do.” He tries to go back to Ecuador once a year to revisit the elders who taught him, and to reconnect with the medicine.
To be a healer, “the healer needs to be a part of a community,” he says. “Only the local community can guarantee that he is a healer and that his treatments work.”
Accreditation & Facilitator Training
Part of the psychedelic renaissance has included the sudden creation of psychedelic facilitator training programs. Each claims to increase access and accessibility for those seeking treatment through psychedelics.
For Sarah H., a recent graduate of Oregon’s InnerTrek training system, the program “absolutely elevated” her knowledge. “I am so much more informed … I now know what I don’t know.”
InnerTrek offers a six-month, online program and doesn’t require practitioners to have experience with psychedelics to attend. Although Sarah says students do have the option to experience a ketamine infusion and most students did have a personal background with psychedelics.
However, “there were therapists, who, prior to the program, did not have experience with psychedelics.”
Should Facilitators Have Experience with Psychedelics?
Experience with the medicine, according to 5-MeO-DMT facilitator, educator, and Tandava Retreats co-founder Joel Brierre, is “one hundred, one hundred percent” necessary.
“Psychedelics are very different from other medications,” Joel says, and, often, only someone with past psychedelic experience can understand what the patient is going through. He embarks on a journey with 5-MeO-DMT around “once a quarter” or at least twice a year to remind himself of what his guests are experiencing.
In addition to running Tandava Retreats and facilitating 5-MeO experiences, Brierre and his partner, Victoria Wueschner, also run F.I.V.E, a year-long educational platform-turned-training program for 5-MeO-DMT facilitators.
A prerequisite for their first cohort was at least 10 experiences with 5-MeO-DMT, with at least “one year of integration” since their last experience. “We’re not looking for certification chasers,” he says.
Tandava has built the program specifically for those with hefty experience with 5-MeO-DMT and a desire to administer it safely. Students learn how to work with clients who are and aren’t looking for a spiritual experience in addition to receiving lectures from guest speakers.
In the end, the F.I.V.E. certificate shows the recipient took the extra time to learn about “best practices with 5-MeO” and “safe facilitator guidance,” Brierre explains. The training costs $10,000 annually and includes a three-week stay at the Tandava Retreats property.
Counterpoint: Psychedelic Facilitation Without Specific Experience
Myrriah Jannette, a psychedelic integration coach and Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, has completed several psychedelic facilitator and guide trainings — “as many as [she] can,” she says. “For me, this is lifelong work.”
“I don’t think you need to experience every single medicine [to work with them,] but having some sort of experience with an altered state of consciousness will be helpful to understand.”
Jannette offers herself as an example: She has never done ketamine but has sat with people who have done ketamine as an integration coach, and believes her previous psychedelic experiences apply.
She shares a key reminder: “If you don’t feel called to the medicine, don't force it,” adding she only works with the medicines she connects with personally.
The Benefits, Problems, & Perils of Psychedelic Accreditation
Prohibitive pricing and uncertain certification processes raise questions about the sustainability of this burgeoning field. In Oregon — the only US state to legalize psychedelic therapy — private courses are abundant and tuition can start at $10,000.
The psychedelic facilitator license is $2,000 and requires annual renewal. Cathy Rosewell Jones, a woman currently opening a psilocybin clinic, stated session cost would have to start around $3,000 if she wanted to break even.
Sarah H. plans to charge $2,200 for a session.
All for a medicine people can grow a lifetime supply of in their closet with under $200 and 3 months.
She points out everything you’re paying for besides the medicine with additional costs for:
The “full concentration” and presence of a guide
Two preparation calls, and two integration calls
Any other guides she might be working with
For those new to the world of psychedelics, these calls and “extras” could be extremely beneficial and a huge source of comfort. When you’re getting ready to undertake a completely new kind of journey, support can be crucial.
Similarly, ketamine treatments — hailed as a breakthrough in psychedelic therapy and mental health care — can run around $7,000 for six sessions at Field Trip. Though, perhaps not for much longer, as Field Trip faces the same threats of closure and bankruptcy as a few other psychedelic startups in recent months.
With this in mind, is it really too wrong to want to experiment on one’s own, or just hire a trip sitter a friend recommended? Or to simply ask a friend to babysit?
For some, it may be.
Paying for Peace of Mind
The issue arising from underground guides is a lack of responsibility and oversight. Limitations of prohibition make people less likely to report cases of abuse to the police for fear of legal retaliation.
Underground guides continue to operate in this unregulated space, relying on word-of-mouth referrals and social media advertising.
“The biggest worry is transgression,” Jannette says. “There are no safety mechanisms for participants,” and those who might find a guide through word-of-mouth may know nothing of their morals and ethics.”
For those looking for a more “legitimate” facilitator, a guide with an apparent “official” certificate might be just the ticket. Legal psychedelic retreats in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the Netherlands all appeal to this sensibility — why can’t it work here too?
The Certification of Psychedelic Practice
“When it comes to accreditation, I believe the process for securing accreditation should focus on the process rather than the individual (emphasis his,)” says John Johnson — a pseudonym. Johnson organizes (but does not facilitate) underground retreats and psychedelic sessions.
“[A]ccreditation itself would help practitioners (underground or aboveground) understand the best practices regarding safety and would allow teams to work together to meet those standards.”
Johnson says when it comes to psychedelics, people can take one of two approaches: the medical or the spiritual path. Certification seekers, according to him, are likely coming from the medical side of things, but he believes there’s space for all approaches.
Guiffrida agrees, saying he’s open to different paths in the future.
“In ancient traditions, we use the practice itself and then you create your own theory,” Guiffrida says. “I studied with my elders and sat around the fire and observed what they are doing, and, of course, received the plant.”
He notes the difference between older cultures and the fast-track, theory-based certificates new Western facilitators are reaching for — often without any personal experience with the medicines they claim credentials for.
“I’d like to see more freedom for people to choose the path that works for them. There should be less judgment across the board,” says Johnson. He does, however, stress there “should be a framework for all approaches,” something Jannette echoes.
Jannette cites The Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies as a potential solution: “They’re working on creating a board that has an exam for clinicians that would want an additional certification.”
The Future of Underground & Clinical Psychedelic Therapy
Neil Gehani, an entrepreneur with a tech background, hopes to be the one to offer the next step with his psychedelic tech startup, MindLumen. The app exists for seekers of psychedelic services and essentially functions as an “Airbnb for psychedelic-assisted consciousness experiences.”
He hopes to instill an industry-standard “Ethical Reputation Score” to rank different attributes of psychedelic session facilitators and their retreats. Like a RankMyProf but for trip sitters, Gehani believes this is the future of psychedelic facilitation.
Gehani says he’ll encourage underground facilitators to join the platform so clients and customers can find them. Each profile will have an Ethical Reputation Score to help seekers weigh the possibilities of different guides.
The community will have input on the rankings and on the app itself. Profiles may include credentials and certificates but Gehani states they “don’t make a judgment” on which is better.
“Over time, the data will tell us which people and certifications people are choosing.”
Profiles will also include whether they have sliding scale payment plans and if they’ve taken the North Star Ethics Pledge. “We want to eliminate the friction” of locating a psychedelic guide or facilitator.
In his world, underground guides and certified psychedelic facilitators can co-exist peacefully. People are always looking to fill their own specific needs and what’s important to some may not be important to others.
Still, there lacks some sense of accountability in either option — both regarding ownership and oversight.
“An ethical code needs to exist and be shared,” says Guiffrida. Perhaps that’s the missing piece to unify these seemingly opposing camps.
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Credits & Shoutouts:
Article by Sofie Mikhaylova
Artwork by Dikigiyat
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