Psychedelic Resources

Inclusion is not necessarily endorsement. Stay curious. Check sources. Ask questions.

Start With Safety

Know before you go.

Psychedelic experiences involve real physical, psychological, interpersonal and legal considerations.

Before taking a psychedelic, consider:

• Do I know what substance I’m actually taking?
• Do I understand its expected effects and duration?
• Have I considered medications, health conditions and possible interactions?
• Am I psychologically and emotionally prepared for an altered state?
• Is this the right time and place?
• Am I with people I trust?
• Have consent and boundaries been discussed while everyone is sober?
• Do I have support if things don’t go according to plan?
• Do I know when a situation requires professional or emergency help?

Preparation does not eliminate risk.

It can help us make more informed choices about which risks we’re willing to take.

Harm Reduction & Peer Support

People and organizations doing important work around safer psychedelic experiences.

Zendo Project
Psychedelic peer support and harm-reduction education developed through the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Fireside Project
Peer support for people having psychedelic experiences, preparing for them, integrating them afterward, or supporting someone else.

DanceSafe
Public-health and harm-reduction education, including drug information and drug-checking resources.

Bunk Police
Drug-checking education and access to testing resources focused particularly on festival and nightlife communities.

Never Use Alone
Overdose-prevention support for people using substances alone. Not psychedelic-specific, but an important harm-reduction resource.

Research & Evidence

Curiosity deserves good information.

MAPS
Research, education and historical resources related to psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies.

Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research
Academic research into psychedelics, consciousness, mental health and related areas.

UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics
Research and public education exploring psychedelic science, policy, culture and society.

Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London
Academic research investigating psychedelics, consciousness and mental health.

ClinicalTrials.gov
A searchable database of registered clinical research, useful for seeing what is actually being studied rather than relying solely on headlines about psychedelic science.

Finding Professional Support

Credentials matter. Relationship matters too.

A professional title alone doesn’t tell you whether someone is the right person to support you.

When considering a therapist, facilitator, integration practitioner, coach or other professional, ask about training, experience, scope of practice, boundaries, informed consent, confidentiality, emergency procedures and what happens when something goes wrong.

Most importantly:

Notice how you feel when you ask difficult questions.

Trust should withstand inquiry.

Use professional directories as starting points—not substitutes for your own discernment.

Colorado Natural Medicine

Know the system you’re participating in.

Colorado has established a regulated natural-medicine program with specific rules governing licensed facilitators, healing centers and access to regulated psilocybin services.

If you’re considering regulated services in Colorado, go to the official state sources rather than relying solely on practitioners’ descriptions of the law.

Look for:

Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies — Natural Medicine
Facilitator licensing, professional regulation and consumer information.

Colorado Department of Revenue — Natural Medicine Division
Regulation of licensed natural-medicine businesses and the regulated system.

Whenever possible, verify licenses and current regulations directly with the State of Colorado.

Preparation

Preparation isn’t predicting the journey.

Good preparation creates a stronger foundation for meeting uncertainty.

Consider exploring:

Intentions without expectations
Why are you interested in this experience—and what happens if the experience has absolutely nothing to do with your intention?

Set and setting
Your physical environment matters. So do your relationships, emotional state, responsibilities, health and current circumstances.

Consent and boundaries
Discuss touch, privacy, communication, physical proximity, safety interventions and other boundaries before anyone enters an altered state.

Support
Who knows what you’re doing? Who can you call afterward? What happens if the experience lasts longer—or affects you differently—than expected?

Timing
Sometimes excellent preparation culminates in deciding not to take a psychedelic.

That counts too.

Integration

A meaningful experience and a meaningful life are not the same thing.

Integration isn’t about forcing every psychedelic experience into a transformational narrative.

Sometimes there are profound insights.

Sometimes there are difficult questions.

Sometimes there’s confusion.

Sometimes you had an unusual experience and then went home.

Integration creates space to explore what happened and determine what—if anything—you want to carry forward.

I find it useful to consider several areas of life:

Self
Body, mind, habits, health, identity and relationship with yourself.

Relationships
Family, partners, friendships, communication, boundaries, conflict and repair.

Community
Belonging, contribution, service and the people with whom you share your life.

World
Work, society, ecology, responsibility and your relationship with something larger than yourself.

The question isn’t simply:

What did the psychedelic show me?

It is also:

How am I going to live?

Books Worth Exploring

Psychedelics

The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley
A classic exploration of altered perception and consciousness—and one of the books that helped begin my own investigation of psychedelics.

How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
An accessible history and exploration of the modern psychedelic renaissance.

Sacred Knowledge, by William A. Richards
Reflections on psychedelics, mystical experience and decades of clinical research.

Beyond Psychedelics

The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
A widely read exploration of trauma, the body and approaches to recovery.

Atomic Habits — James Clear
A practical framework for translating intentions into repeated behavior—which can be considerably harder than having an insight.

Add books slowly.

A short shelf of resources you genuinely recommend is more useful than an enormous list assembled to look comprehensive.

When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

Difficult experiences deserve appropriate support.

Psychedelic difficulties don’t all require the same response.

Someone currently intoxicated and frightened may need something very different from someone struggling weeks after an experience.

Someone experiencing a medical emergency needs something different from someone trying to understand an unsettling insight.

And someone who believes they were harmed, manipulated or exploited by a practitioner needs support that doesn’t automatically protect the practitioner or institution.

When seeking help, distinguish among:

Immediate physical danger or medical emergency
Seek appropriate emergency medical assistance.

A difficult psychedelic experience happening now
Peer-support and harm-reduction resources may be useful when emergency intervention isn’t required.

Lingering difficulty after a psychedelic experience
Consider qualified mental-health or integration support, particularly when changes in sleep, mood, perception, functioning or connection to reality persist.

Boundary violations, exploitation or practitioner harm
Prioritize your safety. Seek independent support and, when appropriate, use professional or regulatory reporting channels.

Asking for help isn’t a failed psychedelic experience.

Sometimes it’s excellent integration.

Steward Your Sources

Psychedelics attract extraordinary research, ancient traditions, thoughtful practitioners, enthusiastic evangelists, confident influencers, questionable claims and occasionally complete bullshit.

Learn to distinguish among them.

Ask:

• Who is making this claim?
• What evidence supports it?
• What are they selling?
• What don’t we know yet?
• Would I still believe this if it weren’t wrapped in psychedelic language?

Keep curiosity alive without surrendering discernment.

That’s part of psychedelic stewardship too.

Keep Exploring

This library will continue to evolve as psychedelic research, regulation and community practice evolve.

If something here helps, follow it beyond this website.

Read opposing perspectives.

Talk with people you trust.

Ask better questions.

And remember:

No resource – not even this one – can make your decisions for you.