psychsafetyalliance

First thing: it's very reasonable (and arguably, healthy!) to feel apprehension around a psychedelic experience! They can be life changing experiences, and if not approached with the proper gravitas and preparation, can absolutely cause harm instead of help you learn and grow.

In terms of steps you can take, I would first really examine the root of the apprehension. What is it that you are concerned by? Happy to dig into some more detail on this, if we can hear a little more.

We made a checklist for folks to follow that gives a brief walkthrough some of the physical safety questions you might want to ask yourself, to ensure that as a minimum baseline for your experience: https://www.psychedelicsafetyalliance.org/f/safer-psychonaut-dosing-protocol

Based on anecdotal evidence, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder can both be exacerbated in some ways by psychedelics, so those folks should steer clear. Ditto if you have a family history of either

We've also had several friends that experienced psychotic episodes triggered by psychedelic use who had no prior diagnosis of significant mental illness and were diagnosed after the fact.

In addition to being scary to watch and life-altering for them, this experience also made us aware of one of the major bummers when it comes to the risks of taking psychedelics: Though it is rare for people with no prior history of mental illness to experience psychotic episodes triggered by psychedelic use, it does happen consistently enough to be a Thing, and there's some degree to which you can't predict whether this will happen to you until you take psychedelics and find out.

People with heart issues should also probably avoid stimulant drugs like MDMA and MDA.

There are also a wide variety of other drugs and medications which can have weird or occasionally harmful interactions with different psychedelics, so it's important to check those as well. The TripSit Combinations Chart is a good place to look for combinations of different recreational drugs, and the Drugs.com Interactions Checker covers interactions between ketamine and many pharmaceutical and over-the-counter medications, but for interactions between most psychedelics and most common prescription meds, there's a lot less information out there.

Do your own research, and if you're not sure, don't do it.

The Not-So TL;DR:

Our first responder and psychedelic harm reduction friends have reported a recent, noticeable uptick in calls involving people who read a glowing article or watched How To Change Your Mind, took psychedelics with no idea what they were doing, and ended up in an unexpectedly difficult, traumatic, or dangerous situation.

We’re here to help you avoid being that person.

For context, the psychedelic research studies you've heard about are conducted on extensively screened subjects. Pharmaceutically pure compounds made in licensed labs are used. The sessions themselves are conducted by trained professionals in tightly controlled environments with lots of preparation and aftercare for the subjects. Medical professionals are standing by in the next room the whole time in case they're needed.

This is in many ways the exact opposite of how people take psychedelics in the real world.

When you’re taking psychedelics in an unsupervised, uncontrolled environment like a festival, party, or event at home, the number of risk vectors you have to anticipate, track, and manage on your own goes way up.

We learned about the importance of psychedelic safety while coming of age working as staff, performers, and first responders at festivals, which are arguably one of the most (if not THE most) complex, uncontrolled environments where people regularly take psychedelics.

Over the years, we have seen a small but painfully consistent percentage of people overdose, have terrifying experiences, injure themselves, experience psychotic episodes, and rarely (but heartbreakingly) even die in situations involving psychedelics. Many of these incidents involved friends and people we cared about, so we got real nerdy with an interdisciplinary team of psychedelic safety experts to figure out how to take care of our communities.

We’ve now been working together for seven years to create a comprehensive video masterclass for people who use psychedelics outside of supervised medical, therapeutic, and ritual contexts. Having recently completed and launched the masterclass, we’re now able to help answer a wide range of psychedelic safety questions, including:

- Avoiding dangerous drug combinations

- Safer dosing practices

- Determining whether your mindset and environment (“set and setting”), and the people you're with are conducive for a safe, beneficial experience

- How to test your drugs for purity and screen for harmful adulterants like fentanyl- Medical and mental health conditions which are contraindicated with various psychedelics

- Where to find quality, no-BS information about drugs on the internet

- How to triage and respond in a crisis if something goes sideways and you need to get help

- Strategies for supporting someone having a difficult trip

- Consent around psychedelics

- How to make sense of psychedelic experiences and integrate them into your life

A COUPLE NOTES:

- This AMA is intended for informational and harm reduction purposes and should not be taken as medical advice. We’re not doctors and we don’t play them on the internet, but we also know that most medical professionals don’t receive comprehensive training about psychedelics. Thus, we encourage you to do your own research and will be happy to direct you to legit sources of online drug information.

- The word “psychedelics” is an umbrella term which refers to a wide array of compounds from many different classes of drugs. Drugs from different classes have different effects, work differently in your body, and have different safety profiles, which makes general questions about “psychedelics” hard to answer. Asking us questions about specific drugs will get you better answers.

- We don’t know everything about psychedelic safety and won’t pretend to. There’s just too much to know. We teamed up because our complimentary knowledge bases allow us to cover a lot more ground than most people in this space, but new research is coming out all the time, there are hundreds of new drugs being created every year, and there are always edge cases. If we don’t know the answer to a legit question, we’ll tell you so and will try to direct you somewhere or to someone who might.

- There is no such thing as taking psychedelics risk-free. If you take enough drugs at high enough doses over a long enough period of time, something will inevitably go sideways. Part of the point of all this safety stuff is to minimize the impact when it does. That said, there are also always going to be a small percentage of people who react poorly to psychedelics due to genetic factors or predispositions which could not have been known or anticipated in advance.

Okay, that’s all the additional stuff.

Now, should you feel so inclined…Ask Us Anything!

So many! That's why we started an organization and just created a 12-hour long psychedelic safety course.

A few common ones we see are:

- I trust my dealer, so his product should be safe
- I don't need to test my drugs on my own
- I don't need to worry too much about drug combinations
- The amount my friend took should be good for me too
- Calling 911 in an emergency is going to get me busted

Nope, and very few people are. That doesn't stop people from taking psychedelics on their own with even less information or awareness than we've amasssed over 35 combined years of studying this topic. We exist to vet publicly available tools and resources, teach people how to find this information on their own, and how to synthesize all of it into usable safety planning steps.

That's why, for purposes of this AMA, we will not provide specific medical advice to individuals advising as to specific dosages. We are not a substitute for your doctor or psychiatrist when it comes to you and your body.

HOWEVER, we know regular, unlicensed people are dosing themselves all the time anyways, and are happy to provide general harm reduction information on considerations around safer dosing practices and potentially harmful drug interactions.

An important note on medical advice with psychedelics is that there is not much by way of licensing - yet - specific to psychedelics. There are some clinical handbooks being developed as the science on the medical use of psychedelics advances, such as the MAPS MDMA Investigator's Brochure.

That said, one of us (Ally) has worked extensively in clinical environments developing hands-on experience navigating these questions for harm reduction purposes.