🫠 Ask a Guide Anything

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We're the psychedelics newsletter that’s not a magic pill. You can’t just subscribe. You have to actually read it, too. 🙃

Thanks to Michael Pollan, Netflix, and the meteoric rise of TikTok shamans psychedelic influencers, psilocybin’s reputation precedes it.

Unfortunately, that means would-be journeyers often show up with a wishlist of unreasonable expectations their facilitators have to redline.

So, we’re handing them a megaphone to get ahead of that.

For today’s newsletter, we asked our network of licensed psilocybin facilitators: What's a common misconception about psilocybin (or your role as a facilitator) you find yourself correcting with clients?

Let the myth busting begin.

We looked across thousands of legal psilocybin sessions on Althea, and one finding surprised even us.

Dosage was uncorrelated with outcomes.

Look, the medicine clearly works. Participants rated safety at 9.5/10, and 97% called the experience beneficial.

But what seemed to matter most wasn't how much people took. It was the preparation, facilitation, and integration around the experience.

So we created Althea's Pick to make that care affordable to more people. It’s a complete small group experience with a licensed facilitator for $500.

This is a launch rate, and the price goes up on July 1.

Most people have never worked with a medicine that requires their active participation. Erin Witter explains how psilocybin is different: “The medicine doesn't heal you. It just makes it a lot harder to keep lying to yourself. The medicine opens the door. You still have to decide to walk through it.”

Clayton Ickes understands where that expectation comes from, though: “The most common misconception is that psilocybin functions like any other pharmaceutical, that you take the drug and it does everything for you.” He says psilocybin is better “conceptualized as an adjunct or an ally to growth, development, and healing.”

Much of the work falls on you. Terry Turner breaks it down in rough numbers: “Preparation is 25% of the healing, the journey itself is 25% of the healing, and integration, which is the client's responsibility, is 50% of the healing.” Like many things in life, you get out what you put in.

People who've seen past the magic-pill fallacy might start chasing the magic person. Char McKendrick dispels that myth, too: “In Oregon's non-directive model, the psilocybin and the client's own inner process lead the journey. Facilitators are not there to impose interpretations or steer someone toward a specific outcome.”

The magic healer fantasy comes with, well, fantastical expectations. Kate Schroeder knows them by heart and corrects them upfront: “My role is not to direct or control their experience, ‘fix’ them, or provide mystical answers.”

Ryan Phillips agrees. He describes his role as “more of a space holder whose primary task is to support and facilitate the client's own inner healing intelligence.”

The last category of misconceptions is about the predictability of the process. First, Ryan rejects the whole good-trip-bad-trip binary: “Challenging experiences can be the most therapeutic. Psychological difficulty during a journey is often positively associated with enduring increases in well-being, provided the person surrenders to the experience rather than trying to control or resist it.”

Next, Char pushes back on the notion of a standard timeline: “For some, one journey can be profoundly impactful. For others, it becomes an ongoing part of their wellness or spiritual practice.” Benjamin Dancer sets the right expectation for what a single journey can do: "Psilocybin reveals the map, the path forward. It doesn't take away our problems."

So, you may not be able to control what surfaces or how long the work takes. But at least you can control how you show up. Kate makes the case for intentionality: "Careful is what helps make this work truly usable."

Thinking about training in psychedelic-assisted therapy? Numinus runs a free live Q&A called Info Friday where you can get your questions answered. Next one is a week from today.

Hold on a sec. It might seem like all those facilitators were basically insisting they’re not doing anything.

So before you archive this email and walk away with a whole new misconception (whoops), we should set the record straight.

A “space holder” is not a placeholder.

One thing these facilitators didn’t mention is that in many ways, healing is relational. Meaning, it happens human to human.

Being witnessed at your most raw and vulnerable and met with compassion instead of judgment… now that’s one helluva drug.

Seriously, though, no mushroom can do that part for you. Trust us. We’ve asked.

Reply to this email to shoot your shot. If it’s a juicy one, we may select it for a future issue.

That’s all for today, Cyclists! Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.