🫠 Psychonaut POV

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s due for a system reboot. Hold still while we clear the cache of collective consciousness. 🗑️

Sabba Nazhand isn’t a tech bro. (He’s a technology brother. Show some respect.) After psychedelics helped him resolve his childhood trauma, he assembled a dream team and built an AI-powered integration platform to help more people sustain transformation, long after the journey ends.

We asked Sabba what's broken about current integration models, how he's bringing authentic indigenous wisdom into a tech product, and why he believes AI belongs in psychedelic healing despite the risks.

FROM OUR SPONSORS

What’s better than feeling good? Feeling good and doing good.

Today's the last day of Fun Guy's giveback sale. That means they’re taking 10% off everything and donating 10% to Fungi Foundation and the Ecology Center.

The ridiculous part is you can still take another 20% off with our code, TRICYCLEDAY. Oh, and shipping’s free on orders over $100.

It’s never been easier to support amazing orgs protecting mushroom biodiversity and environmental health.

Now go treat yourself to some kanna and pat yourself on the back, you global citizen you.

Don’t forget to use code TRICYCLEDAY.

What's your relationship to psychedelics, and how did Safar come about? Did you struggle with integration yourself?

I grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and came to the US as an asylum seeker. That experience created a lot of unresolved traumas I wasn't aware of as a child. I grew up watching my parents struggle and later found out they'd been carrying PTSD their whole lives. I was the nice kid at school, but behind closed doors I was confused, lost, and angry.

Around 2019, my son was on the way, and my whole world felt like it was collapsing. I knew I had to save myself and my family. That's how I got introduced to psychedelics, and it really changed everything. It helped me see patterns I'd been carrying since childhood and ask myself how I want to show up for my kids.

But those insights after a psychedelic experience fade. Life gets busy with work and kids, and old patterns start to return. The guides you're working with have a million other clients. I started talking to others who’d tried psychedelics, and many shared similar experiences. Then I spoke to practitioners and learned that they were struggling, too, with scattered notes, text threads, and no standardized way to manage clients. What became prevalent was this question: what happens in between sessions? That's the most powerful, important part. The in-between is where most transformation fails. That's how Safar came about.

What's broken about the current integration model? Why do we need AI in the first place?

The biggest thing that's broken is that integration is not one-size-fits-all. There are amazing organizations publishing high-quality integration protocols, but practitioners take them and apply them indiscriminately to every client. What’s broken is the lack of personalization. Integration needs to be adaptive to the individual’s experience, background, and medical history. To see long-term changes, evidence suggests you need to put in 66 or more days of work. These structures just aren't there.

AI is critical to create these adaptive, custom protocols. Without it, it would be nearly impossible to do at scale. Our tool uses machine learning to iterate and improve based on real user intakes, sessions, and protocols. You can think of the AI models as mini coaches that constantly learn how to better approach the client.

We've trademarked this technology as “Salience Intelligence.” In neuroscience, the salience network refers to the parts of the brain that decide what feels important. With psychedelics, that network temporarily loosens so you see new perspectives. After the experience, it tightens again and pulls you back into old habits. Our Salience Intelligence keeps the right things on the radar afterwards by tracking subtle shifts in emotion and language, identifying patterns, and suggesting the right practice at the right time. Everything is adapted to the individual.

We've seen horror stories about people using ChatGPT as a therapist with terrible outcomes. How are you avoiding that with Safar?

It's really simple. We're not replacing the human. This is about continuing the human-to-human relationship. These are just tools to help the guide with more insights and help the client have access to a voice model for reflection or recommendations, versus having a full-on therapy conversation with an AI.

Instead of being on your phone typing and texting, you put it in your pocket, go for a walk, and have a conversation. That conversation gets transcribed and passed to the practitioner. When they get on the next call, they're not spending the first 20 minutes asking, “How was your week?”. They've got information from the last few days and can jump right in.

AI is trained to be super empathetic, and that can have insidious effects. If you say “My life is really shitty,” ChatGPT responds, “I'm so sorry your life is shitty,” and now it's reinforcing that narrative. We're training our models differently. One of our internal prompts says: “Act as a reflective mirror. Notice patterns in my language, point out contradictions, highlight where I may be avoiding or looping in old narratives. Be truthful, even if it's uncomfortable. Do not flatter me. Your role is not to fix or guide. It's to slow me down, hold up a mirror, and help me see myself more clearly.”

Beyond the ways we prompt the AI, we’ve also set up guardrails by keeping a “human in the loop” at all times. Also, unlike ChatGPT, the data expires. We're building privacy-first architecture.

Are you concerned that such a tech-driven approach could dilute the human component of the work? How do you balance that?

Whether we like it or not, we live in a society where people go to ceremony on the weekend, and by Monday morning they're on Zoom calls, looking at spreadsheets, and changing diapers. We need to meet people where they are.

Also, equity and accessibility are critical. Not every client can afford to work with a psychedelic practitioner today, and those are the groups that need it the most. If we can build tools that give people a head start and the agency to focus on themselves, then I think we're succeeding.

With respect to keeping the human touch, it’s worth pointing out that the roots of integration work come from indigenous traditions. If you go ask indigenous tribes about integration, they might not even understand the question because what we call “integration” is already built into their way of life. You sit with medicines, come back to your community, and share stories. You cook with your grandmother. That's integration.

So we're assembling a Council of Wisdom Keepers and embedding them into the business through equity, revenue share, product consulting, and organizational operations. I want them to call us out when we're veering away from these traditions. Those values are rooted in my Persian culture. My ancestors have guided me this whole time.

About six months ago, we expanded the vision for Safar from a platform for psychedelic integration to what we call the first operating system for human transformation. Our model can be used by psychedelic facilitators, executive coaches, health coaches, breathwork facilitators, or essentially anyone doing transformation work. Every one of these practitioners is doing integration; they just might not call it that.

What other opportunities do you see for tech entrepreneurs to support the psychedelic ecosystem responsibly? Where else is technology needed?

There’s real opportunity for tech entrepreneurs to strengthen the psychedelic ecosystem by building the infrastructure the field is missing. We need better tools for safety and screening, evidence-based education, research, ethical marketplace systems, and community support that protect both participants and guides. There are also emerging drug-discovery platforms using AI to identify novel compounds, which will play a major role as the science evolves. The most responsible role for tech here is not to replace the human element, but to build the rails that keep people safe, accelerate the science, and help the field mature with integrity.

The deeper question to ask yourself is, why build in psychedelics versus pretty much any other vertical. Speaking for myself, I could have built three other things that would've made me very successful and put money in my pocket. But this is the mission that matters to me.

Over the last three years building Safar, I've made some huge sacrifices, some of which I’m not proud of. I want to get to a point in my life where I forgive myself for those sacrifices. Safar is the culmination of the good and the bad in my life. If I can build a tool that genuinely helps people grow and become better versions of themselves, all of it will be worth it.

Want more from Sabba?

Get early access to Safar.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

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

ONE CYCLIST’S REVIEW

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here.

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.