Psychedelics and the Underground

A panel on underground psychedelic healing held at The Psychedelic Assembly, a membership-supported psychedelic library and community space in New York, moderated by Pinchbeck. Panelists include Ian Pai, a musician who has guided ceremonies for about sixteen years after training in a lineage he traces to Peru; Anna Yusim, a psychiatrist on the Yale faculty who is building a mental health and spirituality center bridging the medical school and the divinity school and who wrote Fulfilled; and a facilitator behind the Underground Mama channel who formed a de facto community during the pandemic. The discussion covers best practices outside the legal system, the open-ended and relational character of integration, and how facilitators demonstrate safety. Pinchbeck recalls that when Breaking Open the Head appeared in 2002 few in New York discussed psychedelics at all.

In brief

• Yusim argues that psychedelics bridge psychiatry and spirituality, working both as a treatment for treatment-resistant conditions and as a route to religious experience.
• Panelists hold that most psychedelic use is and will remain underground, noting the claim that even if MAPS had won FDA approval for MDMA therapy roughly ninety percent of the work would still happen outside the system.
• One panelist argues that integration is relational and open-ended rather than a fixed set of checkpoints, and that the facilitator is not in a superior position within it.
• The panel rejects the idea that entering this work commits a participant for life, while maintaining that facilitators should stay genuinely available as the process unfolds.
• Pinchbeck observes that the psychedelic field has grown unrecognizably since 2002, when the subject felt like unclaimed territory in New York.
• Pinchbeck suggests that the Trump administration, given stated interest from Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., could paradoxically loosen regulation of psychedelics.

Full text

thank you all so much for being here tonight and thank you so much for all getting to your seats so quickly this was definitely the most efficient audience we've ever had um I am so so so excited to welcome such an amazing panel to talk about the important super important more than ever before topic of underground psychedelic healing uh my name is Abby ly I am one of the three co-founders of the psychedelic assembly for those of you who don't know about us uh we run a space called the Atheneum which is the room back there that's full of books about drugs y it's a psychedelic Library community center and Social Club it is fully membership supported so it's open Monday through Friday 12: to 7:00 for our members who can hang out read all of our amazing Books meet each other drink coffee co-work whatever you like we're also an event space so we have lots of different types of events um open to both members and non-members although members get free or discounted entry along with lots of other special perks we have events like this um with panels about certain topics related to psychedelics we do book signings documentary screenings art rated events we also throw parties we have events that are more like social Gatherings so whatever flavor of psychedelia you are into We Do It um so if you're interested in learning more about membership that is truly what help keeps helps keep us going and makes it possible for us to do events like this one so if you're interested please come talk to me or robin our amazing director of operations and um we're also we're also wouldn't be here without the help of all of our amazing volunteers so thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers who are in the audience um and if you're interested in becoming a volunteer please come talk to Robin as well um I also want to thank Alana verell for organizing this amazing panel tonight she runs Round of Applause she runs an amazing Instagram Channel called underground mama and it's focused on helping people who are maybe new to the Psychedelic space um learn how to self-heal and try psychedelics in a responsible way so if you haven't checked it out please do give it a follow at underground. Mama and so without further ado I am going to hand the mic over to Daniel pinchbeck our moderator thank you guys so much all right hey everybody uh wonderful to be here with all of you today and um yeah it's um uh this is a subject near and dear to my heart uh my first book breaking up in the head came out in 2002 u in uh at that time in New York where I was living nobody was really talking about psychedelics or thinking about them that much it felt like breaking new territory story and now it's quite amazing to see the um yeah how how how big the sort of psychic movement has grown and and um and how many directions it's gone so I'm going to ask everybody just to introduce themselves for a minute or two uh you know obviously their name kind a little bit about their background maybe a little bit about their training you know and you know just yeah if you want to say something about the type of you know work that you do or conduct uh but try to keep it to like a couple you know couple minutes so then we can you know move on to questions and group discussion and so on so then we'll do some back and forth and then we'll have a Q&A with the audience uh so yeah as as you're listening think about what you know would really be galvanizing for you to know from these from these amazing characters so Ian you want to start uh excuse me uh my name is Ian I am pay and uh uh I'm a musician and uh artist Grammy Award Grammy Award yes uh nominated nominated nominated but two um uh but uh yeah I've been um in the Psychedelic medicine space um I mean you know when I was much younger I um I did a lot of things recreationally and um probably about 16 years ago uh I came into the space as a participant and very soon after uh trained as a guide uh working with a variety of different medicines um initially uh with with uh synthetic um and mushrooms and then moved to iwasa and uh wuma um I've held ceremonies all over the place um was trained uh by uh someone who was with the shapo lineage and uh another Mentor who was uh also from uh Peru and yeah I think that's about it thanks thanks Ian my name is Dr Anna yum I'm a psychiatrist and I'm on the faculty at Yale I'm starting a mental health and spirituality Center at Yale which is going to bridge the medical school and the Divinity School and I have a very deep interest in psychedelics um so in uh 2017 I wrote a book fulfilled about the interface of mental health and spirituality and so I see psychedelics as really bridging that world because not only do they serve as a novel treatment from a neurobiological perspective for some of the most treatment resistant psychiatric conditions we have it also for many serves as a connection to Spirit and this is why I'm so interested in integrating more of this into the world and obviously underground use is the way that the majority of people presently are using psychedelics and I'm hoping that eventually it will be more above ground and we can move legislation into that but it's also so important to speak here about what practice are the best practices and how to create safe efficacious experiences to enable people to have the Transformations that they need so thank you I'm Alana verell and my journey with psychedelics started around 2015 when I was in a completely different life all the things and somehow it just didn't feel like I thought it was going to feel and I asked the question where are my people hands up in the air and shortly after I was introduced to a psychedelic Community back then they were more rare and about a year following after taking really taking to it um I started assisting that community and so most of my training came from just on the ground experience 25 people on a Saturday 25 people on Friday and that went on for a while actually I was one of my facilitators um later on so um in 2020 when the pandemic happened uh a lot of the people that I had brought into the community um along with two other people had nowhere to go and really needed help during that time that we all went through and so we started a de facto community and really was there was no thought of being a facilitator it was just about how can we help the people that are in need right now and through doing it um for me it's become a much deeper it's just a way that I can serve and I didn't realize that it all had to come through me in order so that I can show up in the best of my ability so this whole thing I had a thought one day um I was sitting there was a conversation with someone from maps and they said that and this was when they thought it was going to get legalized that for about the next 10 years 90% of the people that were going to try psychedelics were going to do it illegally and that means that that was when we thought it was going to get legalized so safety and efficacy and this whole time period is so incredibly important thank you good evening um my name is ran and under the pretext of looking like I may be a psychedelic facilitator I'm actually a stealth Buddhist who've been introduced with this crowd um and in a very real way you know that is what I think I can contribute to the conversation um because although um I am deeply committed right now for the last 10 years on a pretty much regular basis and that means you know several times a month guiding and helping um guy I mon the the thing that I can contribute is you know 30 35 40 Years of systematic rigorous engagement of the study of the human consciousness subjectively through through meditation and comprehensive methods available through Buddhism where over these last 10 years after having left the monastery and where I was a teacher looking U with precision and open-mindedness and what is actually possible for for us to deepen our capacity for intimacy with our bodies hearts Minds relationships and to what degree this cace between systematic study of subjectivity and use of psychedelics in various ways can help I think help all of us in the various ways that we need to desperately so pleasure to be here and see what happens okay well a lot of you brought up safety and efficacy and I know that's a big concern for you I think it's one of the main reasons you felt like you wanted to surface this panel in way think we'll start with that um yeah so if you're um you know an underground psychedelic guide you know what do you do to kind of Ensure your own safety uh what do you do to ensure the safety of the individuals you're serving during the journeys and um yeah kind of like uh how do you kind of like enhance the the effectiveness or the efficacy what what what methods do you use to kind of like yeah do you check in with people weeks after months after is there like integration calls like you know how how do you make sure that people are getting um yeah you know something that has a sustaining positive impact for them so safety and efficacy uh Lana you want to start since you were charged up on it charged up on the safe well first of all there is definitely um an intake process to figure out if people are candidates um to get into psychedelics and family history all the things that you guys know about maybe hold up to mic yeah all the things that that uh you know about and integration another time I was listening someone speak on a panel and at this point when I started out I thought integration wasn't even a word and and I think if we ask all the people in here they may have a different idea what integration means that's the thing about integration nobody could really like say what it is but the understanding of how you take the information and bring it into your real life which is actually where the magic happens so integration is for me at this point 50% of what we do if not more and having clear post um post experiences where we run integration workshops our community does a lot of free work we do Stillness and suppers which is meditations and potlock so there's just a lot of opportunities for everyone to connect and really make sure that the people are doing okay post is that different if you're doing a group session or an individual session or the different protocols you know what's interesting is that the the individual sessions people have because they're it's individual they have less of a community experience I love the community experience I think it's so incredibly important because it really allows people to form bonds and it's one of the ways that we then can relas to one another and process together so when people are having their own independent ceremonies they're just a little more disconnected from the overall communities but the overall process the intake process and the offerings post are pretty much the same and how long you stay in touch with them after gosh you know so first we do an integration process the following day at this point we now offer I on individual private sessions I do two posts so check in two weeks after and and then two weeks after that as well and then we put them into our um every invitation I mean like every free event that happens which is an opportunity to connect and so Community is part of the integration process okay for us it's I Sor I'm really bad with name this is funny cuz we went to high school together we seen each other quite a time and he he called me Ian then too umere exactly uh I mean safety is such a a big part of of how people uh heal you know um I think uh almost everyone who comes in uh part of the pro part of the reason why uh they're there is because they don't feel safe you know so um it does start with the intake Hall and uh to see if you can really connect with the person you know it's a big part of it um and uh one of my uh early teachers um he said to me you know when you take somebody on like you have to think about um being with them for your whole life and their whole life and so when you take them through an experience you don't want to just knock their lights out and you know uh uh overwhelm them you want to think about like you know what what do they need even if you uh uh are only going to be with them one time uh you have to think about them in this sort of longer term kind of way so that you know that really stuck with me you know uh and then I did some other things like you know uh uh I like to have an RN in the group uh holding space how big are the groups generally it depends you know 10 to 20 you know sometimes more sometimes less and and it's different medicines I you know I work with a variety yeah yeah but I do like to have somebody available um if not in person uh at least on call so I know uh other RNs I know EMTs I know doctors uh and and very often some of those people are also uh in the space either as helpers or participants um you know I have an understanding of uh uh the kinds of things that could go wrong uh procedures that you would take uh certain things would come up you know so there's like the physical part there's the emotional like mental part um really uh I I want people to be really grounded uh by the end of their experience uh because I find that when people are really grounded when when they leave there's usually not a lot of questions they kind of know what they need to do you know they they feel solid um but the community part is also really huge and and thankfully that that kind of takes care of itself you know people are having positive experience they become most people walk into a ceremony and they're like looking around they're like oh my God these people are so weird it's like I don't want to talk to that person this and that and then by the next day everybody's hugging everyone's family no one forgets you know each other and uh do you have a protocol checking up with people like weeks or months after I mean I used to I used to be like I used to do that a lot um uh until I got better at grounding people before they left and then I realized that oh that's just kind of what they needed and uh but I'm always available you know uh uh it's it's been really nice my most of my clients have been really respectful they they uh only call me or text me when they really need something um but then there's the other part where you know I become friends with uh a lot of the people I work with you know it's like we all become super close like we go go through things there's people here who I've been with for you know over 10 years oh that's beautiful so yeah it's awesome andna what are you seeing in terms of safety and efficacy and integration work and so absolutely so I'm not an underground psychedelic facilitator but I can answer that exactly but I can answer the question from um the point of view of clinical trials which is the legal side of cinedelic use and to talk about what is safe and efficacious in those settings and I want to talk about three things um the first is exclusion criteria um which sometimes on the Underground uh isn't always taken into account or could be missed because people just don't know um and it's also could be missed in legal settings and in clinical trials because people just might not know so if for instance you're going to be using psilocybin or MDMA if there is a family history of bipolar or psychosis that's an exclusion and in clinical trials they go so far as to say that if it's not just a first-degree relative if it's a second degree relative so a lot of exclusions but you might actually have a genetic propensity that will only come out if you use a psychedelic and I've certainly seen that as well people have no family history and lo and behold they try psilocybin and get Manic and that unleashes a Mania that then has to be treated in some way so even with the best safety precautions all we could do is have the best precautions you can still miss things so that's the first thing is exclusion criteria the second is um set and setting which is you know set as your mindset and I think this really goes in large part with what Ian is saying about grounding people grounding them on the way in I don't know why you keep becoming Ian to all of us why is that thank you so as I was saying so you ground people on the way in with the right mindset helping him cultivate the right mindset a lot of people can have a lot of fear which is obviously very natural in human especially if it's your first time but really helping them to work through that and to enter their experience with hope optimism and an openness and then you know the setting the setting is all of the factors that come into play Mind Body Spirit and your sensory experience that enable it to be a very powerful calming grounding presence for people so I think between the exclusion criteria set and setting those are three key things for safe and efficacious practices a question for you actually um so do you work with patients oneon-one still or yeah and I mean I'm just curious if you've seen any because now you know the Psychedelic movement has been very very positive about the positive effects of psychedelics but sometimes there's some concerns that maybe there's negative effects that you know we haven't really you know surfaced as much um and I'm wondering if you're seeing that in any in any in any way or what forms those are taking absolutely and the more psychedelic use there will be the more side effects that will be of psychedelics some of which will be dangerous and negative effects of psychedelics and so that's going to happen more and more and it's so important that it not be underground that this actually be well documented for us to be able to research this study this understand it um and it takes many forms so I'm I see a lot of patients who have um had psychedelic use so they come to me for integration but they also come if they've had a negative experience and they're not sure what to do now they've had this experience and their perceptual experiences are persisting and so there's this one condition hppd hallucinogen P persistent perceptual disorder and this is when after a you use a hallucinogen like psilocybin you can have those persistent effects whether it be Halos or seeing things or things that you can have in a psychedelic experience which are totally normal but in your real life are not totally normal and they can persist for days weeks months sometimes even years after they experience and this is with any hallucinogen and so this has been reported um and then visual snow syndrome which is like another form of hallucinogens uh like like a perceptual disorder and then you know for a lot of people it does unleash people might have a propensity for some sort of disorder that they might not be aware of they might have a genetic propensity and this could make someone manic make somebody psychotic but this can also happen not just through psychedelics this can happen through any kind of deeply transformative spiritual experience including meditation I have people come to me as often for experiences like this through meditation and through breath work etc as through psychedelics so this is just to be clear this is not limited to psychedelics this is people are Consciousness explorers they're seeking higher levels of consciousness they're seeking Enlightenment expansion and in the course of that you can overshoot the mark and you can become psychotic and you can lose yourself and then have to figure out how to get back to yourself and this is a lot of what I help my patients Etc to get back to and we're still together because I'm on a psychiatric list serve we're all still trying to figure out together as my profession how best to do this and when patients do overshoot the mark what is the best treatment how do you ground them so this is not it's it's still an un area now that's interesting yeah I'm curious also even about more subtle personality changes uh like interesting but uh ran let's hear from you about safety uh efficacy integration uh what are you what what are you seeing out there what are some of your practices that that that worked best for you well I think the good place to start is to acknowledge that this is inherently unsafe what we're doing it's come it's like we're exploring the mystery we're heading Beyond you know in the old maps and medieval days and they had the dragons kind of on the edge of the of the map and that's where we're headed so I think the question may be reframed of how can we create a setting which convey certain level of safety um or Comfort or care or de appreciation awareness witnessing whatever those qualities are that allows the individual and the group to venture forth and the territory which is the unnown we are definitely dealing with things that can be addressed as symptoms as symptoms on social level personal level but we're exploring the mystery the edges of human consciousness make sure we talk a little bit closer human consciousness so there is there is something about that and I mean I when you ask the question you this moment came in because from the Buddhist perspective we're kind of yeah you know this is dangerous TR used to say this is like dangerous to your ego to sit in meditation you're going to start seeing through the illusory structures and all of that and what I've learned working with a CO facilitator um who is very very much attuned to the difference between conveying the safety and then creating the space of letting go into that mystery you want to talk a little bit about what that what that practice is what that Co fail which one did you describe well you know the way the way we put it is that you know I my role in in in the creating of that particular environment is to take care of the space within which the content of a person's in a group groups processes are going start to manifest and allow people to really Venture into territories which may be tremendously you know non-ordinary foreign painful and at the same time support them not to become overly fascinated with the content not be terrorized or seduced by what's going on and that can be done you know that's the facility of the meditation that it allows you to recognize the nature of your mind which is non-judgmental which is open and where the sense of anxiety or processes you know similar to that can be supported you know acknowledging that there is a moment in a certain dose and a certain phase of the ceremony where no there's a place where nobody remembers what the container is you're so sucked into the process I to the content that should just gone but this dial ictic between the screen of the mind that we all have that's always clear and available and lucid and available uh has content on it and we need to learn how to navigate that and that's a profound teaching that gives you a safety a sense of safety but the thing that in my mind you know always and has that has come up recently that one of the important thing that supports the safety is deep understanding of the facilitator of what their intention is profoundly like really look at that why am I doing this why why are you doing it um to L the way I would frame it right now is to create a space within which through attention awareness care Touch Beauty expression of love and care a person and a group can navigate towards deepening of their intimacy with their body with their heart with their mind with their awareness with their content with their field of relationality and that's it what that will be we'll see but the the intention is to create to create and facilitate the space where that can unfold and what about the kind of integration question afterwards do you have a protocol or do you have like an intake form that more was it less formal how you structure it all of this is integration so you know again opinions opinions opinions but you know this notion that integration can be some way of framing the nature of the mysterious experience is a problematic one for me because the moment we integrate we can actually stop the process that is going on all the time so we don't actually use the word integration we use the words appreciation follow through deepening and actually support people and as much to try to name and articulate what actually might have happened might have happened but not towards the any conclusive sense of what that was but more in terms of skillfulness of how does that inform every aspect of their life and that doesn't require that happens almost continuously so you know we do I think the way that most of us do pretty much stay in touch with people open-endedly there are formal checkpoints but you know I was I as said that was demonstration of safety that made ion feel safe um this notion that if you do this work you're committed for life it's like what is this you know we're entering into a conversation about again the depths of your Human Experience your experience and like depends on Sunday no so there is I think that again that intention of seeing this as an open-ended process is profoundly important and that's the intentionality I think then situates and communicates something about you know yeah I may tell you that I'm going to be with you and get hit by the car on Sixth Avenue um but I mean that when I say that I'll do whatever I can to be available as that process opens up and not just for you because that's the other thing the integration is relational so you know I'm not in any kind of a superior position in that process this is continuously unfolding for you inter relation gra that's um oh let's talk a little bit about the um so a lot of mentioned that even if Maps had won the approval they were saying that 90% of um work would be underground so yeah obviously you know when I started exploring this stuff like 25 years ago it was all underground there wasn't even a possibility of above ground um and um yeah I mean you know also we see what's happening in the world right now I mean Trump apocalypse may bring a lot of negative things but it it may bring a you know a new legal you know kind of atmosphere around psychedelics because um both musk and RFK Jr have expressed interest in um kind of uh you know deregulating them um so um yeah all these all these companies have started you know you know billion dollar companies

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.