Harm reduction in the context of psychedelic use is not about promoting or prohibiting use, it’s about supporting people to make informed, intentional, and safer choices. It recognizes that individuals may choose to engage with psychedelics for many reasons including healing, curiosity, exploration, or coping, and that a supportive, nonjudgmental space can significantly reduce potential risks while enhancing the potential for growth.

This approach rests on the belief that people are the experts of their own experience. Rather than imposing rules or moral judgments, harm reduction offers education, preparation, integration, and care throughout the psychedelic journey.

Key Elements of Harm Reduction in Psychedelic Work:

• Preparation: Exploring a person’s intentions, mindset, and emotional state prior to a psychedelic experience. Discussing dosage, setting, potential interactions, and safety plans helps create a foundation for a more supported and meaningful experience.

• Informed Decision-Making: Providing accurate, evidence-based information about the substance(s) being used, their effects, and potential risks including psychological and physiological impacts, so individuals can make choices that align with their values and goals.

• Navigating Risk with Compassion: Recognizing that substance use exists on a spectrum, and that reducing harm is often more realistic, and more supportive, than expecting abstinence or ideal conditions. This includes discussing consent, boundaries, and potential trauma triggers in non-ordinary states.

• Support During the Experience (when applicable): For those working with peer support, guides, or therapists, harm reduction includes understanding how to hold space, respond to difficult experiences, and know when to seek additional support.

• Integration: After a psychedelic experience, harm reduction involves creating space to process insights, challenges, emotions, and emerging questions. Integration can include meaning-making, resourcing, and anchoring lessons into daily life - whether the experience was healing, confusing, joyful, or painful.

• Respecting Autonomy and Readiness: Not everyone is ready for a psychedelic journey, and not every moment is the right time. Harm reduction honours each person’s readiness, capacity, and pacing, offering support without pressure.

Harm reduction is ultimately a relational and trauma-informed process, one that sees the person, not just the substance. It invites dialogue over judgment, presence over fear, and care over control.