Interpersonal harms and psychedelic abuse

People can sometimes cause harm to other people while they’re on psychedelic drugs, either intentionally or unintentionally. Psychedelics amplify suggestibility, reduce normal capacities of rationality and autonomy and increase vulnerabililty to outside influences. In this vulnerable state, even a small action or expression can be amplified in the sensitive consciousness of the person on psychedelics, occasionally sending them into a tail spin. Sometimes, this can cause harms that last beyond the trip itself.

The person harmed is then struggling with psychological difficulties (such as anxiety, PTSD, derealization etc) plus a sense of moral injury – ‘I was harmed by this person or this organisation, and that’s not right.’

There are various kinds of interpersonal harm that can be caused to people on psychedelics.

The facilitator or guide can be incompetent or negligent in some way. When people are in suggestibility-boosting altered states of consciousness, a misplaced action or remark can be amplified and resonate in the consciousness and psychedelic experience of the client. Sometimes, with the best intention in the world, a facilitator can still accidentally impact a client’s psychedelic experience in a negative and sometimes harmful way.

For example, one participant in a psychedelic trial asked for one of the facilitators to take their hand during a difficult moment of her trip, and no one did – this had a negative impact on her trip and the feeling of harm continued beyond the trip.

In several other instances we have come across, people say they feel their trip was negatively impacted by the music chosen by the facilitator for their psychedelic experience – it was too loud, or too vibratory, or too harsh, or simply not to their taste, and this ruined their trip and led to them feeling harmed beyond the trip.

Perhaps the ‘setting’ of the trip does not feel safe – there is some disturbance and this leads to a person feeling uncared for by the faciltators, which in turn causes a feeling of harm that lasts beyond the trip.

The facilitator could also impose their own beliefs or interpretation onto someone else’s psychedelic experience, either during the trip or soon afterwards when they are still suggestible: ‘You should do this, or that, you should become a shaman, you have an entity within you… you were abused by your parents’…and so on. Their client or patient may later feel the therapist or facilitator overstepped the boundaries of their role in an unethical and unprofessional way.

Therapists, guides or coaches can also cause harm after a psychedelic experience. You seek help for post psychedelic difficulties and the therapist or coach is dismissive or unhelpful in some way. In psychedelic culture , subtle ways of defending the drugs and blaming the individual – ‘you didn’t listen to the medicine’, ‘you were irresponsible’… Such insensitive comments compound the harms the person is already experiencing. You can read more about the prevalence of these sorts of attitudes here.

In addition, psychedelic facilitators or guides can sometimes fall prey to ego inflation and spiritual narcissism – they start thinking they are awakened beings or master shamans with extraordinary healing or spiritual powers, and that normal rules no longer apply to them. You can read here about the case of one 5-meo-DMT facilitator (a former real estate fraudster) who ran a retreat where he demanded clients recognize him as the Messiah.

Psychedelic organisations such as training programmes or retreat centres are often not run with high standards of ethics, safety or professionalism, and people come away feeling harmed. When they complain, the psychedelic organisations often dismiss their complaints.

This for example is an Ecstatic Integration story about AWE, a leading psychedelic training school, where several students complained about poor safety and ethics on the school’s retreats. Their complaints were dismissed as ‘entirely false’, and AWE threatened legal action against us and our sources for the story.

We come across many stories of both clients and employees of psychedelic retreat centres who feel the centre is run unprofessionally, unsafely and unethically, causing harm to clients, employees or both. It’s extremely hard to run a psychedelic retreat centre safely and professionally, and most fail to meet basic professional standards, sometimes spectacularly. In fact, there are no agreed and publicly-upheld professional standards in the psychedelic retreat industry.

To take one example, we were approached by several clients and employees of one leading ayahuasca retreat centre, one of the oldest in the industry. It offers months-long ayahuasca retreats including multiple ceremonies in the Peruvian Amazon. We were told these retreats are run by facilitators with very little experience of ayahuasca and no therapeutic or ethical training. These facilitators are way out of their depth professionally and commit multiple basic errors such as being egotistically focused on their own ‘process’ or starting unethical sexual relationships with clients. The owner of the retreat centre lives in the US and dismisses any customer complaints.

Psychedelic-facilitated sexual abuse

We also come across many cases where people take advantage of others while they are vulnerable and suggestible in altered states of consciousness – typically in order to have sex with them when their capacity to consent is compromised.

This sort of sexual abuse and misconduct can of course happen in other sorts of therapeutic or spiritual relationships without use of psychedelics (think of the multiple sex scandals in the Catholic church or in yoga industry, or in traditional psychotherapy where therapists have sex with clients).  Sexual misconduct is also common when other, non-psychedelic drugs are taken such as alcohol. According to some research, 30 percent of all sexual assaults and 75 percent of sexual assaults occurring on college campuses, occur when the perpetrator is under the influence of alcohol.

However, psychedelics can increase the likelihood of a sexual assault occurring because they can increase suggestibility and vulnerability, dissolve ego boundaries and reduce people’s rationality, moral judgement, and capacity for informed consent.

In the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug survey of over 2000 people who had taken psychedelics, 13% said they had someone force sexual advances on them while they were under the influence.

In Kruger et al’s 2024 survey of 1221 psychonauts, 8% reported that they or someone they knew was the victim of inappropriate sexual contact by a psychedelic sitter, guide, or practitioner.

This is a story about an academic who paid for an underground psychedelic facilitator training programme in the US, and who was raped by someone teaching on the course (specifically, the person took advantage of the academic while they were under the influence of psilocybin).

This is a story about British psychiatrist Ben Sessa, who coined the term ‘psychedelic renaissance’, and who was stripped of his medical license when he had sex with a vulnerable patient who later took her own life.

In many instances, a psychedelic guide, facilitator or shaman grooms clients to have sex with them by telling them it’s in the good of their own healing or spiritual advancement.

On a MAPS clinical trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, one facilitator groomed a participant to have sex with him and move in with him, as recounted in this story.

This is a story about a leading figure in the Santo Daime ayahuasca church who abused multiple women, often telling them it was for their own healing.

Individuals and organisations can also take advantage of people’s psychedelic-induced suggestibility to exploit them financially. One leading ayahuasca retreat centre in Costa Rica, for example, tries to sell retreat customers real estate during their ayahuasca retreats, while they are still in suggestible states.

This is an article about psychedelic organisations fund-raising from people while they are under the influence of psychedelics.

Psychedelics dissolve ego-boundaries and this can lead to blurred professional boundaries in psychedelic organisations or relationships. For example, the therapist and client become friends, lovers, ‘soul mates’, ‘family’, or emploter-employee. These sorts of dual or multiple relationships go against psychotherapeutic ethics.

Organisations which work with psychedelics may also expect employees to take psychedelics together, and this can also lead to blurred boundaries – multiple sexual relationships within the organisation, and a somewhat cultish atmosphere.

Psychedelics can enhance ‘cultiness’. They lead to mystical-type experiences – extraordinary moments of ego-loss and sense of connection to the divine. This can lead a person taking the psychedelic drug to attribute extraordinarty spiritual power to the person giving the drug and they may feel devotion and even worship towards them. Psychedelics can also  lead to ego-inflation and spiritual narcissism in the person giving the drug  - they decide they are a guru with extraordinary spiritual or healing powers, who can do no wrong.

Within organisations that use psychedelics, ‘cultic dynamics’ can arise: ‘We the awakened ones have been initiated through the extraordinary mystical experience of psychedelics, our egos are dissolved and we have been born again as purer more awakened beings, we are now united as one family or group mind, devoted to our special leader, and united in our cosmic mission.’

There is nothing essentially wrong with this sort of cultic dynamic but it can lead to conformism, group-think, excessive devotion to a charismatic or authoritarian leader, minimization or dismissal of harms, the othering of outsiders, and the demonisation of anyone who speaks out of line.

Cults exist on a continuum of authoritarianism and control. An organisation or a relationship can be a ‘little bit culty’, or in some rare cases there have been high-control, totalitarian criminal cults who have used psychedelics to indoctrinate members.

For example, this is a story about a Peruvian shaman, Roger Bardales, who runs a sex cult in the Amazon.

What to do about interpersonal harms from psychedelic drugs

Some organisations exist to try and support people who have experienced interpersonal harms connected with psychedelic drugs. One is the SHINE Collective (click here), which offers onlinepeer support; another is PsyAware in the UK.  CPEP runs a monthly peer support group which is mainly for people experiencing post-psychedelic psychological difficulties – sometimes these harms were triggered or exacerbated by the actions of others - for more information go here. 

You could also see a therapist, though be aware that psychedelic therapists and coaches can sometimes be so devoted to psychedelics they will unconsciously defend the drugs while subtly blaming anyone who experiences harm through them.

You could seek justice or reconciliation in some way, for example by reaching out to the facilitator or organisation who you feel harmed you. Be warned – at the moment the level of professionalism in psychedelic culture and industry is low, while narcissism levels are high, so don’t be surprised if the facilitator or organisation ignores you or dismisses your complaints.

If that fails you could post an online review (under your name or anonymously) on a site like Retreat Guru or some of the leading psychedelic pages on Reddit or Facebook. You could also reach out to the media, including to psychedelic reporters like Mattha Busby or our own Substack Ecstatic Integration.

If the person who harmed you is a licensed therapist or psychiatrist, you could report them to their licensing board. Or, if they committed a sexual or financial crime, you could report them to the police.

If you think you might be in a psychedelic cult, or were in one, some resources for ‘cult survivors’ are listed below.

It takes courage to speak up. If you do, you help psychedelic culture and industry to become more professional and safe. At the same time, your own healing should always be your first priority.

Articles on psychedelic abuse

• Silence on abuse in psychedelic therapy, by Will Hall and Kayla Greenstien
• Psychedelic therapy has a sex abuse problem, by Olivia Goldhill
• The Power Trip podcast (explores issues of psychedelic abuse in depth)
• Am I broken? Survivor stories podcast includes episodes with survivors of psychedelic abuse
• Studying harms is key to improving psychedelic therapy – by Nese Devenot, Sarah McNamee and Meaghan Buisson
• This is a seminar on psychedelics and cults featuring Jules Evans and Dr Steve Hassan
• We recommend the work of cult scholars Janja Lalich and Steve Hassan for those who think they might be in or were previously in high-control cult groups.