Philly’s underground network of psychedelic guides is here to help

In the summer of 2020, Andrew, a 37-year-old business professor, began having the kind of nightmares that startled him awake. Panicked and new to a locked-down city, he became afraid to go to sleep.

He tried breathwork, antidepressants, ketamine infusions, talk therapy. But months later, he still found himself unable to sleep, heart racing in the predawn hours. He had heard about psychedelics — they’re somewhat of a cultural phenomenon at the moment — but wasn’t even sure where to buy them.

After tentative conversations with friends and acquaintances, he sent off a candid email to a stranger. Would you, he asked, be my psychedelic guide?

“I would never have considered psychedelics otherwise,” Andrew, who lives in Old City, said in an interview. “I wanted this to be done with other adults involved.”

Psychedelic drugs — including psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms; MDMA, also known as ecstasy; and LSD — are all classified as “Schedule 1,” meaning officially they have no currently accepted medical use. (Ketamine, a legal dissociative drug that can produce psychedelic effects, is sometimes prescribed off-label to treat depression.)

But in spite of their federal status, psychedelics are experiencing a popular renaissance. A host of clinical research suggests they have real potential to treat major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychiatric issues. And changes are ramping up on both the policy and pop culture fronts: On Jan. 1, Oregon became the first state to allow adults to legally use psilocybin in therapeutic settings; Colorado also voted in November to legalize psilocybin in such settings. Investors are pouring millions into research.

Even Prince Harry recently said he benefited from taking ayahuasca, a plant-based medicine, and mushrooms “with the right people” to navigate his grief.

Without state-mandated training or licensing for guides in Pennsylvania, an underground network of “trip sitters” has sprung up to support people taking psychedelics. (The Inquirer agreed to refer to Andrew and his facilitator solely by their first names because the substances they are working with are illegal.)

In Philadelphia, the facilitators are a motley collective, ranging from laypeople with practical knowledge to clinical social workers to people who have apprenticed in shamanic healing traditions. They tend to refer to “plant medicine” or “entheogens,” fundamentally rejecting the “drug” label. They work from their homes or other informal settings, guiding people discreetly through a process that may one day soon be legal — and look quite different.

A former web designer who lives in King of Prussia, Teresa runs the facilitators program within the Philadelphia Psychedelic Society, an informal group of enthusiasts who host events on Meetup.com. (Their logo is the Liberty Bell inside a rainbow eye.) She typically screens clients via video and communicates on the encrypted app Signal. She began working with Andrew in 2022.

Once she decides to work with someone, she advises on which medicines might be best (she doesn’t supply any herself). Sometimes she uses Tibetan bowls, drums, and rattles to “amplify the healing experience.” She charges $700 per session.

» READ MORE: What is a ketamine therapy session like? A Philly-based therapist explains her process.

Teresa came to psychedelics after experiencing a severe depression that left her unable to get out of bed, she said. In the years since, she traveled to Peru and Ecuador, where she studied ayahuasca with members of the Shipibo tribe, Indigenous shamans who maintain centuries of knowledge about plant medicines. Back home she joined the Philadelphia Psychedelic Society and learned about harm reduction and psychedelic peer support through the national Zendo Project.

“It’s like lighting a candle,” Teresa said in an interview at her home, holding a pillow emblazoned with neon pink and purple mushrooms on her lap. “When you heal yourself, now my energy is healing for others.”

During their sessions, Andrew lies on a bed in her basement office, wearing an eye mask and listening to music he described as ethereal. Sometimes the experience is unpleasant, and that’s part of the point, they say. Once, while on a difficult MDMA trip, he lifted his eye mask to check his guide’s reaction.

“She was so thrilled,” he said. “She knew that whatever I was struggling with was something that I needed to work through. It felt really good to have that.”

For psychedelic facilitators, hallucinogens are versatile tools, both spiritual and medicinal, said Colette Condorcita, a Mount Airy and Costa Rica-based psychedelic facilitator and founder of the advocacy group Decriminalize Nature Philadelphia. Condorcita does not do her trip sitting in the United States because of the legal status of the substances here.

“I believe in science,” Condorcita said. “I also very much believe in shamanism — the multidimensional aspects of how energy works. As someone who’s a facilitator, I really try to maintain that balance with individuals.”

While the substances can help deal with trauma, Condorcita said, they can also be ceremonial. Or eye-opening. Or, of course, fun. After a session, psychedelic facilitators often revisit and help translate what happened in a process called integration.

“Integration sometimes is more important than the actual medicine journey, because people need support making sense of their experiences and integrating it into their lives,” said Victor Cabral, who is based in Reading, Pa., and is the director of policy and regulatory affairs for Fluence, an organization that trains medical professionals in psychedelic-assisted therapy and integration.

Scientists, for their part, are still figuring out exactly how psychedelics work. They seem to increase the brain’s ability to spark new connections, prompting a kind of rewiring, said Jason Wallach, an assistant professor at St. Joseph’s University who leads a lab that builds new psychedelic compounds. But he and his peers don’t know how to create a compound that’s more visual, for example, or leads to greater insight. They know that the substances tend to radically shift people’s perspectives — but they aren’t sure why.

Andrew, the business professor, came to believe his night terrors were unprocessed anxieties, emotions, and memories he was able to face during his trips. Taking MDMA, working with psychedelic guides, and attending group integration meetings weren’t a cure-all, but they helped enormously, he said.

“Half of the healing process,” he said, “is not being alone.”

This piece has been updated to clarify that Condorcita does not do trip sitting in the United States.