Important paper! Talks about challenges of navigating the "OMG revelation!!" moments that often occur in psychedelic experiences.

Discusses biographical insights (recovered memories), neo-shamanic insights ("I'm full of demons!"), metaphysical ("All a simulation!") etc https://twitter.com/psych_pp/status/1346491925042507778

Participant in a psilocybin study had a vivid, distressing experience of mom trying to smother him as a baby.

Did it actually happen, years ago?
Often there's no way to find out for sure.

What do you do with that?

Sounds like there was some reframing during integration:

On to ayahuasca centers (Takiwasi specifically)

They're more Catholic than the one I was at, but otherwise similar paradigm... distress / disease often caused by bad spirits / bad energy, and the cure is "contracting relationships with supernatural protective entities"

I didn't take this at face value, when I was in Peru; worked with visionary experiences more fluidly and pragmatically, as narrative and metaphor.

Often meaningful, sometimes deeply so - but taking a pragmatic mystical stance like @ruespieler:

https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2009/11/02/to-believe-or-not-to-believe/

More notes on that topic, entity encounters and plant spirit shamanism: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/HowToHuman/page/oS-1d79gp

I'll likely weave this thread back into the threadapalooza I'm doing about ayahuasca... people asked why I was fired from the center, and I needed this material as background context https://twitter.com/boxofgroove/status/1339191042806001666

Back to the paper!

They also discuss reported experiential revelations about the nature of existence, that can happen in the context of psychedelic research:

There's a lot going on in this paragraph, but it looks like increases in these beliefs -- separate realities, mind-body dualism, "fatalistic determinism" (?) -- were associated with people feeling good after the retreats?

Ohh, ok - "fatalistic determinism" just means like "Fate already has a plan for each of us" -- not like depressed or expecting it to turn out bad.

In fact, probably expecting good outcomes, like "God has a plan" or "Everything happens for a reason"

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2012.00799.x

Good questions, and an outline of the framing pieces they're laying out

Oh, ok! Now they're getting at the thing about apprenticeship, from the title of the paper.

I like it!

"Apprentice" is very different model from "client" or "patient". An apprentice is less experienced in a particular area, but has a path to skilled peership through learning

In contrast, psychiatric patients or therapy clients are not on a peership track, and aren't assumed to be learning the same material that the therapist did.

(Although "psychoeducation" is a word used to describe teaching clients about topics relevant to their situation)

The apprenticeship model of psychedelic facilitation sounds like it has more in common with, like... the process of learning to scuba dive, for example.

There are some safety considerations, and if you go real deep you need to be careful about how you come up from it.

In scuba diving, there's no requirement saying you can't be in community with people you're diving with. That'd be bizarre.

But that's what happens with the therapy model of psychedelic facilitation, because of licensure restrictions, and I think it's a damn shame.

Hmm, do I post this...? It's a public FB post from a friend who's now practicing art therapy & psychedelic integration in Oregon. Recommended!

And... this last bit was really to read, an example of what I was talking about re: limiting models

https://www.facebook.com/AlyssaGursky/posts/10222036754041362

Back to the paper again. I like their ACE model (Accept Connect Embody), and based on a webinar last fall it sounds like they're now using "ACER" (R for Restore)

Webinar notes: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/HowToHuman/page/P58PnsLF1

More on the ACE / ACER model for psychedelic therapy.

Love the somatic work, and the bit about the observer self as being like the sky - the sky doesn't get damaged by the weather, no matter how stormy

And another tweet for the "Embody" part, bc it's lots of screenshots. Good stuff!

Overall impression: A solid paper

Glad people can now reference the "apprenticeship" frame for psychedelic facilitation! And the ACE / ACER model is great.

Still wish folks didn't have to write in academic jargon to get published, because that shit gets real confusing.

Oh, and @chrisletheby - they cite you!

Dunno if you saw it yet, as it's a preprint, but I figure you'd like to read the paper