I have a habit of jumping toward the next promising thing the moment I hear about it. That is what happened when psychedelics started making their way back into clinical conversation, this time with serious money behind them, rigorous protocols, and trials designed to convince regulatory agencies that these compounds deserved a second look. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was at the center of it. I went immediately to get trained, had my own experiences, and came away convinced that the benefits were real, and that what made them real was not the substance alone but everything surrounding it.

As I was finishing my training, something else was already happening. More and more clients were reporting that they had tried psychedelics on their own, or were planning to. The frustrations were immediate and layered. I could not refer them to a licensed provider because the treatments were not yet legal. I found myself explaining, over and over, that preparation matters, that without it, the experience is far less likely to be therapeutic. I wanted them to understand that the protocols existed for a reason: the doses are not arbitrary, the setting is not incidental, and taking MDMA at a concert does not constitute a therapeutic session.