Cosmology of belonging: The role of community in the therapeutic use of psychedelics

Abstract

Background: The recent wave of clinical trials of psychedelic substances among patients with life-limiting illness has largely focused on individual healing. This most often translates to a single patient receiving an intervention with researchers guiding them. As social isolation and lack of connection are major drivers of current mental health crises and group work is expected to be an important aspect of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, it is essential that we understand the role of community in psychedelic healing.

Objectives: To explore how psychedelic guides in the United States discuss the role of "community" in naturalistic psychedelic groups.

Methods: This is a secondary qualitative data study of data from a larger modified ethnographic study of psychedelic plant medicine use in the US. Fifteen facilitators of naturalistic psychedelic groups were recruited via snowball sampling. Content analysis was used to identify themes.

Results: Participants viewed the concept of community as essential to every aspect of psychedelic work, from the motivation to use psychedelics, to the psychedelic dosing experience and the integration of lessons learned during psychedelic experiences into everyday life. Themes and subthemes were identified. Theme 1: The arc of healing through community (Subthemes: Community as intention, the group psychedelic journey experience, community and integration); Theme 2: Naturally occurring psychedelic communities as group therapy (Subthemes [as described in Table 2]: Belonging, authenticity, corrective experience, trust, touch).

Significance: Results suggest that existing knowledge about therapeutic group processes may be helpful in structuring and optimizing group psychedelic work. More research is needed on how to leverage the benefit of community connection in the therapeutic psychedelic context, including size and composition of groups, selection and dosing of psychedelic substances in group settings, facilitator training, and role of community integration. Psychedelic groups may provide benefits that individual work does not support.

Keywords: Belonging; community; ethnography; group process; group therapy; psychedelics; qualitative.