The psychedelic industry is growing bigger and stronger by the day across North America, and to make sure it doesn’t leave anyone out, activists have taken an early front seat to advocate for equity and diversity in the space.
Contributing to the movement, Fireside Project — a San Francisco-based non-profit psychedelic peer support helpline — has launched a first-of-its-kind initiative to train individuals from Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) communities, transgenders, and military veterans to provide psychedelic support-line services to those seeking help to process their psychedelic experiences.
Equity Initiative will train the first ‘Affinity Cohort’ of 40 individuals on the Fireside support line for a year, starting June 13, 2022. After that, volunteers will be able to access a wide variety of resources based on their career goals in the psychedelic space — including scholarships, educational aid, and internships with researchers at the forefront of psychedelic studies.
The organization has also established an Equity and Liberation Research Community which will be led by Dr. Monnica Williams and Dr. Chris Stauffer of Oregon Health and Science Univerisity. Stauffer works in both the military veteran and the transgender communities, and will oversee the research conducted under the Equity Initiative.
Advocates have constantly raised alarms about the lack of representation of ethnic minorities in the mainstream Western healthcare model and clinical trials. This may get amplified in the psychedelic-assisted therapies where current research models are “resource-intensive”, potentially depriving individuals from weaker economic sections of future psychedelic care.
In the peer support context, the lack of diversity in helpline centers makes it harder for individuals from marginalized communities to call in for specialists who could help them process their psychedelic experiences with an understanding of their background, needs, and struggles.
Barriers to resources among marginalized communities, Hanifa Nayo Washington says, “are multifaceted.” She notes that while psychedelic use has been held by black, brown, and indigenous people of the land, there is a lack of representation in large pharmaceutical companies and research programs.
“When we talk about access, and ensuring that people have access to tools that can support their resilience and healing, it means coming above ground and having an education, having the resources — like money or connection — and to be able to make an established basis above ground within a colonized system,” Washington tells Microdose, adding, “which will generate new ways of being with medicines and with business and with industry.”
Washington is the co-founder of Fireside Project, and a sacred activist who has worked with plant medicines for over two decades. Having seen the psychedelic space transition from an underground hush-hush culture to overground healing and wellness space, Washington notes, “I feel that it’s all of our responsibility to ensure that there’s a safety net, and no one’s left out…it’s not rocket science to create community, but it is dedication.”
Role of Equity Initiative
“We noticed early on that the disparity between our volunteers catering to BIPOC callers from marginalized sections,” Washington said, adding that only a handful of people responding to the post-call survey were from the marginalized sections.
In a post-call survey of 236 users of the Fireside hotline, 55% of respondents identified as white, 29% as “other,” 10% as Latinx, 2% as Black, 2% as Asian, and 2% as Indigenous. This revealed a demographic disparity between the hotline support staff and the clients they were serving. To date, the non-profit has trained over 65 individuals, and of those, five were Asians, five Black and African Americans, two Indigenous, and seven Latinx.
“We know that representation matters,” emphasized Washington. “When we think about what might be some cultural and societal barriers to minoritized groups [being able to seek help], that was a really hard question.”
One of the ways to address the problem was to restructure the volunteer program, she shared. Instead of having the same volunteers working fixed shifts four hours a week, they will be working varied shifts so that callers can find different specialists every time they call in.
Fireside Project started with 30 volunteers in April 2021, offering services from Thursday to Monday. Now as it expands, the non-profit is taking calls seven days a week 3:00 PM to 3:00 AM pacific time, and has at least 70 volunteers in the team.
“We believe there will be a very sharp increase in communities who we haven’t seen using the support line [yet],” said Washington.
The organization has also set a goal to raise $200,000 for the Equity Fund, creating a pool of resources for under-supported individuals.
Once the first cohort completes year-long volunteering on the support line, individuals will be able to apply for grants from institutions including Naropa University which has committed an annual offering of $10,000 towards the non-profit’s funds, or Fluence which would allow three free registrations for its Integration Premise and Promise online workshop. MAPS will also donate $5,000 to the fund for tuition scholarships to its MDMA Therapy Training Program.
Washington says that there are no qualification requirements for the positions. “To be a support line volunteer, the qualification is that there is a deep desire in alignment with offering peer support and understand the importance of peer support in the psychedelic space during and after psychedelic experiences,” she says. “We’ll be adding another 40 and we encourage people to hang their credentials out the door when they come into the service on the line… because it’s not about any techniques but about a peer-to-peer people service.”
Applications for the first Equity Initiative cohort are open until March 27, 2022
Call or text the psychedelic peer support line 62-FIRESIDE > 623-473-7433