Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up news, culture, and independent journalism about psychedelics straight to your inbox.

Today’s story is about Psychedelic Safety Flags, a survivor-built vetting system designed to help people determine if a facilitator is safe before heading into a session with them. The system, which is presented in a detailed Google Doc, uses a color-coded scale to give participants a concrete framework for sizing up a guide. You can find that story immediately below!

If you keep scrolling you’ll find pieces on psychedelic fatherhood, a guide to tripping alone, and CEOs who trip and how it impacts their employees.

Enjoy the read 📚,
Mary Carreón
Editor-in-Chief

Together With EdenDirect

Think your mushroom products contain psilocybin?

Some don’t contain any at all.

As the legal mushroom market explodes, more products are appearing that are designed to feel psychedelic without actually containing psilocybin.

Capsules, gummies, chocolates, and “microdose” blends are often formulated with combinations of adaptogens, stimulants, functional mushrooms, and mood-altering compounds that can create sensations like energy, focus, emotional lift, or body effects — while containing none of the primary compound most consumers believe they’re taking.

And from the outside, the difference isn’t always obvious.

That’s why understanding labels, ingredients, and formulation strategies has become an important part of harm reduction. Because informed decisions start with knowing what’s actually inside the product you’re consuming.

To help make sense of it all, Eden created a 13-page educational guide built with input from cultivators and formulators in the space. Inside, you’ll find:

• A simple ingredient breakdown chart
• How to identify misleading formulations
• The difference between microdose vs macrodose products
• Common “feel-alike” ingredient strategies
• Red flags to watch for before purchasing

If you’re consuming in this category, this guide is worth reading first.

👉 Download the Guide + Ingredient Chart

Use Psychedelic Safety Flags to Spot (and Avoid) Predatory Practitioners

In a largely unregulated culture, assessing a practitioner’s trustworthiness is essential. Now, there’s a resource to help you determine if your facilitator is safe.

We’ve said it before: Psychedelics and wellness cultures have a sexual assault problem. It’s the leading scourage of the psychedelic underbelly that’s often ignored because of “love and light” and “fear of damaging the movement” despite its rampant prevalence. Due to the fact these alternative spaces remain largely unregulated and, thus, attract unscrupulous characters, the problem isn’t likely to stop. That means the responsibility falls on us (the people) to arm ourselves with the skills to assess whether a practitioner is safe and trustworthy.

To help fill the knowledge gap, 10 practitioners, harm reduction experts, and mental health professionals teamed up to create a framework for spotting predatory or abusive facilitators. They penned “Psychedelic Safety Flags,” an assessment system designed by survivors to help individuals navigate the ethical complexities of psychedelic therapy and ceremonies. (There’s also a website!) It was inspired by Art of Consent UK’s “Consent, Power and Abuse” guide and uses a color-coded flag system to categorize behaviors ranging from best practices to outright abusive.

The system’s most serious category is the “red flag,” which the authors define as signs of “deeply concerning, unsafe, and/or potentially abusive practices” to be avoided. The examples provided in the document are unambiguous. One of the most obvious (but worthy of repeating) red flags is touching a participant during a session without asking for permission first and establishing clear boundaries around touch ahead of the experience. Another red flag to keep an eye out for is a facilitator who introduces substances or doses that were not discussed beforehand. As in, “booster doses” or new substances getting sprung on participants mid-ceremony or therapy session and/or presenting them in a way that is hard to refuse (as though a person under the influence can meaningfully consent!). The guide is blunt on the underlying principle: When a person in power uses that position for sexual gain, it is abuse. One hundred percent of the time.

The next tier down is an “orange flag,” which the guide reserves for major issues, which could be classified as conduct some participants might accept if they know exactly what they are getting into, but that might be upsetting or traumatizing for others. An orange flag facilitator disavows, minimizes, or disregards the inherent power dynamics of the facilitator–participant relationship. They minimize the importance of integration or skip it altogether, leaving participants to make sense of an intense experience on their own. Or, they failed to conduct a thorough medical and psychological screening before a session, neglecting preparation that keeps people safe. The authors are explicit that this kind of behavior can be a slippery slope into red flag territory.

A further step down are the “yellow flags,” which the document frames as room for improvement. It’s the murky zone of vague agreements and unclear boundaries that, left unchecked, can slip into something worse. This often shows up as sloppy ceremony or therapy containers, no matter how well meaning the facilitator is. It’s a facilitator telling participants or patients how they should feel and leaning on exaggerated promises, claiming the work will completely “change your life.” Or they hide behind jargon and buzzwords instead of explaining things in understandable language, creating a dynamic of superiority.

Then, there are “green flags.” This encompasses best practices and facilitators who explain what they are, where they came from, and are open to feedback. The guide highlights examples of green-flag facilitators as those who “provide assurance that there will be no sexual contact before, during, or after the session.” They empower “participants to ask questions and to disagree.” And when a facilitator gets something wrong, they admit it, apologize, and follow through with sincere attempts to correct it. Integration after a psychedelic session is also a major green flag; it is required! The underpinning of the green flag section is an ongoing conversation about consent and boundaries, transparency around money, trauma aware protocols, and an acknowledgment of the power dynamics inherent to guiding someone through an altered state. Ultimately, it’s about how to stay safe.

But, beyond grading facilitators, Psychedelic Safety Flags also urges participants to self screen, offering reflective questions to help people prepare for sessions and identify their own boundaries. The guide has been picked up and circulated by harm reduction and ethics organizations across the psychedelic community, including the ethical Psychedelic International Community, which hosts it among its living documents.

This collaborative document isn’t the only place the conversation around toxic facilitators is happening. Survivors, journalists, and harm reduction advocates have spent years pushing this conversation into the open. It’s one of the most relevant topics in the space today and, unfortunately, it will remain topical until the abuses stop or consistent justice is brought to perpetrators. Keep the Psychedelic Safety Flags document in your arsenal as you navigate these spaces because the more of us who can spot a red flag, the less room predators have to cause harm.

The Church of Sacred Synthesis Is Back with a New Lawsuit to Prove Psilomethoxin Is Real

In 2023, the Church of Sacred Synthesis (formerly the Church of Psilomethoxin) made a bold claim: that by feeding 5-MeO-DMT to psilocybin mushrooms, they had biosynthesized an entirely novel psychedelic compound called psilomethoxin. (Maybe you’ve heard of it?) Independent lab tests said the compound wasn’t there. Scientists called the process nonsensical. The church got sued, rebranded, and kept it pushing. Now, a physicist with a $1.4 million mass spectrometer says he’s found it — and the church is taking its detractors to court.

On Friday, journalist Jack Gorsline breaks down the new test results, the trade secrets lawsuit targeting Hamilton Morris and the Usona Institute, and what it means for the future of citizen science, sacred chemistry, and the increasingly blurry line between psychedelic religion and psychedelic commerce.

Update your subscription here to get the full story in your inbox on Friday!

DoubleBlind Digs

• WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO A STORY? A journalist is working on a feature about 5-MeO-DMT and ibogaine for DoubleBlind. If a facilitator has ever administered 5-MeO to you post ibogaine treatment, we want to hear from you. Take this survey here.

• VET FACILITATORS: Check out the Psychedelic Safety Flags document to brush up on what abuses, manipulation, and inexperience looks like in ceremony and underground psychedelic spaces. Learn more here.

• NEW DOCUSERIES: The healers who have carried ayahuasca for generations are finally speaking for themselves. And what they have to say about the global spread of their medicina is something the psychedelic world needs to hear. The Temple of the Way of Light is doing important work. Watch the episodes on Youtube here.

• FAMILY ACID: A psychedelic family album like no other — Roger Steffens’ archive of 40,000 film photos captures the golden age of California counterculture, one unconventional snapshot at a time. Learn more here.

Together With EdenDirect

Did you know?

Not all mushroom products actually contain psilocybin.

Many are formulated with adaptogens, stimulants, and “feel-alike” compounds designed to mimic parts of the experience without the primary molecule most people think they’re taking.

That’s why Eden created a 13-page guide to help you decode labels, spot misleading formulations, and better understand what’s actually inside. Includes a simple ingredient breakdown chart you’ll want to save before your next purchase.

👉 Download the Guide + Chart