My guest today is Irina Alexander, co-founder of Sage Institute for Integrative Health, a new psychedelic-assisted therapy clinic and training center that prioritizes equal access to psychedelic therapy.
On the show we discuss the Sage model which provides access to psychedelic medicine for underserved communities, training for therapists from diverse backgrounds, and psychedelic research. We discuss Sage’s perspective on psychedelic ethics, and how to orient oneself towards social justice. Finally, Irina explains the journey of recruiting Sage interns- from community outreach in the Bay Area, to how you, the listener, might apply to the next cohort (applications are due May 15th).
Irina has a background in drug policy reform and harm reduction as Chair of the Board of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and supervisor in psychedelic peer support with the Zendo Project. She is also an adherence rater for the MAPS Phase 3 MDMA clinical trials. She studied Marriage and Family Therapy at University of San Francisco and is now a therapist at the Harm Reduction Therapy Center and at Sage Institute which she co-founded with Genesee Herzberg, Heather Valdez, and Shanna and Jason Butler.
If psychedelic healing gives advantages in life and it’s only available to the most fortunate, then this powerful movement of healing might only serve to increase inequality. Sage is on a mission to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Links
Timestamps
- :04 Irina’s background in drug policy reform through the Zendo Project to Sage Institute
- :11 Sage Institute: Therapy, Training, and Research
- :16 Additional barriers to access and how Sage addresses them
- :20 How Sage recruits from different communities
- :23 Sage’s philosophy of psychedelic ethics
- :37 So you want to be a psychedelic intern?
- :46 Irina’s personal orientation towards social justice
- :52 Irina addresses the psychedelic therapist
