This episode features Jeronimo MM of ICEERS Foundation and explores the potential dangers and pitfalls present for ayahuasca/plant medicine facilitators in non-traditional contexts. Dangers specific to the facilitators, that Jeronimo refers to as The 6 Pitfalls: Sex, Money, Power, Intercultural Relationships, and Legal Situations.

We also do a deep dive into what a “non-traditional context” is and two potential harms that might come up for participants, namely “when the experience is too much” and “Ayahuasca told me that…”

To use Jeronimo’s words from the interview you are about to hear, this episode explores “How to avoid harming people who have put themselves under your care”

We welcome Jeronimo back to Adventures Through The Mind for his fourth feature. His previous episodes were a dedicated interview on the complexity of the ongoing mainstreaming of psychedelics and the others were psychedelic cafes on how to protect from corporate influence and bad actors in the psychedelic scene, and the importance of ethnopharmacology for the future of humanity.

If you are a plant medicine facilitator of any kind or know facilitators, this episode is definitely for you. However, this episode will be relevant to anyone interested in participating in any kind of plant medicine ceremony. As the dangers presented, facilitators are also dangers present to participants under those facilitators’ care. Having a sense of what they are in advance empowers your capacity to better navigate the often murky world of underground facilitation.

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Importantly, this episode is a vignette into a portion of the 6-month course Jeronimo is putting on through ICEERS titled Increasing the Safety of Ayahuasca Sessions: A harm reduction course for facilitators in non-traditional contexts.

The course begins on May 8 and the admission process ends on April 27. Meaning there is little time left to sign up, if you feel called to do so.

More details (along with a video version of this interview) are available at bit.ly/ATTMind174 Or you can jump right over to the course page by heading to http://iceers.academy/

*** FULL TOPICS BREAKDOWN BELOW** ***Featured image is courtesy of and copyright iceers.academy 2023

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Episode Breakdown

(0:00) Opening
(7:01) Increasing the Safety of Ayahuasca Sessions Course
(7:50) Patron thanks
(9:11)) Interview Begins
(10:21) A harm reduction course for Facilitators in non-traditional contexts.
(14:31) Why non-traditonal use contexts for ayahuasca require additional protocols to protect participants and facilitators
(20:03) Dangers for participants: when the experience is too much, flight-response, disassociation, psychosis
(29:18) The fine line between when to let difficult experiences unfold naturally and when to intervene
(38:21) How to protect an ayahuasca participant from falling into disassociation
(42:18) The dangers of "Ayahuasca told me that..."
(50:15) Discerning between internal and external truths as a part of psychedelic integration
(54:57) The 3 confirmations rule for psychedelic realizations
(57:01) The 6 pitfalls for ayahuasca/plat medicine facilitators | Sex, Money, Power, Isolation, Intercultural Relationships, Legal situations
(59:34) How the social structure of being an ayahuasca faciliator can push them into these pitfalls
(1:10:11) The Pitfall of Money | the importance of payment, but the manipulations that can occur through payment
(1:12:42) “Ayahuasca told me…” sex, love, and relationships
(1:21:37) Its nice to be celebrated, but eventually it becomes a poison
(1:27:31) The pitfall of “Intercultural Relationships” | relationships between non-traditional facilitators and traditional cultures
(1:38:54) “How to avoid harming people who have put themselves under your care” | freedom vs responsibility
(1:43:47) Follow-up links for the ICEERS course.
(1:44:54) Closing

Samuel Davies