A new, free-of-charge peer support hotline called the Fireside Project has begun for people within the U.S. who are having rocky psychedelic journeys to get help from a trained volunteer by calling 6-2FIRESIDE.
The late psychedelic pioneer and spiritual teacher Ram Dass once got a call in the middle of the night from a sobbing girl who told him she was losing her mind during an LSD session. He began to calm her down by asking her who dialed his phone number. When she replied that she had made the call herself, he joked, “Would you put whoever it was that dialed the number on, because whoever dialed seven digits plus an area code in the middle of the night to find me, that person I can talk to. You, you’re a raving maniac.”
As Ram Dass understood, a few helpful words from someone well-meaning and level-headed can be all it takes to turn a chaotic psychedelic episode into a deeply enriching one. That’s the idea behind
The Fireside Project was founded by Joshua White, former San Francisco Deputy City Attorney, crisis counselor for the Safe & Sound TALK line, and volunteer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’ Zendo Project, which promotes harm reduction during challenging psychedelic experiences.
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