It comes at a price point many can't afford. There should be more options.
As noted elsewhere, it is powerful medicine and not without risks. But we also need to remember that many other medications come with significant risk as well, including suicidal ideation.
So yes, it's powerful and should be treated with respect, but many of those other medications don't require you to spend thousands of dollars to have a baby sitter whilst taking it.
It's justified in the context that's been set up -- certification requires a lot of time and the license is big bucks too. Add to that the length of a trip would be many hours.
Finding a friend to babysit is not always easy. I've got this crazy idea on setting up a cooperative to do something like that. Leverage existing guides from tripsitters.org and others. Develop protocol and legal indemnification, identify suitable locations (nature!), etc.
I'd love to chat this up with anybody who doesn't think it's crazy (and even those that do, to disabuse me of this notion). There's another spin on it too that I need to write out and find likeminded souls to explore...
I've been thinking of the same thing, and I think the ideal thing would be to use the psychedelics as a sacrament in the context of a weekend-long initiation ritual. Participants would travel into a remote forested location and go through activities and rituals that would give meaning to the psychedelic experience, as well as rituals and activities with the objective of integrating the psychedelic experience into their day-to-day lives.
I have written out a bit of the experience, I can share it with you if you'd like. We're still in the planning phase.
I've had "friends" in the OTO and that is something I'd like to avoid, but yes, please! My contact info is in my profile -- please ping me, as I'd love to get involved.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to have professional babysitters who have had training and experience talking people through rough patches, maybe some first aid training too.
Personally I wouldn't trust someone who has never done them before. I mean I don't know what a "professional" babysitter's training entails, but in my experience people who have never done psychedelics tend to accidentally do arbitrary things that set off a bad trip at a much higher rate than those who have done psychedelics. People who have done them before tend to be able to see how things might lead to a bad trip.
I solved a bad trip one time by turning the TV off in the other room. It was almost inaudible to me, but it was playing WWE and it was just... negative. Turned it off and everything was fine, but the other babysitter (someone who'd never done psychedelics) couldn't be convinced that the TV was the issue because they couldn't see how negativity could cause a bad trip.
This is all probably just bias on my part. No reason a professional psychologist couldn't make these connections too.
As noted elsewhere, it is powerful medicine and not without risks. But we also need to remember that many other medications come with significant risk as well, including suicidal ideation.
So yes, it's powerful and should be treated with respect, but many of those other medications don't require you to spend thousands of dollars to have a baby sitter whilst taking it.