For anyone new to psychedelic healing and considering going on a responsible journey, there seems to be a lot of homework involved. You’ll probably want to find the right trip sitter, learn about the substances themselves, investigate a suitable set and setting, and be aware of the laws in your area. We’re constantly met by uncertainties and fear in publicly sharing our questions or experiences, looking at stigmas, and wondering what our acquaintances would think about us. While still in its early days, Psychable aims to help.
Launched on Bicycle Day this year, Psychable is building platform providing resources for every stage of a psychedelic journey. While the organization is focused on connecting individuals looking for legal psychedelic-assisted therapy with professionals, it also provides a library of information on guides, laws, history, business, and a community space to exchange information.
“Safety and community are really at the top of our minds. We want to make this experience as safe for people as possible,” says Matt Zemon, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Psychable. “And we know there are multiple ways to heal. There’s a range of professions and there’s an opportunity for every professional to document why they are on the platform and bring that knowledge to the community,” he adds.
Having experienced a powerful healing journey through ayahuasca herself, Jemie Sae Koo, Psychable’s Chief Executive Officer and other co-founder, shares how the pair came to recognize the “big missing piece around integration.”
“Our site provides holistic solutions to healing, and we also believe that every one of us has our own intelligence to healing,” Sae Koo says.
Psychable: Building the One-Stop-Shop
Within eight weeks of conceiving the idea, the two co-founders formed their team and were carrying out rigorous research to find practitioners. “Research on practitioners was extensive,” Zemon shared. He told Truffle Report that a research team was dedicated to scouring the internet, public sources, LinkedIn, and to tracking down psychedelic practitioners.
“We made profiles of those practitioners in our system, about everything you ever want to know, including reviews and the process to get started,” Zemon says. “At this point, we have thousands of practitioners in our database. It ranges from licensed psychiatrists, medical doctors and psychologists to guides, sitters, and everything in between,” he adds.
When asked about background checks and the vetting process for professionals listed on their site, Zemon answers, “As we’re creating this database, we made sure there are multiple sources for every practitioner that we’re gathering from.” For instance, he explains, “Ketamine providers are a part of the American Society of Ketamine Physicians (ASKP), so that was the easy one. For less traditional ones, who are licensed but not in ketamine, we reached out to them to ensure the quality of information.”
Sae Koo adds, “If anyone is found in violation of our terms and policy, they will be immediately removed and banned from our platform.”
Legality and credibility are near-constant stumbling blocks for those in search of psychedelic therapy resources. Knowing that every activity on Psychable is legal could make things less daunting for their target audience of relative newcomers.
“One thing that is critical is that everything on the site is legal,” Sae Koo says. “There’s nothing on the site that’s illegal. There’s no exchange of illegal substances, there’s no promotion of illegal services. We want to see the stigma around these legal alternative therapies reduced,” she adds.
How Does it Work?
“What does our launch look like? It’s profiling ketamine clinics across the U.S. and Canada,” Sae Koo explains. “It’s listing internationally-based retreat centers and even practitioners abroad, practitioners providing preparation and integration after-care support services, and practitioners providing other alternative healing therapies,” she adds.
If you’re going on the website to find your perfect sitter or psychotherapist, there are a few ways of figuring it out. If you’re not aware of what exactly you’re looking for, you can dive into the ‘learn’ section and familiarize yourself with psychedelics.
“For others, they might not be afraid to ask questions. They might want to hop into the community and under the topic of, let’s say how to prepare for a psychedelic experience, they can learn all about it,” Sae Koo says. While some may already know what they’re looking for, they may look up their choices. For instance, search “guide near Toronto” and you will have the choice to see what resonates with your needs and end goal.”
What Lies Ahead?
Fairly new to the psychedelic industry, the co-founders have started with the goal of building a strong, credible network around plant medicines.
So far, Zemon shares, “Right now, for us, it’s all about building a community.” He shared his experience and dilemma of who to talk to about the experiences, or “what the neighbors would think or what [his] doctor would think.” Now, with lessons from his own lived experience, Zemon is focused on developing a safe community space where anyone seeking a journey is free to pose questions and share experiences. “We are a community-first platform, we’re community-led and we’re community-focused. We are here to serve,” both co-founders reiterate.
Psychable recently partnered with the Heroic Hearts Project, helping connect veterans suffering from PTSD and sponsoring them to go on ayahuasca retreats abroad.
The company has now also partnered with the City of Santa Cruz, their city council, and Councilmember Justin Cummings to help increase awareness of psychedelic-assisted therapy, as the city had declared the month of April as Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Awareness Month, a year after decriminalizing entheogenic plants.
