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Manual of psychedelic support v1.0 (Chapter 1) said:A History of Psychedelic Care Services
The modern history of psychedelic care services
can be traced back to the mid-1960s, when young
people began to consume mind-altering substances
at concerts and events. Emergency medical services
were not trained to provide compassionate support
for participants in non-ordinary states of conscious-
ness. In an effort to offer more effective and informed
care, a number of groups created their own special-
ised teams to work with those who were having dif-
ficult experiences. This chapter takes a look at some
of those early efforts in the United States, as well as
a selection of more recent and current ones around
the world, and how they developed specialised
spaces and techniques as part of their on-site care
services. Some of the first attempts at providing sup-
port for people who ingest psychedelics and other
drugs were launched by the Hog Farmers, the CALM
volunteers of the Rainbow Family, Rock Med, White
Bird, and the innumerable parking lot medics who
went on tour with the Grateful Dead. More recently
created psychedelic care services have been devel-
oped by the Green Dot Rangers at Burning Man, by
KosmiCare at Boom Festival, the Zendo Project, and
the Full Circle Tea House. These groups are just a
sample of the various services that exist around the
world today. See Chapter 17, “Online Resources and
Obtaining Assistance”, for a more comprehensive list
and links to further information. The groups profiled
below represent almost fifty years of creative, com-
passionate care that has helped innumerable people.
Services Launched in the 1960s and 1970s
The Hog Farmers at Woodstock
In the mid-1960s a group of forty people associated with
the Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters were offered a
job feeding hogs in exchange for rent-free living on a South-
ern California mountaintop. The community, now known
as the Hog Farm, is widely considered the longest running
hippie commune in the United States. The Hog Farmers are
best known for their services at the 1969 Woodstock Music
& Art Fair, which attracted nearly half a million participants.
Recruited by event organisers to build fire pits and trails on
the festival grounds in Woodstock, New York, the Hog Farm-
ers persuaded the promoters to let them set up a free kitchen.
After flying into New York, the group was met by the press at
the airport and informed that they had been assigned the job
of providing security at the festival, which had been hastily
relocated to a 600-acre dairy farm. Hog Farm co-founder
and professional clown Wavy Gravy named this security
team the “Please Force” (as in please don’t do that, please
do this instead) to reflect their non-intrusive approach. When
asked by reporters what the group’s strategy was for keeping
order, Gravy replied, “Cream pies and seltzer bottles”.
Wavy Gravy, still helping out on the festival circuit after all of these years;
seen here at the 2010 Harmony Festival in California.
Photo by Jon Hanna.
After the perimeter fence was cut down by incoming crowds,
the festival became a free event for hundreds of thousands of
attendees. Whilst the county declared a state of emergency,
the Hog Farmers valiantly fed, comforted, and looked after
a flood of participants, effectively launching one of the first
large-scale psychedelic care services. For three muddy,
historic days, the Hog Farmers found creative ways to sup-
port attendees at the site, which lacked adequate sanitation
and medical services. Standing on stage one rainy morn-
ing during the event, Gravy announced, “What we have
in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!”. The Woodstock
Festival was remarkably peaceful considering the conditions
and number of people involved. There were two recorded
births during the three-day event and two fatalities, one from
a suspected heroin overdose and another caused when a
tractor accidently ran over an attendee sleeping in a nearby
hay field. After Woodstock, the extended family of Hog
Farmers bought a fleet of buses and hit the road to perform
theatre shows. The activists and entertainers who made up
the collective eventually settled in Northern California, and
currently operate a 700-acre ranch where they host large
music festivals, run a children’s circus camp, and raise money
for charitable work around the world.
Grateful Dead Parking Lot Medics
During the long concert tours of the Grateful Dead that
began in the 1970s, many ardent fans, known as “Dead-
heads”, followed the band and created lively, temporary
communities that took up residence in parking lots near the
music venues. After the shows were over, a group of volun-
teer medics remained behind to assist Deadheads who still
roamed the lots. Rob Savoye, who served with one of these
loosely organised medic teams from 1978 to 1986, is a
founding member of the Ilchester Mountain Search and Res-
cue group, a collection of rock climbing buddies from West
Virginia who provided parking lot services. Savoye says the
medics tried to create a calm and secure space for people
who were over-stimulated by psychedelic experiences or
other psychological challenges. Savoye often brought a bus
or truck to the lots—first a VW camper and later a 1964 Ford
truck—and created a chill space inside the vehicle to care
for guests. The medics, many of whom had formal medical
training, also provided first aid for minor injuries. Frequently,
says Savoye, law enforcement officers would try to chase the
Deadheads from the parking lots, but he would let them hole-
up in his parked vehicle for a day or two, often driving them
to the next show to reconnect with their friends.
The CALM Volunteers of the Rainbow Gathering
Every year since 1972, a week-long Rainbow Gather-
ing has been held on National Forest land somewhere in
the United States. This temporary intentional community is
coordinated by the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a loose
affiliation of people committed to the principles of egali-
tarianism and non-violence. With deep roots in the counter-
culture of the 1960s, the Rainbow Family reaches decisions
through consensus; they have no leaders, no structure, and
no spokesperson, nor do they apply for permits for their
gatherings. They once organised annual national events of
up to 30,000 people (as well as international and regional
gatherings). However, due to pressure from local authorities,
including extensive roadblocks and illegal searches, most
gatherings now attract about 5,000 people.
Health services at Rainbow Gatherings in the United States
are provided by CALM, or the Center for Alternative Liv-
ing Medicine, a volunteer, non-hierarchical group of about
ten core members who assume responsibility for medical
emergencies and sanitation. Embracing both conventional
and alternative medical practices, CALM works closely with
the Rainbow Gathering’s Shanti Sena Peace Keepers, who
provide transport for medical emergencies and create meet-
up points with local ambulance services. CALM volunteers
run an on-site medical tent and smaller first aid stations. As
Rainbow Gatherings often take place in remote wilderness
locations miles from the nearest trailhead, CALM relies on
their radio-equipped stationary and roaming medical staff,
rarely transporting patients off of the event site. The CALM
unit does not dispense prescription pharmaceuticals but
it does provide a wide variety of services, from campsite
medical visits—“hippie house calls”—to birthing babies.
Psychedelic care services at Rainbow Gatherings are pro-
vided by Brew HaHa, a CALM subcamp run by a physician
who is a long-time festival participant. Brew HaHa offers a
quiet space bordered by tapestries hung from trees, serves
herbal teas, and provides around-the-clock counselling to
participants in need. Care givers who staff the space have
no set shift schedule, but do have extensive personal experi-
ences with psychedelic substances. Brew HaHa is also fre-
quented by recovering drug addicts and alcoholics drawn to
its quiet atmosphere. In rare cases where physical restraint is
needed for an agitated guest, it is often combined with body
massage at the incident scene. Since people at Rainbow
Gatherings often lose track of time, the greatest challenge
for the Brew HaHa crew is no longer adverse reactions to
psychedelic substances, but participants who forget to take
their prescription pharmaceutical medications and become
self-destructive. For psychedelic care cases, the CALM and
Brew HaHa staff are sensitive about protecting the anonym-
ity of attendees. Guests are asked for information regarding
what substance they took, what it looked like and where they
got it from, but few formal records are kept. In a non-confron-
tational manner, care givers sometimes inform the source of
the substance about adverse reactions, especially in cases
involving “newer” drugs such as GHB and toad venom.
According to care givers, suppliers sometimes volunteer
information about treatment approaches and usually agree
to stop distributing the substance(s) in question.
White Bird
White Bird is a non-profit human service agency based
in Eugene, Oregon, that has been serving the people of
Lane County and nearby festivals for more than forty years.
A collective of largely volunteer care providers, White Bird
was founded in 1969 by a Eugene-based community of care
givers. The group provides direct service and education that
helps people gain control of their social, emotional, and
physical well-being. White Bird provides services at the annu-
al Oregon Country Fair, where some participants visit the on-
site White Bird clinic to receive their annual check up and pri-
mary heath care. White Bird also operates three permanent
clinics that provide free health and dental care, mental health
counselling, and other services to an estimated 12,000
homeless people in the Eugene area. CAHOOTS, or Crisis
Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, is a department of
White Bird funded by the City of Eugene. CAHOOTS fields a
mobile, crisis intervention team—integrated into the city’s pub-
lic safety system—that responds to more than 85,000 service
requests a year. The care givers of CAHOOTS receive 911
dispatch calls and provide services for cases involving severe
intoxication, drug overdose, disorientation, mental illness,
dispute resolution, non-emergency medical care, first aid,
and transport to services. Pioneers in providing on-call psy-
chedelic services and other care to marginalised communi-
ties, CAHOOTS operates a van that is staffed and managed
by the White Bird Clinic.
Rock Med
For more than forty years, Rock Med volunteers have
been providing medical care at large concerts and other
events in the San Francisco Bay Area. The organisation was
founded in 1972 when music promoter Bill Graham asked
the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, a medical service based in
San Francisco’s famous Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, to
staff a medical tent at outdoor concerts of the Grateful Dead
and Led Zeppelin. Rock Med became a standalone organisation
in 1973 and branched out to provide care at sporting
events, marches, fairs, circuses, and other large gatherings, as
well as concerts. The group now has about 1,200 volunteer
doctors, nurses, and CPR-certified care givers, and serves at
more than 700 events a year in Northern California.
Packing its supplies and equipment into “road boxes” mod-
elled on those used by bands to transport music equipment,
Rock Med runs urgent care medical tents, measuring their
success on being non-judgemental and getting participants
back to their families without involving the police or hospitals.
In 2012 Rock Med merged with the Haight Ashbury Free
Clinics and the Walden House drug rehabilitation service
and formed HealthRight 360, in order to combine resources
and raise funds through grants and donations. To assist peo-
ple having difficult psychedelic experiences, Rock Med has
an area in the medical tent equipped with mats that allow
guests to lie down and receive compassionate care. In some
cases medical volunteers also dispense the antipsychotic and
muscle relaxant Haldol, and the anti-anxiety medicine Ativan.
Rock Med has become a ubiquitous presence at San Francis-
co Bay Area music events and attracts seasoned care givers.
Services Launched from 1980 Onward
Green Dot Rangers and Sanctuary at Burning Man
The Burning Man Arts Festival began on a San Francisco
beach in 1986. It is now a 70,000-person event in the Black
Rock Desert, a dry lake bed in northern Nevada. Participants
build a temporary community called Black Rock City, which
contains theme camps, music performances, and many types
of art. The event focuses on creating immediate experiences
instead of commerce, and supports a gift economy that
encourages radical self-reliance and the agreement to leave
no trace at the end of the gathering. The highlight of the
week-long festival is the burning of a large wooden effigy
known as “The Man”, and other fire art that creates an
impressive spectacle on a high desert plateau ringed by
distant mountains.
The Burning Man organisation that runs the event is struc-
tured to support the logistical challenges of creating an in-
creasingly expanding gathering on a remote site. Organisers
work with local law enforcement and the federal Bureau of
Land Management to develop emergency protocols, environ-
mental safeguards and safety plans. Burning Man’s Emergen-
cy Services Department (ESD) provides Black Rock City with
fire, medical, mental health, and communications services.
ESD managers contract with a regional hospital to build a
central field hospital and remote medical stations, providing
on-site medical care. Burning Man also organises uniformed
volunteers called the Black Rock Rangers who address safety
issues and provide community mediation. Black Rock Rang-
ers often hold a current certification in CPR and basic first aid
(and this training is available on-site prior to the event). Care
for participants undergoing challenging drug experiences is
provided by psychiatric services from the ESD Mental Health
Branch, and peer counselling comes from the Black Rock
Ranger “Green Dots”. The Green Dot Rangers also provide
compassionate support for addressing interpersonal issues
and offer mediation services throughout Black Rock City.
They follow a FLAME model, which directs Green Dots to
Find out, Listen, Analyse, Mediate, and Explain.
Together with members of the ESD Mental Health Branch, the
Green Dots staff the Sanctuary space for non-medical, sup-
portive care. Sanctuary offers a limited number of beds and
provides a quiet location to help participants transform poten-
tially difficult situations into positive experiences. Sanctuary
is not advertised at the event, but Rangers, law enforcement,
medical responders, and other Burning Man departments bring
participants there for care. The space and its services are also
available to the event’s staff. As a safe haven for confidential
care, the Burning Man Sanctuary space is open at all times dur-
ing the event. The Green Dot Rangers and their ESD partners
provide on-call counselling outside of Sanctuary—alongside
warming fires contained in metal barrels and at other locations
throughout the festival—during situations requiring emotional
trauma support. Green Dot Rangers also work on-site as foot-,
bicycle-, and vehicle-mobile Dirt Rangers. In addition to receiv-
ing training as Black Rock Rangers, they obtain instruction from
the Green Dot Advanced Ranger Training Manual, a practical
guide for compassionate care. The text Meeting the Divine
Within is also used to train those working with psychedelic
crises at Burning Man.
Sanctuary care giver rewards co-worker Rick Doblin after his shift has ended at
the 2005 Burning Man Festival. Photo by Jon Hanna.
KosmiCare at Boom Festival
Boom Festival is a week-long biennial event that takes place
on the shores of a beautiful lake in Portugal. Launched in
1997 as a psytrance festival, Boom has since evolved into a
more inclusive event showcasing a variety of music styles and
attracting some 30,000 people from 116 nationalities. Boom
also features visionary art, sculptures made of natural or recy-
cled materials, performances, fire dancing, and juggling. The
Liminal Village, a large shaded venue, hosts lectures, presen-
tations, workshops, and documentaries on forward-thinking
topics by international speakers. The Healing Area is devoted
to therapeutic treatments including massage, meditation, and
yoga. A Baby Boom area offers activities for children. In addi-
tion, Boom is an innovator and role model in the development
and application of psychedelic care services and sustainability
practices for large-scale events.
In 2002 a small area was set up in the Liminal Village where
info on psychoactive substances and harm-reduction practic-
es was distributed by representatives of the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a United States–
based non-profit organisation. In 2004 Boom organisers
created a dedicated care facility called CosmiKiva that com-
plemented the festival’s medical services. CosmiKiva offered
professional attention to people undergoing “psychedelic
emergencies”. To aid in this endeavour, Boom further collabo-
rated with MAPS to help create a quiet space and develop
effective care techniques. In 2008, CosmiKiva was renamed
KosmiCare and relocated to a large geodesic dome run
by thirty multilingual volunteers. The dome was positioned
between the three main music stages, and it attracted many
attendees seeking care and/or information. Representa-
tives from Erowid and Check-In (a Portuguese risk-reduction
group) provided computer access and printed materials, and
answered questions about psychoactive substances.
Comprised of trained volunteers recruited from amongst
Boomers—including medics, psychiatrists, psychologists,
nurses, therapists, anthropologists, researchers, and others—
KosmiCare’s services are coordinated by team members,
Boom organisers, on-site medical staff (paramedics), and
event security services who assist with particularly difficult
cases. The KosmiCare team uses a classic “sitting” method to
provide peer counselling for attendees, but also offers other
kinds of care such as massage and alternative therapies. Ho-
meopathy, for example, dispensed by practitioners with deep
knowledge and experience, has been popular at the past
few KosmiCare services. The KosmiCare dome also stocks
art materials for guests to draw and paint with, and provides
information about assorted psychoactive drugs.
Official signs posted by the drug-testing service warn of dangers and deception related to drugs sold at the 2012 Boom Festival. Photo by Zevic Mishor.
Also in 2008, KosmiCare collaborated with Energy Control,
a Spanish drug-testing organisation that made its services
available at Boom. Working out of a small, well-equipped
laboratory, these professionals used thin-layer chromatog-
raphy (TLC) to assay substances brought to them by festival-
goers, or in some cases submitted by the KosmiCare team
after the substances had been given to care givers by care
space guests. The service provided information regarding
the active compounds(s), as well as adulterants, present in
the samples tested. This information was very useful not only
for individual cases, but also in helping to build a general
picture of the kinds of drugs that were being circulated at the
festival, and indeed, of trends of disinformation and decep-
tion; for example, when one psychoactive was being sold
under the guise of another. The photo on the pervious page,
taken at Boom 2012 (which hosted a similar testing service),
shows the level of honest concern and transparency possible
under (and indeed, as part of its emphasis on harm reduction,
largely supported by) current Portuguese law. These official
signs, unthinkable at present under other jurisdictions in cer-
tain countries around the world, help to convey a sense of the
atmosphere of openness, saneness, and support that has so
far characterised Boom Festival. The article “Energy Control:
TLC and Other Risk Reduction Approaches” by Sylvia Thys-
sen and Jon Hanna gives some background information on
Energy Control, and presents an excellent depiction of their
work at the 2008 Boom Festival.
In 2008 the Boom Festival worked closely with paramed-
ics and security to maintain the KosmiCare psychedelic care
space and provide effective medical care during a large-scale
outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness that was dubbed the
“Boom Bug”. This phase of the project is documented in Svea
Nielsen and Constance Bettencourt’s essay, “KosmiCare:
Creating Safe Spaces for Difficult Psychedelic Experiences”.
In 2006 and 2008, CosmiKiva/KosmiCare launched a strat-
egy to pursue a vision of expanded support and improved
guest-outcomes for current and future care services. It con-
sisted of a partnership between Boom organisers, the Faculty
of Education and Psychology at the Catholic University of
Porto (Portugal), and the Portuguese General-Directorate
for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies
(SICAD). The purpose of this partnership was to transform
the existing care strategy into an evidence-based crisis
intervention model that addressed the use of psychoactive
substances in recreational settings.
The first results of these partnerships were delivered in
2011; psychedelic care resulted in very positive feedback
from guests and staff, producing significant improvements in
guests’ short-term psychological and physical well-being as
a result of treatment. Boom organisers continued to support
research related to intervention, and more data was col-
lected at KosmiCare in 2012. As results were made avail-
able during 2013, it was possible to verify that other, more
quantitative measures of crisis resolution also prove equally
positive, with mental state exam indicators increasing signifi-
cantly between the periods of admission and departure of
guests. Please see Appendix B, “Monitoring, Evaluating and
Researching—Recommendations from an Academic Perspec-
tive for an Evidence-Based Approach to Psychoactive Crisis
Intervention”, for further discussion on this research.
At the 2012 Boom Festival the KosmiCare space was moved
to a more central area of the event, compared to where it
had been set up in 2010, making it easier for participants
to locate. An increasingly experienced team of care givers,
using tested-and-true methods, continued to provide and im-
prove psychedelic care services, despite budget restrictions.
Kosmicare UK
Kosmicare UK is an organisation separate from the origi-
nal KosmiCare project set up by Boom Festival, but owes
much of its philosophy and ethos to that pioneering project.
After a successful, challenging, and rewarding time as a
volunteer with KosmiCare at the Boom Festival in 2008,
Karin Silenzi de Stagni recognised the need for similar
services at festivals in the United Kingdom. With support
from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Stud-
ies, Karin formed Kosmicare UK, using the framework for
psychedelic emergency services that MAPS had developed
with Diogo Ruivo, chief organiser of the Boom Festival.
Recognising the hard work and innovation of those involved
with the original project, Kosmicare UK gratefully utilised
their resources, building upon them to meet the challenges of
working at festivals in the United Kingdom. The demands that
Kosmicare UK faces include the harsh climate—often wet and
cold even in the summer months—the logistics of attending a
number of different festivals across the nation, and the lack of
funding. Kosmicare UK is an independent community project
that does not have sponsors, depending entirely on donations
and voluntary work. In addition, many small festivals have a
limited budget and are able to only just cover basic expens-
es; nevertheless, the Kosmicare UK team make every effort to
have a presence at as many festivals as possible, because the
team really believes in the importance of their project.
Since 2009, Kosmicare UK has provided care services
at several festivals across England, Wales, and Scotland,
including Sunrise Celebration, Eden Festival, Waveform,
Boomtown Fair, Glade, Magikana Festival, Alchemy Festival,
and Sunset Collective. The project has made good connec-
tions with long-established and respected organisations in
the United Kingdom festival scene and works closely on-site
with event security, medical, and welfare services. Each
year Kosmicare UK strives to improve operations through
increased festival attendance, networking and sharing info
with similar groups throughout Europe, and building a pool
of experienced volunteers. Kosmicare UK also has the ongo-
ing support of a diverse group of professionals whose guid-
ance is invaluable and to whom they are grateful.
DanceSafe
DanceSafe was founded in the United States in 1998 by
Emanuel Sferios to promote health and safety within the
electronic music and nightlife community. The organisation
provides peer-based educational programmes to reduce
negative drug experiences. They pride themselves on provid-
ing unbiased information to help empower the young people
who use drugs to make informed decisions about their health.
DanceSafe is a non-profit, harm-reduction organisation
with local chapters throughout the United States and Can-
ada. Regional chapters are run by individuals from within
the dance culture. DanceSafe volunteers are trained to be
health educators and drug abuse prevention counsellors,
who use the principles and methods of harm reduction
and popular education within their own communities.
A DanceSafe volunteer answers questions for attendees at the 2005 Mind States conference. Photo by Anonymous.
The volunteers staff harm-reduction booths at raves, night-
clubs, and other dance events, providing information on
drugs, safer sex, and assorted health and safety issues of
concern to the electronic dance community. DanceSafe
also provides adulterant-screening/pill-testing services for
ecstasy (MDMA) users, an important harm-reduction service
that may save lives and reduces medical emergencies by
helping users avoid fake and/or tainted tablets that can
contain substances far more dangerous than actual MDMA.
In 2013, the Drug Policy Alliance acknowledged Dance-
Safe by honouring them with the Dr. Andrew Weil Award
for Achievement in the Field of Drug Education.
The Psychedelic Nurses
The Psychedelic Nurses is a European organisation of
health care providers that has offered psychedelic support
services at parties and festivals in France and Switzerland
since 2006. Members of the group base their care on natu-
ral healing and holistic therapies, including qigong, tai chi,
Reiki, ayurvedic and Thai massage, and shiatsu. Whilst in
recent years the Psychedelic Nurses have shifted their focus
to offering natural health and exercise services at parties
and festivals, they will still provide care for someone experi-
encing a psychedelic crisis if the need arises.
The Zendo Project
The Zendo Project was launched at the Burning Man Arts
Festival in 2012 as an outreach service sponsored by MAPS.
Zendo operated from a circular structure near a popular
music stage, and was staffed by trained volunteers. Since
2001, MAPS has brought together a diverse team of thera-
pists, doctors, researchers, and experienced peer counsel-
lors to provide compassionate care and psychedelic harm
reduction at large gatherings. MAPS first provided volunteer
recruitment and training for the Sanctuary space at Burning
Man in 2003. The organisation later also joined production
efforts to help develop a model for psychedelic harm reduc-
tion at the Boom Festival (see “KosmiCare at Boom Festival”
above). Following these efforts, MAPS continued to expand
its services to a circuit of international events.
The mission of the Zendo Project is to provide a supportive
space to help people obtain some benefits from difficult
psychedelic experiences, reduce the number of psychedelic
drug-related arrests and hospitalizations, and train volun-
teers to provide compassionate care. The Project strives to
address the public’s fear of psychedelics and encourage
honest and responsible conversations about their use. The
service clearly demonstrates that it is possible to mitigate the
risks associated with the non-medical use of psychedelics at
the community level, and that there is a strong interest within
its community of volunteers to do so. Since its debut in 2012,
Zendo volunteers have provided training and support at the
Envision Festival in Costa Rica, Bicycle Day in San Francis-
co, AfrikaBurn in Tankwa, South Africa, and at a handful of
smaller events in California and Colorado, as well as return-
ing to Black Rock City, Nevada, for Burning Man.
During the Envision festival, Zendo staff led a public train-
ing for twenty volunteers, followed by a smaller private
meeting with medical staff to discuss methods and tech-
niques, and develop triage protocols. With Zendo and
medical spaces situated directly beside one another, the
collaboration proved helpful for both teams and empha-
sised the need for reliable infrastructure and bilingual staff.
Many of the volunteers at the event were former guests of
the Zendo who wished to give back to the community after
receiving assistance in the space during their own difficult
experiences.
During other large events, such as the 70th Anniversary
Bicycle Day Party in San Francisco, California, Zendo
volunteers provided care for participants who might
otherwise have been arrested by police, and promoted
harm reduction in overcrowded environments. The Zendo
team has also learned the importance of working directly
with security staff to support guests at the conclusion of
an event, and the value of collaboration with Dance-
Safe and other harm-reduction services. Whilst deliver-
ing service at AfrikaBurn, the largest regional Burning
Man event with over 10,000 attendees, the Zendo team
provided a supportive space, compassionate care, and
drug education whilst working alongside medical staff
and Rangers. Zendo volunteers helped relieve medical
staff from caring for attendees who were primarily in
need of psychological support. Since drugs are decrimi-
nalised in South Africa, volunteers provided care as well
as on-site thin-layer chromatography to screen street
drugs for adulterants. By offering training to volunteers
with different levels of experience, the Zendo created
an environment analogous to a teaching hospital, where
volunteers shared and compared techniques from their
respective backgrounds and provided a context for help-
ing train psychedelic therapists. During the 2013 Burning
Man Festival, the Zendo trained 140 people including
twenty-six medical professionals and twenty-two mental
health professionals. The Zendo service cared for more
than 150 guests at the event, some of whom had ingested
psychoactive substances and some who sought relation-
ship counselling or information about psychedelics.
Full Circle Tea House
The Full Circle Tea House was launched by a group of
California-based tea enthusiasts in 2011 to provide a safe
place for festival participants to rest, hydrate, and integrate
transformative experiences. Comprised of a large tent with
a porch, bicycle parking, two tea bars, and a sleeping area,
the Tea House deploys a staff that serves around the clock
at events throughout the West Coast of the United States.
Conceived as an alcohol-free social space, the Tea House
provides free tea and water to guests and hosts occasional
spoken word and acoustic musical performances. The tea
service is intended as a calming ritual that helps participants
ground and centre themselves during the often chaotic at-
mosphere found at music and arts festivals. The tea ritual is
based on a contemporary interpretation of the traditional
Chinese gongfu-style tea service, and uses small tea cups that
are refilled whenever empty. Both herbal teas and pu-erh (a
fermented black tea from the Yunnan province in China), are
served at the Tea House.
Tea House organisers recruit volunteer tea servers who pro-
vide calm, compassionate support for guests through good
listening skills and informal peer counselling. Some servers
are mental health and medical professionals, whilst others
have received training through the Zendo Project, the Green
Dot Rangers, and/or the KosmiCare service at Boom. The Tea
House trains servers to follow the emergency protocols estab-
lished at festival sites and directs volunteers to be attentive to
the possible medical and psychological needs of guests. The
Tea House does not provide medical care, but is usually lo-
cated close to festival medical facilities and sometimes guides
guests to appropriate medical services. All tea servers are
encouraged to receive certification in CPR and basic first aid.
The Full Circle Tea House is supported through donations and
serves at many events in the United States, including Symbio-
sis, Occupy protests, Burning Man, the Psychedelic Science
conferences, Earth Day celebrations, fundraisers, and private
parties. It has developed mobile strategies for serving at large
political demonstrations and helps other groups start satellite
Tea Houses. At least four sister Tea Houses have now been
organised: in Austin, Texas; Oakland, California; Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; and Paris, France. During the 2013 Burning
Man Festival, the Full Circle Tea House worked together with
the Zendo Project and the Rainbow Bridge mobile care unit
to transport Tea House guests to the Zendo for focused psy-
chedelic care. The Tea House, which served several thousand
people during the week-long event, also provided a quiet
space for those who received Zendo services to integrate their
experiences and insights.
DÁT2 Psy Help
DÁT2 Psy Help is a team of volunteers associated with the
Hungarian Psychedelic Community, a peer-help drug-user group
focused primarily on harm reduction related to psychedelics.
Embedded in the Goa/psy culture, volunteers of DÁT2 Psy Help
have specialised in managing psychedelic emergencies and
spiritual crises at dance events since 2004, including big inter-
national festivals in Hungary (O.Z.O.R.A. 2007, 2008, 2011,
2012, and S.U.N. 2013 in collaboration with NEWIP).
Safer Festival
Safer Festival was a European non-profit organisation found-
ed in 2011 by Jonas Di Gregorio, a member of the Boom
KosmiCare project in 2008 and 2010. According to its
mission statement, the group was dedicated to “promoting
well-being and safety at festivals in Europe”. They offered
a portfolio of services, including psychedelic care; cultural
activities such as field libraries, documentary screenings, and
visionary art exhibitions; food and catering; training for festi-
val organisers and staff; and eco-consulting. One of its core
offerings was “Universal Care”, a care service with trained
staff that could be established upon request at music festivals
and similar events. Universal Care provided service at Sol
Fest in Spain in 2011, and at O.Z.O.R.A. in Hungary in 2012
and 2013. Whilst Safer Festival is currently taking a hiatus,
those interested in their services can email jonasdigregorio@
gmail.com to see what might be arranged.
The frame grab above is from a video that describes The Haven, a care space established at O.Z.O.R.A. in 2012 by the European non-profit organisation Safer Festival, which helped to promote health, well-being, and safety at festivals.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdoPjsMct1k.
LUKE GRAY • Peace Pipe, 2012 • Staedtler Triplus Fineliner
http://www.lukegray.net
MARK HENSON • Inner Voices, 1983 • watercolour on paper
http://markhensonart.com/all-art-gallery-shop/inner-voices
The woman is about to enter into a state of communion
with the source of all beingness.
As she passes into the light,
voices of doubt and fear make one more attempt
to direct her thoughts elsewhere.
What if there is no love?
What if there is no caring?
Will I be left out?
As the light comes closer and closer,
the unresolved “Inner Voices” fade,
drawing her through the door of consciousness,
into the love that was there all the time.
— Comm entar y by Mont i Moore
http://psychsitter.com/download-manual/