After decades of prohibition, scientific and academic inquiry into the psychedelic sciences has been reignited in the West. Alongside research, clinicians are being permitted to study the effects of psychedelic substances in humans, and the door has been opened to deliver psychedelic-assisted therapies for mental health needs. However, despite excitement for the professional use of psychedelics, there are few, if any, overarching principles regulating such studies and treatment approaches in Canada. To this end, experts in religious studies, psychiatry, clinical psychology, palliative care, anthropology, ethics, and legal studies assembled to assess the developing situation and form recommendations, as an initial step in laying the groundwork for therapeutic, spiritual, and research involvement/activities with psychedelics. This article reviews the historical context of entheogens in indigenous traditions; a current view of the field in Canada; potential risks associated with psychedelic use; recommendations regarding ethical guidelines and education and training for professionals; and criteria for credentialing in psychedelic-assisted therapies. These recommendations comprise the first step in an essential process to connect science, education, varied entheogen and psychedelic practices and our government. The professional recommendations of the committee culminate in advising the creation of a National Advisory Council, adjunct to the Office of Controlled Substances, Health Canada, and a Credentialing Council adjunct to the National Advisory Council. These councils would advise on sustainability and management of entheogenic plants, and education, training, core clinical competencies, ethical codes of conduct, and credentialing for clinicians and practitioners seeking to provide psychedelic-assisted treatments to clients. Public Significance StatementEntheogenic and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies are poised to become an effective mainstream approach to mental health and wellness in Canada. Practitioner guidelines for ethical practice, training, and credentialing are needed to ensure public safety of this emerging modality.

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The promise that Psychedelic Medicine holds for debilitating, treatment-resistant, disorders rests as much upon novel explanations of illness as it does upon novel treatments. If actualized, Psychedelic Medicine will revolutionize heath care and theories of healing. Psychedelic medicine's unintended consequences may prove to be just as far-reaching, as non-ordinary states of consciousness, induced by psychedelics, raise fundamental questions about knowledge, our place in the world, and about reality itself. In particular, such states reveal the anthropocentric fiction of an ontologically distinct Self at the heart of individual, social and ecological malaise. As the testimonies of the three authors (who, though trained therapists, assumed the role of clients in this study) reveal, psychedelic healing is an inextricably embodied process, informed by historical, social and cultural factors, and tied to community both present and past, visible and invisible. Healing occurs, at least in part, through the remembrance of and re-connection with "things past"-a recovering and interweaving of one's personal narrative with one's collective narrative, including embodied collective trauma.That the authors at the center of this study are African American women was not incidental to their psychedelic experiences, any more than it is accidental to their everyday embodied ways of being. The "I" at the center of their experiences is not an unchanging entity or substance, but a historically, culturally, and socially constituted one. And, as the experiences revealed, it is one powerfully shaped by the experience of racialized oppression.Psychedelics make short work of our pretense to self-sufficiency by removing protective shields, often forcefully, and leaving us exposed. While this can be a place of radical vulnerability, it is also, as the testimonials here show, the ground out of which healing emerges. With the presence of a skilled therapist, we can come to identify fear as nothing more than the desperate pleas of the disintegrating illusory Self, and we can come to experience the death of this Self as the condition for authentic connection with others. Wholeness, not annihilation, emerges in its wake, along with feelings of connectedness, love and security.While this is the promise of psychedelics, it is not guaranteed. Despite the great hopes of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a cultural predilection for "quick-fixes", healing is not simply a function of the psychedelic substance ingested. Research continues to mount confirming the centrality of "set and setting" to therapeutic outcomes. The more we learn about the states of hyper-suggestibility and receptivity that psychedelics are apt to occasion, the more the role of the therapeutic encounter takes center-stage. Healing hinges, at least in part, on being seen, and on having one's experience heard and validated in ways that go beyond discursive communication. At a minimum, the therapist needs to bear nonjudgemental witness to the life of the other, and resist addin...