Dear Friends,
Joshua White spent over a decade as a city attorney in San Francisco before he left the law to build something the psychedelic community didn’t have:
Joshua founded Fireside Project, an anonymous support line for anyone in the middle of a psychedelic experience, or anyone still sorting out one they had years ago.
He launched on April 14, 2021, during the pandemic. Joshua placed Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, and the psychiatrist Julie Holland on the panel.
Joshua researched psychedelics and kept seeing the same four gaps: not enough support, not enough diversity among providers, not enough hands-on training, and almost no data on why some trips heal and others hurt. A support line staffed by volunteers could work on all four at once. The first month, Fireside took about a hundred calls. Last month it took more than 1,300.
I asked Joshua who answered the phone. No hard qualifications, he said. Volunteers ask themselves one question: if I were tripping, or if the person I love most in the world were tripping, would I want this person on the other end of the line? Anyone who clears that bar trains for fifty hours and commits to a year on the same weekly shift.
“Someone who doesn’t have any kind of agenda about what type of experience you should have, but rather someone who’s just there to be human with you.” - Joshua White
The way I conceptualize a “bad trip” is that something has escaped the box it got pushed into years ago. Old fear, old shame, whatever the mind couldn’t hold at the time. Joshua’s volunteers don’t say bad trip. They say challenging, and they stay on the phone while a person turns toward it instead of running.
Fireside is sitting on roughly forty thousand anonymized calls now, and it’s using that archive to train the next generation of psychedelic therapists through a simulation tool called Lucy, already in use with researchers at Mount Sinai and in a New Mexico psilocybin study. Calls are stripped of anything identifying first, and the data never leaves the organization.
Running Fireside seven days a week for four years nearly broke Joshua, until an ibogaine journey got him to slow down. I told him what a patient taught me decades ago. She put her hand on my shoulder and said: we know you love us, Dr. Miller, but you’re wrong that working this hard helps us more. Take care of yourself and you’ll have more to give. Keep going the way you’re going, and you’ll get sick, or die young. I’ve never forgotten it, and I’m not done repeating it to Joshua.
Please listen to our conversation. Just below it you’ll find a small practice built on the same idea Joshua now lives by.
Today’s Practice: Be the Loving Rock
A simple thing to take with you from this week’s conversation.
Joshua’s volunteers have a name for what they do on the phone: they are a “loving rock” for whoever is on the other end. No agenda, no fixing, no timeline.
This week, find one person who’s having a hard stretch and give them your full attention without trying to steer them toward feeling better. Ask one open question, then let the silence do some of the work.
You don’t have to be a therapist to be a loving rock. You just have to show up and stay.
If you do it, write back and tell me who you sat with.
Golden light,
Dr. Richard Louis Miller
Resources mentioned
Fireside Project — free, anonymous psychedelic peer support | donate | app (iOS/Google Play)
Lucy — Fireside’s psychedelic-therapist training simulator, used at Mount Sinai and in a New Mexico psilocybin-for-PTSD study
A note on working together
I offer a small number of one-on-one sessions for those who want to work with me directly.
This is not traditional therapy. You bring whatever is troubling you, and we practice the simple tools I have used with patients for six decades — ways of quieting the mind and easing anxiety that you can carry into daily life.
We go at your pace, and we work on what helps.
My New Book
The Adverse Effects and Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Medicines was recently reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. I was honored by it. Read the review here.
A few words from the front of the book:
Dr. Richard Louis Miller is a true elder and wisdom keeper of the psychedelic community, and his credentials come honestly, through hard-won experience. In this book, he continues his role as an educator by sharing his knowledge of both the perils and the promise of psychedelic substances. The reader will find valuable advice on how to avoid pitfalls while realizing the maximum benefits from the thoughtful and safe use of these remarkable medicines.
— Dr. Dennis McKenna, ethnopharmacologist and author of The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss
Putting forth the adverse effects of these substances in readable form contributes to their understanding and separates psychedelic scientists from those who would cover over, or even hide, negative effects of pharmaceuticals.
— Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco
It’s the fifth book in my series on psychedelic medicine. You can find it on Amazon.
My Other Books
Master Your Mind: Practical Tools to Calm Anxiety, Silence Your Inner Critic and Stop Overthinking
Freeing Sexuality: Psychologists, Consent Teachers, Polyamory Experts, and Sex Workers Speak Out
Psychedelic Wisdom: The Astonishing Rewards of Mind-Altering Substances
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca
Integral Psychedelic Therapy (co-edited with Jason A. Butler & Genesee Herzberg)
