Evaluating a facilitator, clinic, or retreat

The psychedelic marketplace rewards certainty. Good programs are slightly boring: they document, they screen, they say no, they have a medical plan, they follow up. Use that boredom as a signal.

Green signs

• Licensure, insurance, and a physical address you can verify.
• Written screening that can exclude you — and examples of when they have.
• Named medical backup and a transfer plan.
• Clear fees, no pressure to book this week, no “your trauma will get worse if you wait.”
• Integration that is scheduled, not implied.
• A complaint process that does not run only through the founder’s inbox.

Red signs

• Sexual or romantic attention framed as part of the work.
• Requests to keep the method, the dose, or the injuries secret.
• Guaranteed cure language, especially for PTSD, addiction, or moral injury.
• Discouraging you from telling your existing clinician.
• Isolation from your ordinary supports as a condition of participation.
• Improvised medicines, unlabeled powders, or “trust me, I tested it.”

If a program needs you to be less informed in order to proceed, it is not a program. It is a capture.

Bring someone with you to the information call. Take notes. Sleep on it. The people worth working with will still be there next month.