If you have spent any time looking for someone to sit with you through a psilocybin journey, you have probably noticed that no two people seem to call themselves the same thing. One person is a facilitator. Another is a guide. Someone else is a therapist, or a sitter, or a coach. The words get used interchangeably, and the more you read, the less sure you feel about which one you are even supposed to want. It is a confusing place to begin.
Part of the reason is that this work did not begin with us. It comes from a long Indigenous lineage, from traditions that held roles like the Curandero and Curandera, the Healer, and the Shaman, people who carried this medicine for their communities long before it arrived in a Colorado living room. As these practices moved into a Western context, the old roles did not carry over cleanly, so people reached for new words, and most of us landed on whatever term fit how we work. For me, that word is guide.
Here is roughly what the words tend to mean, so you have something to hold onto.
A guide takes an active role in your journey. A guide stays with you the whole way through and helps you move with whatever comes up, rather than watching from across the room. You will find guides in ceremonial settings, and in plenty of others. It is the role I have chosen.
A psychedelic therapist is a licensed mental health professional, trained and licensed to practice psychotherapy. Therapy is a specific and legally protected thing, so plenty of people who support a journey are not therapists, even though the work can feel deeply therapeutic.
A sitter, sometimes called a harm reduction specialist, is there to keep you safe. Think of the friend you would invite over to make sure nothing goes sideways, though there are skilled professional sitters doing this too. Where a sitter mostly watches over you, a guide does that and stays more active alongside you.
In Colorado, there is a fourth word that means something very particular. A facilitator here is licensed by the state, working out of healing centers that the state monitors and regulates. That is the path the Natural Medicine Health Act created, and for a lot of people it is the right one.
There is something the word credentials can hide, though. Some of the most gifted people in this space have no certificate to show you. They are underground guides and healers who have sat with hundreds of people across many years, long before any of this was legal, and they hold a kind of knowledge no training program can hand out. Plenty of people with every credential are only average at this work, and some of the best I have come across carry none at all. Experience, presence, and real care can give you as much as all the credentials in the world, sometimes more.
Why I chose the guide path
The question I get most is some version of this: if Colorado has a licensed, state-monitored path, why am I not on it, and should that make you nervous? I would rather answer that head on than hope you do not ask it.
I chose not to pursue state licensure for a couple of reasons.
The first is cost. There is a lot of overhead that comes with becoming a state-licensed facilitator and running out of a healing center, and that overhead does not vanish, it gets passed to the client. I wanted to keep this work affordable, for you and for me. Staying outside the licensed system also lets me work in my home, or in yours, wherever you feel safest and most grounded, instead of in a healing center.
The second is that the licensed program is still young. There are wrinkles being worked out, and I would rather put my attention on the person sitting in front of me than on a framework that is still finding its shape.
Choosing not to get licensed does not mean I work outside what the state had in mind. I have finished all of the coursework the facilitator license requires. I just have not completed the licensing itself. Everything about how I practice is modeled on the Natural Medicine Health Act's framework for facilitators, and I built it that way on purpose, because I think it is a careful and sound standard.
One caveat. I can tell you how I work. I cannot promise you that everyone calling themselves a guide works the same way.
What is different, and what is not
What does that difference feel like once you are in the room? My hope is that it does not feel like much at all.
What matters far more than the title is the fit. You are about to share a very intimate stretch of hours with whoever you pick, therapist, sitter, guide, facilitator. It is not unlike choosing a therapist. A good practitioner is not automatically the right one for you, and that match is the thing I would weigh above all else. What I care about most is whether you feel safe and at ease, and I have found I can offer that more fully in a calm, home-based setting than I could inside a healing center. The training, the framework, the care, all of it I have built to meet the licensed standard. The setting and the fit are where I am different, and that part is a choice.
How to vet a guide
A good website is not enough to go on. Before you trust anyone with something this vulnerable, there are questions worth asking, and these are the ones I would ask. They are also the ones I hope you will ask me.
Ask about training and credentials. What programs have they done? What framework do they work inside?
Ask about psychedelic first aid. Are they trained to help if your body or your mind needs it in the moment?
Ask about screening. What does their intake look like, and what are they screening for? Someone who says yes to everyone is not screening at all.
Ask about safety. What is in place to keep you safe, and what happens if something goes wrong during your journey? You want to hear a real plan, with specifics.
Ask about accountability. Do they have a mentor, a peer group, or a community holding them to a standard? The good ones rarely work alone.
Ask how they guide. What is their role once your journey begins? Do they direct, suggest, step back? You want that to line up with what you need.
Ask about supportive touch. How do they think about it, and how do they handle consent? This should be settled, and clearly, long before the day arrives.
Ask about confidentiality. What happens to what you share, and to any notes they take? You are handing them your most unguarded self, and you should know how that gets protected.
A guide worth your trust will welcome every one of these. Watch how they react as closely as you listen to what they say.
A last word
You do not need to map the whole field to make a good choice. Mostly you need to find the person who feels right, ask them the hard questions, and pay attention to what your gut does while they answer. The words are going to keep shifting around for a while, the field is young and the labels are still settling. What you are really after is simpler than the vocabulary makes it sound. You want to feel, sitting across from someone, that you are in careful hands. I hope you find that, with me or with someone else. Either way, you should not have to walk towards this alone.