Frequently Asked Questions.

Fireside Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the world's first psychedelic peer support line. We offer free, confidential emotional support to people during and after psychedelic experiences - by phone, text, and scheduled video. We also offer paid one-on-one coaching, build training tools for the broader field through our platform Lucy, and contribute to research that makes psychedelic care safer for everyone.

We launched our Psychedelic Support Line in April 2021 with a small group of trained volunteers. In the years since, we've supported tens of thousands of callers and texters and trained hundreds of volunteers from across the United States.

Yes. Fireside Project is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Our EIN is 88-2124868. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Our staff and volunteers are spread across the United States. The Support Line currently serves callers in the U.S., with a goal to expand internationally, starting with Canada.

No.

No. Fireside Project does not encourage or condone any illegal activities, including illegal drug use. We support people who have already chosen to use psychedelics, and we help them stay safer.

Our work is supported by individual donors, foundation grants, fee-for-service coaching, and licensing revenue from Lucy.

If you'd like to support our work, you can make a donation, explore major gifts, or subscribe to our newsletter to follow along.

There are many differences. In short: the Psychedelic Support Line is free and offers one-off, inbound, unscheduled conversations by phone or text with anonymous volunteers - for people in the middle of psychedelic experiences or integrating past ones.

Fireside-Certified™ Psychedelic Coaching is a paid service offering long-term, scheduled support by video to clients preparing for future experiences or integrating past ones. Clients select their coach from a database of profiles, and every coach is a Fireside employee who has completed our 30-step, 300-hour certification process.

For a full comparison, see this chart.

We support:

• People in the midst of psychedelic experiences
• People supporting others who are in the middle of psychedelic experiences
• People wanting to talk through a past psychedelic experience - whether it happened days or decades ago
• People who have provided psychedelic support to others (facilitators, therapists, sitters)

It means non-clinical emotional support from people who understand what you're going through because they've been there themselves. It does not include medical care, medical assessments, psychotherapy, or any other professional services. If you're experiencing a medical emergency, please call 911. If you need medical care, please call a doctor. If you need mental health treatment, please contact a mental health professional.

No. Sometimes it's just nice to connect with another human, even when your trip or integration process is going beautifully.

Yes. You don't have to share any personal information - including your name - and even if you do, we don't save it. We don't even save phone numbers. For more detail, see our Privacy Policy.

No. It's all up to you. You can give us your real name, a made-up name, or no name at all. You can share what you took, or not. We meet you where you are.

People who get it. Our volunteers come from all walks of life and have been through their own psychedelic experiences. They've completed dozens of hours of training in active listening, harm reduction, and trauma-informed care, and they bring personal and cultural sensitivity to every conversation.

That said, we're here for non-clinical emotional support only. Our volunteers are not your doctor or therapist, and we don't provide medical advice or assessments. If you think you or anyone you're with may be having a medical emergency, please call 911.

Our volunteers provide non-clinical emotional support only. The relationship is not a doctor-patient relationship, a therapist-client relationship, an attorney-client relationship, or any other kind of professional relationship - even if a particular volunteer happens to be a doctor, lawyer, or therapist in their life outside Fireside.

Volunteers are trained not to disclose their profession to callers. When they're on the line, they offer non-clinical emotional support only.

No. We provide non-clinical support only. If you need medical care, please contact a doctor or other licensed professional.

No. If you believe you or someone you're with may be experiencing a medical emergency or is in immediate danger, please call 911 right away.

Fireside Project is not a suicide hotline. Callers intending to die by suicide, or who have a plan or the means to do so, are beyond the scope of what we can offer. Those calls are promptly transitioned to other resources, including 911 or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call 988.

No. We provide non-clinical support only. We do not provide medical care, psychotherapy, psychiatric care, or any other professional service. If you are experiencing a clinical or long-term health issue, please consult a licensed professional.

No. We don't recommend or endorse any particular product, person, or service. We may point you toward sources of information, but it's up to you whether to act on that information - we haven't independently vetted or verified it.

No, but we can refer you to some resources that discuss how to safely prepare.

Not yet. The Support Line currently serves people in the United States. We hope to expand internationally soon, starting with Canada.

Please do! Making sense of a psychedelic experience and incorporating what you've learned can take weeks, months, or even years, and we want to walk alongside you for as long as it's helpful. Call or text as many times as you like.

No. To protect everyone's privacy and safety, volunteers will not provide you with their contact information. If you reach out to a volunteer outside of the support line, they are instructed not to respond. This is part of how we create a safe container.

Yes. Please see our Terms of Use for the full picture.

Yes. We offer scheduled calls through our TripCheck service. You can read more and book a session whenever it's helpful.

We record anonymized conversations on the Support Line for three reasons: to keep improving our volunteers' skills through ongoing training, to power Lucy (our AI training platform), and to make sure our policies and procedures around confidentiality, boundaries, and ethics are being followed.

One way to think about Lucy is as a flight simulator for psychedelic support - a low-stakes environment where trainees can practice before working with real callers. When Lucy speaks, all voices are distorted beyond recognition through a process called obfuscation. Lucy never interacts with our callers in any way.

Any revenue from licensing Lucy is reinvested to keep our Support Line free. For the deeper version of this answer, see this blog post.

If you've decided to take psychedelics - whether at a clinic, a retreat, in nature, at a festival, or anywhere else - coaching may be a good fit. Our coaches meet you where you are, answer your questions, support your growth, share wisdom and practices, celebrate your successes, offer accountability, and above all, look out for your safety.

Psychedelics can open doors and reveal things. But an open door is just a starting point. You have to walk through it, stay safe, explore what arises, and apply what you've learned. That takes time and work. Having someone walk alongside you the whole way can make all the difference.

All of our coaching is done through the lens of, and for the purpose of, harm reduction.

Your coach's agenda is to support your agenda. The relationship is collaborative, co-creative, and ever-evolving - it depends on what you're seeking and where you are on your path. Coaches create a safe, non-judgmental space where all emotions, thoughts, questions, and ideas are welcome.

Your coach will support you with whatever arises - difficult emotions, challenging questions, safety concerns, personal goals. They may offer suggestions, tools, and reflections based on your circumstances, and share what's worked for others. All of it is in service of supporting and empowering you.

What coaches can't do is help you decide whether, where, or when to take psychedelics. That decision is yours.

We recommend at least three preparation sessions and five integration sessions - but it depends on you. Coaching relationships often last weeks, months, or years. Unpacking your journey and applying its lessons isn't a quick process. When your psychedelic experience ends, the same life and the same old patterns are still there. Your coach is the ally by your side as you re-engage with, re-imagine, and let go of whatever no longer serves you.

Like many things in life, what you get out of a psychedelic experience reflects what you put in. Preparation can mean setting an intention, making space to reflect on it, exploring where you are in your life and where you'd like to go. It's a key part of both safety and fulfilling the transformative potential of psychedelics.

Integration is the process of exploring what came up during your journey and applying it to your life. It can mean letting go of old habits and building new ones; falling in love with parts of yourself you'd forgotten; or reimagining your place in your community and relationships. Integration is also a meaningful part of reducing risk after a psychedelic experience.

No. Our coaches support people who have already decided to have a psychedelic journey or who have had one in the past. They don't help you decide whether to journey, which substance to use, at which dose, or where to do it.

No. Coaches are with you before and after a journey, for preparation and integration. They're not present during the experience itself.

If you'd like support during your experience, our free, confidential Psychedelic Support Line is open every day from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Pacific. Call or text 62-FIRESIDE (623-473-7433).

You may be able to. Our services are classified to accept HSA/FSA funds, but we recommend confirming eligibility with your carrier or a tax professional. A note from your medical or behavioral health provider explaining how coaching fits into your care plan can help.

Fireside coaching is not psychedelic-assisted therapy - but it can pair beautifully with therapy, especially if your therapist isn't familiar with psychedelics. Our coaches have had their own psychedelic experiences and have spent 300+ hours supporting people through theirs. They bring that knowledge and presence to wherever you are on your path.

Coaching is often more future-focused and goal-oriented than therapy. It can complement root-cause-focused therapeutic work nicely.

Reach out at info@firesideproject.org with your availability - we'll do our best to make something work.

Lucy is a voice-based simulation tool that helps practitioners strengthen their skills through realistic roleplay. It allows practitioners to practice the moments that matter before they’re real.

One way to think about Lucy is as a flight simulator: a way of practicing in a low-stakes, controlled environment to prepare for real-world interactions. You can learn more here.

Lucy is for clinicians and non-clinicians alike. No matter the context where you hold space, Lucy will help you hold it better.

No. Lucy is a training tool only. She is never on our Psychedelic Support Line. When you call or text 62-FIRESIDE, you always reach a real, trained human volunteer.

Lucy was trained in part by anonymized and obfuscated recordings from our support line and other sources, coupled with the expertise of our team of clinicians and clinical partners.

The anonymized conversations used to train Lucy remain within Fireside Project. You can read more about how and why we record on the Support Line in this blog post.

You talk to Lucy out loud, just as you would on a real call. She'll bring you into a wide range of experiences - and respond to what you say with the kind of nuance and unpredictability of a real person navigating a journey. After the session, you receive detailed feedback on what you said, how you said it, how attuned you were to her emotional state, and where you might grow.

No. Lucy is a supplement, not a substitute. Real training requires real humans - mentors, supervisors, peers, and the trainee's own lived experience. Lucy lets people get many more reps in a safer environment, so the human feedback they do get goes further.

Another way to think of Lucy is as a bridge between classroom learning and real-world care.

No. Lucy is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. She is a training simulator for the practitioners who provide that kind of care.

We work with universities, professional associations, training programs, harm reduction collectives, retreat centers, and clinical sites who want to bring deliberate practice to their teams. Reach out at info@firesideproject.org to start a conversation.

Our mission is to help reduce the risks of psychedelic experiences, and Lucy does just that by helping to train practitioners to do their job in a safer and more effective way. Plus, any licensing revenue from Lucy goes to keeping the support line free.

We look for people with empathy, presence, emotional steadiness, and a genuine respect for the people they'll support. Lived experience with psychedelics is helpful but not the only path in. A wide range of backgrounds - clinical, harm reduction, hospice, peer support, education, activism, and beyond - can all be a great fit.

You can learn more and apply on our training page.

Volunteering on the support line is a full year of training. It starts off with a 50-hour initial training that includes a mix of live Zoom sessions, self-paced learning, Lucy scenarios, 1-on-1 time with supervisors, and shadowing live shifts. That's all before a volunteer can start taking calls. Once cleared, volunteers continue their development on the line, receiving regular supervision and feedback from our supervisors as well as feedback from callers on our post-call survey.

Volunteers must be located in the United States. We operate remotely, so you can live anywhere in the country - but we do require volunteers to be U.S.-based.

No. Our volunteers donate their time. We're a nonprofit and the Support Line is free for callers, which is only possible because of the generosity of our volunteers. (For paid opportunities, see our careers page.)

We ask volunteers to commit to training plus a minimum number of shifts per month for at least a year after certification. The specifics evolve, so the most current details live on our training page and in the application.

No. We are not a clinical service and our volunteers do not provide clinical care. A license or credential isn't required (and credentialed professionals who join are asked not to identify their profession on the line - see our Support Line FAQ on relationship boundaries).

Yes. Personal psychedelic use is essential and foundational to one's ability to provide psychedelic peer support. The premise of peer support is connection through lived experience, and on the support line, the primary layer of peerness is psychedelic experience. Ideally, our volunteers will have had their own tectonic, life-changing psychedelic experiences, so that they can better support our callers who are navigating those kinds of experiences.

Yes - and many of our volunteers are. What matters is that you can hold a steady, non-judgmental presence with callers wherever they are on their own path. We'll talk through fit during the application and training process.

You can give online at firesideproject.org/donate - one-time or monthly. Monthly giving is especially powerful for us because it lets us plan ahead and keep the Support Line staffed reliably.

Yes. Fireside Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 88-2124868). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by U.S. law. You'll receive a receipt automatically after giving.

Yes. We work closely with major donors and foundation partners to fund specific programs - the Support Line, Lucy, volunteer training, research, and more. Visit our major gifts page or reach out at info@firesideproject.org to start a conversation.

Many employers do match charitable donations - check with your HR team. If you need our tax documentation to submit a match, email info@firesideproject.org and we'll send it over.

Yes. You can train as a volunteer, subscribe to our newsletter, follow and share us on social, hand our stickers out at events, host a fundraiser, or simply tell people about the Support Line - most callers find us through word of mouth.

Yes. We work with foundations and institutional funders who align with our harm-reduction mission. If you're a grantmaker exploring a fit, please email info@firesideproject.org.