Tuesday Brunch: Do underground guides know the legal risks?
Plus an update on the Amy Griffin law-suits, and why is Alfred North Whitehead so big in China?
Over the last 15 years, thousands of Americans of all ages and from all walks of life have heard the call of the mushroom / ayahuasca / toad / MDMA, left careers as accountants, marketing consultants, soccer moms, real estate salesmen, or boring old non-psychedelic therapists and life coaches, and became shamans. Some of them paid thousands of dollars for training courses that promised to train them to become guides. Some of them plunged straight in, guided by the medicine.
This new army of psychedelic guides often had little idea of how bad things could turn out for their clients, or for them. If one of their clients died, they’re not dealing with the lax regulatory environment of the Amazon jungle. No, they’re in the US, and they might have to face the American judicial system.
If you sell someone a controlled substance and then they die, you could face a sentence of 15-25 years in prison on charges ranging from manslaughter, to distribution of a controlled substance leading to death, to failure-to-aid if you don’t seek prompt emergency assistance.
‘Spiritual psychiatrist’ Samuel Lee could face 15 years in prison if he’s found guilty of manslaughter in the state of Florida, after one of his clients died at a Miami retreat last year (he’s pleading not guilty). Jasveen Sangha, the ‘ketamine queen’, got 15 years from the US federal government after she sold ketamine to Matthew Perry, who then drowned in his pool. In Australia, the organizer and facilitator of an ayahuasca and kambo retreat were both charged with manslaughter this year after a client died at their retreat, and could face a maximum of 25 years in prison if found guilty.
Many of Samuel Lee’s followers have told me this week on my Instagram (check out the 400 comments, it’s an education) that people die in hospitals from ‘mainstream medicine’ all the time, so why is ‘the spiritual psychiatrist’ being accused of one death when (they say) he has helped thousands? ‘Why not focus on the light?’
It’s true that accidents and deaths often occur in mainstream medicine. That’s why doctors spend a lot of money on insurance and indemnity. That doesn’t exist in the underground. The waiver form your client signed? It won’t make much difference if the client died.
Some underground guides have realized the shit they would be in if it emerged one of their clients had died. So they have hidden deaths, or at least, not faced consequences when clients died under their care. But, like Odysseus’ comrades who died without a proper burial, one day the dead may speak. How many have died in underground supervised sessions in the US in the last 15 years? Yesterday I heard from two sources about three deaths in the last three years, just in one US city. I know that’s nothing compared to deaths from alcohol, cigarettes or opioids, but it’s still three dead people.
Did thousand-dollar training courses warn about the risk of prison?
I might be completely wrong about this, but I feel the psychedelic renaissance has downplayed the potential legal consequences underground guides could face, including prison time. Reading Michael Pollan’s 2018 New York Times article, ‘The Trip Doctors’, which is about his journey into the world of underground guides, the word I would use is: genteel. Pollan takes us into a discreet, elegant world of high-minded, bourgeois guides, supporting people in plush living rooms while listening to Bach. It’s the elegant world of the New York Times weekend supplement. There is no mention of the possibility of death or psychosis, nor any mention that these discreet charming bourgeois guides could potentially go to jail for 15-25 years if a client dies. But that is important information. The suburban shaman-moms of the psychedelic renaissance need to know that. Is anyone warning them?
Pollan’s article features the late Ralph Metzner, emeritus professor at CIIS, telling CIIS students they have a moral responsibility to offer this treatment now, ie illegally:
It’s an underground culture, and underground cultures are good, in fact they can be lifesaving…[He then compared the psychedelic underground to the underground German resistance hiding Jews during the war]. [We have these] fantastically promising medicines that can cure all sorts of ills, and yet doctors can’t get them. We don’t have to accept that!
I get the feeling some of these courses are inflating their naive middle-class students with a saviour complex, and it would be a rude awakening if and when they discover the judicial system views them not as Oskar Schindler but as a drug-dealer.
Readers who work in the underground: did any of the training courses you paid tens of thousands of dollars for tell you what to do if a client dies? Because if they didn’t, they are leaving out a critical aspect of your new career.
For 15 years or so, there’s been impunity, more or less, in the psychedelic underground. And that’s given providers a false sense that this impunity will last and that to all intents and purposes psychedelics have been decriminalized in the United States, psychedelics are entirely safe, and this is a golden opportunity to get very rich very quickly. But this is a dangerous bet.
The Department of Justice or State / District Attorneys may decide they want to start cracking down on illegal activity - that’s already happening in the ketamine industry, where some doctors have gone to jail for illegal prescribing. And the public may also become more emboldened to bring civil cases if they feel they or their loved ones were harmed by guided psychedelic sessions.
In Denver, a man was referred by his therapist to an underground guide (the therapist’s wife). They did a psilocybin session in a hotel room in May 2025 and - according to a law-suit brought by the client - the underground guide left him unattended during the trip, and the client fell out of a fourth-floor window. He says he spent nearly two months in hospital and accumulated $2 million in medical bills, and now he’s suing the therapist and his wife, according to the Denver Post. The defendants didn’t respond to the Post’s request for comments.
We’re already seeing lawyers recognize an opportunity to go after ketamine clinics where harm has occurred. If underground guides have overground businesses, clients and their lawyers could be emboldened to go after them too.
How can therapists and coaches reduce the legal risks?
The easiest way is simply: don’t work with illegal substances. Or don’t sell them to the client and just offer ‘harm reduction’ services. If you do sell them controlled substances, you still have a duty of care even if you’re choosing to conduct illegal activity.
Before the trip: preparation, screening, informed consent (telling people what they’re taking, explaining the potential benefits and risks accurately, warning of contraindications), presenting your credentials accurately (not calling yourself a physician or licensed therapist if you’re not).
During the trip: stay with them for the entirety of a retreat, keep them safe, don’t over-dose them, don’t give them multiple drugs, don’t make sexual contact with them.
After the trip: if they’re in crisis, make sure they have proper care, refer them to emergency support if needed, don’t over-dose them in repeated sessions, don’t take advantage of them sexually or financially while they’re in the afterglow state, don’t allow dual relationships to form, warn them not to make sudden major life decisions which they might regret or which partners might resent and blame on you.
All of this is hard, and even if you take care, a person might still die, and you might still go to jail - but at least you could show a judge or jury you’re not a complete cowboy. Saying that, none of the above provides a legal defence for distributing Schedule I substances. Alternatively, you could go down the route of becoming a legal DEA-approved psychedelic church - this is happening more and more. But just saying you’re a church isn’t enough, as Samuel Lee may discover (or not, who knows how the trial will pan out).
It seems obvious but is worth saying clearly: illegal psychedelic work has serious legal risks, and if you haven’t been told that by your training course, you’ve been dangerously misinformed.
After the paywall, an update on the Amy Griffin ‘recovered memories’ law suits; an update in the Paulo Roberto Santo Daime trial in Brazil; a case against Netflix involving ketamine, wild developments in the Mango succession law-case in Barcelona; and (in a break from legal matters) why is China so into the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead?
