A NOTE FROM MEGAN Hickey, FOUNDER OF
THE PSYCHEDELIC SOBRIETY PROJECT

Around the time of my 20th anniversary in AA, I undertook my first psychedelic journey in over 25 years. It was awe-inducing, cathartic, strange, pleasurable, revelatory - and a profound 12-step spiritual practice (‘conscious contact’ takes on a whole new meaning on 3.5g of psylocibin!)

I’d spent over a year in preparation, not only to plan the practical aspects (I ended up choosing the same dosage and music playlist used in Johns Hopkins’ research), but also to arm-wrestle with my internalized stigma about psychedelics within the 12-step community: Would I still be ‘sober’ if I used psychedelics? Would I feel like an imposter in my AA meetings? Could I still credibly sponsor people in AA? In my many months of soul-searching, I scoured every Reddit post for personal stories, dug into the history of AA’s co-founder Bill W.’s advocacy for LSD in the 1950s, nervously confided in my closest AA friends, I journaled, I ‘explored my motives’ and set my intentions with my therapist. In 2020, an old friend told me about a small underground group of fellow travelers who were using psychedelics as part of 12-step recovery, so I tracked them down online: Psychedelics In Recovery was a revelation. Over the countless months and hours spent researching and reflecting, a gnawing feeling began to grow in my mind and heart: it shouldn’t be this hard. What about other AA members who won’t even explore the benefits of psychedelics because of stigma? What about the members who are using psychedelics in isolation, without the benefit of the fellowship for accountability and support? And what about the alcoholics - especially young ones - who won’t even make it to AA because of a (mis)understanding that AA prohibits psychedelics and cannabis? And what about the fate of Alcoholics Anonymous as an institution: if doesn’t openly reckon with the Psychedelic Rennaissance that’s raging in the wider culture, will it become increasingly out-of-step and less able to deliver on its promise to help ‘anyone, anywhere, who reaches out for help’?

Once I finally undertook my psychedelic journey and found it to be every bit as safe, wondrous and spiritually-edifying as I’d hoped it might be, my burning questions morphed into a burning drive: to do all I could to help de-stigmatize psychedelics in AA and other 12-step programs. The Psychedelic Sobriety Project was born. It’s fueled by my fundamental belief, forged over my many years of experiences in AA meetings, that there’s immense power in openly sharing our experiences to benefit others.

I can’t pretend I’m entirely comfortable sharing my own experiences with recovery and psychedelics publicly. I’m not. But far greater than my discomfort is my conviction that the time to act is now.

[Cue Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself.’]

We’re in a defining cultural moment: will the recovery community embrace the potential of psychedelics for individual and societal good, or will we allow our fear and misunderstanding to calcify into a hard shell of stigma that will, for decades or even generations to come, keep millions of people from exploring the vast potential of psychedelics - and keep many more from exploring AA and other 12-step programs? I hope and believe that we’ll choose to write our own story - by being curious, by being open to the truths that reveal themselves in scientific exploration, but most of all, by sharing the reality of our real, lived, human experiences. I hope to meet many of you as we trip the road to happy destiny.

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” -Herbert Spencer, as cited in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book.