Psychedelic -Informed Recovery

A clinical training course for professionals by Dana T. Lerman, MD and Vanessa Crites from Sobriety of the Soul.

Psychedelics & Addiction Recovery

A Harm Reduction–Focused Educational Course

Dates: April 7– June 30, 2026
Format: Weekly live clinical training- Tuesday’s 11 am-12 pm MT plus Thursday office hours for Q&A and integration support

This in-depth course explores the complex relationship between psychedelics and sobriety through a harm reduction and educational lens. Designed for clinicians, facilitators, and recovery professionals, the course offers a thoughtful, non-dogmatic space to examine how psychedelics intersect with recovery, safety, and long-term well-being.

Rather than promoting or discouraging use, this course focuses on discernment, ethics, and informed decision-making. Participants are invited to engage critically with nuanced questions around recovery, risk, and responsibility in a supportive learning environment.

Investment: $4,200

Founding Cohort Discount $1,000 off Expires 3/2/2026

CODE: RECOVERY

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    • Rehab relapse rates & the “revolving door” problem: why standard treatment models often fail to produce sustained recovery

    • What’s missing: trauma, disconnection, unresolved pain, and the limits of abstinence-only frameworks

    • Why recovery populations require specialized care: elevated relapse and overdose risk, substance substitution, and vulnerability to unethical or predatory providers

    • Reframing relapse: craving as an altered state—how compulsion, trance, and loss of agency mirror non-ordinary states

    • Clinical grounding: case reflections from Dana & Vanessa—how lived experience shaped the course foundation

      📖 Lit Review: NIDA & SAMHSA relapse data; McLellan (2000)

    • Addiction as survival strategy: how substance use functions as adaptive regulation for unresolved trauma

    • Neurobiology of craving and relapse: reward circuitry, stress response, and compulsion beyond “willpower”

    • Family systems & intergenerational trauma: co-addiction, codependency, and patterns common in children of alcoholics

    • Beyond the individual: cultural trauma, loss of community, and spiritual disconnection as drivers of addiction

      📖 Lit Review: Gabor Maté; Bessel van der Kolk; family systems research in SUD; neuroscience of addiction

    • Why the Steps still matter: psychological structure, moral repair, meaning-making, and community as stabilizing forces in recovery

    • Mapping psychedelic processes onto the Steps: parallels between surrender, inventory, amends, humility, and integration

    • Recovery’s entheogenic roots: Bill W.’s LSD experiences and the suppressed psychedelic history of early recovery movements

    • Beyond 12-Step: alternative recovery frameworks (SMART, Dharma, She Recovers) and how clinicians can support pluralistic pathways

    • Lived integration: Vanessa’s story of bridging the Steps and psychedelics as a sustained recovery path

    📖 Lit Review: Kelly et al. (2020); White (2007)

    • Harm reduction vs abstinence-only: bridging the tension

    • Meeting people where they are, with caution

    • Screening for suicidality, psychosis, unstable detox

    • Medication interactions (benzos, SSRIs, MAT)

    New: Competencies required to serve addiction populations (recovery literacy, emergency planning, capacity to say no)
    📖 Lit Review: Marlatt & Witkiewitz; harm reduction in SUD

    • Intention-setting as protective factor

    • Ceremony & ritual as grounding and safety structures

    • Trauma-informed facilitation basics

    • Ethical red flags: coercion, unsafe dosing, lack of medical oversight

    New: Embodied practices (breath, somatic anchoring, ritual movement) as relapse protection
    📖 Lit Review: Carhart-Harris (set/setting), Labate & Cavnar

    • Mystical-type experiences in recovery

    • Evidence for alcohol and nicotine cessation

    New: Risks of destabilization in early sobriety & the role of peer/sponsor anchors
    📖 Lit Review: Bogenschutz (2015), Johnson (2014), JAMA AUD (2022)

    • Indigenous traditions and ceremonial use

    • Accessing root causes of addiction

    • Risks: dietary/medical complications, psychological overwhelm

    New: The tension between spiritual awe and destabilization in recovery populations
    📖 Lit Review: Thomas (2013); Labate & Cavnar (2014)

    • History, Bwiti tradition, Western applications

    • Potency for opioid dependence interruption

    Extreme medical risk → hospital-level care required
    📖 Lit Review: Alper (1999); Mash (2018)

    • Indigenous ceremonial lineages; rapid entry into transpersonal and archetypal material

    • Potential access to core trauma narratives, existential meaning, and addiction-as-spiritual-wound frameworks

    • Risks: acute psychological overwhelm, dissociation, recovery destabilization, and medical/MAOI contraindications

    • Key tension: profound spiritual revelation vs. recovery stability—when awe supports recovery and when it becomes a substitute attachment

    • Trauma healing, relational repair

    • Evidence for PTSD + SUD overlap

    • Risks: boundary vulnerability, re-traumatization if poorly held

    New: Family repair & amends processes supported by MDMA
    📖 Lit Review: Mithoefer (2019), MAPS Phase 3

    • Dissociation, neuroplastic reset, psychotherapy pairing

    • Evidence for mood stabilization and craving reduction

    • Guardrails for high-risk patients (dosing, supervision, aftercare)

    New: Risks of ketamine dependency / compulsive use
    📖 Lit Review: Dakwar (2019), Krupitsky (1997)

    • Addiction to non-ordinary states: why this population is especially vulnerable

    • Spiritual bypassing and peak-chasing

    • New: Integration as ongoing recovery practice, not one-time “fix”

    Safeguards: grounded community, accountability, sober anchors
    📖 Lit Review: Cashwell (2007) on spiritual bypass; compulsive psychedelic use reports

    • Psychedelics as catalysts, not cures

    • Anchoring healing through therapy, community, and service

    • New: Step 11 as an integration frame — psychedelic practice as prayer/meditation

    • Policy, research, and training landscape

    Building psychedelic-informed recovery communities that protect vulnerable populations
    📖 Lit Review: Watts & Luoma (2020); ongoing psilocybin/ketamine/MDMA trials

Psychedelic-Informed Recovery is the first of its kind in-depth professional training designed for clinicians and recovery professionals working at one of the most complex and high-stakes intersections in mental health care.

Recovery-identified clients are already encountering psychedelics—inside clinical settings, in underground spaces, and far outside traditional therapeutic oversight. Yet most psychedelic training models were not designed with the specific risks, vulnerabilities, and ethical considerations of recovery populations in mind.

This course addresses that gap directly.

Rather than promoting or discouraging psychedelic use, the training centers on discernment, recovery literacy, and ethical responsibility. Participants engage with nuanced clinical questions around readiness, relapse risk, trauma, spirituality, and long-term stability—grounded in harm reduction and real-world practice.

Designed as a live, cohort-based learning environment, the course offers a rigorous and supportive space for professionals who want to think clearly, act ethically, and stay accountable when these conversations arise in their work.


Course Description

Meet Your Course Leads

Dana T. Lerman, MD

Dana is a physician, psychedelic educator, and clinical trainer whose work sits at the intersection of trauma healing, addiction recovery, and ethical psychedelic-assisted care. She is the founder of Skylight Psychedelics and works nationally with therapists, physicians, and recovery professionals to develop clinically grounded, harm-reduction–based training programs.

Dana’s background includes clinical research, licensed psychedelic care, and ketamine-assisted therapy within therapist-led settings, along with training in trauma-informed approaches. She has completed a year-long Big Book fellowship and has longstanding personal and professional relationships within addiction recovery communities, informing her recovery literacy and ethical discernment without positioning herself as being in recovery.

Her work emphasizes clinical rigor, practitioner self-awareness, and respect for the complexity of recovery pathways—particularly when working with non-ordinary states of consciousness. Dana brings a systems-level perspective to psychedelic-assisted care, centering safety, integration, and long-term healing over outcome-driven or extractive models of practice.

Vanessa Crites

Vanessa is a Psychedelic Integration Specialist, Recovery Strategist, and educator whose work bridges traditional recovery frameworks with psychospiritual exploration. She is the founder of Sobriety of the Soul and collaborates nationally with therapists, facilitators, and recovery professionals to support ethically grounded, recovery-literate psychedelic care.

With over 20 years of lived experience in recovery communities and 9 years immersed in sacred medicine traditions, Vanessa has supported more than 1,500 individuals through recovery-informed psychedelic exploration, microdosing, ceremonial work, and integration. Her approach emphasizes discernment, safety, and long-term integration—particularly for individuals navigating sobriety alongside non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Vanessa partners with licensed therapists nationwide to offer professional collaboration in ethical psychedelic-assisted care and is a sought-after educator within addiction recovery communities, providing trainings in harm reduction and spiritually integrative approaches.

  • Imagine being better equipped to support individuals as they move through trauma, face long-held fears, and reconnect with meaning and purpose in their lives. This course is designed for therapists and recovery practitioners seeking to deepen their clinical insight, emotional intelligence, and capacity to hold complex healing processes. You will learn how to thoughtfully and responsibly integrate psychedelic medicines into recovery-oriented frameworks—enhancing self-awareness, fostering emotional and spiritual integration, and supporting sustainable transformation. The focus is not on the medicine alone, but on how you show up as a practitioner to facilitate authentic, values-aligned healing and long-term growth.

  • By integrating principles from diverse recovery models with the clinical and experiential potential of psychedelic therapies, practitioners can support deeper, more durable healing and growth in the people they serve.

  • The relationship between recovery and plant medicines, including psychedelics, is often misunderstood. When approached intentionally and within appropriate therapeutic and recovery-informed containers, psychedelic experiences can be compatible with sobriety, spiritual growth, and long-term recovery.

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