PT408 – Hanifa Nayo Washington & Joshua White, Esq. – Fireside Project: Harm Reduction Through Free Peer Support
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2023
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, David interviews two founding members of Fireside Project: activist, healing justice practitioner, musician, and Chief Ambassador, Hanifa Nayo Washington; and lawyer, aspiring researcher, and Executive Director, Joshua White, Esq.
Fireside Project was created after White volunteered for a help line for years and realized a few things: that follow-up calls made a big difference; that the state of mental health in the U.S. was a disaster (he was talking to some of the same people for years); and that while psychedelics were becoming popular, they would likely only be accessible to the wealthy. Alongside Washington, they realized the most effective thing they could do would be creating a free help line where people could call for peer support during a psychedelic experience, and receive support in integrating that experience afterward. They've focused on finding volunteers who may be marginalized or who have been persecuted from the war on drugs, but most importantly, have real experience and true compassion (rather than letters after their name proving their credentials). They are on track to receive 10,000 calls over their first two years.
They discuss Fireside's Burning Man origin story; the serendipity they've seen in the organization's beginnings and so many calls; where the name came from; how they prepare volunteers; what true equity looks like; and how, while it's a common challenge for therapists and facilitators to hold back and not try to fix a problem, that may be even more important here.
Fireside Project takes calls every day from 11am – 11pm PST, and while there is an app you can download, they recommend saving their number in your phone for when you need it (62-FIRESIDE). And to destroy the notion of being afraid to ask for help, they encourage everyone to share their stories on social media: the times that you've used Fireside Project or the times you had a challenging experience and wish you had known about them. Many newcomers have no idea this support exists, and it could truly be life-changing for them.
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Transcript
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| 1:09.4 | Hello everybody. David Drabkin here. Shalom to one and all wherever you are in the world. |
| 1:14.7 | This is going to be a fantastic episode. I loved recording it with Hanifa, Naya, Washington and Josh White. |
| 1:21.4 | We had a lot of fun, and that kind of wasn't the plan. It always is lovely, but wow, we really hit it off and a lot of laughter. |
| 1:28.8 | Definitely at the very end, Josh had Hanifa and I in hysterics. So listen out for what goes down there. |
| 1:37.2 | And it was beautiful to hear how they met a Burning Man, you know, a couple years back and how this |
| 1:42.8 | idea for fireside started. And it seems that there's |
| 1:47.7 | been this kind of sacredness and serendipity around their collaboration from that very first moment |
| 1:53.0 | and all the way through until today. And we speak about how to conceptualize fireside in an |
| 1:59.0 | anthropological way. |
| 2:02.7 | And yeah, what it is to hold space for someone that you've never met that is on the end of a |
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