GoKawiilLSD and other psychedelic substances are in clinical trials for use as treatments for various mental-health conditions.Credit: Alfred Pasieka/SPL
When cognitive scientist Félix Schoeller met Joshua White, the founder of a psychedelic support phone line, at a conference in 2024, they immediately hit it off. The two developed an idea for an artificial-intelligence-powered tool called Lucy, to improve training for people administering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Trained facilitators are needed to assist individuals who are undergoing psychedelic therapy for mental-health conditions.
Several psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, MDMA (also known as ecstasy), ibogaine and LSD, are in clinical trials for conditions ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression to substance-use disorders. Rigorous clinical trials require trained professionals to administer these drugs and oversee hours-long therapy sessions that are often emotionally challenging for both client and facilitator.
As treatments that use psychedelic drugs gain further clinical approval, and as more US states consider legalizing the use of psychoactive substances for therapy purposes, the demand for facilitators is likely to increase. Today, adults in Oregon and Colorado can legally consume psilocybin if supervised by licensed facilitators, and New Mexico plans to launch a programme for the medical use of psilocybin this year. Yet, there is a global shortage of mental-health providers, and this is likely to be even more severe in psychedelic-assisted therapy because it is an emerging field that requires specialized training.
Schoeller discusses the approach to designing Lucy, how the AI platform is revealing what effective psychological support looks like and how data from Lucy could inform public-health policies around drug regulation.
What inspired Lucy?
Joshua told me about his non-profit organization Fireside Project, which operates a free support phone line, run by trained volunteers, for people seeking guidance during their psychedelic experiences. Fireside Project records its calls for training purposes, and its database contains thousands of support sessions.
Moreover, it’s a high-quality database. After the calls are recorded and anonymized, the volunteers document the techniques that they used during the conversation, such as reflective listening and crisis de-escalation; the drugs and dosages that the callers took; any adverse events that the callers were experiencing; and the mental-health conditions that the callers were trying to address by taking psychedelics.
I immediately understood it to be an incredible epidemiological data set on the consumption of psychedelics in the United States. Joshua and I came up with the idea of using the database to create Lucy and improve training for psychedelic-assisted therapy.
What training issues does Lucy address?
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