Substance, Set & Setting

This workshop will bring together leading international researchers and experts from different disciplinary backgrounds (including academics, clinicians, and expert practitioners) to foster an exchange of ideas and best practices around the roles and functions of set and setting in psychedelic use. The workshop will explore the need for, and work towards the creation of, a new model of ‘drug, set and setting’ to further our understanding of how non-pharmacological factors affect the psychedelic experience. This exploration may lead to innovative research ideas and methods, and work towards practical applications of these findings for therapists and other practitioners. We also aim to foster engagement between researchers, health educators, psychedelic users, practitioners, addiction and substance abuse experts, and policy makers, adopting a public health perspective focused on harm minimization. Starting from the viewpoint that set and setting are of fundamental importance for the psychedelic experience, we will discuss possibilities for reducing the risks of psychedelic drug use in society by integrating academic and experienced experts’ knowledge on rituals of use that exist in medical, religious, and other non-medical settings.

Our aims for this workshop are to: 1) establish an interdisciplinary European research network for psychedelic research; 2) write an open access joint white paper about ‘set & setting’, co-authored by representatives from the major European research centers involved in psychedelic research; 3) draft implementation guidelines, based on an integration of workshops findings, conceptualizing parameters of responsible and safe use of psychedelics in different contexts (medical, religious, recreational and other). Such guidelines can be implemented by policy makers and practitioners and are aimed towards providing concrete advice and recommendations related to risk reduction of psychedelic use.