Guild of Guides Netherlands and the future of professional psychedelics

Lucid News recently published an interesting info piece about the developing 'Guild of Guides' in the Netherlands. It looks an encouraging development. Lucid News writes "A short internet search for “psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands” turns up several pages of results. Marketed with buzzwords like “peace,” “healing,” and “transformation,” and with experiences tailored to all walks of life, the options are dizzying, and that’s before anyone ingests a drug. 

Despite the number of retreat providers, members of this large community have been operating in varying degrees of isolation. Now, one group – Guild of Guides Netherlands – hopes to shift the fragmented whole towards connected self-regulation by developing a publicly available, community-created code of ethics and best practices for its members to follow.  

Historically more tolerant drug policies have made the Netherlands a destination for drug tourism since the 1970s. The recent explosion of interest in entheogens has led to the development of hundreds of psychedelic retreats in the country, where psychedelic mushrooms are technically illegal, but sclerotia, or truffles, as well as mushroom spores and active mycelia, are legal and available. Other psychedelic substances, including prepared ayahuasca, are illegal. 

While that lack of oversight has allowed the Netherlands’ psychedelic community to flourish, Daan Keiman, a co-founder of Guild of Guides Netherlands, says that the time has come for a professional association of psychedelic practitioners with robust policy and rigorous requirements for members working with truffles. Keiman started talking with Marta Kaczmarczyk, who is one of the founders of the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands, as well as a founding member of the OPEN Foundation and a Synthesis team member, and Miriam van Groen, founder of Guided Tripping, and realized they had concerns in common ... "