25,000 Calls to a Psychedelic Help Line Found That When People Struggle Matters More Than What They Took
The Fireside Project runs a free, volunteer-staffed phone and text line for people in the middle of a psychedelic experience or working through one afterward. In a study published in Science Advances, its team analyzed 25,419 conversations from April 2021 to February 2026. PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan covered the findings.
Psilocybin came up in about 60% of the contacts that named a substance, followed by LSD (14%), cannabis (13%) and ketamine (8%). About 40% of callers reached out during an experience and 32% afterward, for integration. Distress ran about 47% during an experience and 36% afterward, and once the researchers accounted for that timing, the differences between drugs were not statistically significant. "When people struggle with psychedelics, timing matters more than the substance," said Joshua White, Fireside's founder.
Two-thirds of callers were alone. Fewer than 1% of contacts were escalated to 911 or 988. Forty-three conversations, or 0.2%, involved reports of abuse by a facilitator, mostly in ceremonial settings. Those accounts were unverified.
The limits: Fireside funded and ran the study, so the 76% of surveyed callers who said they felt supported is a self-assessment. The data only covers people who chose to call, and the study can't show whether the line prevented harm. "Our distress rates describe our callers, not the population-level risk of any drug," White said. For more on what a bad trip is and how harm reduction works, see our encyclopedia.