What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder or supportive hug? Easy tiger…

Don’t put it past anyone’s shadow self not to get off with a pilled-up patient.

That’s the message from therapy ethics expert, transpersonal psychologist and addiction counsellor Kylea Taylor.

I’d hate to wipe any glamorous, lifestyle magazine-sheen from the Vital Student Zine. Yet seeing as this is ‘The Ethics Issue’ of Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine it’d be remiss of me not to mention the sordid revelations to have swept the psychedelic space of late. 

First fell Francoise Borat, the French figure fancied by many more than myself. Women like Maria Papasyrou, Adele LaFrance, Celia Morgan and Reanne Crane are tackling the least agreeable and most necessary areas of the psychedelic renaissance right now, and Borat pioneered that. Investigations showed she lived up to her femme fatale archetype.

The scandal also exposed the wellbeing industry’s appalling lack of oversight, from passing your email address on to cat charities to… not actually removing famous people from your public register after you’d struck them from the official register for shagging clients. The stink was mostly coming from Bourzat’s hubby Aharon Grossbard in the form of detailed and sustained allegations by counsellor, campaigner and award-winning blogger Will Hall.

“Have a safe word. Even if it’s just: Stop”

Next, just when you were thinking some boomers may be OK, MAPS therapist dyad Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer blotted the saintly org’s copybook during landmark 2015 trails. It’s worth watching the CCTV. Trial subject Meaghan Buisson, a PTSD sufferer who took the edge off her condition with a career in the tough sport of inline speed skating, then moved near the couple as her only option to continue treatment. Yensen and her slept together during the period.

In 2022, welcome to a world of headlines like A psychedelic therapist allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor, highlighting worries about elders taking hallucinogens. Campaigning website Psymposia which produced the Power Trip podcast with New York Magazine that brought many of these stories to a wider audience, does a sterling if militant job of sniffing out stuff like this.

Thing is, some patients really would like a hug during MDMA therapy. Recreational users might sympathise. Written and thoroughly discussed pre-agreements are the done thing, says Taylor. 

“Have the safe word, even if it’s just ‘stop’, and tell the patient, ‘Remember you can say stop’ even when you’re merely putting a blanket over them,” advises Taylor, “a lot of people are recommending a dual consent process involving a written agreement on touch, that is sacred and not changed in the middle of the session.” 

The subject should be fully felt through: “Explain the reasons why they might want it, and might not want it, and that if they say no now, they won’t get touched in the session,” says Taylor. California bioenergetics bodywork teachers have legal license to handle clients when required. 

Strictly unconditionally loving cuddles can be a productive part of emotional breakthrough, release and recovery, say many therapists.

“A third agreement is ‘If you do ask me to touch you in the session, I will’,” suggests Taylor, “If they do want that, then watch out for obvious gestures suggesting they might require physical comforting. If their body language suggests it, then you might – for example – touch the back of their hand, and read their reaction.”

It’s a jungle out there and not all accusations, unfortunately, carry complete legitimacy. Professionals in an area as unpredictable as psychology, let alone shamanism, expect accusation of some sort eventually according to Vital students in the field. Soccer players in the UK are advised to simply stay away from any form of ‘nightlife’ as it’s known in sporting circles, and most now do.