Regulation Doesn’t Equal Legitimacy: On Integrity in a Changing Psychedelic Landscape
The psychedelic landscape is shifting faster than anyone imagined. In Colorado and across the country, laws are being rewritten, new training programs are emerging, and “facilitator” has become one of the most coveted new titles in mental health. On the surface, it all looks like progress—long overdue recognition for medicines and traditions that have been healing people for centuries.
But beneath the excitement lies a quieter question, one that deserves just as much attention: Does regulation automatically equal legitimacy?
When Permission Becomes Confusion
The regulation of natural medicines has opened doors that were locked for generations. For many, this has been a triumph of science, advocacy, and spiritual renewal. Yet the speed of these changes has also created confusion—especially for those trying to enter the field responsibly.
In Colorado, for example, new state regulations now determine who can use certain titles such as “facilitator.” Licensure is an important step toward safety and accountability. But it’s also a reminder that regulation defines what is permitted, not necessarily what is prepared.
As professionals, we must distinguish between what is legally permitted and what is clinically or ethically sound. For example, new state regulations define who can use certain titles like “facilitator,” but the deeper question remains: how do we ensure legitimacy—safety, training, and integrity—in practice?
(While the use and possession of natural medicines have been decriminalized, only licensed facilitators are permitted to legally offer administration or facilitation services under the new regulatory framework.)
The Difference Between Regulated and Legitimate
Legitimacy can’t be legislated. It grows from within—from ethics, self-awareness, mentorship, and time spent in the messy, humbling work of sitting with real human suffering.
A license, by itself, doesn’t guarantee those qualities. True readiness involves more than memorizing safety protocols or completing required hours. It means learning to regulate your own nervous system while holding space for another’s. It means understanding transference, trauma, and the subtle ways our egos can interfere with healing. It means recognizing when excitement about the medicine eclipses the slower work of maturity.
Legitimacy is what remains when the enthusiasm quiets down and the practice begins.
The Shadow of Rapid Growth
Whenever a new field expands quickly—especially one that carries spiritual promise—there’s a tendency to confuse access with mastery. The psychedelic world is no exception. People are understandably eager to be part of something sacred and transformative. But without a deep ethical and psychological foundation, good intentions can unintentionally cause harm.
Clinicians and guides alike are being called to hold a paradox: we can celebrate regulation as a necessary evolution, and still name the responsibility it carries. State systems can tell us what is allowed. Only our integrity, training, and humility can tell us what is right.
Apprenticeship, Not Acceleration
In the traditional sense, apprenticeship was never just about learning a skill—it was about developing character. You studied under someone wiser, made mistakes, learned restraint, and earned trust through time. The same spirit is needed here.
Whether one comes from clinical training, underground experience, or ceremonial lineage, the shared responsibility is to uphold legitimacy through care, respect, and accountability. This means slowing down enough to ask not only, Can I do this work? but also, Should I? Am I ready to hold another person’s psyche in this way?
The In-Between and the Irony
As new systems of regulation emerge, we also have to hold empathy for those who’ve been practicing in the underground—the healers, guides, and sitters who carried this work quietly and often courageously through decades of prohibition. Many have spent years learning how to safely accompany others through expanded states of consciousness, long before the state created rules to describe what they were already doing responsibly.
Ironically, even researchers—those conducting clinical studies under DEA oversight and institutional review boards—find themselves excluded from these new state training pathways. Their data and practices helped shape the very regulations now defining who counts as “legitimate,” yet they, too, must requalify to fit within the new system.
Legitimacy, then, cannot be reduced to who holds a state-issued credential. It must include how we hold one another—with respect, humility, and awareness that healing lineages and research legacies exist both inside and outside the emerging structures. Ethical evolution will depend on dialogue between these worlds, not judgment or exclusion.
For Those Seeking Training
For those exploring facilitator or integrative training in this evolving field, take time to discern programs that honor both safety and soul—where ethics, embodiment, and self-work are as central as technique. Look for teachers and mentors who value apprenticeship, not acceleration. Ask not only what will I learn? but who will I become through this training?
Regulation may open the door, but legitimacy determines what we do once we walk through it.
Author Note:
Dr. Christina Collins is a clinical psychologist, educator, and psychotherapist integrating depth psychology, relational approaches, and spirituality in her work. She writes about integrity, maturity, and the meeting place of psychology and soul at Soul Speak Psychotherapy.
