Mary Sanders is a founding board member of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, an organization that provides psychedelic education to historically marginalized communities in order to foster empowerment and healing. She is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in exploring the depths of transgenerational trauma and, in her words, peeling off layers of oppression and cultural conditioning. She is certified in psychedelic-assisted therapies and believes that plant medicines can serve as tools to effectively heal trauma.

During our discussion we talked about her experiences as the only black person in psychedelic circles, and what constitutes a safe space for her as she attempts to explore her own healing. We also touched upon what kind of barriers have to be dismantled for BIPOC folks to access psychedelic-assisted therapy, why there’s often an earned skepticism in communities of color around psychedelics studies, how the war on drugs has affected people who might seek psychedelic therapy, what trends in psychedelic research and psychedelic training education she finds especially intriguing, and what she wishes a majority white populace might do to create a more easeful experience around psychedelic healing for folks of color.