Psychedelic Savvy

The essential guide for anyone seeking clarity, safety, and empowered transformation in the rapidly evolving world of psychedelic healing—from bestselling author and expert guide Kristina Hunter

Includes in-depth discussions of consent, power dynamics, preparation, integration, and what to look for—or walk away from—when seeking a guide or facilitator

Grounded in rigorous science, expert information, and trauma-informed psychology, Kristina Hunter’s primer on psychedelic care—from understanding your “why” to choosing a practitioner; from navigating your journey to integrating its insights—is a discerning, empowering resource for anyone seeking the transformative benefits of healing in expanded states.

You’ll learn:

• How psychedelics heal: understand how plant medicines and other entheogens facilitate inner healing intelligence
  
• A self-empowered approach that helps you make informed, conscious choices from a place of agency and discernment
  
• Harm- and risk-reduction strategies: screening practices, safety precautions, and ways to identify warning signs of incompetence and abuse
  
• Skills for maximizing therapeutic benefit, like intention-setting, preparation, and integration strategies for long-term growth
  
• About the realities and complexities of asymmetrical power dynamics in psychedelic guiding
  

Crucially, Hunter dedicates an unprecedented three chapters to exploring the ethics and power dynamics of psychedelic guiding, offering a necessary update on classic psychedelic explorers’ guides that’s firmly rooted in 21st-century realities. Readers will learn which red (and orange) flags to look out for and come away equipped with knowledge on consent, suggestibility, therapeutic alliances, and navigating transference.Kristina Hunter is a psychedelic educator, integration counselor, and Certified Hakomi Practitioner. She is co-author of Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth (North Atlantic Books, 2019). From 2022 to 2025, she served as Program Coordinator and Practicum Supervisor for UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics’ Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program, overseeing ethics curriculum and helping train 120 professionals, many of whom now offer legal psychedelic services across the United States and internationally. A stage four cancer survivor, Hunter draws on her own healing with psychedelic medicines and two decades of study with Indigenous and mestizo teachers in South America. She maintains a private practice supporting preparation and integration, consults on ethical psychedelic care, and leads supervision groups for practitioners. An ordained Buddhist minister with Two Rivers Sangha, she serves on the board of Medicine Earth.