Moving at the pace of relationship: establishing safe and ethical psychedelic-assisted therapy services in the Yukon in the absence of a regulatory framework
Subject
Abstract
This project documents the early days of establishing safe and ethical psychedelic-assisted therapy services in the Yukon, Canada, in the absence of a territorial, regulatory framework. Grounded in an Indigenous relational epistemology and a Celtic pagan animist worldview, the author draws on ethnobiographical narrative to account for the educational, relational, and advocacy work undertaken in co-founding Taproot Wellness, an integrated health collective. The project examines the evidence base for psychedelic-assisted therapy, the Canadian regulatory landscape that leaves most Yukoners without meaningful access to these treatments, and what it means to establish novel services in the community within which one is embedded. Operating within a harm reduction model the project argues that values-aligned, community-rooted practice is both possible and necessary in the absence of formal regulation. Key findings indicate that relationship is the foundation of effective psychedelic-assisted therapy service provision, that slowness and trust-building are generative rather than limiting forces in small and remote communities, and that the loudest voices currently shaping this field in Canada are commercial ones. A different model, non-extractive, relationally grounded, and accessible, needs to be documented and made visible. This project is one contribution to that effort.