What Is Psychedelic Chaplaincy?
Psychedelic chaplaincy is an emerging field of spiritual care that supports individuals as they navigate the profound, often life-altering experiences catalyzed by psychedelics.
“When chaplains bring the gift of empathic presence into care encounters, we are mediating something greater than ourselves while inviting the spiritual and religious beliefs and values of the patient or client to guide the healing process.”
— MAPS, “Tending the Sacred: The Emerging Role of Professional Chaplaincy in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies”
As psychedelics become more integrated into therapeutic and healing contexts, chaplains are stepping forward to offer compassionate presence, spiritual grounding, and ethical support—bridging the gap between clinical treatment and personal meaning-making.
Professionally trained chaplains hold deep experience in accompanying spiritual and existential intensity: grief, illness, transformation, and transition. In psychedelic contexts, chaplains offer nonjudgmental support before, during, and after a journey—including spiritual assessment, intention setting, ritual preparation, and integration.
Whether or not someone identifies with a particular tradition, chaplains create space for reflection, insight, and connection to inner wisdom and belonging.
Unlike clinical models that focus on symptoms or diagnoses, psychedelic chaplaincy speaks to the soul-level questions that often arise in non-ordinary states: Who am I? What matters most? What am I being asked to release—or to become? With humility and reverence, chaplains hold these questions without trying to answer them, allowing the experience itself to guide the healing.
Psychedelic chaplaincy affirms that not all healing can—or should—be measured. It honors mystery, sacred transformation, and the unfolding of the most authentic self