Chez Taylor has always had a passion for finding different ways of supporting people. That’s what drove Taylor, an associate marriage and family therapist at Intuitive Heart Counseling in Sacramento, to explore the world of psychedelic-assisted therapy, a field that’s growing fast but still unfamiliar to many in Black communities.
Taylor has practiced therapy since late last year and received training in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy earlier this year through her clinic.
“After spending time in North Carolina working in mental health, I saw how racism and underrepresentation shaped the care people received. Now, I am back home in California, and I wanted to find new ways to help people heal, ways that actually meet them where they are,” Taylor says.
So far Taylor has guided several clients through ketamine-assisted sessions, helping them process depression, trauma, and grief. However, they noticed that not a lot of Black clients are open to psychedelic-assisted therapy.
“I have actually only had a few Black clients,” Taylor says. “There is a lot of stigma wrapped around psychedelic use in the Black community. “People are afraid of how it might impact them because of the limited statistics available on the Black community.”
That hesitation runs deep. Black therapists in Sacramento acknowledge that Black people aren’t widely open to psychedelics, and for understandable reasons.
For decades, the war on drugs criminalized in Black communities substances that are now being repackaged as medicine. From crack cocaine sentencing to marijuana arrests, drug laws were disproportionately enforced, leaving generations of families harmed and distrustful.
Medical racism adds another layer. From the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to unethical drug trials conducted in prisons and psychiatric hospitals, Black people often have been used as test subjects rather than beneficiaries of scientific innovation.
“Back in the ’60s and ’70s, there were a lot of experiments done by our government, and some of those experiments were done on Black bodies,” says DocJudah, a healer in Sacramento who provides safe spaces and education for those interested in psychedelic therapy. “ I do think that the war on drugs has had a huge impact on the Black community and what our use of substances looks like, and how we interact with substances.”
The term “psychedelics” refers to a class of substances that can alter perception, mood, and thought processes. They include compounds such as psilocybin (found in “magic mushrooms”), LSD, MDMA, DMT (found in ayahuasca), and mescaline, as well as dissociative medicines such as ketamine.
In clinical settings, these substances are used in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, in which patients take a controlled dose in a guided, therapeutic environment. Research suggests these approaches can help people struggling with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction.
“Psychedelics very powerfully impact brain function, and they seem to enhance neuroplasticity in the brain. The idea behind enhancing neuroplasticity is that it might help someone recover from various stress-based and depression based disorders like PTSD, depression, substance abuse,” says John A. Gray, associate director of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.
In California, psychedelics remain largely illegal for personal or recreational use, though the landscape is shifting. Ketamine is legal when prescribed by a licensed medical provider, making it the only psychedelic currently accessible through clinics such as Taylor’s. Meanwhile, the state is considering new legislation that would decriminalize natural psychedelics such as psilocybin and ibogaine for adults. That follows similar moves in Oakland, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, where local laws already deprioritize arrests for psychedelic use or possession.
Still, legal access doesn’t always mean cultural access, and that’s where the conversation in Sacramento is starting to deepen.
While psychedelics often are presented as cutting-edge science, their use in healing dates back centuries, especially in communities of color.
In Central Africa, the Bwiti religion has long used iboga, a psychoactive root bark, as a sacred medicine for spiritual healing. In Brazil, Afro-Brazilian religious communities have incorporated ayahuasca, a plant-based DMT brew, into ceremonies emphasizing connection, ancestry, and emotional release.
“If you look at history, Black people have been using psychedelics for a long time. So I think the taboo and the stigma around psychedelics is a result of the war on drugs,” says Ifetayo Harvey, executive director of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. “The most harmful thing about the war on drugs was not the drugs themselves. It was the policies.”
Harvey says psychedelics helped her with major depressive disorder, and she believes they can help other Black people, too. “It helped me kind of see the beauty in life,” she says. “It helped me be able to feel laughter that I hadn’t felt in months.
“So a lot of times we’re carrying depression, anxiety, PTSD that may not even really be ours. Psychedelics can kind of help us look at what we’re carrying, acknowledge it, and move on,” she adds.
Across the country, trials with MDMA and psilocybin have shown major symptom reductions, some lasting months after treatment.
However, according to a recent analysis published on a research study on ScienceDirect, the field remains overwhelmingly white. The study found more than 80% of participants in modern psychedelic trials identify as white, while Black, Indigenous, and other ethnoracial minorities remain vastly underrepresented.
Cultural context, historical trauma, and lived experiences shape how people respond to psychedelics and therapy. When those perspectives are missing, there’s a risk that treatments are developed for only one group.
“Systemic and structural barriers prevent nonwhite folks from accessing research trials in psychedelics for new treatments in clinical settings,” says Marcus Hughes, an assistant professor of psychiatry and attending psychiatrist on the Interventional Psychiatry Service in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
“Also, nonwhite folks might be less willing to participate in testing because there’s been lots of history of experimentation on Black folks, experimentation on [incarcerated persons], which generally are nonwhite folks,” Hughes says. “And then I think there’s a lack of interest from the system to include nonwhite folks, which has kind of been a system of structural racism throughout the history of this country.”
Dr. Monnica Williams, a board-certified, licensed clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapies, attributes this exclusion to multiple barriers, including a history of medical racism that involved overdiagnosing and misdiagnosing these populations, the prevailing stigma surrounding psychedelics, and entrenched systemic racism within health care. All of this leads to a critical lack of representation in practice and research.
“Black voices and those of other people of color have been systematically excluded from Western psychedelic spaces for years, despite the deep Indigenous and African roots of these medicines globally,” says Williams, who also is the clinical director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut, and the Behavioural Wellness Clinic in Ottawa.
For Taylor, psychedelic therapy isn’t about trends or mysticism; it’s about expanding what healing can look like. They believe there’s work to do before psychedelic care feels truly accessible for Black clients. Taylor adds that training programs are costly, most clinics are not Black-led, and insurance rarely covers treatment.
To change that, Taylor says the field needs investment in Black clinicians, community education, and spaces where people can explore healing without stigma or fear.
“We need to have more representation for Black therapists in psychedelics because it is often way more comforting for Black people to talk to someone who can relate with them on a variety of levels and cultural levels,” Taylor says.
Hughes agrees with Taylor that there’s a need for more Black providers, researchers, and clinicians in the psychedelic space, so that people feel safe and confident that the providers understand their unique group and specific cultural perspectives.
“There needs to be a larger push from academic institutions, organizations, and pharmaceutical companies to figure out how to recruit more Black people into psychedelic studies, and that might also include hiring more Black staff so that Black patients feel comfortable coming in,” Hughes says. “There also needs to be a stronger push towards introducing psychedelics in the curriculum at HBCUs or other institutions that graduate a lot of Black social workers, Black doctors, Black researchers.”
For Williams, healing isn’t about choosing between science and spirit; it’s about weaving them together. At her clinics in Connecticut and Ottawa, she’s blending modern psychedelic therapy with the wisdom of cultural traditions passed down through generations.
“Trauma often severs people from their roots. Drawing on cultural traditions can be powerfully restorative, helping to reestablish those vital connections and a sense of self within a lineage,” she says. “Simultaneously, modern clinical practices ensure we’re addressing the neurobiological and psychological facets of trauma in a safe, structured, and expertly guided manner.”
In that balance lies a vision of what the future of psychedelic therapy in Black communities could be: one that is culturally grounded, scientifically sound, and profoundly human.