PSA's Psychedelic State(s) of The Union: January 6th, 2026

Two key harm reduction measures were included in Ireland’s National Drug Strategy ‘Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery: A health-led response to drug and alcohol use in Ireland’ published in 2017. These were to establish a pilot for a safe injection facility, and a working group to examine the evidence base for ‘back-of-house’ drug checking (meaning testing substances voluntarily given).

It took five years for back-of-house drug checking to start, and then only as a pilot on a smaller scale of only one festival than the three festivals initially conceptualised. The safe injection facility only opened in December 2024. Both faced logistical delays like planning permission objections and slow proposal processing. This meant that people who use drugs were left without any evidence-based interventions to keep them safe from the unregulated drug market, in a period where Ireland had one of the highest overdose rates in Europe.

Our research explored what these delays in harm reduction policy meant for people who use drugs and those working in drug-related organisations. We interviewed 34 people, a mix of people who use drugs and members of the substance use workforce in Dublin, between October 2023 and January 2024 – roughly one year before the safe injection facility opened in the Irish capital, and before the drug checking pilot was expanded to additional music festivals. Our work demonstrated that participants perceived direct and secondary impacts of delayed implementation of these harm reduction initiatives.

 Direct impacts of delays in drug policy reform

With no drug checking or safe injection sites in place, people using drugs resorted to makeshift safety responses. Some of these were helpful like using drugs with someone or using in a spot where they could be seen if there was an overdose.

Others actually increased the potential for harm, like improper overdose responses, such as using crack cocaine to respond to an opioid overdose rather than naloxone.

Those interviewed believed that policy delays compounded the existing inequalities that people who use drugs already face. Participants reported that people who use drugs were rarely seen as a policy priority, and that these types of policy delays wouldn’t occur for issues impacting people of a different socioeconomic status or did not use drugs.

Participants also believed that lives could have been saved if these policies had been implemented earlier. A few speculated on what had been the human costs of these delays.

 Secondary impacts

We also found that people identified a series of secondary impacts felt by these delays. The Irish drug landscape changed dramatically since the safe injection facility was first legally approved in 2017.

This meant that some of the interventions needed to be altered to meet the current needs of people who used drugs, such creating an inhalation room for people smoking crack cocaine as crack cocaine use has risen dramatically in recent years.

Participants also highlighted that harm reduction interventions should anticipate incoming challenges. One crucial change was the appearance of new synthetic opioids, which some believed were already prevalent across Ireland. While many participants discussed fentanyl, overdose clusters due to nitazenes occurred during data collection.

We also saw that participants had to navigate feelings of frustration with the slow or incremental pace of change in Irish drug policy, all while the drug market rapidly changed around them.

 Looking ahead

Our findings show that delays in the implementation of the safe injection facility and drug checking have concerning impacts. Policy changes are not reacting fast enough to drug market changes. These changes can seriously alter how people are consuming drugs and what risks they face: from smoking crack rather than snorting powder cocaine, to the wider availability of synthetic opioids in the heroin supply. It’s important that the current needs of people who use drugs are met with timely interventions if they’re to have a serious public health benefit.

The existing safe injection facility needs the addition of an inhalation room. Drug checking should be available in community-based settings, not just recreational venues, because the very real threat of synthetic opioids exists within all sorts of communities, not just those attending parties or festivals.

These interventions, if not implemented in a timely way, won’t meet the needs of the people who are expected to use them. Ensuring that those most impacted by drug policies are included in the planning and implementation processes of future harm reduction interventions could help reduce people’s frustrations with lacking services, and improve their ability to rapidly shift and meet the current needs of people who use drugs.

This article was republished from Talking Drugs under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You can read the original version here.

From our Friends at Normalize Psychedelics

We met with Mama Ayana in San Francisco during Spirituality and Beyond 2024 (organized by the Church of Ambrosia). Mama Ayana is the wife of the legendary Kilindi Iyi. In this interview she discusses conscious parenting and her approach to open family dialogue about sacred plant medicine. She shares personal insights about mindful use during pregnancy and nursing, while emphasizing responsible practices and the importance of preserving traditional wisdom.

 Mama Ayana Iyi: So my husband gave me five grams, 25 years ago and that was my first dose. And he said, here,  I’m like, well, what is it? He was like mushrooms. I’m like, well, where’s the pizza at? You know,  but he didn’t give me any kind of information or knowledge. He’s just like, eat this baby. 

Eating the mushrooms just changed the trajectory of my life. This pure love that I felt,  I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was just something that took over my entire being and I knew that there was so much more to life than getting up going to work, punching in, coming home, kicking the dog, feeding the kids.

 It was just so much more and I wanted more of that so the mushrooms just kind of helped strip away the illusions of what this is.  You know like trying to chase the money and always get it the more you chase it the more elusive it becomes so it let me know that that wasn’t the key, but mind manifesting was the key, and we know that that’s what psychedelics mean, mind manifesting.

So that changed me in the sense of, I want to know more, but I want to give what I know.  I wanted everybody to hear what I had to say. You know, I was excited and I see the young people now going through this, that they’re so excited and I just want to feed that energy

Mama Ayana Iyi:  So in terms of a better mother, it just led me to not bullshit my kids to tell them the truth. You know, if you’re old enough to ask me, then you’re old enough to give to take what I’m giving you.

And to listen from another place, not of that whatever that sternness, but opening myself up and allowing them to speak. My son, when he was 11, he said, mama, I really appreciate you telling me the truth about this whole Santa thing. He said, I just really appreciate that.

 So in terms of bringing our babies forward now. These Children are amazingly bright as we see. They have to be because we’re in this age of technology. I mean, they come out the womb and know how to do the thing, you know, but we want our babies to be strong enough to deal with what’s coming. Okay, because it’s coming. You could feel it coming.

 We think that they will be they will be consciously more aware of the energy that’s around them If we give them mushrooms while they’re in the womb, if we are giving birth through the psychedelic experience. Because you hear a lot of women who are in labor who say no, no, oh, no, oh, you know, say yes, allow this process to happen and the mushrooms open you up so that you can say yes to it.

 And then through the breastfeeding process. I’m not saying you gonna be on a macro trip and feeding your baby, you know, little stuff flying around, but microdosing. You know, to just kind of get that energy inside that child and then do that eye locking technique with the babies, you know, because  we have to listen to them.

Mama Ayana Iyi: In 2014 my husband decided to bring the psychedelic conference energy to Detroit. I don’t know if he was the first one to do a psychedelic country conference in the United States, but I know in 2014, everything was hush hush and underground and you had to go over the water over to Europe to get more information.  And nobody could really afford to do that. To go to these conferences in Europe, to pay the amount, the plane fare.

 When they scheduled him, they would put him maybe on the, 13th floor at eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday after everybody hung out on a Saturday. And so nobody would be there, maybe three or four people. 

So the word got out. Did you hear the man on the 13th floor in the corner?

He was talking some really deep stuff, but he knew that he was being censored. He knew there was a lack of diversity there. And so he said, you know what, I’m gonna have the strength enough to bring it to Detroit. I can speak as long as I want to. I can say what the hell I want to say, and I’m going to open the doors up for everybody to come through.

Normalize Psychedelics is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) working to transform public perception of psychedelic medicine through real stories of healing. Our mission is to collect 1,000 powerful testimonials from individuals whose lives have been transformed by psychedelic experiences. By sharing these authentic voices, we aim to reduce stigma, advance the conversation around mental health, and expand our understanding of wellness.

Until next time,

The Psychedelic State(s) of America Team