Even the hardiest, most vocal psychedelic enthusiasts recognize that trip experiences can be intense and sometimes difficult. Especially when taken in unfamiliar surroundings — such as crowded music festivals or in the desert heat of Black Rock City — psychedelics can cause untimely emotional meltdowns.

Now there’s an excellent guide for handling psychedelic crises, produced by some of foremost experts on harm reduction techniques. It’s called “The Manual of Psychedelic Support,” and its laundry list of contributors includes the Erowids, Rick Doblin, Jon Hanna (the founder of Mind States), Linnae Ponté (who runs MAPS’ excellent Zendo harm reduction tent), five members of Kosmicare UK, Dave King (co-director of Breaking Convention), and too many more to list. Featured artists include Alex and Allyson Grey, Fred Tomaselli, Luke Brown, Robert Venosa, and more.

This free guide is full of insight, and not just for festival organizers. Anyone who uses psychedelics will find immense value in this sleekly-designed manual. Whether you’re hosting a big party or just dropping acid with an old friend, it’s wise to prepare for any unpleasant surprises. Anything that fine-tunes your sense of compassion is a good thing, right?

From the website, PsychSitter.com:

The Manual of Psychedelic Support is a comprehensive guide to setting up and running compassionate care services for people having difficult drug experiences at music festivals and similar events. The Manual grew out of the work of its original creators at KosmiCare, the psychedelic care service at the iconic Boom Festival in Portugal. Whilst psychedelic care services have been in operation for decades, and have grown in number and in scope in the past few years, a general guide on how to establish and run them did not exist in the public domain, nor indeed—beyond training manuals for specific organisations—at all. We envisaged a work that would address all aspects of such a project, containing material to guide the care service leader, team leads and care givers, and those fulfilling vital supporting roles (such as psychiatrists and nurses) through the entire gamut of preparation, training, logistics, operations, and the wrap-up of a care service.

What started off as a small project grew into something much larger, involving over fifty people from around the world. These people came from all walks of life – psychiatrists, therapists, scholars, psychonauts, artists, and many more – all united by a common love and interest. Some brought deep knowledge and rich experience gained from work with KosmiCare in Portugal, with the Burning Man organisation in the United States, and from other groups worldwide. A core principle, from the beginning of this project, was that the Manual should be independent of any external organisation, its content open to adaptation (for example, utilised in training manuals for particular care services), and never to be used directly for commercial purposes. To this end, the work has been published under a Creative Commons License, and is freely available as a PDF download.

You can download the free PDF here.