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Where Glauber Loures de Assis comes from, it’s perfectly normal for families to drink ayahuasca together. So you can imagine the culture shock when his children weren’t welcome in psychedelic spaces in the US at all. Now he’s hosting conversations about psychedelic parenthood to foster a more inclusive community.

We spoke to Glauber about responsible ways to involve children in sacred ceremonies, common misconceptions about psychedelic parents, and his tips for engaging skeptical family members about psychedelics.

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What inspired you to create the Psychedelic Parenthood Community?

Being a parent is something very central and important in our lives. I compare parenthood to the spiritual names people receive after initiation in some traditions; it transforms you. The moment we become parents, we're not the same person anymore. It expands your mind, changes your perspective, and forces you to grow as a person. Becoming a parent is a psychedelic experience!

Family is a topic full of taboos, stigmas, and challenges. I personally struggled with parental guilt and wasn't sure if I was prepared to be a father. I was afraid of trying to make my children a mirror of myself or projecting my own wishes and frustrations onto their life. But psychedelics helped me become a better parent. Now, as a psychedelic dad, I dream of a world where psychedelic families are protected, not persecuted.

What really triggered my wife, our collaborators, and me to create this initiative was seeing how the psychedelic field itself isn't yet welcoming to whole families. When I started being invited to North American conferences, I couldn't bring my family because these conferences didn’t have childcare or a support network to help families. Many mothers in the field have shared with me that they feel overwhelmed because they need to hire a nanny or make big arrangements just to be present in these spaces.

We were deeply touched by these challenges and firmly believe that to create a united and flourishing global psychedelic community, we must ensure that all families, including LGBTQIA+ families, feel included, respected, and able to participate.

In Brazilian ayahuasca communities, how do families work with the medicine? What can we learn from these models?

In Brazil, ayahuasca is considered legal for religious purposes, so we have the right to consecrate ayahuasca in our religious traditions. Importantly, families have the right to decide if children are also going to participate in ceremonies. Women who are pregnant are usually allowed to take part in ceremonies too.

I believe that communities that include families naturally build more trust and make for safer containers. Just so people aren’t too concerned, usually children take a very small dose—just a few drops. My children were complaining to me that they never feel anything, and I said, “yes, because you still need to grow up a little bit.” It's less about the medicine itself than it is about being in ceremony, singing together, and learning how to consider plants part of our families and ourselves part of nature.

What I've learned from indigenous traditions, especially here in Brazil, is that psychedelic parenthood is not new, but actually the oldest and most ancestral thing in the world. I went to the Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference and was amazed seeing mothers breastfeeding their children, children playing and making jokes, and families experiencing this joy together. In most indigenous traditions, these sacred plants that we now call psychedelics are a natural part of the community and the family.

In the US, there's stigma around psychedelics and parenting. What misconceptions do you encounter most often?

The deepest misconception is that psychedelics are going to make you a bad parent. I believe it's the contrary. In the West, when people find out someone takes psychedelics at school meetings or parent gatherings, they might think, “this is the kind of person my children should stay away from.” What I actually see is psychedelic parents, since they're already dealing with pressures from the state, family, and work, are extra vigilant and responsible regarding their children.

Another big misconception is that we shouldn't talk to children about psychedelics at all. Rick Doblin mentioned something interesting to me: in the 60s, hippies were trying to hide psychedelics from their parents. These days, we see a lot of parents trying to hide their psychedelic experiences from their children! However, being transparent with our children about psychedelics is actually a form of harm reduction. They learn about effects, dosing, and good practices naturally, which helps them make better choices if someone offers them substances on the street.

There's also the idea that psychedelic families can't be structured or organized. This misconception can damage families because if they're not respected as they are, they're going to have more difficulties in life. If you compare psychedelic communities in the Amazon with their surroundings, psychedelic families are not less healthy or more problematic than the general population. Studies have shown that children in ayahuasca traditions can be happy, thoughtful, considerate, and bonded to their families and religious peers.

How do you advise people to approach conversations about psychedelics with their children, parents, or other family members?

I don't have a simple answer to that question yet. This is one of the reasons we created the Psychedelic Parenthood Community. Parents often feel lonely in this field, and although there are thousands of parents who work with psychedelics, we didn't have a network until now. Together, we can develop better ways to have these important conversations.

With my children, I approach the conversation through storytelling. First, I talk about Indigenous culture and share magical stories about nature—how plants are living beings with consciousness and the ability to communicate with us, and how everything is interconnected. Then we might play music together. At the end of these conversations, I can say, "You know this little plant? This is the plant that Indigenous traditions have used for centuries, and it's the one we consecrate in our ceremonies."

With adult family members who don't understand or who are against drugs, it can be challenging, but I believe that leading by example speaks volumes. The key is not to be too defensive. Most people are kind and mean well; they just don't understand. They need an invitation to hear from you, to sit with you, and to normalize the idea that you're also a human being who makes your own decisions. My father doesn't take psychedelics, but nowadays he even helps me pour ayahuasca in bottles because he respects and trusts me after years of frank conversations about the topic.

What changes would you like to see in the psychedelic movement to better support and include families?

I believe in a psychedelic field that can accept people as they are, with the language they speak and the knowledge they have. I’d like to see indigenous traditions and cosmologies embraced as science, as well. We need to welcome more voices—the voices of mothers, single mothers, and members of families beyond the heterosexual, cisgender norm. All kinds of families need to be heard.

We need conferences that provide childcare and spaces for children to play with their parents. We need places where we can share our stories and empower families who are part of minority groups, because they suffer from different layers of prejudice on top of the social stigma we all face with psychedelics. We're starting to do circles specifically for mothers, for BIPOC parents, and for parents who are immigrants in the West.

The Psychedelic Parenthood Community is committed to being an international ecosystem of parents and families from all over the world who share this existential condition of being “psychedelic people” in two ways—they’ve taken medicine, and they’ve become parents. We want to bring these people together and co-create something more horizontal. I’m less interested in telling people how they can do better and more interested in learning from them. They have so many beautiful stories.

Want more from Glauber?

Become a member of the Psychedelic Parenthood Community at no cost, or support the project with a donation.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.