Who We Are: Meet Mary Sanders, LCSW, POCPC Treasurer And Board Member

It's time for y'all to get to know the members of the POC Psychedelic Collective! The People of Color Psychedelic Collective aims to bring psychedelic education to people of color around the world. In our latest blog series, WHO WE ARE, we introduce our members and their interests to our audience. Part of our mission is to nurture future Black and Indigenous leaders and leaders of color that will work in our communities, so we're excited to showcase our members and their accomplishments.

In this first blog of our series, Soma Phoenix chats with Mary, a founding board member of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. Professionally Mary is a committed licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and social justice advocate. Mary's goal is to explore the depths of transgenerational trauma and peel off the layers of oppression so that we can relate to our true selves. 

Soma: Mary can you break down what you do professionally and how that lends itself to your recent training.

Mary: Yeah, so I’m a community mental health provider in San Francisco and I also have a private practice providing individual psychotherapy for mostly black indigenous and people of color. And a lot of my work interest is around race-based trauma, navigating experiences of oppression, and kind of also examining the conditions that we’ve been in and how that’s impacted how we view ourselves, others in the world, and as I move forward with training in psychedelics my intention is to be able to do that kind of work with medicine. 

So, being able to hold space, you know, maybe individually my action in the group work, feeling in the community, really focusing on collective healing and building a solid community around psychedelics. So as people do their own internal work, it’s that they have people they can turn to, you know other peers, their neighbors, whatever, and they can pass information informally and continue to do that integration work. So there’s one thing about sitting and taking the medicine or using psychedelics, but how do you continue that practice of what you learned, insights you gathered, or even the weird stuff you can’t just go around and telling anybody. So what I would love is to help support people so that they can share these experiences.

Soma: That’s wonderful and so needed in our various communities. So, let’s talk about your most meaningful psychedelic experience.

Mary: That question took me back to my first time taking Ayahuasca with a black medicine community, and it was so powerful because I think it was my first time walking into a psychedelic or medicine experience with all black people. 

Soma: I bet that was exciting.

Mary: It was so powerful. So it meant that I could just walk in and be like ‘Ahh.’ And I could really show up in my most authentic self, and I felt so welcomed and I think I only knew maybe one or two people and so I noticed how my body responded in that space and it was very clear to me that I could just drop in. 

Soma: So important. 

Mary: So important! If I’m already dropped in my body, and then I move into a healing space in this particularly Ayahuasca space, then I could go deeper already.

Soma: Yes, you already feel safe and that’s huge right?

Champagne colored graphic with a photo of a Black woman, Mary Sanders with blonde hair anda a floral button down shit. The text reads: Blog: Meet POCPC board member and treasurer, Mary Sanders, LCSW.“Your trauma is my trauma, and my trauma is our trauma. And there’s no way to separate that”. And in this work, collective healing it’s so important because I can see, I can bear witness what you’re experiencing, and at the same time I can also, or we can also, uplift each other and celebrate.

Mary: It’s so big, and I think when we don’t experience it often, we don’t even know that that’s an experience that we can have. 

Soma: That’s the thing right?

Mary: That’s the thing! Like I don’t have to scan the room and kind of guess who’s gonna be the safest person to sit next to. So I can just sit and then while the session was unfolding, it had this moment where I could look at my neighbor and know that “Oh, we come from the same land, but we are from the same land. We have the same ancestral trauma”. And so, at that moment, I told myself “Your trauma is my trauma, and my trauma is our trauma. And there’s no way to separate that”. And in this work, collective healing it’s so important because I can see, I can bear witness what you’re experiencing, and at the same time I can also, or we can also, uplift each other and celebrate. 

Soma: Yes! All at the same time.

Mary: All at the same time! And so such a beautiful experience because it all happened, it’s just like a little snapshot of our lives but happening in a few hours. And so, it’s so clear to me how important this work needs to be done in a collective, in a community. 

Soma: Yes! Because you can’t grow in a vacuum. 

Mary: Exactly! And that’s it for us - this is the way we survive, being together, singing together, dancing together, moving together, laughing together, crying together. And so while I was singing, we’re using all these tools that we didn’t think about, but that is part of our resilience right? And has helped us survive, and for many of us thrive. And so, I always go back to that moment because it just touched me so much and it’s always you know, wherever I go, that moment’s with me but also these people, they’re part of my healing and the songs are part of my healing, the sounds, the dancing. 

Soma: I love that. You know, as you explained that, it makes me realize how important the collective is. And so even with social media like, that’s what we’re doing. We’re getting each other through this collective experience, just you know with humor, everything that social media brings. And like, meeting that energy with the psychedelic experiences, that’s next level. 

Mary: It’s next level, yeah! And you know with POC Psychedelic Collective, right now we’re using the platforms that are available to us right? And continuing to educate and connect and build with the conditions that are available to us right now. As we look forward to how beautiful it will be in person, and we’re doing whether it’s music or conferences, whatever it might be, it’s just great to think about it. It’s super exciting, I’m really stoked about it. 

Soma: The future is bright for us indeed!  What do you think about psychedelic exceptionalism? For example, do you feel all drugs should be legal?

Mary: Yeah, so we talked a little bit about this in our harm reduction conversation and you know, I’m newer in the psychedelic community that is exclusively actively involved in psychedelics - And so, I think when I started to navigate the more academic environment is when I experienced what psychedelic exceptionalism is where people will separate and use language to separate themselves from other drugs so that they don’t look down so bad and we can invite more people to the table and more funding to the table are more different. And they’re all drugs! And people are using them for all different reasons, and it would be amazing if drugs were legalized and you could just get your medical-grade drug and not fear that you have fentanyl and not fear you have something else and experience an overdose. 

Soma: Yeah, that’s scary right?

Mary: That’s so scary and you know, a lot of people I’ve worked with because you don’t have the medical-grade drugs, have overdosed. Something that was said in the harm reduction is “you have all the tools so that you can do things, you can do drugs in a responsible way, and inherently there’s harm in anything and you can make that decision around that”. So I’m really hoping as more people are involved in psychedelics, it becomes more diverse, there’s more representation, that it changes that tune.

Soma: I have another question for you related to this, based on your clinical background, what do you feel that psychedelics provide that standard therapy or traditional therapy doesn’t? So what is the added advantage of psychedelic therapy versus traditional?

Mary: Yeah, I think talk therapy is very limited. It’s really great to talk, but I also think we can talk ourselves into anything.

Soma: In and outs, and out and in right?

Mary: Yeah we can intellectualize, we can rationalize, you know we can just often reinforce these ways of being that have been historically adapted to us. I think that there have been so many traditions and there’s this feeling that we’ve left things behind, or that something has been taken from us. And so, the ways that our ancestors healed, I imagined are a lot different than sitting with one person. So I think you know, psychedelics especially plants, help us really reconnect with our ancestors, reconnect to the land. For me, it has helped me acknowledge that we’re all living beings, our whole ecosystem, and kind of decolonize that thinking that can just extract and take from the land. And so, I don’t think I would have done that in talk therapy.

Soma: Yeah, some conclusions you just won’t reach.

Mary: Yeah, so I think you know, I really value talk therapy as part of these other modalities. So, I think psychedelics are able to go straight to the source and that’s kind of why I chose to work with Ayahuasca. I really needed to go straight to the source, and really face it without the defense mechanisms that I had traditionally used. Those neuropathways are very strong, so I think that there is an opportunity to you know, go head-on, we’re ready for it, and to slowly deconstruct, and sometimes that can be with a therapist, and sometimes maybe that can be with our friends, sometimes that may be in a circle of people, and so for me, it has helped to have a therapist but then also having a bodyworker and like an herbalist…

Soma: Yeah, I was just going to say, you bring up an excellent point that they’re all tools and you need multiple tools sometimes to do the job you know? Also, it’s like you have talk therapy, you have psychedelics, you have movement practice, you have herbalism, you know you gotta attack it from different angles. You know, it’s hard to even say that there’s just one right way to approach anything because you need this whole tool bag of different ways. 

Mary: So I do think that psychedelics help us go deeper and really like get to the source, and I feel like having a long-term relationship with a therapist can be really supportive and kind of maybe be a container thought process. And like I said, sometimes that might have to be a community member, a friend, a church member because not all of us are gonna have access to therapy. It’s not really often accessible. Really thinking about, what if we continue to have that support, it’s something that comes to my mind, often. 

Soma: Ok, tell me your favorite psychedelics? You mentioned Ayahuasca..

Mary: So I would say, my primary medicines or my master teachers are Ayahuasca and psilocybin.

Soma: Ok. Awesome, awesome.

Mary: And Ayahuasca, I worked in a community and have the support of the community and the facilitators that are well trained, that have a long history of working with Ayahuasca.

Soma: So Ayahuasca is more community, it’s more connection-based.

Mary: Yeah, and I think traditionally the work and the lineage is also a community. And my other work is with mushrooms, so what I love about working with mushrooms is now that I’ve worked with Ayahuasca, I have the skillset that I can trust to work with mushrooms. And so now I can do mushrooms with my dear friends, or with myself when I feel like I’m called. You know, I’m noticing there’s some stuck energy there, and noticing maybe I need some clarity or support. And so, what I love about working with mushrooms is I can choose when the time is right and I can make that plan on my schedule. And it’s so empowering and so healing you can practice that agency, and a lot of my work is around agencies, so I have agency, I have the privilege of a safe home and privacy to do that as well. And so, those are the primary medicines that I work with.

Soma: Yeah, you bring up a good point because it kind of illustrates how with each medicine you have a whole different path you know? Like with psilocybin you go on journeys and you build on the healing journey, and with Ayahuasca a similar but different route to the same destination, so it’s like you have all these different relationships with the plants and they’re all different, it’s a whole different world. I think that’s pretty cool

Mary: Yeah and you know, they have their plans for us too. And you know, thinking of reciprocity, it’s clear that some of their intentions are for us to be better stewards of the land and to change our behaviors and to think about how we want to work in partnership with them.

Soma: What are your visions for the psychedelic landscape in the next 5 years? What would you like to see or what do you think is going to happen?

Mary: Yeah. Hmm in 5 years, so my hope is that MDMA and psilocybin will be up and running, my hope is that we have the infrastructure in place so that the clinics that want to do this medicine, the community clinics that have been doing the front line work who may be using Medical and Medicare, you know, that they’re funded so that their clinicians are trained and these medicines are accessible. And that folk don’t have to go somewhere else, or have to go to a foreign place because they want to use psychedelics, they can go somewhere they can trust. 

Mary: Yeah, so I hope that in this time - this renaissance - that we’re thinking about the people that have been providing care for folks who’ve been suffering because of the war on drugs, because of poverty.

Soma: How ironic is that we need to use drugs to heal the damage done from the war on drugs, like what the fuck is going on?

Mary: Really in 5 years, if we could just normalize drugs right? Get people out of jail so we can actually heal people and have an offering, and psychedelics can be an offering if one chooses. But I think about, something I hope with black people and psychedelics is that we will be able to support people in the community that are not going to be able to drop $10,000 for training… I just really hope we can have infrastructure so that these medicines are available and the burden isn’t back on the people. We have the opportunity, I think, to do things differently so that as we introduce these medicines, they are accessible for the people, and not just a few. 

Soma: Let us hope. 

Soma: Ok, last question: How does your culture inform your relationship with psychedelics?

Mary: Our culture in the US, it’s how we move, it’s how we talk, like our swag, it’s all of it. So I just see psychedelics enhancing them, and for me, it has allowed me to be more open. So as I’m more open, I feel like I can fully express myself and I feel more comfortable in my body. So I see it like when I am in my psychedelic circle, we’re dancing or singing, we’re moving, we’re clapping, we are you know doing our call and response, and so it’s all of it. Yeah, it’s us! It also shows kind of as I was mentioning earlier, that feeling when you are most safe and supported.

Soma: That’s when the magic happens.

Mary: Yeah, that’s when the magic happens, when you are going to feel like you can allow yourself to just be right? 

About Soma Phoenix: Soma Phoenix is a psychedelic researcher and integration consultant who works with individuals seeking healing from trauma and spiritual transformation. As an attorney, Soma advocates for drug policy reform and supports the idea of cognitive liberty, or freedom to explore consciousness on our own terms. Soma provides private integration support services and is the founder of Psillygirls.com, a site devoted to community building, spiritual support, and discourse around psychedelic experiences and insights.
A Chicago native, Soma spent years in the underworld of pharmaceutical litigation as a litigation support attorney, dredging through the sorrow and heartache of people with illnesses and horrific injuries. She went on a quest for ancient information that might help alleviate this misery, exploring topics from herbalism to hoodoo and occultism.

Soma seeks to destigmatize the use of sacred psychedelic medicine in communities of color, who are often most vulnerable to PTSD from the effects of trauma. Soma provides education about the benefits and history of psychedelics to groups lacking access to these valuable resources. As part of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, Soma is helping to reclaim and highlight the legacy of sacred mushrooms and their use by healers in Huautla de Jimenez Mexico.