The North Star Ethics Pledge, created with input from more than one hundred stakeholders, is a commitment to centering integrity in the emerging psychedelic field.
Integrity Should Feel Like Gravity
North Star
North Star is a coalition of people and organizations across the psychedelic field committed to centering ethics in creating safe, legal, and affordable access to psychedelic medicine.
The North Star Ethics Pledge provides access to the community, with shared resources, a values-aligned network and North Star gatherings and events.
The North Star Ethics Pledge provides access to the community, with shared resources, a values-aligned network and North Star gatherings and events.
Pledge Creation Process
The North Star team came together after the publishing of We Will Call It Pala. Each of us saw a need to raise a critical dialogue around integrity in the commercialization of psychedelics. We shared a concern that unethical actors were going to not only seize power, but control the narrative and shape the culture of the emerging field. We believed there might be a better way.
That began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
That began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
Organizations & Accountability
The culture of any organization starts with its people. Organizational values are an extension of the individuals making business decisions day-to-day. The North Star pledge does not refer to organizations. However, individuals may use it as a tool for engaging their workplaces on key questions around integrity and ethics.
North Star will form a working group to evaluate the feasibility and define the requirements to create accountability around ethics at the organizational level. Signatories will be invited to contribute to the development of criteria and metrics to measure an organization's adherence to ethics. We believe in an inclusive-stakeholder approach to creating principles and standards. If bringing accountability into organizations is important to you, please reach out.
North Star will form a working group to evaluate the feasibility and define the requirements to create accountability around ethics at the organizational level. Signatories will be invited to contribute to the development of criteria and metrics to measure an organization's adherence to ethics. We believe in an inclusive-stakeholder approach to creating principles and standards. If bringing accountability into organizations is important to you, please reach out.
Stay Connected
North Star Ethics Pledge is a step in the process of centering integrity in the emerging field of psychedelics. Enter your email to stay up to date on the pledge, resource development, and the North Star community.
The North Star Ethics Pledge is a commitment to a set of principles for individuals working professionally in the field of psychedelics.
Who is the Pledge for?
The pledge is voluntary and aspirational. It is a commitment by each of us to put integrity at the heart of our work in the psychedelic field. We can all use our voices, platforms, and influence to center ethics in the professional culture. The pledge supports this work, as a basis for professional engagements, to inform decision making, and to inspire action.
What is it hoping to achieve?
Psychedelics are achieving breakthrough outcomes in the kinds of healing the world desperately needs. COVID-19 only makes those needs more urgent. In the coming years psychedelic treatment may transform mental health and reach millions of suffering people.
The business side of working with non-ordinary states of consciousness raises unique ethical questions. Unethical action could not only harm participants, but given the history and legal standing of psychedelics, could also lead to debilitating setbacks for the field. By centering integrity in the professional culture of the field, we can build a future where safe and legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics are available at scale.
The business side of working with non-ordinary states of consciousness raises unique ethical questions. Unethical action could not only harm participants, but given the history and legal standing of psychedelics, could also lead to debilitating setbacks for the field. By centering integrity in the professional culture of the field, we can build a future where safe and legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics are available at scale.
Why now?
Context on
the Pledge
the Pledge
North Star
Ethics Pledge
Ethics Pledge
1
I pledge to ground my work in the field with work on myself, and to treat personal growth as a lifelong process.
Start
Within
Within
Principles:
--
We can lead by example starting with our own self work, centering this practice as core to the professional culture of the psychedelic field.
Possible Actions:
We can lead by example starting with our own self work, centering this practice as core to the professional culture of the psychedelic field.
Possible Actions:
- Engage in the work of seeking to understand my full self, recognizing that there are undiscovered biases, blind spots, desires, motivations and intentions that influence my decisions and actions. Work to explore, understand, and resolve these.
- Where legal and applicable, and with skilled facilitators, I will develop my relationship with the psychedelic compound(s), especially the ones my professional work centers around.
- Seek mentorship and guidance from people in the field whom I respect, both inside and outside of my network, to seek feedback that will help me grow.
- Make my commitments to ethical action public to my team, organization, stakeholders, customers or clients, and community.
- Make a practice around personal growth, using resources like therapy, breathwork, and mindfulness training to continue to go deeper.
Possible Actions
2
I pledge to grow my knowledge of the history of psychedelics and their many traditions of use, in a good-faith effort to appreciate both the potential of these substances and the conflict and complexity surrounding them.
Study the
Traditions
Traditions
--
Psychedelics have a complicated history, spanning many cultures and millennia. That history is full of hope as well as harm. It provides essential context. I will do my best to understand it.
Possible Actions:
Psychedelics have a complicated history, spanning many cultures and millennia. That history is full of hope as well as harm. It provides essential context. I will do my best to understand it.
Possible Actions:
- Study the history of psychedelics, with the goal of appreciating and understanding the diverse perspectives, especially the ones I am inclined to disagree with.
- Study the history of indigenous use of psychedelics, and listen to the perspectives of indigenous peoples on psychedelic use today.
- Understand the sacrifices in time, resources, and in some cases lives, that made the mainstreaming of psychedelics possible.
- Explore the history of psychedelics in the West, including the scientific research and cultural uses, to understand the controversy around these substances. Consider the lessons that apply today.
- Learn about the history of drug policy, including the history and implications of prohibition, the social and political consequences that continue today, and the drug policy reform movement. I will consider questions around integrity and ethics in the ways my work intersects with this history and with its impacts today.
Possible Actions
3
I pledge to invest in building trust in my relationships across the psychedelic field, and repair trust where possible.
Build
Trust
Trust
--
Trust builds relationships. Relationships drive action. Action creates change. This means change moves at the speed of trust.
Possible Actions:
Trust builds relationships. Relationships drive action. Action creates change. This means change moves at the speed of trust.
Possible Actions:
- Learn tools for effective communication, feedback and accountability, and transparency to strengthen trust. Actively solicit constructive criticism and critical feedback.
- Ask myself key questions: How am I building trust across the psychedelic field? Are there relationships I have that need mending? How could I repair them? Are there relationships that I should consider initiating?
- Start from a place of trust and assume best intentions in others. Remain open to difficult conversations and honest dialogue, and refrain from gossip. If needed, l seek third party mediation.
- Take steps to ensure I understand and engage with the people impacted by my work, to be sure I know their perspectives. Keep those channels of communication open where possible.
- Lean into conflict and tension, recognizing them as pathways to growth. Do my best to understand the principle of what someone is telling me regardless of the tone.
Possible Actions
4
I pledge to consider the implications of the choices that I make, understanding the potential consequences of unethical behavior to individuals, communities, and the psychedelic field at large.
Consider the
Gravity
Gravity
--
Five years from now it is possible that millions of people have safe, ethical, legal access to psychedelic healing. It is also possible that mistakes, accidents and unethical decisions could reset the regulatory paradigm, halting the momentum toward legal psychedelic access. The responsibility to ensure this does not happen rests with each of us.
Possible Actions:
Five years from now it is possible that millions of people have safe, ethical, legal access to psychedelic healing. It is also possible that mistakes, accidents and unethical decisions could reset the regulatory paradigm, halting the momentum toward legal psychedelic access. The responsibility to ensure this does not happen rests with each of us.
Possible Actions:
- Put patients first, recognizing the need to make high-quality treatment accessible and affordable for all those who can benefit.
- Study the history, the precarious legal standing, and the enduring cultural stigma of psychedelics. I will ask key questions: What are the implications of unethical action in this space? How can I minimize risk?
- Continue to emphasize the need for centering ethics and integrity in the emergent psychedelic field.
- Study the incentives created by the economic model of my work, and examine the risks those incentives create, making plans to mitigate those risks, and asking a key question: are there ways my work is misaligned with the patient's interest or the public good?
Possible Actions
5
I pledge to make the process as important as the outcome, letting the future I hope to see guide the approach I take in getting there.
Focus on
Process
Process
--
It is tempting to put ends over means when it comes to making a positive impact. I recognize that how I do something is as important as what I do.
Possible Actions:
It is tempting to put ends over means when it comes to making a positive impact. I recognize that how I do something is as important as what I do.
Possible Actions:
- Ask people I care about to hold me accountable to my goal of being a model of ethical behavior
- Be transparent in my thinking around decision making in key areas, creating a window for community input to build accountability.
- Humbly own my mistakes and consider publishing a retrospective on how I intend to do things differently in future decisions and actions.
- The commercialization of psychedelics will call us to make hard choices around ethics. It may come down to the difference between what is right and what is easy. Commit to choosing what is right.
- Present the pledge for discussion at my organization to ask: How are we centering ethics and integrity? Where does our model potentially present risks? Are we satisfied with the way we center ethics in our decision making process?
Possible Actions
6
I pledge to actively take steps to make the world more equitable and just.
Create Equality
& Justice
& Justice
--
We want a world that works for everyone. Right now, that's not the case. We would do well to look for ways to bring about that goal.
Possible Actions:
We want a world that works for everyone. Right now, that's not the case. We would do well to look for ways to bring about that goal.
Possible Actions:
- Examine the places I have personal, organizational, and societal power, and whenever possible use my position to lift others up.
- Empower diverse leadership within my organization.
- Appreciate that everyone's worldview has limitations, and work to seek out and empathize with perspectives different from my own.
- Consider signing the equity and inclusion statement.
- Consider adopting Environmental, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) Metrics and work with my organization to proactively report on progress.
- If I have a supply chain, analyze it for sustainability and environmental issues, as well as for ethical employment practices throughout.
Possible Actions
7
I pledge to support the flourishing of the psychedelic field and the communities in which I work, and to give back should my work lead to personal gain.
Pay it
Forward
Forward
--
The field of psychedelics stands on the shoulders of many individuals who devoted their lives to their work, as a labor of love and for the benefit of all, and often with great personal sacrifice. As beneficiaries of this work, we can show our gratitude through giving back to help the whole field move forward.
Possible Actions:
The field of psychedelics stands on the shoulders of many individuals who devoted their lives to their work, as a labor of love and for the benefit of all, and often with great personal sacrifice. As beneficiaries of this work, we can show our gratitude through giving back to help the whole field move forward.
Possible Actions:
- Where applicable, work with my organization to dedicate a percentage of profits to support the people or groups on whose effort and sacrifice the field now stands, such as giving back to Native Communities, and/or supporting the non-profits and universities advancing the field at large.
- Consider committing to the statement on open science, OR, alternatively, sharing my thinking on why I am not committing to it, factoring in the way my decision impacts the field at large.
- Offer time, energy, and resources to support the thriving of my local community.
- Not only seek mentorship, but be a mentor to others and use my learning and experiences to help other people grow.
- Where applicable, share learnings, tools, resources and assets in the public domain in service of advancing the field at large.
Possible Actions
I commit to the practice of upholding the principles of this pledge, to share the values in it with others, and do my part to help build integrity and ethics into the heart of the emerging psychedelic field.
Signatory
Commitment
Commitment
The signatory response is an opportunity to add your voice to the conversation around ethics. Responses to the following may be published on the North Star website: What does putting this pledge into action look like for you?
Signatory
Response
Response
We protect your data like it is our own
The pledge is only the beginning. Its value wholly depends on the earnest effort we all make to put its principles into action every day.
Signatories have access to the North Star community, a values-aligned professional network dedicated to shaping the culture of the psychedelic field around integrity. The community serves as a structure to support identifying the field's critical challenges and creating ethics-first, patient-focused solutions.
Signatories have access to the North Star community, a values-aligned professional network dedicated to shaping the culture of the psychedelic field around integrity. The community serves as a structure to support identifying the field's critical challenges and creating ethics-first, patient-focused solutions.
What comes next?
Everything North Star has done is rooted in community accountability and a never-ending process of inclusive stakeholding. The Ethics Pledge was created with the input of more than one hundred stakeholders across the field. The process was imperfect. The pledge is imperfect. Depending on their perspective, people will find it flawed for different reasons.
Community
Accountability
Accountability
North Star's approach is to seek feedback and work continuously to improve. North Star invites ongoing critical input and dialogue on the pledge, and on the practical considerations around what acting with integrity should look like on an individual and organizational level. Click here to share ideas and feedback on the pledge.
Inclusive Stakeholding
The North Star Ethics Pledge was co-created with input from people across the wide field of psychedelics. We constantly engage our stakeholders and lean on their input to co-create our work.
Our team is comprised of psychedelic advocates representing different coalitions in the field, including a clinician, facilitator and trained sitter, a drug policy activist, an investor, a business operations specialist, and an artist and storyteller.
North Star Team
North Star's goal is to support an ecosystem of heart-led, highly effective organizations advancing safe, legal, and affordable psychedelic medicine with an ethics-first, patient-focused approach.
Co-Created with Auryn Project
North Star is supported by Auryn Project, a 501(c)(3) incubator and accelerator for change-making organizations across the psychedelic field making a more just and equitable world.
Auryn Project, North Star's parent non-profit, published We Will Call It Pala, a story exploring a potential future for the commercial phase of psychedelics. This story helps inform North Star's work.
We Will Call It Pala
Stay Connected
We invite you to take the North Star Ethics Pledge and to share your own ethics statement far and wide. If you'd like to support North Star - in time, resources, or feedback - please email us, [email protected].
Pledge Creation Process
The North Star team came together after the publishing of We Will Call It Pala. Each of us saw a need to raise a critical dialogue around integrity in the commercialization of psychedelics. We shared a concern that moneyed interests were not only going to take power, but control the narrative. We believed there could be a better way.
Thus began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
Thus began a six month process of community dialogue. It started with a dinner with twenty of the elders we respect and admire most, asking questions around their hopes and fears for this moment in psychedelics, and what they'd like to see done. Similar dinners happened with clinicians and therapists, asking for their perspectives on commercialization and what would support them in this time, and investors oriented around impact. Here a concern was raised of a "nuclear arms race" effect, where unethical actors would have a competitive advantage to seize power, rapidly scale and control the narrative.
During this time gathering perspective, the North Star team was distilling the feedback into categories, the basis for the principles, and researching other examples of ethics commitments across industries and time. From that point forward the pledge went through four drafts, with one on one feedback with dozens and dozens of stakeholders representing different coalitions in the field.
The principles in the pledge, and the possible actions, are generated by the community. We see our role at North Star as stewarding this process, soliciting perspectives, opinions, concerns, considerations and feedback. This is reflected in the framing of the pledge - it is participatory, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell anyone how they have to behave. It invites people into a dialogue with themselves and others around what it means to put integrity at the heart of their work in the field. The hope for the pledge is that it helps people step into their own power in culture shaping, and serves as the foundation of a community that can take an ethics-first, patient-focused approach to safely scaling psychedelic healing.
