This is perhaps the most obvious and easily implementable role for AI today.
Preparation
As David already mentioned, “AI could provide a perfect adjunct to the process of preparation and screening of patients, providing interested parties with standardised educational materials/questionnaires, etc.”
Tools like Psycheck have already been made to screen for people’s mental health, including current symptoms of depression and anxiety, and more are in development for checking interactions between psychedelics and common prescription medications, according to the latest research. These might need some human involvement, but still stand to save trip sitters and clinicians a lot of time.
Beyond screening and safety, AI could be used to create personalised protocols and selected educational materials. For a first timer going for a low dose, it might give information about onset time, visual effects and emotional waves. For someone heading into a high-dose experience, it might give tailored information about specific techniques to let go and surrender. These could be personalised further if, as part of the preparation, the AI has been given information about what types of techniques and inner resources each person finds helpful – for example, images of nature, mantras, or specific mindfulness techniques like body scan or attention to the breath.
Depending on the personal themes that a person is bringing to the session, AI could also work these into the preparation. For example, if a person is having problems in their relationship, this could be woven into intention setting, or if someone is dealing with grief, some work on processing this and preparing for its emergence in the session could be done beforehand.
One major advantage of AI is also its 24/7 accessibility. If someone is awake at 2 am with anxiety about a trip the next day, most therapists aren’t going to be available to them. AI could be there to guide them through breathing exercises and reassure them that their nervousness is normal.
Integration
This 24/7 support naturally extends to integration and the period following a psychedelic experience. Whilst a therapist may meet someone once a week, AI could work as a check-in or accountability buddy on a day-to-day basis, and help manage any difficult emotions bubbling up. The personalisation of support could be implemented here too, based on what came up in the session. For example, if a non-religious person had a mystical experience like nothing they’ve experienced before that expanded their worldview, AI might connect them to frameworks or teachings from spiritual traditions.
Beyond this more comprehensive support of what integration already looks like today, AI could provide extra insights. Studies have already been made to track an individual’s changes after a psychedelic experience by tracking changes in their speech patterns and the tone and pitch of their voice. Some of these changes can be quite subtle, and an AI may be able to pick up on these differences more effectively than a human. For example, people suffering from depression tend to use the words “I”, “me”, and “mine” more than “we” and “us”, and speak in a flatter and more monotonous tone. One study has already used a voice diary app that was developed to detect these changes, and it demonstrates how AI’s ability for data analysis and pattern recognition might be used.
Other advantages that may arise from AI’s availability through a daily check-in via a voice diary-style app would be that it might notice extra patterns that wouldn’t be possible with only a weekly human check-in. AI could analyse and summarise themes from the diary entries that could be extracted into a document for a therapist or integration coach to read for a brief before the session, so that the time together is more fruitful.
Longer term, it might notice other patterns. If someone’s entries keep repeating themselves, it could notice that they are somehow stuck, and this could help determine when it might be time for another session. In other circumstances, it might be able to notice when a person’s mental health is deteriorating and flag when further professional support is needed.
Another strength of AI in terms of preparation and integration is its memory. It could have logs and transcripts of everything from screening to integration sessions, as well as diary entries. This would be more than one human could realistically be expected to remember. A human likely wouldn’t remember every word from a session three months ago, but an AI could. It could create a really in-depth profile of someone, which includes all their intentions, insights, and recurring themes. This long-term memory could help it spot patterns across longer-term time frames that would be very difficult for a human.
Finally, there’s one more way of supporting someone. It arguably wouldn’t fall under “trip sitting”, but it can be a service that trip sitters provide when they receive an inquiry from someone they are unable to support themselves…
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