Based on in-depth interviews with survivors of the Nova Music Festival, this presentation offers a rare, grounded, and nuanced perspective on how individuals and communities navigate psychological distress when psychedelic experiences are entangled with extreme trauma.  Rather than focusing on treatment outcomes or clinical protocols, this lecture draws on anthropological, psychological, and phenomenological approaches to explore the lived experiences of survivors, how they made sense of what happened, how their environments shaped their responses, and how meaning, memory, and recovery were co-constructed in both personal and collective ways. 

The lecture invites clinicians, researchers, therapists, students, and those working with altered states to engage with pressing questions about how trauma is experienced, integrated, and shared when it unfolds in non-ordinary states of consciousness. What does it mean to heal when the frameworks of both trauma and psychedelics are present? What forms of care, language, and community can hold such experiences?

Guy Simon is a psychotherapist, researcher, and PhD candidate in anthropology based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His work explores the intersection of trauma, altered states of consciousness, and cultural healing practices, with a focus on psychedelic experiences. He is the founder and clinical director of Impulse – an integrative clinical center, and serves as Chair of the Clinical Advisory Committee at SafeHeart, an NGO supporting trauma survivors of the Nova Rave attack. His current research uses phenomenological and qualitative methods to examine how individuals and communities navigate recovery when trauma and psychedelics converge.

Maya Gal-Birman is a social worker, psychotherapist, and researcher. As a therapist, she specializes in preparation and integration processes surrounding psychedelic experiences, and has also worked extensively in the field of trauma. Her current research brings these two areas of expertise into dialogue, exploring their points of intersection and meaning for individuals' and communities. 

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