Episode 4: The Care That Makes the Medicine Work with Michelle Baker-Jones
Stand in the Circle Month 1, Episode 4
The Care That Makes the Medicine Work Michelle Baker-Jones
Together, Ros and Michelle explore what is being lost as psychedelic therapy scales. From their view inside the clinical trials, the medicine was never separate from trust, preparation, integration, and human care. Michelle speaks plainly about the danger of reducing psychedelic therapy to dosing support, and why aftercare, belonging, and community are not extras.
This is also a conversation about attachment, attunement, what science can measure, and the living world as a teacher. At the heart of the episode is a simple question: what kind of care do we need before, during, and after something in us opens?
In this episode:
Michelle's early experiences of separation and disconnection
The wounded healer, embodiment, and sitting with discomfort
Why prep, integration, trust, and relationship cannot be stripped away
The ACE model and how Michelle built on it in later DMT work
The risk of scaling psychedelic therapy without aftercare or community
Trees, grief, Druidry, and standing in the circle with the living world
Michelle Baker-Jones is a relational psychotherapist and psychedelic guide who worked alongside Ros on the first Imperial psilocybin-for-depression trial. In this conversation: attachment, friendship and loss, the wounded healer, what's being lost as psychedelic therapy scales, and finding sanctuary in trees.
The trials & the film
Magic Medicine (2018, dir. Monty Wates)- the documentary following the first Imperial psilocybin-for-depression trial, featuring John, whom Ros mentions: magicmedicine.net · Netflix
The Watts Connectedness Scale: overview and manual: drrosalindwatts.com/watts-connectedness-scale · validation paper (Watts et al., Psychopharmacology, 2022): link.springer.com
The ACE model (Accept, Connect, Embody): the prep-and-integration approach Michelle refers to building on for the DMT work (Watts & Luoma, 2020), and access to the 'pearl dive' the visualisation made from the ACE model- to prepare for a psychedelic experience: https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/pearl-dive . The earlier "connectedness and acceptance" paper (Watts, Day, Krzanowski, Nutt & Carhart-Harris, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2017).
Ideas & terms we mentioned
IFS (Internal Family Systems): the therapeutic model Michelle did ten sessions of, developed by Richard Schwartz: ifs-institute.com
Attachment styles: Bowlby's four patterns (secure, avoidant, ambivalent/anxious, disorganised), and the Adult Attachment Interview Michelle undertook as part of her MA in relational psychoanalysis.
The wounded healer: the Jungian archetype Michelle names.
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner & Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience (1964) the book (and "really bad audio tape") Michelle had at Glastonbury.
Druidry: the Bardic and Ovate training Michelle is undertaking, through the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) https://druidry.org/
The wider context
Trump's executive order on psychedelic therapy (18 April 2026), which Ros references alongside concurrent healthcare cuts: White House order · plain-English explainer: TIME
ACER & staying connected
ACER Integration: https://acerintegration.com/
Submit a question for a future Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/JgJaAjDRbowAcyWZ9
If you're struggling:If you are living with the kind of heavy depression Ruth describes, you do not have to sit in it alone. Samaritans volunteers are there any time. In the UK, call 116 123. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.