5 Questions for Rebecca Kronman

Plant Parenthood's founder discusses creating a space for parents to discuss psychedelics.

Rebecca Kronman is a psychotherapist in Brooklyn with a practice specializing in mindfulness techniques to help clients navigate depression and anxiety. She also guides clients through preparations for psychedelic experiences, and offers integration sessions. As a trainer with the psychedelic education company Fluence, Kronman has led courses in psychedelic integration and ketamine assisted therapy. Kronman is also the mother to two young boys. She noticed that few people in the psychedelics were talking about parents who use psychedelics — so she wrote pieces published in DoubleBlind and Chacruna, and spoke about it on the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. Other parents started reaching out to her, saying it was the first time they felt they could speak openly about it. 

On March 4, 2020, shortly before much of the world was plunged into coronavirus lockdowns, Kronman launched Plant Parenthood, an online community of parents who use psychedelics. The Microdose spoke with Kronman about creating a space for parents to discuss psychedelics.

When you first started talking with other parents about psychedelics, what was their reaction like, and why did that lead you to start Plant Parenthood?

There’s so much shame around drugs, particularly as a parent, wrapped up around being a “drug addict” — the druggie parent, the irresponsible parent. When I felt safe enough to speak about it with other parents, they started telling me that they felt like psychedelics made them better parents. These substances are allowing them to address their intergenerational trauma, or to access and transform their feelings of shame, so that they can show up better as a parent. The project originated from those conversations, and the recognition that this was something people felt they couldn’t talk about.

How does Plant Parenthood foster those conversations?

We host online events and monthly integration circles — the integration circles are the primary place where people connect with each other. Many people who come to those say it’s the first time they’ve been able to talk casually about their psychedelic use among welcoming and non-judgmental people who are experiencing the same thing. Just having that sense of a like-minded community of people is incredibly healing for people. I don’t think we’ve ever had an integration circle where we haven’t had one or more people in tears. It’s really moving.

How are parents using psychedelics? For instance, are people using psychedelics away from their kids or around them, or are they primarily microdosing or macrodosing — and are there best practices around safety? 

Some people might say, I don’t want to be around my children on psychedelics — I want this to be my own experience. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who say, I take a small amount of LSD or psilocybin when I’m around my child, and it helps me be a better parent. It helps me cultivate patience and compassion for them, and it helps me play better with them and be more silly and goofy. 

I wouldn’t say there are necessarily best practices, other than being careful with preparation and thinking it through when it comes to dosage. Are you prepared to engage in child care activities with the dosage you’re on, and if not, is there someone else there who can do so? But I also want to say that there’s nothing inherently dangerous about psychedelics, other than, obviously, operating a car, and we can reexamine our perspectives around what is safe behavior around children. In our culture, there’s no stigma whatsoever around having a drink, or several, in front of your child.It’s a topic we even make light of. When we think about what is safe behavior, psychedelics don’t have to be this secretive experience we scurry off to do on our own. We can think about how to approach this topic with children, one that we present as we would any other topic, but with age appropriateness in mind.

What might parent-child conversations about psychedelics look like? 

We think a lot about the difference between introducing a topic and responding to interest from a child, and how to balance the two. There are certain things that are important for our children to know because they exist in their environment, and they’re going to have to respond to them. Whether you want it to be true or not, psychedelics are pervasive – a high schooler might start being exposed to substances, and that’s not something a parent has a choice about. 

You can be prepared for that, and we think that having a framework from which to speak about it is really valuable. Some parents are talking with older children about substances that they encounter already — substances we use every single day, like caffeine or sugar. This destigmatizes the substance itself, and makes it part of a category of things that can be helpful or harmful, depending on how you use them and how much you use them. And it humanizes people who use these substances. Maybe it helps to explain the person you walked past on the street, who is clearly using substances, is experiencing a lot of pain, and they’re using the substance to help them deal with that pain. All of us use substances to help us deal with our pain sometimes. That’s what I tell my boys: Mommy’s work is to help people who use certain substances to deal with hard things in their life. 

When Rick Doblin spoke with our group, he talked about the value of telling his children about their right to alter their consciousness. That’s maybe a little advanced for a 5-year-old, but a 13-year-old might be able to digest something like that. And you can teach them you need lots of thoughtfulness and careful preparation beforehand: who you’re going to do it with, what you’re going to do, and how to create a safe environment for yourself.

Just as there’s no one way of using psychedelics, there’s no one way of parenting. I imagine that those integration circles represent many different perspectives and approaches to both psychedelics and parenting. I noticed a disclaimer on the Plant Parenthood site that says the organization doesn’t promote the use of illegal substances or provide info on where to find them — are there ground rules at Plant Parenthood to make sure everyone is on the same page before discussing? Or taboo topics, like giving psychedelics to kids?

We actually do talk about giving psychedelics to kids — but not in the sense of promoting it or advocating for it. We operate from the harm reduction framework, which means we’re not encouraging or discouraging any particular use of any particular substance or behavior. Instead, we’re encouraging open conversation and dialogue. To borrow a concept from Dr. Julie Holland, when topics fall into the shadows, they become adrenalized — there’s more shame or secrecy, and you end up having a pathological or problematic use of a substance. So we’re not shying away from any topic. 

Frankly, there's been a decent amount of discussion about giving psychedelics to children. And I'll tell you how that comes up: some people who come to our group have kids who are neurodivergent, or have anxiety, or another mental health issue. Often the parent has really exhausted their options and feels some desperation to help their child. They think maybe psychedelics could be an option. We talk a lot about how children cannot consent to doing something like that. We need to be open to discussing this topic because it's already happening. People's reaction might be shock or horror. But the alternative — not talking about it — seems bad, too.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.