Door's background & qualifications

Scientific conferences, founder & board member of the OPEN Foundation (from 2006 onwards)

Thanks to a very special conference in 2006, I now walk this path as a psychedelic guide. When I attended the LSD Symposium in Basel as a young anthropology student, I had no idea that scientific gatherings about psychedelics would become a big part of my life. During my 15 years on the board of the OPEN Foundation, I have been able to attend many lectures, symposia, conferences and special workshops. I have in fact also helped organize many of them. Over the years, I've dedicated countless hours of my spare time to the promotion of psychedelic science. Although I officially resigned from OPEN in 2022, the psychedelic research community is still a large part of my social and professional life. And I never miss an edition of ICPR!

MAPS Training: MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD (2018)

MAPS (The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) is taking the lead in developing MDMA assisted psychotherapy for patients with PTSD.  Thanks to MAPS, phase 2 & 3 clinical studies with MDMA are now being conducted and MDMA will - in all likelihood - be on the market as a medicine within a few years. I completed Part A & B of MAPS' therapist training. I was able to join this program as a non-therapist, because the OPEN Foundation co-organized this week-long on site training. I'm still very grateful for this wonderful opportunity.

Much of the training consisted of watching and discussing recordings of real MDMA sessions. Here it became really clear to me that treating severely traumatized people is only responsible and safe with trained and qualified therapists. Especially the integration phase requires a lot of specialized therapeutic skills. Even though I'm not an MDMA therapist and I don't work with MDMA, attending this training was very inspiring for my work as a psychedelic guide.

Psychedelic Harm Reduction - such as Kosmicare & Zendo (from 2012 onwards)

In 2012 I started working as a volunteer at festivals in psychedelic harm reduction projects. These are crisis facilities for festivalgoers who are having a difficult experience, under the influence of substances or not. You could call it a first aid for challenging psychological experiences. As a "sitter" I have helped quite a few people with "bad trips" and have seen the dark side of psychedelics (or rather: of our mind) up close. These experiences have made me more aware of the importance of a safe, trusted and comfortable setting while using psychedelics.

Projects like Zendo at Burning Man (USA) and Kosmicare at Boom festival (Portugal) have been an extremely valuable learning setting for me. These organizations have acquired so much knowledge and experience in working with “bad trips” - or challenging psychedelic experiences, as they are more aptly called. As a sitter, I developed skills to help people through such challenging experiences and also grew self-confident as a guide. Both Zendo and Kosmicare organize an intensive training day for the volunteers every edition. Even as an experienced sitter, I learn something new every time during those training sessions.

In 2017, I helped to organize and manage a psychedelic harm reduction project at a Dutch festival: PsyFi. In the months leading up to that festival - but also on site - my job was to  facilitate a good work setting for the volunteers (the “sitters”) so that they could in turn provide a safe space for confused festival visitors. For this project I also put together the training material for the volunteers.

Counselor in Psychiatry (2006 - 2016)

I have developed my coaching skills (listening carefully, relying on the wisdom of the client) largely during my work as a counselor in mental health care. I worked as a residential counselor and an occupational counselor, with severely disabled psychiatric patients, for a decade.

MSc in Medical Anthropology

In 2013, I graduated (with honours) in Medical Anthropology. This subfield of Cultural Anthropology is concerned with questions such as: how do people give meaning to illness and health? What explanations do they have for illness and in what ways do they seek healing? What is the importance of context and ritual? Anthropologists deal with groups of people and study cultures or subcultures. As a coach I am interested in the same questions, but at the level of the individual: my client. My background in medical anthropology helps me to keep an open mind and to pay attention to the sociocultural context in which clients find themselves. One of the most important tools for anthropologists, in which I was trained during my studies, is the in-depth interview. Skills like asking the right questions and deep listening are also very valuable in my work as a psychedelic guide.