Rita Kočárová

Rita Kočárová is a chief coordinator and co-founder of Czech Psychedelic Society that aims to open a discussion on the therapeutic use of psychedelics in Czech Republic and promotes education and research in that area. She is a graduate student of psychology at Masaryk University in Brno and trainee of Gestalt therapy. She is currently working as a research assistant in the study where effect of psilocybin is studied on healthy volunteers at National Institute of Mental Health. In her work, she focuses on therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and complex approach to the addictions. These topics she was intensively studying also during her internship in Takiwasi Center in Peru in 2014, where psychotherapy and psychoactive plants are used to rehabilitate drug addicts. There she has undergone her own psychotherapeutic process with ayahuasca, but also gathered data for her research on ritual ayahuasca use in the psychotherapeutic context. Before the Takiwasi experience, her efforts to better understand psilocybe mushrooms took her from Mexico to Guatemala and in Colombia she stayed in an informal community where drug addicts were coming to fight their addiction using ayahuasca, san pedro, vilca and other psychoactive plants.

In Czech Republic, she used to work as a streetworker for addicted drug users in Podané ruce, o.s., an organization promoting harm-reduction philosophy; and published articles related to therapeutic use of psychedelics, psychoactive plants and addictions.