Phish article: Helping Phriendly Therapists Facebook Group Welcomes Everyone
From Surrender to the Flow
This article was published in the October 2024 edition Surrender to the Flow, a print newspaper/magazine about Phish. Produced for the Albany, NY Divided Sky Foundation benefit shows.
Not just in Albany, but in all aspects of Phish culture, mental health and wellness have a place. Certainly there are institutional solutions, like Divided Sky Foundation, but perhaps there is room for more grassroots, community-organized mental health support. Couple Rachel Moore and Powell Cucchiella, who are both trained mental health professionals, are making it happen.
This summer, Moore and Cucchiella created the Facebook Page Helping Phriendly Therapists and the Facebook Group This is Your Song Too—By the Helping Phriendly Therapists. These channels offer complementary space for mental health or wellness modality providers, as well as people who might be patients or recipients of those services. The common thread is a love for Phish and an interest in bringing mental health into the conversation. Divided Sky led the way.
“We are incredibly grateful for the work of the Divided Sky Foundation in paving the way for mental health to be such a staple and accepted part of the community,” said Cucchiella. “It has made the work we are trying to do and bring in feel like a seamless transition.”
Helping Phriendly Therapists brings together people who are qualified to help fans make their lives better through various modalities. A directory of over 170 Phish-friendly professionals captured by the group includes professionals who have a variety of specialties and populations.
“We are just blown away by the incredible diversity of what the professionals in the group are offering. We have people trained in circus therapy all the way to lots of psychedelic practitioners and people trained in all sorts of interesting in sobriety methods who have been sober themselves for a long time,” Moore said. “We have a really eclectic draw… So I think what we can do is really limitless.”
Moore and Cucchiella help organize the passion that has grown organically among participants. The Facebook Group has swelled in size with many people showing up to monthly virtual “happy hours,” offering ideas for activities, and asking for advice from other professionals. A week after the festival, they offered a virtual “Post-Mondegreen Reintegration Session” designed to help people process their experience and collaborate on strategies for positive re-entry.
A key component of Helping Phriendly Therapists’ mission is to offer active support. A committee of the group wants to offer mental health support during shows. Also, they will continue to host virtual workshops on wellness topics, which can be found on Facebook. A dream is to offer a Phish-style retreat where providers and fans can benefit from healing modalities in community.
Moore and Cucchiella are ready to embrace all aspects of mental health and wellness, including drug use. Moore has certifications in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and feels comfortable going there with people.
“It gives a lot of room from a professional standpoint to be a voice of how you can use these drugs therapeutically. It’s not just a party drug,” said Moore. “We look at it as, there’s so much more you can get out of it if you know what to do and have the support. (We can) be an educator and a supporter without condoning things that put people at risk. We’d never want that. We don’t want people to be harmed by it.”
The common thread in the group is that everyone is a fan of Phish, which offers powerful potential between provider and possible client. Cucchiella shared that a powerful variable in therapy for change to occur is a therapeutic relationship. Phish as a common interest can lead to greater trust. There’s something about the shared passion of Phish that can act as a link between people.
“So many of us have had spiritual or mental health experiences with Phish,” said Moore. “I really relied on the Dinner and a Movie shows during COVID, because my life had just exploded, we were isolated, and those shows just saved my life. So many people have stories of Phish being a part of their mental health story and something that we rely on, whether it’s the music or community, to help ourselves. It’s kind of surprising that this hasn’t become a huge thing already, because it already is a thing. We’ve already experienced it. We’re just organizing it.”
The ways in which the Helping Phriendly Therapists group plans to build community are in simple measures that make a lasting difference. Moore and Cucchiella, as well as others from the group, will be at the Albany benefit show for Divided Sky Foundation and hope people will stop by, give hugs, share stories, and find support. In addition, the group will be at the PhanArt show on Saturday from 12-5 at The Palace Theater running a table and offering experiential wellness activities.