22 August 2025
The Psychedelic DJ
A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Music Curation
and Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy
By: Matt Xavier
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV
Music has always been my medicine, the true mind-manifesting psychedelic that shaped many peak moments in my life. As a child in a chaotic home, I turned to it for refuge, recording songs off the radio and replaying them in quiet moments when I needed empathy and escape.
By my pre-teen years, music opened doors to culture and identity. New friends from the inner city introduced me to early rap, a new sound that made me feel seen and gave me a way to connect with cultures different from my own. In those lyrics and rhythms, I found power during times when I felt powerless.
Later, 60s acid rock became the backdrop to my first explorations of psychedelics and consciousness. That journey quickly led me into electronic music and rave culture, where I discovered a community that understood the impulse to transform through sound, dance, and shared altered states. Like the DJs I worshipped at the time, I became obsessed with pairing music to moments, whether on the dance floor or in the blacklight poster-filled glow of my childhood basement bedroom.
And to this day, music continues to score my life. It plays on drives to and from DJ gigs, during decompression after a day of therapy sessions, or while winding through the gorgeous landscapes of North America. It calms my nervous system, clarifies my mind, and grounds me in something deeper.
Whether behind the decks, alone in my room, or sitting beside a client in therapy, music has always guided and supported me. It resonates with my truth, reminding me who I am, where I’m going, and who I might become. It remains the most powerful tool for connection, feeling, and healing—one that supported me long before, and will continue long after, my experiments with psychedelic compounds.
What follows is a more detailed and personal glimpse into how this lifelong relationship with music evolved into a practice that blends sound, psychedelics, and therapy. It’s the beginning of the path that shaped The Psychedelic DJ and the work I and many other psychedelic DJs are doing today.
Excerpt from The Psychedelic DJ: A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Music Curation and Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy
This book and my work in the field of psychedelic therapy are the result of a winding, decades-long journey filled with music, transformation, and a deep desire to help others find healing. While music and psychedelics are the heart of my current practice, it’s important to understand how I arrived at this intersection, where my passions converged with my purpose.
The foundation of my path began in childhood, where music was a sanctuary—a constant companion and one of my life’s greatest loves. My attempts at learning how to play instruments were hindered by anxiety and frustration, but my love for listening never wavered. My earliest influences included classic rock staples like the Beatles, the Doors, and Fleetwood Mac. It wasn’t until my tween years at our family’s basketball camp in upstate New York that my world expanded to the sounds of early rap and hip-hop. Artists like Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, Eric B. & Rakim, Special Ed, EPMD, and Gang Starr provided the backdrop for those formative years.
At age 16, I had my first encounters with cannabis and LSD, and those experiences transformed my life and relationship with music. My doors of perception swung open, revealing the vast potential of sound. Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Led Zeppelin became the new soundtrack to my psychedelic explorations. A year later, my journey took a major turn when I walked into NASA, a pioneering rave club in downtown Manhattan, where I encountered the vibrant world of early ’90s house, techno, jungle, and electronic ambient music. I was captivated by the sights, sounds, energy, and openness of the rave scene, which inspired my friends and me to organize underground raves in clandestine locations across Long Island and Brooklyn.
In those early years, I stumbled into DJing and learned the craft by watching legends like Frankie Bones, Adam X, and Jimmy Crash. I was drawn to their artistry, confidence, and raw Brooklyn style. But my DJing journey truly took off after a tense episode with my mother. I persuaded her to sell my car after she’d confiscated it following an argument, and with the proceeds, I purchased my first set of turntables. While studying audio engineering in college, I spent countless hours mixing records at home, acquiring my first vinyl treasures like Cari Lekebusch’s Hybrid EP – 1 and 2 (under his Braincell moniker) and Richie Hawtin’s alias Plastikman’s Sheet One from Groove Records in Brooklyn.
My brother, born with perfect pitch, couldn’t stand my novice, off-key mixes and devised a system for harmonic mixing—a technique that was pioneering at the time. This became my secret weapon, allowing me to refine my auditory and technical skills and deliver polished performances in the North American rave, nightclub, and psychedelic trance scenes. My exploration of music expanded into Goa trance, inspiring me to create my first DJ alias, Matthew Magic. Soon after, I cofounded two pioneering production companies, Project Beyond and Tsunami Productions, which became well known for their cutting-edge psychedelic trance events.
Despite my public DJ sets being dominated by techno, house, and trance, my private love for ambient and chill-out music never waned. Artists like Mixmaster Morris, the Future Sound of London, the Orb, Moby, and Aphex Twin soundtracked my drives home from raves and subsequent moments decompressing in my childhood basement. As rave culture shifted toward harder beats and the chill-out rooms began to disappear, I held onto these soothing sounds, wondering if I’d ever have the opportunity to share this type of music with others.
By 2000, the shadows of the psychedelic party scene had become too obvious to ignore. Many friends slid into problematic drug use, and I decided to step back from psychedelics to focus on self-care and spiritual pursuits. My creativity flourished during those three years of burgeoning sobriety. I began performing regularly as Matt Xavier and producing house and techno records under the moniker grüvhaus as well. After this period, I moved to Los Angeles, where I cofounded international techno and house music label Railyard Recordings with my high school friend Sean as a tribute to our roots in New York’s electronic underground. In 2007, I moved our operations to Berlin, Germany, immersing myself in that city’s rich electronic music scene. Shortly after, I felt a call to change directions once again, returning to Los Angeles to pursue addiction counselor training in Gestalt therapy.
For the next several years, I worked as a full-time addiction counselor, helping people navigate the challenges of addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders. In 2015, after a 15-year hiatus from psychedelics, a close friend gifted me some psilocybin mushroom chocolates. The experience of consuming these was unlike any of my earlier recreational trips—it was deeply healing and life changing. This led me to explore other plant medicines like ayahuasca, which further opened my eyes to the power of blending music with psychedelics. In 2017, I even revisited cannabis with a more mature and intentional approach, understanding it as a tool for healing rather than recreation. These experiences helped me realize that my work could bridge ancient ceremonial practices with modern therapeutic techniques.
By 2018, I experienced significant burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. The devastating OxyContin, heroin, and fentanyl addiction epidemic had swept through the nation, taking a heavy toll on both clients and counselors. Feeling the weight of this crisis, I reached out to a peer in the Los Angeles harm reduction community who was also a psychedelic therapist and MDMA researcher. We discussed the possibility of blending my background in DJing, psychedelics, and mental health counseling as a means of self-preservation.
Around this time, I connected with the emerging world of psychedelic integration circles—distinctive gathering spaces where individuals could share and process their psychedelic experiences. As someone with a background in group therapy, these circles felt like a homecoming. Soon, I enrolled in training programs that further shaped my approach, including training in Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy in New York City, which offered a compassionate approach aligned with my counseling work. I also completed an extensive, experiential psychedelic therapy program where I learned a modified version of the MAPS MDMA therapy protocol. Upon completion, I adapted that training for use with psilocybin mushrooms, which became a cornerstone of my practice.
As I delved deeper into combining music with psychedelic therapy, I found that the music I’d been collecting and curating for decades was uniquely suited to this work. I began to experiment with different soundscapes, testing each track in both altered and nonaltered states. This allowed me to observe how each piece influenced the emotional and psychological experiences of clients, helping me to refine my approach and create more effective music sets for each stage of a psychedelic journey.
Those preliminary sessions revealed the profound impact that music could have on the therapeutic process, whether by unlocking long-held memories, facilitating emotional breakthroughs, or providing a sense of safety and surrender. I began to see my DJing skills in a new light—not just as a way to entertain but also as a means to guide and support clients on their healing journeys. This realization marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life, where my love for music, my passion for counseling, and my desire to help others came together to form a dynamic whole. These elements were no longer just individual passions—they fused into something greater, a true gestalt that brought depth and direction to my path. Through this synthesis, I found a way to channel my skills into a unified, transformative practice, offering clients the space to pull up roots, process old patterns, and plant seeds for change.
Matt Xavier
Matt Xavier is a pioneering ambient-techno DJ and psychedelic-assisted therapist who has shaped electronic music culture since 1993. He co-founded NYC’s Tsunami Productions, produced under “Gruvhaus” with releases on Fabric and Release Records, and founded international techno imprint Railyard Recordings. After earning CADC-II certification from Loyola Marymount University, Matt transitioned to addiction counseling before combining his decades of music curation with psychedelic therapy. Author of “The Psychedelic DJ,” he provides clinical guided therapy sessions, using his unique blend of DJing expertise, Gestalt therapy, and plant medicine knowledge to facilitate healing through music and consciousness.
Help Spread Psychedelic Education
Thanks for your contribution to MAPS!
Your tax-deductible contribution supports psychedelic science research, drug policy reform, public education, harm reduction, peer support, and our general operations.