Fireweed Collective — until 2020 known as The Icarus Project — is a peer-led, US-based network for people who have been called crazy, mad, or mentally ill, and want a different conversation than the one mainstream psychiatry usually offers. Founded in 2002, it has been one of the most distinctive voices in the radical mental health space: deliberately literary, social-justice oriented, and unwilling to accept the framing of psychotic and extreme states as nothing more than disease to be eliminated.
Fireweed Collective (formerly The Icarus Project) is a peer-led mental health community that frames extreme mental states as 'dangerous gifts' and supports people through grassroots groups, harm-reduction guides, and online community.
The Icarus name and the original idea
The Icarus Project was founded in 2002 by writers Sascha DuBrul and Jacks McNamara, both of whom had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hospitalised. DuBrul's 2002 essay The Bipolar World, published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, argued for a reframing: that some of what gets pathologised as mental illness is also a wellspring of creativity, sensitivity, and political imagination — gifts that come bundled with serious risks of falling, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
The framing struck a chord. Within a few years, Icarus had local chapters in dozens of US cities, a substantial online presence, and a series of widely circulated zines and harm-reduction guides.
The 2020 rename
In 2020, after years of internal reflection, the organisation rebranded as Fireweed Collective. The new name draws on the image of fireweed — the plant that returns first and most abundantly to scorched ground after a wildfire. The rename also signalled a deeper commitment to disability justice, racial justice, and a structural rather than purely individual understanding of mental health. Founders DuBrul and McNamara have continued related work in their own ways since the transition.
Core ideas
Across both names, several positions have remained central:
- Mental health is shaped by context. Trauma, racism, poverty, and ecological collapse are mental health issues, not just personal ones.
- Extreme states have meaning. Mania, voices, visions, and despair can be intelligible responses to a person's life and history.
- Peer support is the foundation. Local groups, online community, and shared writing are the primary modes of support.
- Informed choice about medication. Some people in the community use psychiatric drugs, some do not; the organisation does not tell people what to do but provides harm-reduction information for both options.
- Justice-aligned. Fireweed's framing is explicitly intersectional and rooted in disability justice traditions.
The harm reduction guide
Probably the most-circulated document associated with the original Icarus Project is the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, written by Will Hall (a therapist and former mental health system user) and revised over multiple editions. The guide does not advise people to stop medication; it describes how to do so more safely if they choose to, in collaboration with a prescriber where possible. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages and referenced in clinical literature on antipsychotic discontinuation.
If you are taking an antipsychotic, decisions about reducing or stopping should be made with your prescriber. Sudden discontinuation carries real risks of relapse and withdrawal effects. See our guide on antipsychotic discontinuation.
What Fireweed offers now
- Online and in-person support groups, including identity-specific groups (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc.).
- Trainings on mad-positive peer support, mutual aid, and crisis support.
- Madness and Oppression: Paths to Personal Transformation and Collective Liberation, a self-published manual that has been used as a curriculum for peer support groups.
- A resource library of articles, zines, and recorded talks.
- A community of practice for people doing radical mental health work in their cities.
Connections to the broader movement
Fireweed sits in a constellation that includes the Hearing Voices Network, the National Empowerment Center, MindFreedom International, and a long lineage of disability justice organisations. It is generally more culturally radical than NEC and more relational/community-focused than MFI's human-rights-litigation orientation. The constituencies overlap heavily, and many people are active in more than one.
Who might find Fireweed useful
- People who feel the standard clinical framing of their experiences leaves something important out.
- People interested in peer community rather than (or alongside) clinical care.
- People from communities that have historically been underserved or harmed by mainstream psychiatry.
- Family members and allies wanting a different vocabulary for talking about a loved one's experiences.
- Activists, artists, and writers thinking about mental health in social terms.
Who might look elsewhere
- People in acute crisis — Fireweed groups are not crisis services. Call 988 in the US for crisis support.
- People for whom a primarily medical framing has been helpful and feels right.
- People who want a more clinically structured peer program — see peer support specialists or WRAP.
How to engage
The fireweedcollective.org website lists current programs, support group schedules, and resources. Many groups meet on Zoom and are accessible regardless of location. The organisation's mailing list is the simplest way to stay informed about new offerings.
The bigger picture
Whether or not the "dangerous gifts" framing fits your experience, Fireweed's core insight is one most clinicians have heard from patients in private: people want their experiences understood, not only suppressed. The organisation's contribution has been to build durable, peer-led infrastructure for that understanding. For related reading, see normalising psychotic experiences, peer respite houses, and schizophrenia and creativity.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified mental health professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or your local emergency number.