Abstract:

There are risks involved in the use of psychedelic substances. The acute experience can be challenging, power over vulnerable trippers can be abused, distressing symptoms can persist past the acute effects of the drug and there can be social reentry problems. The work of Jules Evans and the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project has highlighted these dangers and acted as a corrective force to the idealisation of these ‘magic’ substances characteristic of early on in the hype cycle. How useful are the underlying assumptions and findings of the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project to ongoing drug policy reform efforts and the psychedelic clinic? Could this discourse which has been criticised as ‘fear mongering’ be colluding with decades of stigma contributing to the continued prohibition of psychedelic substances? Could too close a focus on safety sterilise the radical potential of the use of these substances? Or does their work provide a sobering antidote to idealisation, evangelism and wilful ignorance of risk and danger resulting from the wishful desire for quick (profitable) fix for suffering? In this talk I will take a critical perspective based in both the psychoanalytic clinic of psychedelic difficulties and policy work challenging decades of stigma to critically evaluate the work of Jules Evans and the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project. Putting forward a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective on metapsychology and consent I will argue that it is precisely in the high risk nature of these substances that their value lies both for society and the individual.

Bio:

Timmy Davis is the founder of The Psychedelic Experience Clinic, director of Psychedelic Policy and Regulation at the Centre for Evidence Based Drug Policy (CEBDP), policy director at the Psilocybin Access Rights (PAR) campaign and a trainee at the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is a contributing member of Drug Science's Medical Psychedelics Working Group and has provided psychological support on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London. Timmy also leads teams of volunteers in welfare and harm reduction spaces such as Boom Festival in Portugal and many music festivals in the UK. He graduated from Birkbeck, University of London with an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and with a BA Hons in Philosophy and Religion from the university of Kent, where he was president of the psychedelic society for three years. Timmy co-authored a chapter entitled The Feminine Enshadowed: the Role of Psychedelics in Deconstructing the Gender Binary in the book Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine (2019) and The Medicinal Use of Psilocybin: Reducing Restrictions on Research and Treatment (2020). He also authored THOU ART NOT THAT - Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Bad Trip (2022) and New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions - A Lacanian Approach to Psychedelic Experience (2020).