Since 2014, Psymposia has been generating conversations to advance the psychedelic field beyond its dominant narratives. We popularized the genre of “psychedelic stories,” using the power of narrative to build community and destigmatize psychedelics internationally. After organizing psychedelic conferences at major universities, we were invited by MAPS to be a “Leading Partner” at Psychedelic Science 2017 in Oakland, California, where we curated talks and panels on our own stage. Now Power Trip, a podcast co-production with Vox Media and New York Magazine, has challenged the foundation of psychedelic medicalization and made Psymposia a household name.
Psymposia collaborated with the major players of the psychedelic renaissance—until we realized we had different goals. Before the rise of psychedelic corporations, we called attention to the strategies and tactics that would later become rampant. We were able to predict these trends because we understood the inherent exploitation involved in capitalist systems. Since the “set” of the “psychedelic renaissance” is prohibition and its setting is capitalism, these systems of exploitation impact psychedelics on all scales.
This panel will examine the intersectional abuses of power across these different scales, from practitioner abuse through institutional harms. In all of these cases, powerful people are advancing their own interests at the expense of the vulnerable. From multimedia journalism to university courses and peer-reviewed articles, our mission is not to simply deconstruct the logic of prohibition, but to democratize access to the information we need to build a post-prohibition world that works for all of us.
Join us for a robust discussion of the structural pressures these ideologies exert on the psychedelic landscape, and to learn a little bit about where we come from, and how we got here.
Some topics for discussion will include psychedelic authoritarianism ranging from right-wing psychedelia to practitioner abuse; ideological harm reduction; corporadelic actors and capitalism’s corrosive effects on psychedelia, and; the manner in which medicalization reproduces the harms of prohibition through a “prohibition-lite” framework.
Speakers:
Neşe Devenot, PhD (she/they) is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS) at the University of Cincinnati; an Affiliate Scholar with The Ohio State University’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research & Education (CPDRE); and the Medicine, Society & Culture Research Fellow at Psymposia. She previously completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and she received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship examines bioethical approaches to psychedelic medicine, and she conducts research on the function of metaphor and other literary devices in narrative accounts of psychedelic experiences. They were awarded “Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies” from Breaking Convention in 2016 and received the Article Prize for best publication in Romanticism Studies from European Romantic Review in 2020. They were a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library's Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where they participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. They have presented on psychedelics at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
David Nickles is the Managing Editor for Psymposia (a non-profit psychedelic media organization and watchdog); co-creator, producer, and reporter for New York Magazine's Cover Story: Power Trip podcast (co-produced with Psymposia); and intermittent moderator of the DMT-Nexus community. He has presented social critiques and commentary on psychedelic culture and radical politics, as well as novel phytochemical data, at venues around the world. David’s work focuses on the social and cultural implications of psychoactive substances, using critical theory and structural analysis to examine the intersections of drugs and society.
Brian Pace, PhD is an Affiliate Scholar with Center for Psychedelic Drug Research & Education (CPDRE) at The Ohio State University where he teaches Psychedelic Studies: Neurobiology, Plants, Fungi, and Society in the Department of Plant Pathology. He is the Politics and Ecology Editor at Psymposia, a 501c3 watchdog. His research has examined ideology and psychedelic experiences. It has been featured in VICE, translated into French and Italian, and covered internationally. He was trained as an evolutionary ecologist, specializing in phytochemistry, ethnobotany, and ecophysiology. A former US Borlaug Global Food Security Fellow, he has conducted field work in Southern Mexico, the US midwestern prairie, and the Ecuadorian Amazon. For more than a decade, Brian has worked on agroecology and climate change. Along the way, he has taught several university courses on cannabis.
Lily Kay Ross, MDiv, PhD is Arts & Gender Editor for Psymposia (a 501c3 watchdog). She is a co-creator, producer, and reporter for New York Magazine's Cover Story: Power Trip podcast (co-produced with Psymposia). Lily has been taking a feminist approach to theorizing ethics in psychedelic spaces since 2009, especially with regard to sexual misconduct, abuses of power, charlatans, and the dominance of traditional gender norms in psychedelic spaces. Her PhD research looks at how neoliberal discourses burden victim/survivors of sexual violence with the directive to individually overcome social problems, and the trouble with posttraumatic growth. Her other projects advance best practice and evidence based policies and responses to sexual harm. She is a feminist writer, educator, and violence prevention facilitator. After a five year hiatus from psychedelics, she’s happy to be home.
Brian Normand is an editor, producer, and co-founder of Psymposia. Since 2014 he has produced numerous events on psychedelics and drug policy at universities and venues in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. He has also helped organize numerous events with MAPS including Psychedelic Science 2017. Brian became interested in psychedelics as a teenager from listening to Bill Hicks and reading Aldous Huxley, and as a treatment for depression after losing his mother to suicide. After his arrest and prosecution for cannabis and mushroom cultivation, he completed a B.S. in Plant, Soil, and Insect Science from Umass Amherst where he helped organize the first ever psychedelics conference on campus. Brian’s work focuses on the impacts of drug prohibition in Latin America, and the impact of corporations on psychedelia.
Shayla Love is a senior staff writer at VICE, writing features for Motherboard. She covers health, science, and psychology, and drugs. Her work has also appeared in Mosaic, Stat, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Gothamist, Harper’s Magazine, and more.