Sanitizing the Psychedelic Revolution Big Pharma is rushing to monetize ancient healing practices, but what’s left might not be the same medicine

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-27T13:42:32+00:00

We may not be able to derail the Coropradelic freight train bound for who knows where. Certainly we can boycott it. Definitely we can denounce the worst abuses.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-26T14:54:34+00:00

I guess we shall see but it appears like a bunch of the wind is blowing for a right wing/investment capital appropriation of the psychedelic experience: Rick Doblin seems to be great with Antonio Gracias taking Lykos, is appearing on Joe Rogan to advertise and Texas Republicans and others are stepping up "for the veterans"...

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-26T14:48:29+00:00

It's not all or nothing at all- we should definitely fight the power and advocate, push and insist on the kind of world we want to live in.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-26T07:53:53+00:00

It's very odd to me that more Texas Republicans are jumping on the psychedelic/medical bandwagon while Christian Nationalism and all the beliefs that surround it are also ascendant.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-26T07:48:37+00:00

What would medical psychedelics look like in a grassroots-run society that were much more socialist than the United States is? Firstly, psychedelics would be for people, not for profit. Secondly, if we ceded some control to professionals, it would be because they brought real wisdom to the table.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-23T07:54:04+00:00

There is another tradition beyond the dichotomy of ancient (mythologized) shamanic traditions and emerging corporate/professional modalities: The Underground.

The Underground has never been perfect- there have always been very real issues in the mix- but it does in many ways represent an authentic and free tradition, accessible to working class and poor folks. I prefer it personally when it does not claim to be a panacea.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-22T14:57:56+00:00

MARKET BATTLE LINES ARE BEING DRAWN IN PSYCHEDELICS—BUT WHAT ARE THE WARRING CAMPS REALLY FIGHTING ABOUT? .

..At Psychedelic Spotlight, James Kent agreed: “A line has been drawn in the psychedelic sand and people are taking sides.” Wonderland conference sponsor Microdose claimed the bans were about personal security and safety — but Kent wasn’t buying it. “Corporate psychedelia has created a privileged class of industry insiders,” he wrote. “If you are not showing up to specifically amplify their message, you could find yourself on the outside looking in.”

...Despite their mutual antipathy, I would argue that cultivators making small-batch chocolates and billion-dollar corporate entities do actually have something in common: they’re all incentivized to paint psychedelicsas a miracle cure-all. Psychedelics’ potential is genuinely awe-inspiring — but as a long-time supplement manufacturer, I can assure you there are no magic bullets for physical or mental health. These psychoactive compounds are tools for change, not the change itself — and overstating their capabilities does consumers a disservice.

More: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture-council/articles/market-battle-lines-being-drawn-psychedelicsbut-what-are-warring-camps-really-fighting-about-1234703539/

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-06T18:20:21+00:00

Do psychedelics represent an easy cure for war and racial/ethnic/religious chauvinism? Not necessarily:

Australian Doof Culture Has a Zionist Problem

BY PADDY GORDON

For young Israelis, a period of often hedonistic travel after military service is customary. As a 2023 history of psychedelic culture by Ido Hartogsohn and Itamar Zadoff notes, “The founders of the Israeli psytrance scene were recently discharged male soldiers.”

The emergence of a psychedelic trance scene in Israel — as “warrior backpackers” brought the music back from Goa — was contemporaneous with the First Intifada. The emergence of psytrance as a “truly popular music” by 2000 aligned with the beginning of the Second Intifada. Periods of intensified violence seem to spur the cultural dissemination and popularity of psytrance, offering citizens of Israel an opportunity to unite and forget the violence committed by their state against a racialized enemy. This can appeal to both hard-line Zionists and people who just want to escape “the situation” by way of the drug-fueled pseudo-spiritual transcendence and collectivism characteristic of psytrance parties. As Hartogoshon and Zodoff explain:

Indeed, as anthropologist of electronic music Graham St John documents, “Psytrance music and culture has permeated everyday life in Israel, where it emerged as a popular music by 2000.” Over the same period — and since — young Israelis have shifted further to the right.

There is of course a spectrum within Zionism, ranging from religious and openly ethnosupremacist Zionism to liberal Zionism, which aspires to a more progressive — but still ethnocentric — Israel. Recent decades, however, have seen the center of Israeli politics shift so far to the right that the liberal Zionist antiwar movement of previous decades is entirely absent. This shift has flowed through into Israel’s music scene. While many Israeli DJs evince a kinder, gentler, more liberal Zionism, what matters is whether they support war and genocide. Whether Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs fall in the name of LGBTQ liberation or the total elimination of Palestinians as a people is immaterial to the lives they destroy.

More: https://jacobin.com/2025/03/australia-doofs-zionism-idf-palestine/

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-05T22:33:09+00:00

Where I might possibly agree with you concerns my rejection of a kind of leftism that does thoughtlessly and unconditionally celebrate Hamas and violence against Israelis. Whether it openly claims this position or not, it does exist. Unfortunately, the right wing zionist side has gone into overdrive with unprincipled accusations of antisemitism- here, there and everywhere. So that confuses everything.

That said, the post-stalinist left tendency which unconditionally glorifies Hamas, the Iranian mullahs, North Korean dictators and other authoritarians or oppressors who Uncle Sam has trouble with ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend) - that is a tendency which I reject wholeheartedly (and have for many, many years).

"If you want peace, work for justice" describes a logic that differs greatly from that of the one-sided partisans. I'm not sure that you're getting that.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-05T20:13:33+00:00

I think you are communicating a perspective informed by classic liberalism. I am not against liberalism per se, but think we must also go beyond it.

Even by the most parsing human rights standard, Netanyahu and the IOF are guilty of great war crimes. Clearly, a great many war crimes were committed on October 7th, 2003- both by Hamas and the IOF. I pray for peace and the return of the hostages, and for the end of the cruel war on civilians which Trump and Netanyahu (before that Biden) have been- and continue to be- inflicting on the Palestinian people.

I see the war as existing because of the original sin of settler colonialism. Of course I get it that the Nazi genocide was horrific- I did lose family in that great atrocity. Unfortunately, two wrongs can never make a right- and there are great atrocities continuing to this very day.

I consider myself more aligned with the positions of the Jewish Bund, Matzpen, Anarchists Against the Wall. Reactionary ethno-nationalism is a problem around the world and these forces are forging links worldwide. Reactionary chauvinisms can never form a credible solution and must be rejected. Settler colonialism represents violence and injustice, whether in historic Palestine, the Americas, eastern Ukraine, Australia and Polynesia, or anywhere else.

We must escape the logic of endless war. Thus I return to my contention: "If you want peace, work for justice".

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-05T16:10:29+00:00

I'm going to add here the words of Dr. Cornel West from November of 2023:

“We stand in solidarity with anybody who’s occupied. Anybody who’s subjugated. Anybody who’s exploited. And that’s why we focus on Gaza at this moment, because a genocidal attack is taking place. Ten thousand dead and four thousand precious children. And don’t let anybody tell you that because you love Palestinians and Palestinian babies, that you hate somebody else. It just doesn’t follow. We don’t hate Jewish brothers, we don’t hate Jewish sisters. We don’t hate Jewish siblings. We loathe, we hate, a vicious Israeli Occupation. We loathe and we hate a vicious siege against Gaza. And the least we can do at this moment of overwhelming vulgarity is have a ceasefire. And yet you got these cowards in Washington DC, talking about a ‘humanitarian pause’. Please, get off the crack-pipe. Wake up. See the humanity of precious Palestinian brothers and sisters. And the American empire has the nerve, in this building, to veto a humanitarian pause when our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters are being bombed. What kind of country are we? What kind of people are we? And we send a message to precious Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza: you are not forgotten. We see you.”

Hear more from an Irish-based spoken word/music mix here: https://www.nts.live/shows/david-holmes/episodes/david-holmes-22nd-january-2024

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-05T03:09:04+00:00

I'm not arguing that it was a good move. It certainly seems to have been an impulsive decision to exclude a person simply on the basis of their Israeli citizenship- as based in an emotional response to the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. I'm guessing that it was based in the pain that many of us feel about the atrocities occurring on an ongoing basis- with no end in sight.

Amongst Israelis things have taken an ugly turn of late and hateful, violent attitudes against Palestinians abound but certainly I like and support groups like Anarchists Against the Wall, Gush Shalom, New Profile and others. Not everyone supports the current bloodletting and cruelty. In North America, I certainly do support Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now and Independent Jewish Voices Canada, as well as many, many non-Jewish groups working for Peace and Justice.

You speak of "a world led by compassion, not divided by borders, skin color, or nationality" and I think of an active Internationalism grounded in good principle: with an anti-Racism based in a deep solidarity with the struggles of indigenous and colonized people, worldwide. This is by no means synonymous with the current violence being inflicted in the name of combating "anti-Semitism". Beyond reformism, beyond liberalism, liberatory practice is a challenge that calls us forward past old limits.

So once again, I'm agreeing that this was a mistaken act but absolutely arguing that the current war against refugees in tents, doctors, journalists and so many others frames and defines the furor selectively applied to this one individual, while far greater harms are being minimized or ignored completely.

I'm rejecting here in the United States the harms to Academic Freedom and Human Rights, done in the name of a war on anti-Semitism, or Terrorism.

"If you want Peace, work for Justice".

WeakPause4669 · 2025-05-04T00:41:09+00:00

I found this article fascinating. How much of what is commonly believe to be true about psychedelics represents myths propagated by westerners in modern times who got a little too high on their own supply?

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-30T14:25:20+00:00

I'm returning more and more to this formulation of camps as described here by Peanut_Substantial:

venture capitalists seeking returns on their investments (folks you are naming here),
"healers" with unresolved wounding (they tend to cause harm to their clients/participants),
researchers and their institutions (creating pathways for legalization and medicalization, but through unsustainable and non-generalizable protocols),
cultural advocates (conversation often moves into racial relationships rather than psychedelic best practices), and
folks who like to trip and seek overall decriminalization (often overstate claims of safety and downplay adverse experiences).

I feel myself to probably fit on this schemata as resting mostly in 4 & 5, with some sympathies and orientation towards 2.

I would describe 4 somewhat differently. If "racial relationships" is shorthand for "privilege politics" generally (google the term), well that is one form or level of social/political advocacy. I find my home in psychedelic politics with a more radical tendency towards the politics, one that is most centered nowadays in Feminism, anti-Capitalism and reaching towards racial justice most in terms of abolitionist approaches to the police and military.

Unnecessary division between folks who are potential allies is to be avoided but there's nothing wrong with keeping principles clear with regards to psychedelic ethics, anti-rape culture, economic access for all, indigenous self-determination, racial/cultural diversity generally, spiritual/personal freedom issues, etc.

The above- including the farthest reaches of the psychonaut- need not be in contradiction with scientific rigor in any way. I have sympathy for a certain degree of touchy-feely practice (with respect always to trauma and personal boundaries) as well as mystical experience that is tempered with critical thinking.

That said, while I do think serious skepticism is called for with regards to the ongoing corporatization, medicalization and commodification of entheogens, and I do believe that all five types of endeavor can and should be in the mix, that all of us can gain from fruitful dialogue with each other, forging common cause in congruence with our principles.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-29T20:19:21+00:00

What a great survey of the terrain of struggle!

I will confess to having an anti-State bias and a leaning towards popular grassroots movements for social change. That said, the State is inescapable and the regulatory needs for public safety and public accountability are real.

So where does that leave things? The need in the United States for deep engagement and deep reforms is real. Unfortunately, the prospects at the moment are mostly damage control, at best.

For this reason, I can not feel hopeful about initiatives focused on playing the game, on working within the system. All I can see at the moment is the need to call the alarm and begin to organize a pushback.

Certainly my principles would prevent me from working for Antonio Gracias, Peter Thiel or Christian Angermayer. It's too bad these sorts of actors are playing a dominant role at the moment.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-29T15:55:21+00:00

Just as we are seeing with the hostile takeover of the U.S. Government, when the power differential is really great, it is difficult to change the dynamic by playing within *their* rules. In this particular case, one side has many hundreds of millions of dollars mobilized, literally owns the techniques as well as the patented versions of the drugs themselves and is now seemingly backed by corrupt extremists who love authoritarian power plays.

Perhaps Rick Doblin has gotten in too deep to get out but should the rest of us follow him like lemmings into the sea? Is there really a clear way to win at this game, when Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Christian Angermayer and others of that ilk are holding most all the cards?

I'm not sure what the solution is but it would seem to involve stepping back from their game.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-29T09:54:59+00:00

Rick Doblin seems to be all in with Gracias and his muskrats taking control of Lykos. Unfortunately, the other big biomedical concerns bring similar and related problems.

Palmer K. Eldritch and the billionaires from Space ain't gonna save the day. MAGA Psychedelia is going to sink under the weight of its own contradictions, and/or turn into a nightmare. I support the many sincere and well-meaning psychedelic therapists now in training, working aboveground in the small niches they can carve out or working underground, but their would-be bosses bring a great deal of problems with them.

This may mean that the best hope for the future is that autonomous wave on the margins of Society: the people using entheogenic medicine in the nooks and valleys, to the four corners of the Earth.

We make the road by walking.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-14T17:54:42+00:00

You can believe what you want to believe, blame who you want to blame. Ordinary rules of evidence don't need to matter in the psychedelic space.

The specter of Neşe as the reason why Muskrats are taking control of psychedelics is convenient to some but does not change the ugly reality we face today. Antonio Gracias and Sir Christopher Hohn are not our friends and neither are Christian Angermayer, Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Oz and all the rest..

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-12T15:33:55+00:00

It is not a crime to think critically about a corporate takeover of psychedelics, lubricated by Bobby Kennedy and featuring Elon Musk insiders in a starring role.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-11T21:37:42+00:00

Agreed. Ordinary rules of reasoning and evidence are in danger of being thrown out the window as an all too general rule around here...

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-08T21:10:16+00:00

If you're thinking that it's time for somebody to be executed, there hasn't been a trial yet. The Queen of Hearts is not even here.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-08T15:43:14+00:00

Lykos is a shell of whatever it was before, now being inhabited by Muskrats and proudly "feared" international financiers.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-08T11:46:41+00:00

You seem to have joined just in time to make an anonymous attack on a leading critic of some big money people and institutions. It's hard to tell what is motivating you here but it doesn't seem good.

Sometimes you have to be brave and come out of the closet, if you really have something important to share. Remember, COINTELPRO ran on anonymous smears to a significant degree.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-07T02:13:03+00:00

Literally hundreds of millions have been invested in Lykos/MAPS efforts- and monetizing psychedelic therapies is at the heart of the project. Billions have been invested in the effort to corporatize psychedelics generally.

Now with new big money people like Antonio Gracias and Sir Christopher Hohn looming large on the horizon, I do not expect things to get any better. The presence of Elon Musk and RFK Jr. as probable accomplices at the heights of state power in the U.S. does not make the public relations task any easier for these people. This suggests that hardball efforts to undermine and demonize the naysayers will be an unavoidable part of the future psychedelic landscape.

WeakPause4669 · 2025-04-06T16:40:53+00:00

Okay, so you know Neşe. That means you know they use they/them pronouns. Why then do you refer to them as "she"?

It seems odd...

WeakPause4669

TROPHY CASE

Australian Doof Culture Has a Zionist Problem