The Psychedelic Space Has a Credibility Problem

Everyone in the psychedelic space is an authority, expert, and visionary who has substantial reason to believe that they are correct in their philosophy and course of action.

This is wonderful, except it’s a logical fallacy.

I don’t imagine that the Johns Hopkins research scientist is fundamentally more correct in their ruminations on the dynamics of DMT entity encounters or proper set and setting than the Detroit underground community healer or the Shipibo curandera - I’d actually be more inclined to side with the indigenous medicine keeper than the career academic on many matters where mystical states are concerned, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

My point is that the best path forward for all concerned is to be skeptical of people claiming to be authorities on the psychedelic experience and mystical states - especially where serious medical and psychological advice is being dispensed. An extra layer of dubiousness is added when people attempt to build and *lead* communities around the psychedelic experience. I support the existence of safe, empowered, and accountable community frameworks for psychedelics - but who’s left holding the bag when something goes wrong?

Social media has given people amnesia. In the two years I’ve been public facing with my advocacy and activism in the psychedelic space, I’ve seen *dozens* of psychedelic communities, businesses, and leaders have bitter falling outs, actual tragedies, and aggressive restructurings without ever publicly addressing what actually happened. And that’s saying nothing about what I’ve observed during the 17 years I’ve been part of the global ‘psychedelic community’.

I don’t care to go into details, but anyone who’s been around and who’s paying attention is probably thinking I’m alluding to a handful of specific incidents right now - I’m not.

Things fall apart. People are fallible. Communities evolve and devolve.

In 2007 I was getting my drugs from people I met in Golden Gate Park or on Haight street in San Francisco - people with codenames and burner phones. I didn’t know where else to get them yet. My first ‘LSD experience’ was with an actual piece of cardboard that supposedly had LSD on it and which I took with three friends at a party where the only substance quality control was in the Pabst Blue Ribbon on the beer pong table. I won’t begin to disclose my concerns about some of the pills and powders that came across my path.

I got ripped off a handful of times, but that was the cost of trusting people I’d only just met.

In 2009 I was invited by a former high school acquaintance to join a facebook group assembled for the express purpose of buying a private island where the facebook group members were theoretically going to build paradise on earth. Plant medicine ceremonies and intentional community with a distributed bunch of neoshamans that connected on Facebook: What could go wrong? I hung out with this person like four times in four years of high school, but because we both were interested in tripping, I qualified for the private island intentional community.

I might have joined it if they hadn’t sold me some of the lowest grade weed I’d ever had a few months before.

In 2010 I witnessed people at an ayahuasca community outside of Iquitos meet and bond over ceremony, then *get married and open a 6-figure retreat center together* a few months after the medicine united them. They sent me their pitch deck to invest in the new property, which featured a swimming pool and a beautiful, large ‘maloca’ for nightly ceremonies.

The visionary retreat center and the relationship lasted about 6 months, but not before a bunch of people who didn’t know any better got ripped off and destabilized by the con. When I asked the proprietors what happened, I was bitterly scolded for poking my nose into business it didn’t belong in - even though it was fine for them to send me a pitch deck and put the hard sell on me when they needed $130,000 for their center, because at that point we were ‘medicine family'.

I’ve seen the same thing can happen at the corporate level where hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars are involved - frauds, professional scam artists, and PT Barnum type characters are happy to take your money and promise you the moon while they’ve got their exit strategy mapped out. Spoiler: It doesn’t always involve a return on your investment. Does anybody remember Enron or Quadriga? The same types of people who pulled those also exist in the psychedelic space.

The power of psychedelics to amplify personal attachments, bonds, and feelings of mutual trust can lead to very dark places as well as profound and lasting relationships - it’s up to you to be discerning and choose your associates and care providers wisely. The blind trust that people invest in strangers they just met is disconcerting where psychedelics are involved. Social media and the hypermodern digital age encourage people and projects to move blisteringly fast to accomplish their agendas, but the visions and downloads you may experience while in mystical states are under no obligation to manifest according to wishful thinking and your expedited timeline.

It seems profoundly unwise to attach your mental health, business, and your hopes and dreams to relationships you only recently started to cultivate -

Play the slow game. It’s worth it. Give yourself time to make mistakes at the penny slots before you saunter into the high roller room.

The slow game invites a sense of humility.

Ask yourself: When is the last time you heard a leader in the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ admit that they’re wrong? When is the last time that you admitted to yourself that you might be wrong?

Being wrong is a part of life. Recognizing that you’re wrong or may be wrong about something and owning it is humility.

The psychedelic space needs humility.