This article outlines a skeptical appraisal of Psymposia, a small but influential self-appointed psychedelics “watchdog” organization based in the United States of America, which played a significant role in blocking regulatory approval for MDMA as a treatment for PTSD in 2024. Contextualized close analysis of its “Power Trip” podcast series, which focused on sexual abuse in the psychedelic...
This article liberates discussion of the politics of psychedelics from its present impasse. Across ten theses, it asserts that psychedelics are interruptive deautomating political technologies, which makes them conducive to democratic politics, in the radical sense: rather than consolidating liberal-democratic systems of representative or managed democracy, psychedelic experience tends to open...
Psychedelics are undergoing a clinical research renaissance, with compounds such as psilocybin advancing to Phase 3 trials for treatment-resistant depression and receiving fast-track or breakthrough designations from regulatory agencies. Despite this progress, the field lacks standardized terminology to guide clinical development, dosing, safety monitoring, and regulatory classification. Here,...
This article presents an analytical reading of the extraordinarily rich cultural production around drugs by the 20th-century French poet, writer, critic, and visual artist Michaux (1899–1984). Over about a decade, from the mid-1950's, the otherwise habitually sober Michaux wrote five books, included within which were dozens of drawings, and made one half-hour film, charting his adventures as an...
Psychedelically assisted psychotherapy (PAP) looks set to become a common remedy for a range of serious mental health problems. The market for providing PAP, including a secondary market for the training, credentialising and monitoring of therapists, is expanding rapidly. Concerns have been raised recently by actors in that secondary market about the potential for abuse in PAP, which have been...