PSYCHEDELICS IN A CHANGING WORLD:

MEDICALISATION, RECIPROCITY AND PLANETARY HEALING

With: Ben Sessa, Gabriel Amezcua, Nick von Christierson, David Luke, Andrea Langlois & Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner

 

This is a recording of a fascinating panel chaired by Chasing Consciousness in the talks tent of Medicine Festival programmed by Ruby Reed. It included psychologists, psychiatrists, psychedelic entrepreneurs and activists at the top of their field. The panel gave a nuanced and positive overview of the issues associated with the now inevitable medicalisation of these psychedelic compounds. With great sensitivity they approached the very difficult issue of how to honour the roots of this therapy in indigenous shamanism, without reducing it to just money or token indigenous board members. Despite positive predictions for the future it became clear by the end of the talk just how complex the issue of reciprocity is. If you enjoy this you can check out Episode #10 with Ashleigh Murphy Beiner of the Imperial College team on 'Testing psychedelics for depression'.

And look out for future interviews with panelists Ben Sessa and David Luke to come soon!

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00:00 Introduction to the speakers

02:49 Medicalisation: Just a success story or are there shadows to call out early in the process?

03:10 Ben Sessa: safe, effective medicines as alternatives to long term pharmaceutical

05:00 Getting to the root cause of the problem rather than papering over the symptoms

06:40 'A psychiatric renaissance'

07:30 The shadow side of rolling out medical drugs to the mainstream

09:20 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: Learning from the shadow to confront worldwide depression

11:00 Negative psychedelic experiences for patients by inexperienced unregulated therapists

12:40 Acknowledging the large difference between psychedelic therapy and regular psycho therapy

15:40 Designing ethical psychedelic treatment models that match its uniqueness

16:15 David Luke: Biomedical model VS subjective psychological model

18:00 Bio-Psycho-social-spiritual models may not work with medicalisation

20:00 The need to incorporate community into the medical model

21:00 Nick Van Christiersen of Woven Science

22:00 Being inspired by Indigenous models: Diagnosis, preparation, peak experience, integration in community

23:00 Psychedelic treatment is a threat to big pharma

24:00 Andrea Langlois: Keeping the door more widely open than just to medicalisation

25:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Accessibility, decolonisation, inclusion of indigenous people in the medical process

28:00 Andrea Langlois: The indigenous idea of Reciprocity, that we may have become disconnected from

29:00 The ailments of modern society like depression and climate change are a call to come back into a relationship of reciprocity with Gaia 30:00 Learning from and remaining connected to indigenous roots

31:00 Risk of hijacking of reciprocity, to green wash profiteering

32:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Giving and getting, participation, engagement, respect not money

36:00 Do you think they really want to be ‘preserved’!? The colonisation of our knowledge? No, we need computers and western education too 39:00 Nick Van Christiersen: reparations before reciprocity

41:00 We need your advice to help bring this crucial knowledge to western industry

42:00 David Luke: Is it our right to give them to have a seat at the table!?

45:00 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: We have so much to learn and adapt from the indigenous methodology

47:00 The newly founded Association for Psychedelic Therapies

48:00 Ben Sessa: ‘Prime care giver and preverbal child’ image of reciprocity. Co-dependence and responsibility for the connection that will lead to the thriving or traumatising of their lives

49:00 Accessibility to psychedelics for people in the mainstream too

51:00 Reciprocity between carer and patient

53:00 Andrea Langlois: Indigenous knowledge should be understood as science and decriminalised

59:00 Ben Sessa: Getting it over the line - decriminalisation

1:01:50 David Luke: Qualitative psychedelic research ‘measuring your mystical experience’ at Jons Hopkins

1:03:00 Changing our whole world view through psychedelics, to reboot the culture of a species in crisis

1:05:00 What’s the nature of reality, who are we and what the fuck are we doing on the planet?

1:06:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Psychedelics are confined mostly to privileged white people when they are most needed by vulnerable minorities, many whom have PTSD

1:08:00 De-Regulation of substances, accessibility for poor communities with trauma

1:11:00 Andrea Langlois: Earth practice and our own western relationship with plants and the natural world

1:13:00 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: what’s the cost of the mad process of rushing this through too fast

1:15:00 Nick Van Christiersen: putting the breaks on, we’ve only got one shot at this

1:18:00 Closing comments

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