The coming psychedelic-industrial complex threatens to strip hallucinogenic drugs of their historical and religious significance.
"Obregón Matzer’s sense of place has always included the perpetually looming threat of placelessness—and the dream of helping others overcome it." Photo by Jason Henry
Before there was LSD, there were psilocybin mushrooms. Before there was MDMA, there was ayahuasca plant medicine. Both have been shared by indigenous people for generations as far back as can be remembered, always in a ritualized context.
Yet, "what for centuries has been a largely taboo or prohibited experience is on the verge of becoming fully legal in majority-minority California and other states. The growing and largely white business of blowing minds adds to the economic distress of poor, non-white communities while denying them access to the powerful mind-altering substances that might help them. The fate of the psychedelic underworld hangs in the balance. As it stands, the dismal statistics documenting access to legalized psychoactive medicines look no better than employment statistics for people of color at Facebook, Twitter, and other Silicon Valley companies whose employees and investors are (again) putting the Bay Area in the vanguard of the next movement.
"Nationwide, a University of Connecticut analysis over a 25-year period found that only 2.5 percent of participants in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy studies were Black, 2.1 percent were Latinx, and 1.8 percent were Asian. Most tragically ironic: only 4.6 percent were Indigenous, the descendants of the psychedelic 'first wave' that introduced the world to using plant-based psychoactive substances to explore altered states of consciousness." - Roberto Lovato
Article: The Gentrification of Consciousness