About
Psymposia is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization that offers leftist perspectives on drugs, politics, and culture. Subscribe to our newsletter.
Our perspectives are informed by critical analysis of the systemic crises we currently face: the socioeconomic inequalities of capitalism, the community-shattering effects of racist policing, criminal legal systems and drug prohibition, social manipulation through surveillance capitalism, the rampant spread of COVID-19, the warehousing of human beings through mass incarceration, white supremacism and the rise of fascism, and global ecocide.
Together, these systemic crises have directly contributed to the unmitigated growth of addiction, depression, suicide, and the unraveling of our social relations.
The same economic elite and powerful corporate interests who have profited from causing these problems are now proposing “solutions”—solutions which both line their pockets and mask the necessity of structural change.
Attempts to capitalize on “solving” the crises we face have contributed to the explosive growth of predatory industries which offer us individualized solutions to collective problems, including corporate wellness and commodified psychedelic therapies.
As a non-profit, we believe solutions start by ensuring that communities have access to factual information in order to make well-informed decisions. A vibrant social fabric requires a “range of opinions and ideas that are a prerequisite for meaningful participation in social and political life.” We strive to ask challenging questions, and we’re committed to independent reporting, critical analysis, and holding those who wield power accountable.
Psymposia publishes news, essays, and investigative journalism, while challenging those in power on behalf of the public . In addition to articles, we produce the Plus Three podcast, and wide-ranging commentary videos. We’ve organized numerous events in Boston, New York, California, London, Prague, Mexico, and other places around the world.
You can find us on the conference circuit — physically and digitally — around the world.
Donate
Psymposia is 100% independent non-profit media. We have no corporate overlords and we never run ads. We are sustained by our readers and listeners who believe in the work we do. Your support is vital. Please donate today!
Editorial Policies
For our editorial philosophy, and policies on advertising and donor influence, whistleblowers, corrections, submissions, republishing, endorsements, privacy, and terms of use, click here.
Contact & Submissions
For general inquiries, press, questions, feedback, and ideas, contact our team. To contact an individual team member, you can find their email address in their biography below.
For submissions: While the majority of our stories are conducted internally by our team, we welcome unsolicited pitches for essays. Please familiarize yourself with our areas of interest and approaches to previous stories before sending us your pitch.
Our Team
Brian Normand
Brian Normand co-founded Psymposia as a way for students to discuss the wide-ranging social issues in psychedelic science and drug prohibition in-person and online. He began to advocate for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for those with depression in 2009 after losing his mother to suicide, and ending drug prohibition after his arrest in 2012 for cannabis and mushroom cultivation. He’s organized numerous community education events around the world and has a BS in Plant, Soil, and Insect Science with a focus in business from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
David Nickles
David Nickles is Managing Editor of Psymposia, underground researcher, and harm reduction advocate. He has presented social critiques and commentary on psychedelic culture and radical politics, as well as novel phytochemical data from the DMT-Nexus, at venues around the world. David’s work focuses on the social and cultural implications of psychoactive substances, utilizing critical theory and structural analysis to examine the intersections of drugs and society. He is a vocal opponent of the mainstreaming and commodification of psychedelic compounds and rituals, believing that such approaches inherently obscure the liberatory potential of psychedelic experiences.
Neşe Devenot
Neşe Devenot, PhD is the Medicine, Society & Culture Editor at Psymposia and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Her research explores the function of metaphor and other literary devices in verbal accounts of psychedelic experiences. She was awarded "Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies" from Breaking Convention in 2016 and received the Article Prize for best publication in Romanticism Studies from European Romantic Review in 2020. She was a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library's Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where she participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. She was a founding member of the MAPS Graduate Student Association, which she moderated during 2011-13, and has presented on psychedelics at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Brian Pace
Brian Pace, PhD is currently a lecturer who teaches Psychedelic Studies at The Ohio State University. He was trained as an evolutionary ecologist, specializing in phytochemistry, ethnobotany, and ecophysiology. His interest in life science was piqued as a teenager while experimenting with his own neurochemistry. Brian believes in the psychedelic society movement and other grassroots decriminalization efforts to find alternative policies to the imperial drug war. He did field work in Southern Mexico, the US midwestern prairie, and the Ecuadorian Amazon. For more than a decade, Brian has worked on agroecology and climate change. Along the way, he has taught several university courses on cannabis.
Russell Hausfeld
Russell Hausfeld is an investigative journalist and illustrator living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Religious Studies from the University of Cincinnati.
Lily Kay Ross
Lily Kay Ross, PhD has been taking a feminist approach to theorizing ethics in psychedelic spaces since 2009, especially with regard to sexual misconduct, abuses of power, charlatans, and the dominance of traditional gender norms in psychedelic spaces. Her PhD research looks at how neoliberal discourses burden victim/survivors of sexual violence with the directive to individually overcome social problems, and the trouble with posttraumatic growth. Her other projects advance best practice and evidence based policies and responses to sexual harm. She is a feminist writer, educator, and violence prevention facilitator. After a five year hiatus from psychedelics, she’s happy to be home.
Erica Darragh
Erica is a harm reductionist, peer educator, and community organizer working in drug policy reform, climate justice, and digital rights advocacy.
Matt Payne
Matt Payne is the podcast editor for Psymposia. He has a journalism degree from St. Thomas University and lives in Ottawa.
Advisory Board
Yarelix Estrada
Yarelix Estrada is a first-generation Central American, drug policy and harm reduction researcher, and community outreach liaison for overdose prevention in low income communities of color. She currently works as a City Research Scientist with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducting community-based substance use harm reduction outreach and research. She’s on the board of SALUD, where she is working to highlight the needs of Latino health in NYC, as well as organizing support for Indigenous communities. She is the Director of the New York City Psychedelic Society with which she organizes free monthly psychedelic integration circles for people of color for the community. Yarelix received her MSPH in Public Health in Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Laura Krasovitzky
Laura Krasovitzky currently works as a communications and membership engagement strategist at SumOfUs, a global consumer group leading campaigns to curb the growing power of corporations. She has also been involved in drug policy reform advocacy, transnational social/racial/environmental justice initiatives, intersectional feminism and community organizing in Central America and Mexico.
Jae Sevelius
Jae Sevelius, PhD (they/them) is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and is a licensed clinical psychologist. At the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, Dr. Sevelius’ community-led research is focused on developing and evaluating transgender–specific, trauma-informed interventions to promote health among transgender people, with an emphasis on serving transgender women of color and those affected by HIV in California and São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Sevelius holds a Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr. Sevelius has conducted research and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on topics at the intersections of social justice, sexuality, health, and identity.
Alexander Zaitchik
Alexander Zaitchik is a journalist who writes on politics, media, and the environment. He has written for The Intercept, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Baffler, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. He was a staff writer and editor at the New York Press, the eXile in Moscow. He is the author of Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, "The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America, and Out of the Ooze: The Story of Dr. Tom Price.
About // Donate // Editorial Policies // Contact and Submissions // Team // Advisory Board
About
Psymposia is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization that offers leftist perspectives on drugs, politics, and culture. Subscribe to our newsletter.
Our perspectives are informed by critical analysis of the systemic crises we currently face: the socioeconomic inequalities of capitalism, the community-shattering effects of racist policing, criminal legal systems and drug prohibition, social manipulation through surveillance capitalism, the rampant spread of COVID-19, the warehousing of human beings through mass incarceration, white supremacism and the rise of fascism, and global ecocide.
Together, these systemic crises have directly contributed to the unmitigated growth of addiction, depression, suicide, and the unraveling of our social relations.
The same economic elite and powerful corporate interests who have profited from causing these problems are now proposing “solutions”—solutions which both line their pockets and mask the necessity of structural change.
Attempts to capitalize on “solving” the crises we face have contributed to the explosive growth of predatory industries which offer us individualized solutions to collective problems, including corporate wellness and commodified psychedelic therapies.
As a non-profit, we believe solutions start by ensuring that communities have access to factual information in order to make well-informed decisions. A vibrant social fabric requires a “range of opinions and ideas that are a prerequisite for meaningful participation in social and political life.” We strive to ask challenging questions, and we’re committed to independent reporting, critical analysis, and holding those who wield power accountable.
Psymposia publishes news, essays, and investigative journalism, while challenging those in power on behalf of the public . In addition to articles, we produce the Plus Three podcast, and wide-ranging commentary videos. We’ve organized numerous events in Boston, New York, California, London, Prague, Mexico, and other places around the world.
You can find us on the conference circuit — physically and digitally — around the world.
Donate
Psymposia is 100% independent non-profit media. We have no corporate overlords and we never run ads. We are sustained by our readers and listeners who believe in the work we do. Your support is vital. Please donate today!
Editorial Policies
For our editorial philosophy, and policies on advertising and donor influence, whistleblowers, corrections, submissions, republishing, endorsements, privacy, and terms of use, click here.
Contact & Submissions
For general inquiries, press, questions, feedback, and ideas, contact our team. To contact an individual team member, you can find their email address in their biography below.
For submissions: While the majority of our stories are conducted internally by our team, we welcome unsolicited pitches for essays. Please familiarize yourself with our areas of interest and approaches to previous stories before sending us your pitch.
Our Team
Brian Normand
Brian Normand co-founded Psymposia as a way for students to discuss the wide-ranging social issues in psychedelic science and drug prohibition in-person and online. He began to advocate for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for those with depression in 2009 after losing his mother to suicide, and ending drug prohibition after his arrest in 2012 for cannabis and mushroom cultivation. He’s organized numerous community education events around the world and has a BS in Plant, Soil, and Insect Science with a focus in business from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
David Nickles
David Nickles is Managing Editor of Psymposia, underground researcher, and harm reduction advocate. He has presented social critiques and commentary on psychedelic culture and radical politics, as well as novel phytochemical data from the DMT-Nexus, at venues around the world. David’s work focuses on the social and cultural implications of psychoactive substances, utilizing critical theory and structural analysis to examine the intersections of drugs and society. He is a vocal opponent of the mainstreaming and commodification of psychedelic compounds and rituals, believing that such approaches inherently obscure the liberatory potential of psychedelic experiences.
Neşe Devenot
Neşe Devenot, PhD is the Medicine, Society & Culture Editor at Psymposia and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Her research explores the function of metaphor and other literary devices in verbal accounts of psychedelic experiences. She was awarded "Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies" from Breaking Convention in 2016 and received the Article Prize for best publication in Romanticism Studies from European Romantic Review in 2020. She was a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library's Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where she participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. She was a founding member of the MAPS Graduate Student Association, which she moderated during 2011-13, and has presented on psychedelics at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Brian Pace
Brian Pace, PhD is currently a lecturer who teaches Psychedelic Studies at The Ohio State University. He was trained as an evolutionary ecologist, specializing in phytochemistry, ethnobotany, and ecophysiology. His interest in life science was piqued as a teenager while experimenting with his own neurochemistry. Brian believes in the psychedelic society movement and other grassroots decriminalization efforts to find alternative policies to the imperial drug war. He did field work in Southern Mexico, the US midwestern prairie, and the Ecuadorian Amazon. For more than a decade, Brian has worked on agroecology and climate change. Along the way, he has taught several university courses on cannabis.
Russell Hausfeld
Russell Hausfeld is an investigative journalist and illustrator living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Religious Studies from the University of Cincinnati.
Erica Darragh
Erica is a harm reductionist, peer educator, and community organizer working in drug policy reform, climate justice, and digital rights advocacy.
Lily Kay Ross
Lily Kay Ross, PhD has been taking a feminist approach to theorizing ethics in psychedelic spaces since 2009, especially with regard to sexual misconduct, abuses of power, charlatans, and the dominance of traditional gender norms in psychedelic spaces. Her PhD research looks at how neoliberal discourses burden victim/survivors of sexual violence with the directive to individually overcome social problems, and the trouble with posttraumatic growth. Her other projects advance best practice and evidence based policies and responses to sexual harm. She is a feminist writer, educator, and violence prevention facilitator. After a five year hiatus from psychedelics, she’s happy to be home.
Matt Payne
Matt Payne is the podcast editor for Psymposia. He has a journalism degree from St. Thomas University and lives in Ottawa.
Advisory Board
Yarelix Estrada
Yarelix Estrada is a first-generation Central American, drug policy and harm reduction researcher, and community outreach liaison for overdose prevention in low income communities of color. She currently works as a City Research Scientist with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducting community-based substance use harm reduction outreach and research. She’s on the board of SALUD, where she is working to highlight the needs of Latino health in NYC, as well as organizing support for Indigenous communities. She is the Director of the New York City Psychedelic Society with which she organizes free monthly psychedelic integration circles for people of color for the community. Yarelix received her MSPH in Public Health in Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Laura Krasovitzky
Laura Krasovitzky currently works as a communications and membership engagement strategist at SumOfUs, a global consumer group leading campaigns to curb the growing power of corporations. She has also been involved in drug policy reform advocacy, transnational social/racial/environmental justice initiatives, intersectional feminism and community organizing in Central America and Mexico.
Jae Sevelius
Jae Sevelius, PhD (they/them) is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and is a licensed clinical psychologist. At the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, Dr. Sevelius’ community-led research is focused on developing and evaluating transgender–specific, trauma-informed interventions to promote health among transgender people, with an emphasis on serving transgender women of color and those affected by HIV in California and São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Sevelius holds a Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr. Sevelius has conducted research and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on topics at the intersections of social justice, sexuality, health, and identity.
Alexander Zaitchik
Alexander Zaitchik is a journalist who writes on politics, media, and the environment. He has written for The Intercept, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Baffler, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. He was a staff writer and editor at the New York Press, the eXile in Moscow. He is the author of Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, "The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America, and Out of the Ooze: The Story of Dr. Tom Price.
