#6 – Abusing Power: Taking Predatory Daniel Pinchbeck At His Word

Author Daniel Pinchbeck sexually harassed and coerced interns, community members, and those less-powerful than himself, harming untold numbers of women in the psychedelic community. He has described himself as being “sexually fixated, creepy, predatory,” using psychedelics as “tools of seduction,” “making unwanted advances” towards much younger women, and “seeking sexual contact with volunteers in an organization” that he helped start.

Despite this, some individuals and organizations are fixated on defending and rehabilitating Pinchbeck’s image rather than meaningfully addressing systemic issues of sexual misconduct and misogyny in the community; promoting a perpetrator while ignoring the victims and survivors.

The Chacruna Institute has dismissed Pinchbeck’s critics – in interviews and in statements – as angry, mentally unstable, seeking to ostracize him from community events, and unwilling to give him a second chance. Over the explicit protests of his organizing team, Paul Austin of The Third Wave asserted the importance of Pinchbeck’s participation in community events. In response, the majority of Third Wave staff quit.

Pinchbeck has made it exhaustingly clear in his own words that as soon as he gained a modicum of power and status, he used it to exploit women. Why are some members of the psychedelic community so insistent that he get it back?

Co-hosts: Brian Normand, Neşe Devenot, David Nickles, Brian Pace. Editor: Matt Payne.

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