Neşe Devenot, PhD of Psymposia’s Plus Three podcast ventures into the psychedelic “arm” of the Intellectual Dark Web in this first episode of Chemical Poetics.

We kicked off the start of our ongoing livestreams with the announcement of Psymposia's 501(c)(3) non-profit status, discussions of corporadelic dynamics, fond memories of helping people learn how to extract psychedelic drugs during an Ivy League University's psychedelic conference, and a whole bunch of back and forth with the audience about the current state (and future) of psychedelia.

Live from Brooklyn, New York, the team discusses psychedelic science unfolding in a capitalist culture and deconstructs the 'Standard Story' of psychedelic medicalization. They also talk about incoming corporations seeking to capitalize on psychedelic medicines, and ongoing decriminalization efforts across the country.

The crew recaps the Economic Models for the Expansion of Psychedelics panel at the Horizons Perspectives on Psychedelics conference in New York. They also discuss the corrosive effects that Compass Pathways, a for-profit psilocybin startup has had in psychedelic science and research.

The historical record is clear - drug prohibition is directly connected to the prosecution of minorities: ethnic or political. Not only do we see a complete lack of scientific or evidentiary basis for prohibition and criminalization, we can see it has been a product of white supremacy, xenophobia, misogyny, and imperialism. 

The team explores the Psychedelic/Climate-Change connection, and tools for addressing existential crisis. Climate change is the challenge of our era, but the media still distracts us with comparatively trivial matters.

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?

The team shares their personal stories and talk about how and why they became involved in psychedelic advocacy and drug policy reform. Happy New Year y’alls.

Well, it’s official, psychedelics have entered the corporate-wellness mainstream. If you have any doubts, check out Gwyneth Paltrow’s new Netflix series, The Goop Lab. Or maybe don’t.

We discuss our recent article, Lucy in the Sky with Nazis: Psychedelics and the Right Wing, which stirred up quite a bit of controversy. So to stir things up a little more, we’ve unpacked some of our perspectives while exploring questions of psychedelics as non-specific amplifiers of consciousness, the far right, the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web,” white supremacy, and psychedelics and social change.