The Ibogaine Conversation Part 2 | Our first stop is in Gabon, Africa, where consumption of the iboga root bark is intimately tied to the ancient spiritual discipline known as Bwiti.

Consent is really pretty simple but also apparently complicated, due to our inheritance of a messed up culture.

A few years ago, I witnessed the systematic silencing and shaming of Lily Kay Ross for having dared to call attention to severe abuses of power in the psychedelic space. Her extraordinary bravery in sharing her own experience with abuse was met with victim blaming and accusations of selfishness. Key members of the psychedelic research community turned on her for “jeopardizing” the entire field of psychedelic science with her “negativity” and “theatrics.”

The controlled narrative goes something like this: ayahuasca is good, and we need to control how people perceive it because this is a controlled substance we want to see legalized, a medicine we want to see legitimated. And if we have to sacrifice a few women who get themselves raped to keep ayahuasca’s name clean, so be it.

No offense to Nancy or the U$ government cocaine-smuggling rings that thrived under the regime of her anti-communist ideologue of a husband, but drugs are endemic to life.

The risk of coming out as queer is grossly unequal to the risk of disclosing as a psychedelic user.

During an earlier era of psychedelic research, the 1950s-70s, some scientists believed that in order to ethically administer psychedelics to others it was necessary to first experience them oneself.

You can’t expect to get equal rights unless you push for them, and you can’t push for them without first standing up and being “out.”

The demonization of psychedelic culture is not a social justice issue, and using the language of social justice is damaging to those causes.

Psychedelic users and sexual minorities are both involved in the same struggle. We both represent a valid threat to the same obsolete control mechanisms. We are on the same team.