Fruiting Bodies, Political Depression and Composting the Psychedelic Dream

What happens after the dream dies? After it’s co-opted, diluted, and sold back to us in government-approved doses for those who can afford it, while those who can’t risk their freedom for a glimpse of transcendence? This talk is for those sitting with the weight of these questions.

Drawing on Natalie Osborne’s work on political depression and failure, I explore how hope, when it becomes untethered from reality, can be cruel, and how this has played out in our psychedelic landscape and my own life. Many of us did what we were told would work: we built organisations, wrote submissions, chased legitimacy and attention. For some, the results have been underwhelming. For others, outright demoralising.

But this isn’t just a talk about loss. It’s about what grows in the cracks, and seeing possibilities, even when we failed to save the world.

Through metaphor and lived experience, I trace an alternative vision, one that doesn’t rely on being seen, sanctioned, or scaled. One that recognises the value of what’s quiet, decentralised, and relational. If the visible structures of psychedelic culture are fruiting bodies, then there is also a mycelium: the informal, underground, and often unseen networks that sustain and protect.

This is not a call to abandon institutions entirely, nor to romanticise the underground. It’s a reflection on where we are, why many of us feel so exhausted, and how we might reorient ourselves toward something more nourishing, longer lasting, and perhaps less easily consumed.

For anyone who’s found themselves caught between burnout and bitterness, hope and disillusionment, this talk offers no neat solutions. Just a few questions worth sitting with and a few traces of life pushing up through the ruins.