Whose Futures Do Psychedelic Medicines Serve?

Across the globe, psychedelic medicine is provided through a striking diversity of practitioners and settings. This includes psychedelic therapists, assistants, curanderos, maestros, chaplains, facilitators, coaches, guides, companions, neo-shamans, and others. While psychedelic substances travel easily enough today, the ways of guiding them vary considerably. Picture three scenes: A lab monitor subdues her impulse to support a volunteer taking psilocybin so regulators can measure the drug effect alone. A psychotherapist builds hours of dialogue around the same dose. An Amazonian healer invites plant-persons, animal-persons, and ancestors into the ceremonial maloca as allies, guides, and “co-participants”.

This talk focuses on the way in which providers are at the nexus of multiple ontologies and regulatory environments of psychedelic medicine. It considers drug-centred, therapy-centred, and Indigenous Amazonian models side by side to show that arguments about “what really works” are not simply technical questions but are biopolitical and cosmopolitical negotiations over which futures can flourish—and what worlds are being kept alive—as these plants, fungi, and molecules edge further into mainstream settings and imaginaries.