A Leftist Primer on the Right-Wing Psychedelic Takeover
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Psychedelics are the next front in Big Tech's dystopia. Psymposia developed this primer for leftists in response to Donald Trump‘s April 18 Executive Order, which accelerates review of psychedelic drugs deemed “Breakthrough Therapies” and makes Schedule 1 drugs more accessible under Right to Try laws. This announcement made a splash in psychedelic media, where praise for the Trump administration mixes with false claims about an “end to prohibition.” In this discussion, we provide important context about this Executive Order and the people who engineered this moment behind the scenes. We highlight concerns about how this initiative will be rolled out by the Trump administration, which has been accused of pay-to-play tactics at the FDA and stacking the Department of Health and Human Services with psychedelic industry evangelists. This move represents a crystallization of far-right interest in the psychedelic industry and a step towards oligarch monopolization of psychedelic medicine by figures including Peter Thiel and Musk lieutenant Antonio Gracias. We end by discussing the risks of elite control over drugs that have been developed to shift identity — especially when those elites are simultaneously devoted to killing the so-called "woke mind virus" and remaking the global order in Palantir's image.
Foot Notes:
The Psychedelic Syndicate (Psymposia):
Executive Order (White House):
President Trump Signs Executive Order to Accelerate Psychedelic Research and Access (Psychedelic Alpha):
Over-the-top psychedelic promos could undermine the field’s drug development efforts (STAT):
https://www.statnews.com/2026/03/31/psychedelic-biotech-promotion-scrutinized-helus-atai-influencer-marketing/
Archived: https://archive.is/bv1oU
Pharma lobbyists focus on a surprising new target: the FDA (STAT):
https://www.statnews.com/2026/02/23/fda-lobbying-efforts-grow-under-trump-administration/
Archived: https://archive.is/wQav7
Wohin treibt die Renaissance von LSD & Co.? (WOZ)
https://www.woz.ch/2609/psychedelika/wohin-treibt-die-renaissance-von-lsd-co/!NBCC4R4K3E06
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] In a vacuum. A lot of this stuff seems innocuous, but this isn't happening in a vacuum. This is being signed on Donald Trump's desk. This administration is 100% paytoplay. That's who they are. When you are allowing people like the Jervsons and Peter Teal to be controlling both the acceptable narratives within LLM training models and also the context for psychedelic therapy, you're creating a system where people can be steered in certain directions that are in line with elite interests. Hey, happy bicycle day. We are here today to discuss some breaking news that came out yesterday regarding an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
[00:50] My name is Russell with the Psymposia podcast and I'm here with my colleagues Pace and Mâche. We've seen some basic coverage of the content of the executive order, but we wanted to go through that as well as some further context behind the order and the broader implications. Yeah, this has been in some ways our beat for a while now. You know, the Trump administration being the one to have strong executive action on psychedelic therapy is not something that a lot of people would have predicted 5 years ago, except that we have been talking at least 5 years ago, if not longer, about how the right-wing has not only been amendable to psychedelics, but is increasingly taking a leading role in shaping what psychedelic therapy and psychedelic legalization looks like.
[01:37] We have talked for some time about the intersections between the economics and the funders behind psychedelics. There's a lot of folks that have deep ties with both the first and now current Trump administration and that shapes how things are done and the way that these treatments are marketed. For example, the focus on on veterans and that's front and center with this executive order. Yeah. And that's something as an organization we've covered a lot of as far as the right-wing ties, the veteran policy strategies. And we also covered a lot of abuse in the space. And for reporting on these things, we were largely scapegoed for the rejection of one of the biggest psychedelic new drug applications that had gone through the FDA, Lyos therapeutics as MDMA application by many of these right-wing associated groups.
[02:28] And we've been trying to alert the left to everything that's been going on in the psychedelic field. Trump's recent press conference is hopefully an opportunity for the left to understand more that that there are things going on in this field that are not in the best interest of workers or in the best interest of public health. Jumping off that, I think we can just take a look at the signing of that executive order. Order I'm signing. We're actually signing the executive order today is really a moment. It directs the FDA to expedite their review of certain psychedelics already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs. They're very much being discussed. I that's one of the hottest things I think you're talking about, right?
[03:15] This order will clear away unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, improve data sharing among the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and facilitate fast rescheduling of any psychedelic drugs that become FDA approved. And we think many of them will go very quickly. In 2024 study from Stanford University, 30 special operation veterans with traumatic brain injuries underwent it's called I Boane treatment. I boain. Remember the name. Is that pronounced relatively properly? Would you say I don't want to get it wrong. I Boane because it's so important. and experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month.
[04:02] Can I have some, please? I'll take whatever it takes. We're also opening a pathway for iOS to desperately ill patients under the right to try law. That's a law that I started and I got right to try. I want to say that I'm here because of the man to my left, Brian Hubard and former Texas Governor Rick Perry came on my podcast. They told me how impactful this medicine is and having that conversation with them, millions of people got a chance to hear. Yeah. Says millions of people got to hear their story. So, a couple things to note from that video. This focus on expediting the pathway for breakthrough therapies. his focus on Ibeane in particular, which to date is not a breakthrough therapy, as well as some of the characters in the background.
[04:55] So, you see Joe Rogan standing directly behind the president. You see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his left and you see Brian Huard to the right of Joe Rogan. Brian Hubard is someone we covered a bit in the psychedelic syndicate. And I know Mich has some thoughts on. Yeah. out with I think it's important for people to understand the ideology about healing from addiction that Hubard is advancing and advocating. He has a particular stance of you know thinking of addiction as a essentially like a spiritual disease that can be cured through reconnecting via psychedelics like ibeane with the divine and he does not pay attention to issues like inequality in society and a lot of the factors that leftists understand are actually driving addiction and it's kind of my perspective and perspective of a lot of people that work in harm reduction public health that you can't just spiritualize addiction away that there are structural factors that are driving those issues and that's who Joe Rogan says is one of
[05:55] The main figures that sort of introduced him to this Ibagane literature and healing potential. And then Joe Rogan goes on to say that he essentially forwarded this information to Trump and that's what led to this executive order. We can debate whether we think that was the correct narrative after this clip here. I'll just show how Joe Rogan says this executive order came about here. I want to tell everybody how this happened. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country. Obviously, in 2024, more than 80,000 people died of overdoses. It's a horrible number. And there's more than 5 million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of ibagane, more than 80% of people are free of that addiction.
[06:41] With two doses, it's more than 90%. I sent him that information. The text message came back. Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. It was literally that quick. These drugs are illegal not because they're harmful. They're illegal because of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act that was passed by the Richard Nixon administration. They did it to target the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement. It's not because these drugs harm people. And for 56 years, we've lived under those terrible conditions. We're free of that now. We're free of that now. Thanks to all these people that you see next to me and thanks to President Trump.
[07:30] So, we should pause it there. It's a pretty wild statement that we're somehow free of the Controlled Substances Act as a result of a rather narrowly focused executive order. We should be very suspicious of taking Joe Rogan's account of how this executive order came to be at face value. There are a lot of factors at play, including Rogan's increasing discomfort with the Iran war and a was beginning to criticize the president and the current administration during what the leadup to the midterms. I mean, that's the meta story that's happening here. And then, you know, having Joe Rogan stand next to the president and condemn the Controlled Substances Act and its, you know, history of sort of social oppression gives Rogan a moment in the sun and a way for him to come back to his audience and say, "I I'm fighting for you."
[08:23] So, there's some quidd proquo going on here. It would be my analysis. Apart from that, you know, emailing or texting the president and saying, "Hey, take a look at this and do you want FDA approval?" is the reply is is completely bananas. Yeah, there's two baffling issues on both halves of that clip, which is the first that that's a narrative that they're comfortable presenting in public and two that Trump should get any kudos for alleviating pressures on policies that were introduced to tamp down civil rights issues and anti-war movements like as clown shoes. And we also know I mean from our reporting in the psychedelic syndicate on Psymposia's website that there is an entire infrastructure of lobbyists and investors behind the scenes that are engineering a lot of what's going on.
[09:12] And you know it's not just about this one phone call. The consulting class is fully engineering and conscripting you know grassroots movements in the psychedelic ecosystem to get on board with this specific corporate model of psychedelic medicine. And it's to the point based on everything we have seen in our reporting that I, you know, am also asking questions like is it possible that this was you know planned for right before bicycle day when which is for those of you who might not know is a big psychedelic holiday celebrating the first intentional use of LSD by Albert Hoffman who then bicycled home. across the country there are and you know even around the world there are mobilizations and gatherings happening today in the psychedelic community and so we we've heard the consultant class working in this field talk about wanting to activate influencers and activate groups around this and so what a convenient set of circumstances that we have this prepackaged talking point on this day when all of these groups are
[10:13] Coming together and can be mobilized and we'll definitely get into some of the broader lobbying implic applications around the psychedelic industry in a little bit. The next couple of slides I just had was some basic reporting. We just heard Trump discuss the basics of the executive order, but I thought it might be nice to sort of itemize what this executive order is actually doing for context before we get into some of the broader implications. So, what we're going to see first here, it's basically expediting the review of certain psychedelics that are already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs. So the list of breakthrough therapy designation psychedelics at this point which does not include ibo gain is MDMA for PTSD, psilocybin for treatment resistant depression, psilocybin for major depressive disorder, LSD dtarterate for generalized anxiety disorder, deuterated silosin for major depressive disorder and a subcutaneous prod
[11:14] For postpartum depression granted earlier this year. Yeah, thanks for running through those. I think it's important to note there's only a couple on that list and like you said, the drug they're stressing in the executive order discussions is not on that list. I think an important note for here for anyone who's coming into this not knowing what breakthrough drug designation is, is that it's essentially a designation that says the FDA will work closely with you to expedite the research and review of your new drug application. It is not. What it is not is a guarantee that this drug is therapeutic or will come through the approval process approved by the FDA. It's based on very limited early stage data that just shows that you know there is a potential for it to be at or surpassing existing treatments for serious conditions.
[12:02] But many drugs that receive breakthrough therapy status end up being shelved. So yeah, that's sort of the first bit of the executive order is this accelerated review of breakthrough therapy drugs. The second thing that the executive order seeks to do is to facilitate fast rescheduling of psychedelic drugs that do become FDA approved. So drugs, for instance, the one that came up, I gain is a schedule one drug. Were that approved by the FDA, they would seek a speedy rescheduling of that to a lower schedule on the DEA's scheduling charts. The other big point from this executive order is this allocation of federal funding towards psychedelic research. So we saw in Texas that the state has allocated $50 million to ibagane research. This executive order is committing another 50 million towards psychedelic research of its own through ARPA which is a government sort of funding structure for new research.
[12:59] We should also mention about this Texas initiative that they were initially hoping to have private investment into kind of matching that $50 million. And it was only after the failure to find this matching private investment that you know and there was there had been some question in the previous few weeks asking about whether this was going to move forward at all and what was going to happen last month. Yeah. Yeah. It was a very recent conversation and so they are coming in to as a stop gap to fill the void of this already failed you know plan for this project. It's a bailout. It is a bailout. That's ex that's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Absolutely a bailout. And regarding Ibagane the Trump is also talking about opening up a pathway for Ibagane to be administered to desperately ill patients under the right to try law.
[13:46] That's the other big point in this executive order is they've had previous issues with getting schedule one drugs used through the right to try act which is this act that prior to FDA approval lets desperately ill patients use experimental drugs to try to alleviate their ailments. The other announcement that was made alongside this executive order is that Ibagain has received clearance for an investigational new drug application with the FDA, meaning that it can begin clinical trials in the United States. Like we said, Ibagain is not even on the list yet of breakthrough therapy status. This would allow for the preliminary research to be done that would prove whether it could qualify or not for a breakthrough therapy status. The executive order refers to promising clinical studies that are involving ibo gain.
[14:37] A lot of these are open label. One of the ones Joe Joe Rogan mentions on his Facebook post on this is an open label study with 30 people. Yeah, open label is not a randomized clinical control with a placeboc controlled trial. And I also wanted to mention as context about like why it would matter that we're getting Ibegan into the FDA pipeline is because there had been a lot of conversation uncertainty about that because there are known cardiac risks with ibeane. There had been some conversation about whether the FDA would even be okay with the risk of these clinical trials. And so that is something that is being signaled here that yes, they are open to this. They're willing to move forward. And to the point of the cardiac risks you're mentioning, I just singled out this tweet from a doctor named Tyler Black who just kind of is calling out the absurdity that MAGA and Maha are so behind Ibagane right now.
[15:31] Thought his kind of response tweet here where he says, "I thought MAGA types hated cardiac toxicity. Y'all got hyped over vaccine myocarditis which is orders of magnitude smaller than the risk with Ibagane." So it's just highlighting some of the contradiction of their ideologies here. Joe Rogan in particular has hammered on vaccines like the amount of time that they have focused on these somewhat rare side effects and that it's not rare. It is screened for people who take ibain any of these long QT syndromes and other cardiac issues. Yeah. of any really psychedelic out there, Ibagane is one with the most documented tangible cardiac risk and body count associated with it as well in the underground practitioner space.
[16:21] So just kind of ironic there. The next slide here, we had already mentioned this is this federal funding is coming through the ARPAH program and the executive order specifies that there would be more kind of intergovernmental agency communication going on between research that's going on in different agencies. The piece here from Psychedelic Alpha that I just kind of wanted to work in as an interesting piece of reporting is that Psychedelic Alpha reported that there are currently around 30 studies at VA sites. The majority of which are clinical trials. And then the last point from the executive order that I wanted to touch on is that they are wanting to implement these vouchers that were that came up this voucher system.
[17:07] So just reading from the psychedelic alpha brief on this here. They're saying we have now had three applications that are imminent and we'll be issuing vouchers next week. McCari said, and what he's talking about here, psychedelic alpha breaks down. Last summer, the FDA announced the commissioner's national priority voucher pilot program. It aims to reduce the AY's new drug application review timeline from around 10 to 12 months to just one or two. Earlier this month, Eli Liy's new daily weight loss pill, Fondo, was approved in record time after receiving the voucher, just 50 days after it submitted its NDA. Today, Psychedelic Alpha wrote, "We learned that the FDA will award three new vouchers to psychedelic candidates in the coming week.
[17:56] Further vouchers should be awarded, quote, to appropriate psychedelic drugs that have received a breakthrough therapy designation and are in accordance with the criteria of the program." The order reads, "Josh Hardman with Psychedelic Alpha has predicted that those three companies receiving vouchers would be Resilient Pharmaceuticals, which is taking MDMA for PTSD through the FDA approval process. This is the same company, Lyos Therapeutics, that stemmed from MAPS. They just changed their name to Resilient Pharmaceuticals. They were already rejected by the FDA and asked to conduct another phase three clinical trial. The other two companies would be Compass Pathways for their psilocybin for treatment resistant depression and Eona Institute for psilocybin for major depressive disorder.
[18:44] Those are the predictions from psychedelic alpha. This is a pretty notable point from the executive order and when this voucher system was implemented, it was also a pretty heavily criticized program about this expedited approval process. A lot of people expressed concerns that this could lead to harms and potential issues being overlooked prior to approval and create also a bit of a pay-to-play system with FDA review, especially because the applications for that voucher system were so small and there was a lot of room for particular favored companies getting a foot in the door. And we should also mention regarding the voucher system, there had been previous reporting from psychedelic alpha and other places about the first wave of vouchers.
[19:33] According to the reporting, Compass Pathways, their psilocybin application was initially slated to be one of those items that got the initial vouchers. But the day of I think the announcement they were saying news broke that the White House, the Trump administration specifically had yanked the one psychedelic from that list of vouchers. So this turnaround to say now we have three is a big shift from there had been a lot of concern in the field that Trump was not on board with psychedelic medicine at that point. Big maja disappointment at the time. One thing that that speaks to that is boiling in the under the surface here is that there is discord in the Trump administration with regard to schedule one drugs. Like the way an administration works.
[20:19] It's a ship. It's a giant cadre of people who've built a coalition to, you know, get behind a candidate. And many of those people are traditional drug warriors. They're not on board with this sort of stuff. The there was a piece in, I think, marijuana moment talking about, you know, some comments from Roger Stone about the ways in which the scheduling of cannabis has been sandbagged by these same drug warriors. So, you know, we're seeing that heterogeneous approach as a result of that sort of thing happening behind the scenes. Totally. and the what Nache had mentioned about the pay-to-play administration stuff. I have some quotes singled out coming up here. I just want to signal we're kind of moving off of the executive order facts now. We've ran through kind of the major points there. I think that's the context people need to understand some of the bigger context we're going to get into now, which is like Pace had mentioned, we're not against Ibigane research.
[21:11] That's not the issue here. like in a vacuum. I think all of us would say send IBA through phase one research, add to the knowledge pool. We want to know if this is safe, if it's effective, great. But this isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening in the context of the Trump administration, which has a lot of issues surrounding it, drug approvals, FDA, etc. So I singled out some articles here with context on what's been going on in the Trump administration that I think plays into our concerns around this executive order. So like Nishay had mentioned this politico article for instance the psychedelic medicine revolution that wasn't quotes a woman named Melissa Levasani founder of the psychedelic medicine coalition in advocacy group for psychedelics describes the administration as paytoplay.
[22:03] So she was trying to raise money to paytoplay essentially is what she's describing in the article. Yeah. One thing I just wanted to mention about this article as well is there's this line in it that says Kennedy vowed to Congress last June, 7 months ago, to greenlight clinical psychedelic therapy within 12 months. His ascent to the nation's top health agency under a Republican administration has upended traditional political alliances around the issue. His make America healthy again movement and many veterans now push for looser regulations for natural medicines while the left has grown more skeptical. And I think that's very interesting because it's like it's alluding to us actually like it's like we are the left in the field that has grown more skeptical but the reporting on this space is not actually giving readers an insight into who that left is and what the concerns are why there would be a skeptical left at this moment.
[23:01] It's also interesting that it has to be stated that this administration is paytoplay as if that weren't sort of its whole thing. This administration is 100% paytoplay. That's who they are. Yeah. So, Pace, your point transitions really well directly into the next source I have here, which expounds upon this point that the administration is paytoplay. It's a stat news piece titled Pharma Lobbyists Focus on a Surprising New Target, the FDA. The FDA has long been shielded from political influence, but that's changing under Trump. And I think I'm going to read directly from this article because I think the context here is really solid and important to read. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly promised to root out industry influence from the Food and Drug Administration.
[23:48] But the Trump administration's injection of political priorities into the agency, which has long been shielded from such meddling, has opened new avenues for lobbying. The pharmaceutical industry is working to capitalize. According to 10 people, including lobbyists, advisers, FDA officials, and an executive involved in the efforts, "The nature of the relationship is so drastically different." Now, Michael Abrams, a managing partner at Numer and Associates, who works with pharmaceutical clients on regulatory requirements, said of the interactions between the companies and the administration. Abrams said, "The new system under Trump makes discussions about FDA decisions that would once have been heretical the new norm." And then I have one other quote from this article here. Companies pressuring the FDA to make favorable decisions is not new.
[24:35] Biogen, for example, famously lobbyed senior FDA officials to approve its controversial Alzheimer's drug. But the approach is becoming more common and more blatant. It's reaching beyond the FDA as companies work to sell the White House or senior health department leaders on how a decision or a company's success can be spun as a win for the Trump administration. According to four people involved in the strategies here are just becoming more and more blatant. And like we've alluded to before that there might be some influence around trying to get Joe Rogan back into the party around midterms and that kind of stuff. Like there's a political win here for the Trump administration to act like they're taking this stuff seriously or accelerate these pathways. there. I mean, there's just long been a bipartisan political consensus that health should not be subject to this kind of politicking.
[25:25] And I don't think it needs to be really explained why that's bad, but since we're here, yeah, it's bad. It should be based on science. Sound science should determine whether or not medicines are approved. Like, and also to have the data to know who is more at risk and what can be done to support those people if in the event that there are harms. And part of the problem with the coverage of this whole industry is that people are hearing all the positive sides of psychedelics and there's not a lot of understanding amongst the public that there are downsides, that there are risks involved in all of these substances. We're so in the sauce in the United States that we can't see how wrong this whole discourse is in the first place. The idea that we're talking about health and drugs as first in industry, that's not how it is in other places with socialized medicine.
[26:17] With something like Medicare for all, there would be no profit incentive to be exploiting patients or cutting corners. You the goal is public health, right? The risks to public health and the issues with some of these drugs are actually often lionized as we've discussed in some of our previous reporting. For instance, MDMA, there was this push to educate the FDA that sometimes bad trips are good trips, that kind of stuff, and downplay adverse events. This is something that comes up with Ibagane as well. I'm just going to read a little bit from another psychedelic alpha piece here that discusses some of the issues with the boosters behind Ibagane, this psychedelic that's being championed right now in Trump's rhetoric and the executive order. Psychedelic Alpha writes, "While some psychedelic advocates have sought to explain away bad trips, Ibeane advocates appear keen to foreground the difficult nature of the median Ibeane experience.
[27:13] It's pitched as a selling point, even positioning it as the opposite of a drug of abuse or desire. In speaking with Ibeain advocates, I couldn't help but notice a sort of Protestant ethic around the drug, if you will. This plays nicely, of course, with narratives around the military and veterans and when seeking support from the political consultants or representatives who are more likely to be socially conservative and thus skeptical of drugs. By setting Ibeane up this way, it may be implied that other psychedelics like MDMA and psilocybin are quote unquote fun drugs, more likely to be enjoyed in a sort of hedonistic way. In one case, an Ibagain advocate made this supposed contrast to me explicitly while one or two psychedelic advocates have raised it as a point of potential concern. So, I just wanted to bring that up because it's a consistent issue within our analysis of how psychedelics are being pitched to government agencies and stuff.
[28:07] This whole idea that the adverse events should be downplayed. It's not just downplayed in the case of Ibegan. It's a sense that you want to bring people through this really distressing kind of experience and that that can be like healing. As it was said, it's a selling point. Yeah. So, that's one of the big cultural context issues that I think is at play around this executive order that I think is worth noting. The other piece of context I wanted to bring into this discussion is the lawmakers and boosters that are getting involved in influencing this kind of policy. So from another psychedelic alpha piece, they write about the characters that are getting involved here in boosting these policies. They write in terms of characters, the psychedelic advocacy front is already littered with polarizing lawmakers past and present. Matt Gates and Kristen Cinema are two notable examples.
[28:55] Matt Gates, who stepped out of his position after a number of sexual allegations were leveled against him. Some of those allegations involve the substances that are under consideration by this group. And so newer recruits to the psychedelic advocacy arena like Senator Tim Shehy have also made major missteps in recent months. Cinema called Shehy last January to talk about psychedelics, and many expected the junior senator to make a more substantive foray into supporting psychedelic legislations this session. But the Montana Republican became a lightning rod last month when he assisted Capitol police in physically removing an anti-war protester from a Senate Armed Service hearing. in the process, apparently breaking the Marine Corpse veteran's arm. No one wants to fight for Israel.
[29:43] Some advocates told me they hope it will blow over, you know. So, the context I think that's important that I think we just saw is we are in a war of choice against Iran. We've supported Israel in their genocidal actions against the people of Gaza and their neighbors. These kinds of acts of war are things that veterans and active service men and women are very concerned about. This is where the PTSD comes from on both the shooting and receiving end of these bombs. So look, the reality is is this focus on veterans for PTSD treatment and Rogan talking also about opioid addiction.
[30:31] Many of those addicts being former servicemen and women themselves, there is a much broader context that could be addressed, which is maybe we don't drop bombs and make it rain oil on on innocent people. That's the machine that needs to be addressed. Psychedelics won't solve that. Maybe two points that it could be worth bringing in here. So, first of all, it's worth noting that a lot of the people that were in that press conference with Trump were previously in a heroic hearts press conference that we've covered in the psychedelic syndicate that was funded by investors in the psychedelic industry and was attempting to pressure politicians in the FDA to approve MDMA despite the laundry list of problems with those clinical trials.
[31:19] And I think it's very noteworthy that during that press conference there was a military figure openly joking and laughing about giving PTSD to the other side and everyone there laughed and you know clapped along. Please welcome Congressman Lel to the mic. Good morning. It's always an admission for Mr. Pere. He's such a passionate speaker. I have gone through the psychedelic treatments and I did have to go overseas in order to do that and my journey was a little bit different than everybody else's. I don't have post-traumatic stress. I don't have post-traumatic stress disorder. I spent my entire career giving that to other people and I was accepted. [laughter] that is you know a little peak into the attitude of some of these figures and what their actual priorities are here.
[32:09] It is not about healing everyone. It's about healing their particular military inroup that in order to enable the current wars that Pace was talking about that also connects to Russ's reporting on how the psychedelic field has moved from claims of helping soldiers recuperate when they return from war and reintegrate into civilian society to now openly interested in psychedelics for active duty soldiers and to optimize soldiers that are involved in warfare currently. And the other thing worth mentioning is that MAPS, the multi-disiplinary association for psychedelic studies, one of the leading organizations developing psychedelic medicine over decades, they're actively involved in collaborating at least maps Israel is actively involved in collaborating with the Israeli military and specifically, you know, helping treat soldiers that are returning from places like Gaza and now Lebanon.
[33:07] And yeah, and the last bit about the people that are involved in influencing psychedelic policy right now, Jules Evans reported last year, a quote from an industry figure who told him, "The Health and Human Services Department deck is well and truly stacked with pro- psychedelic figures. It's almost too stacked. Like, don't show your hands so much." So alongside all of these figures being involved with industry lobbyists and stuff there there's all these very biased figures that are currently stacked in the HHS department that would cause concern as expedited approval processes are attempted to be rolled out for these drugs. I mean obviously they're different class of substances but if people saw that the opioid industry was getting placed with key figures within HHS itself people would understand the problem with that as far as like an unbiased evaluation of the evidence base for a new drug application.
[34:04] But that's exactly what is happening with psychedelics. Yeah. I mean I think people do have a broad understanding of that. We call it what the revolving door between industry and government. The key difference here is that there's an industry that hasn't really been created yet. And so the general public isn't really educated or aware that these are people who are going to leave government office and cash out in an industry that they built. And so that's some of the broader context around this executive order we thought was really important to put in front of people as some of it can seem on its face fairly innocuous and maybe even positive but in the context of the Trump administration is a little bit disturbing and concerning. The next thing we wanted to discuss were some of the characters that were both in the room physically behind Trump while he was signing this executive order and spiritually in their influence on policy that Trump is signing.
[34:59] The first characters are Steve and Genevieve Jervetson who we wrote about pretty extensively in our psychedelic syndicate reporting. As soon as we saw this executive order was being signed, one of the first questions I remember texting to the group was, "Have Steve Regenev Jervson tweeted about this?" Because they are some major funders in the psychedelic philanthropy space. They have some investments through Steve's venture capital fund in psychedelic companies. And an important point of context here, Steve Jervson is like claimed to be like one of Elon Musk's best friends. He's a SpaceX board member, billionaire. They're big boosters of psychedelics. In our psychedelic syndicate reporting, we discussed how they have gone to the White House multiple times to lobby on behalf of psychedelic industry stuff.
[35:47] And they were some of the influential figures behind that heroic hearts press conference that we discussed earlier in the episode. Steve and Genevieve both claim to not have a horse in the race here as far as the psychedelic industry is concerned. However, what they don't explicitly discuss very publicly is that they are invested in a Thai life sciences through Steve's venture capital firm. Like I said, a Thai being the psychedelic incubator company attached with Compass Pathways. These are the two industry leaders in the psychedelic industry right now. Two of the biggest psychedelic companies that there are. they have investments in. So they go around lobbying on behalf of the psychedelic industry claiming they don't have a horse in the race while being directly invested in some of the biggest companies in the space.
[36:34] And Genevieve is on the board of the psychedelic science funders collaborative which in terms of psychedelic lobbying we've pointed out they're everywhere in terms of dollars that are going to federal lobbying on the topic of psychedelics. PSFC is a monolithic influence and you know these are some lesserk known characters in the psychedelic world but they see themselves as at the vanguard. They are literally in the room while this is happening. This is their celebration. PSFC has been engineering a lot of the astroturfing of the psychedelic industry. So funding and steering what were previously grassroots organizations or creating new organizations in order to establish and coordinate all of the infrastructure to be in line with their class interests.
[37:24] Media figures on the left have recently been paying a lot of attention to the ways that what appears like a consensus of public discourse and opinion is actually engineered and coordinated through like coordinated messaging campaigns. So this has emerged in the discourse recently around like Taylor Lorenz's reporting on how influencers are being paid by dark money associated with the Democratic party and even more recently figures like Ashley Stlair who was previously a right-wing influencer has been sharing with the public about how that happened on the Republican side through coordinated signal groups and parties that influencers were conscripted into and often directly paid to promote specific messaging.
[38:12] So, the reason I mentioned this is it's really important for the public to understand that what appears to be the way that psychedelics are and what psychedelic therapy is and seeing it as everyone's agreeing with that those concepts is because of the influence of groups like PSFC that are pushing a specific agenda and giving disseminating messaging out to key thought leaders, key influencers. And even some of the influencers we just discussed like Taylor Loren are subject to being drawn into these PR campaigns by psychedelic companies and being paid to promote their messaging. It was recently reported in Stat News that a Thai Beckley, that massive psychedelic company, had been on an ad spending kick with influencers.
[38:57] And one of those influencers was Taylor Loren, who they got to, at least in one video that we're aware of, read a direct ad roll with their propaganda in it, and fund her content. Lately, major figures in the MAGA movement have all become obsessed with one common enemy, white women. This episode is brought to you by Atai Beckley, a clinical stage biotech company that's developing new treatments for mental health disorders like depression, especially for people who haven't responded well to existing options. They're a publicly traded company under the ticker ATAI. They focus on fast acting research-driven psychedelic based therapies that are rigorously tested. Right now, a Tai Beckley is working on developing a controlled psychedelic compound called BPL00003 that's designed to help reset brain activity and help people break out of negative thought patterns that traditional anti-depressants often fail to address.
[39:49] Treating depression can be really tough and not everyone responds to pharmaceutical options. Many psychedelic therapies require six to eight hour monitored sessions. BPL 003 is designed to work in roughly 1 to two hours. That's just one of their treatments, but if you want to learn more about the company, check out the link below in the description. And this is part of why we at Psymposia have been trying to connect with the left. It shows that how much the left does not understand because it's really interesting to me that someone like Taylor Lauren who understands the implications of other industries with connections to Peter Teal being a problem for workers and for democracy. People don't understand how that extends into the psychedelic industry and a Tai Beckley being a company that Peter Teal has connections to and was an angel investor in one of the companies that they helped incubate Compass Pathways.
[40:39] And so the tweet that's on screen right now that we've been looking at is Steve Jervson at the White House during this executive order signing. When I had mentioned I texted have they tweeted about it yet? I got the response no not yet. And then about an hour later Pace texted the group like clockwork with [laughter] the tweet of them with Joe Rogan with all of the figures in the White House that that they had in fact been there. They couldn't resist. And in relation to Steve Jervson, some of the issues that he's pushing for and what we should be concerned about as far as his influence in the psychedelic therapy space is what his future vision for the industry looks like. He's been pretty explicit in interviews with places like this outlet called Spirit Territory that his future for the psychedelic industry is what he says here.
[41:26] It's obviously going to be AI therapists. He's invested in X AI which is behind Grock. He's friends with Elon Musk. He's kind of in this venture capital Silicon Valley tech scene and very much has the view of the future that figures on the left fear is coming if these kind of oligarchs are left to their own devices to direct policy and stuff. Meanwhile, nobody's really looking behind the scenes in the psychedelic industry at these same people and the vision that they have for the future of the industry. Steve Jervisson's vision for the ideal future for psychedelic therapy where we're only using the cheapest possible labor of minimally involved humans while the AI is steering the therapy. To be clear, this is a dystopian future for workers and they are salivating over this which should be a sign that we are not on the same team.
[42:18] We are not working towards the same ends to take away the actual mean meaningful interpersonal aspects of work and replace that with AI and have people who are not trained to provide therapy just there as a backs stop in case someone tries to flee the room for example that is not great and the fact that as Russ was saying these are the people envisioning this future are also involved in developing the LLM models where we already know figures like Elon Musk as we talked about in the psychedelic syndicate are trying to correct the facts of history by changing the ideas that are going into those data sets. There's a lot of room for manipulation and control with this sort of model.
[43:06] Another indication that the future being built out by the people developing the psychedelic medicine industry is the example of Christian Anger Meyer. Yeah. who is another investor and co-founder behind the companies we were just talking about Compass Pathways a Thai life sciences in the German language publication was which we have an excerpt from here that is an autorated version of the German text the article where's the renaissance of LSD and similar substances headed they get into investor Christian Angermmer here and I'll just read it for some context I think in light of some of the characters that the left might not be familiar with in this space. I think he's a really important one. I have to run. So, yeah, I'm sure that you all will cover the rest of this adequately and more than adequately actually.
[43:57] So, yeah, thanks. I I'll talk to you'all soon. It'll be good to have you. Cool. We'll catch you later, Pace. Yeah. Bye. So, yeah, this was the article discussing Anger Meyer here. Anger Meyer being a friend of Peter Teal, both involved in a Thai and Compass Pathways. So this article reads, "Inves investors are indeed sensing huge profits in psychedelics. The psychedelic market is estimated to grow to over 10 billion dollars by 2027. One of the key figures in this psychedelic capitalism is the German tech investor Christian Angermier. As the founder of a Thai life sciences and together with Peter Teal, the main investor in Compass Pathways, the world's largest pharmaceutical company focused on the development and marketing of psychedelics. He is driving the transformation of psychedelic substances into patented pharmaceutical assets.
[44:47] Angermmy employs the full spectrum of Silicon Valley's reactionary ideology, a blend of transhumanist promises of salvation, anti-democratic resentment, and libertarian market fundamentalism. He sees himself as part of a select group of tech elites that promises humanity a future of AI, brain implants, Mars colonies, and radical life extension. He is aware that this technology shift is likely to be accompanied by social upheaval and traumatic displacement effects for many. Maybe before we get into the last quote here, I just want to point out that he has gone on record in places like the diary of the CEO podcast saying that he believes that psychedelics will as the world becomes more concrete and more industrialized and less nature is available to the human to humans and to experience by humans. that instead of shifting focus to preserve nature and preserve the state of the
[45:47] World, his take is more so that psychedelics could play an important role in getting back in touch with our humanity in a world that is more concrete in which nature is less accessible and things like that. So that's the kind of view he has around psychedelics potential for the future. Really, you know, I now live between four white walls alone in a big gray city. Could that also not be part of the reason why people are we're getting less human than ever? And in fact, what I like, you know, when I read about some of the social reasons why people are getting more depressed is because we're getting further and further away from being human. I do think somewhat psychedelics will be the medication for that. And he also openly says that you know the world that the elites are building and he identifies among those elites is not good for mental health.
[46:41] And so seeing psychedelics as a way of preventing the masses from rising up against the elites and rebelling to use psychedelics as a pressure relief valve for steering things in an antihuman direction. Yeah. and to encouraging further engagement in the economy for longer periods of time. As this quote sort of goes on to say, he goes on and says, "We, the elite," he said in a 2021 interview with right-wing podcaster Dave Rubin, must offer these people new jobs in lowerkilled positions, but at the same time, we must ensure that they actually want these new jobs. And this is precisely where psychedelics could help. Anger believes they represent a means of brain rejuvenation, which is why they appear to him as a tool for keeping those who are economically and socially marginalized by the changes driven by the tech elites mentally available.
[47:36] So I was interviewed for this piece and I kind of like shared a lot of my research. I expanded on that point more deeply if anyone's interested in test hallucinations which was comparing the psychedelic and AI hype. Awesome paper. I'll toss it on the screen right here. Let's check that out. In reporting by Travis Kitchens, he mentioned that quote, "Psychedelics, he Angry Meer says, might eliminate the need for retirement as older Americans have so much left to give." viewing retirement as this loss for capitalism as people are no longer able to be exploited for profit and viewing psychedelics as a way of eking out more labor hours from the average person instead of seeing retirement how workers see it as a chance to finally live your life.
[48:27] And one of the reasons I wanted to bring this quote into the fold of him discussing people participating economically and socially in new economic conditions and things like that is that his take is almost mirrored by a figure who was in the room with Trump at the time and who is also a large booster of the psychedelic industry. Dr. Oz, that's one of the hottest things I think you're talking about Oz. Right. And we have a little video of the actual exchange here. But the poll quote here, if we could get the average American to start working a year earlier, right out of high school or a year later, and not retire, it would generate about $3 trillion for the US economy. And here's the actual video clip. If we could get the average American because they feel healthy, they're vital, they're strong, they have agency over their future, to start working a year earlier, right out of high school or work a year later, not retire or work better during their lifetime because they're healthy.
[49:25] It would generate about $3 trillion $3 trillion to the US economy. Tremendous downstream benefits. But to do that, you actually have to invest in making sure people want to work the extra year. Yeah. So what when I heard that Dr. Oz clip, I saw the tweet and I listened to it. It immediately struck me that he is talking exactly the way that Anger Meyer is describing what he envisions being able to achieve once the psychedelic medicine industry is built out. And that is very concerning. Yeah. So, we wanted to put these two things back to show that the policy makers in the room with Trump while he's signing these executive orders ideologically are very in line with the Silicon Valley connected investors and influencers behind the scenes in the psychedelic industry and the ideology that they want to enact in their idealized future.
[50:16] So, another influential figure who I believe was kind of spiritually in the room with the policy makers as Trump signed this executive order was Rick Perry. You heard Joe Rogan reference him directly as having been on his podcast. This is another quote from that German language magazine which I think has a lot of context that actually is not making it into the US mainstream reporting on a lot of this stuff. So, this magazine wrote, "The meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC are considered the engine room for conservative politics. In the past, bills to loosen environmental regulation or to dismantle labor unions have been prepared here. But when Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and Trump's energy secretary from 2017 to 2019, took the stage last December, he presented a proposal that at first glance didn't seem to fit into the repertoire.
[51:08] The psychedelic substance I gain was a gift from God and its therapeutic potential absolutely had to be further explored. That Perry of all people who as governor signed one of the country's most restrictive abortion laws and compared homosexuality to alcoholism is now advocating for psychedelics seems all the more astonishing. So yeah, Rick Perry regarding the Ibagain focus on of that press conference around the executive order and the current rhetoric around accelerating access to right to try and things like that for Ibane is largely being pushed by Rick Perry and the example of Alec as well that was mentioned there. It's another example of how the US media is not acknowledging any of the astroturfing elements.
[51:56] These are mechanisms where the elites are able to push their agenda across the states and into federal priorities. And the US media is just reporting that this is kind of like an emerging grassroots interest as a reflection of how profoundly healing things like Ibegan are when really there are interests that stand to benefit a great deal from the way these industries are being rolled out who are engineering things behind the scenes. So yeah, Perry was there very much in spirit as you heard mentioned by Joe Rogan. You can see Rogan here directly behind President Trump. And as we mentioned earlier in the episode and has been speculated on by other psychedelic outlets like psychedelic alpha here, this could have been an exercise in real politic with midterm mathematics urging action on a topic that had thus far only seen words.
[52:49] They write in Psychedelic Alpha that this was potentially motivated by an effort to repair Trump's relationship with podcaster Joe Rogan, who had largely disagreed with him on policy decisions like the war in Iran. Some of the points we wanted to end on were some of the more broad implications moving forward as far as legislation goes and as far as like the cultural shift that has occurred throughout the psychedelic industry over time. So, one thing we wanted to bring up again from that German language magazine was was a bit of information that again I hadn't seen anywhere else, but the fact that particularly promising study results have been achieved in the US with war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder prompted Perry to reconsider his position on Ibagane.
[53:35] Thanks to his lobbying efforts, a law was passed in Texas in 2025 that released $50 million for clinical trials with Ibagane. That's the Texas state funding we've been talking about. He was also able to convince Alec, the conservative policy organization. On January 6th, ALEC passed a new model law intended to serve as a template for other Republican governed states to follow Texas's example. Psychedelics have arrived in the right-wing mainstream. They go on to say that this proposal is likely to find a receptive audience in Washington. During his second term, Trump appointed RFK Jr. is Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who clearly supports psychedelics. However, Kennedy's support stems from a peculiar mix of new age conspiracy theories, skepticism towards science, and a libertarian anti-establishment reflex.
[54:25] For him, psychedelics, along with raw milk cures, increased meat consumption, and the use of hydroxychloricquin against CO 19 belong to a list of remedies allegedly aggressively suppressed by the medical establishment. Furthermore, Martin McCari, the new head of the US Food and Drug Administration, declared the accelerated approval of psychedelic therapies a top priority in 2025. A lot of the news about Perry emphasizes Perry's lobbying, but it's important to note that Rick Perry was also lobbyed by PSFC, the Psychedelic Science Funders collaborative, the secular syndicate that we've been talking about. So there were meetings that we talked about in our reporting back to 2021 where you know closed door private meetings with PSFC including at Steve Dverson's house in fact with Rick Perry.
[55:13] So this is not like a offshoot of the other initiatives. This is all part of the same coordinated effort. And the last quote we wanted to bring in here from the W article was a couple paragraphs on the ideological shift over time of figures like Rick Dolblin, the founder of the multiddisiplinary association for psychedelic studies. They write, "Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, has been a driving force behind the clinical research and therapeutic institutionalization of psychedelics in the US. Like few others, he expresses cautious optimism regarding the positive signals emanating from the Trump administration. He interprets the fact that psychedelics are now gaining traction in conservative circles less as a right-wing co-optation than as a consequence of their mainstreaming.
[55:59] Quote, psychedelics are no longer primarily branded as a left-wing countercultural issue, he says in an interview. Furthermore, he believes that bipartisan support is essential if psychedelic therapies are to become permanently established in society. Early on, Doblin focused on veterans as a target group for psychedelic therapies, which you can read a lot more about in my truth dig reporting if you're interested. I kind of charted that that history of his pol of his strategy. As a result, maps increasingly received funding from the right libertarian sector. For example, from Rebecca Mercer, co-owner of Breitbart News and one of the largest donors to the US right, or from Antonio Gracias, who was involved in attempting to dismantle the US social security system for Elon Musk's Doge project.
[56:46] Doin, who himself has a past in the left-wing counterculture, sees no fundamental ideological contradiction in this shift of in political emphasis. quote, "If conservative individuals like Rebecca Mercer want to donate to MAPS to support research into MDMA assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, I have no problem accepting their funds." Mercer only stipulated that her donation benefit veterans. What he's talking about there is that her donation was conditional that it be used for trials studying specifically veteran PTSD. And this is kind of a common sentiment that comes up in the psychedelic nonprofit space, which is this idea that any money going towards this is good money and it can be used for good.
[57:31] But when you start seeding control over your projects and where the funding is going, I think that's a whole different story. Or when you have people like Peter Teal investing in your companies and these Silicon Valley adjacent folks investing in your companies with their ideologies, you're then seeding control over the project to them. You're making money for these people. You're giving up influence over the project to people with some pretty concerning views for the future. And it's not even just about like treating veterans in some kind of like contextfree sense. The reason that veterans have been the focus by these far-right actors is that they were creating a persuasion context for pushing through a specific agenda more broadly for the psychedelic industry and for working towards monopolization of psychedelic medicine.
[58:25] This is veterans have been used here as a rhetorical chip like has been done previously with the opioid industry where they are being instrumentalized for a project that ultimately does not serve everyday veterans. Yeah. They were the subject of focus groups and things that determined that they were the most sympathetic population to put in front of the American public in order to mainstream these substances. I just want to stress that like for the average person hearing that they think well mainstreaming this is good. It's reducing stigma. It's making people more receptive to rethinking the war on drugs. And that is not what is going on here. This is mainstreaming a particular forprofit industry that will not be accessible to the average everyday person. And your everyday uses of drugs are going to remain criminalized and illegal under this paradigm.
[59:16] So that that's part of why I think the left has been so hesitant to look more deeply into this topic is that it appears on a surface level to be about something that everyone can get behind. And there just is a real need for people to wake up to what's actually happening here. Cuz ultimately at this current moment in time, the left misunderstands psychedelics and thinks that this is an exception to the devastation being caused by all of the other industries that Peter Teal is invested in. And this is not an exception. This is another front of their class war. Alongside AI, surveillance, and military technology, they are fully anticipating a future that is not involving democracy. and they are building collectively between those industries systems of control and mass persuasion.
[1:00:08] And there is a lot to be concerned about here. One of the main issues that maybe we can unpack on a future episode is that people don't realize that psychedelics can make you very suggestible and very open to influence. And when you are allowing people like the Jervsons and Peter Teal to be controlling both the acceptable narratives within LLM training models and also the context for psychedelic therapy, you're creating a system where people can be steered in certain directions that are in line with elite interests. And one thing that I'd really like to kind of end on to emphasize for the left is that these groups of people are also working towards dismantling bans on conversion therapies, so-called conversion therapies for gender and sexual minorities.
[1:00:58] And people are interested on the far right and psychedelics as a tool for changing identity, quote unquote, restoring healthy identity. And so it there's every indication that these far-right figures are interested in psychedelics as a tool to kill the so-called woke mind virus that people like Musk have been overt about dedicating his full attention to. And so that aspect of psychedelics is something that we need to be talking a lot more about that just because you individually might have had this experience of interconnection and that's led to increased empathy for others that is not the context that's being encouraged by these oligarchs and actually fascists as our previous research shows especially right-wing psychedelia paper I did with Brian Peace they are liable to interpret experiences of interconnection as interconnection to natural hierarchies that justifies the sacrifice and extermination of out groups who are not serving that
[1:01:59] Hierarchy. So there's just a lot going on here that is not being discussed in the public representations of this field. Yeah, I think that's a great thesis to end on here and we appreciate you tuning in and listening. The reason we wanted to come here today and discuss this is because you're going to hear a lot of splash. You're going to see a lot of headlines about this stuff, especially if you're embedded or interested in the psychedelic field. And a lot of it is going to leave out a whole lot of context. Like we've said throughout this discussion, in a vacuum, a lot of this stuff seems innocuous. In a vacuum of your own experience, a lot of this stuff seems maybe positive, but this isn't happening in a vacuum. This is being signed on Donald Trump's desk with Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and Brian Hubard standing behind him, influenced by figures like Rick Perry, Christian Anger Meers, the Jervitsons.
[1:02:48] That's the context we wanted to present today. and make sure our audience is aware of. One of our interests moving forward is having more conversations with people on the left who haven't been as in the weeds with the psychedelic industry as we have to have a conversation about some of these dynamics and unpack it for people that are concerned about what's going on. So, anyone who is interested in having those conversations, please do reach out to Psymposia. And if you like this video, give us a like, subscribe to our channel, and you can find us on Patreon. Thanks.
