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# Coming Out of the Psychedelic Closet, Ten Years Later
- URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/coming-out-of-the-psychedelic-closet-ten-years-later/
- Published: 2026-09-07T12:00:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T06:30:56.000Z
- Description: Psymposia discusses takeaways from their "Psychedelic Conversion Therapy" series and reflects on the ten year anniversary of their "Coming Out of the Psychedelic Closet" series.
- Author: Mike Elliott
- Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript

Psymposia discusses takeaways from their "Psychedelic Conversion Therapy" series and reflects on the ten year anniversary of their "Coming Out of the Psychedelic Closet" series.

Footnotes:

Psychedelic Conversion Therapy, Part 1: The First Wave: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2x9WW90So8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2x9WW90So8&ref=ghost.psymposia.com)

Coming Out of the Psychedelic Closet series: [https://www.psymposia.com/coming-out-of-the-psychedelic-closet/](https://ghost.psymposia.com/coming-out-of-the-psychedelic-closet/)

## 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.*

[\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The type of work that I think we aspire to do just in our collective efforts is to create essentially lenses for perceiving the field and the world in a different way. You know, I think with psychedelics, it's not it's also about your right to self-determination with your mind. You know, it's like the type of person that you want to become because it's like a step further than just free speech because if you are preventing people from having certain types of experiences, you're preventing them from having certain kinds of thoughts to be able to speak. And so it's like a it's a form of control on that front as well. I do think, you know, a Psymposia is this sort of like expression of that aspect of psychedelic perspective of like questioning authority and lifting up the stones and seeing what's underneath them.

[\[00:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=52s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Welcome to the Psymposia podcast. I am here today with Brian Pace, Normie, Nishay, and Mike to reflect on some of our recent work and some of our past work from a decade ago. So we're going to be talking about the series we just put out on psychedelic conversion therapy as we're recording this that came out over the last week. So, we wanted to discuss some reflections on the series, our process, and some major takeaways from that series. And related to that, this marks the 10-year anniversary of the coming out of the psychedelic closet series that was published on Psymposia in 2016 that Nishay participated in. And Normie kind of helped set up the structure for and the publishing of.

[\[01:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=100s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, we wanted to kind of reflect on that 10 years later, especially as it relates to the series that we just published. So, we figured we'd start with the most recent series, the conversion therapy series. Nishay, do you want to give us a little overview of the three parts of that series for the audience in case they haven't seen it yet? Yeah. So the first episode is about the first wave of psychedelic research and the ties connections involvement with conversion therapy to provide some historical context and also some context around conversion therapy itself and you know the background of conversion therapy why it matters today especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling that was rolling back a ban on conversion therapy for minors in Colorado.

[\[02:27\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=147s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So historical context for people to know. The second episode was a deep dive into the far-right ideologies that are fueling a resurgent interest in psychedelic conversion therapy in the present day. And then the final episode was with Caleb Graves, a Baptist preacher who had recently written a piece about psychedelic conversion therapy and had just a really fascinating set of perspectives to share from their experience of working in the field. Yeah. And I would say that Caleb was kind of instrumental in sort of getting the spark under us that really started this series. The kind of synchronicity of linking up with him was a major part of what came to be this whole series.

[\[03:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=197s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) When we put out our leftist primer on the psychedelic field, Caleb was one of the first commenters on the piece, commenting on the fact that we had brought up the potential for conversion therapy in psychedelic therapy in that video piece. He commented linking us to his article in Good Faith Media on a Christian's guide to psychedelic and the trans phobic conversion therapy rhetoric that appeared in that book. And we linked up with him and it was like, "Holy crap." Like, \[laughter\] you're kind of charting this same territory that we are. And that turned into part three of our series, but was the first thing we recorded for the whole thing that kind of sparked us into wanting to flesh this out a little bit more. Talking to Caleb really emphasized that what we were seeing in the works was happening.

[\[04:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=245s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You know, it's like we could tell from the rhetoric that this interest was coming together, but his piece really proved that this is, you know, is a live issue close to, you know, in the halls of power essentially. So that that was yeah it motivated us to collect some of the material that we have collected over the past years just like not made use of but I'd been watching this like so for example in the episode two there's lots of clips of Jordan Peterson that I had saved from years ago because I was like this is really concerning to me but we hadn't done anything with it so it was a really great opportunity to actually pull all that material together and try to provide an accessible overview of this topic and why it matters today.

[\[04:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=297s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And to that point of kind of the collecting over over time, you had there was a number of threads that we had produced over the years that really came in handy. Some of the ones you were talking about, Pace, I think you had a whole tweet thread, too, when Robin Carheart Harris first went on Jordan Peterson's podcast. I don't know if you want to speak to a little bit of that. I know we kind of reviewed that in preparation for the series too and why that was important for you to put out and maybe Robin Carheart Harris's response when you had I can briefly explain why I'm blocked by like 45 neuroscientists on Twitter. Sure. Yeah. I mean you know to me like at the time I had students that I was teaching some of Robin's papers despite the fact that I had you know published critiques of his other work. you know, he's a prominent voice in the fields and I just found it to be odious that he was lending his name and credibility to Jordan Peterson and his platform and his audience.

[\[05:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=356s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Given that you know Robin Carheart Harris has colleagues who are trans and gender queer and no doubt will if not has already who knows if he is even aware of whether or not some of the people who have been in his own studies you know had a gender identity that didn't conform with their assigned you know sex at birth. like the, you know, the idea that he was essentially sidling up to talk in a fireside chat way about psychedelics and young with at the time probably the most identifiable hatemonger against trans people. Felt like it needed to be discussed in a public and I would say exceedingly respectful manner given the nature of you know the objection that I was putting forth.

[\[06:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=404s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I just did what we do. Psymposia essentially provided a lot of receipts for the you know problem that I was pointing to. And as is also often the case, it was sort of painted as some kind of you know bully pushing around the golden boy of psychedelic neuroscience. And it just you know Yeah. And it played out as you might imagine. This was a new creative process that Russ and I tried out and experimented with to make this series. We have done a ton of co-writing before, but this was the first kind of long form deep dive journalistic academic analysis that we done kind of in video in that way.

[\[07:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=452s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so I think you mentioned it was something like six hours of recording time for the first two episodes that are both about an hour long. So we had a lot of time to talk through the clips that we brought together and figure out what like how everything fit together and the points we wanted to make and then we would kind of like cue each other up once we figured out what we wanted to say to make the next point. So it was really as a creative academic professional like a very interesting process for me just to experience that kind of new approach. But one of the things that I think was really cool that came out of that new approach to it, the new process is that we throughout even the conversation with Caleb too, you can see it the ideas are really being developed in real time as we're talking through the material.

[\[08:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=501s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So it's not like we knew everything ahead of time and we're just kind of like putting it out there. we the bouncing off and going back and forth was really pushing at the expanding the discourse into these new areas and I think that something really unique has come from that process. Yeah, it was very new for me too as a generally published writer as opposed to being on video and stuff. There was a it was kind of an exercise in self-direction and self-editing as you know. \[laughter\] it was very fun to kind of do different takes. Like we knew obviously the things we wanted to discuss and some of the larger implications we wanted to bring about but like the process was really helpful in refining and refining. But this particular clip that we had was kind of post the conversation between Jordan Peterson and Robin Carheart Harris where they had discussed the benefits of psychedelics and Jordan Peterson had kind of made this straw man about social justice warriors.

[\[09:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=560s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, I'll just play a quick clip of that to bring into the conversation on that topic. Pitching it to Robin Carheart Harris this way, he elicits like this response that just justifies the worldview for Jordan Peterson. Yeah. So it's almost like by not describing his own full ideas behind what he's saying, it's like he's setting up a euphemism to elicit the kind of affirmation from the scientists that he wants to be able to justify his belief system as like another way of saying what you just said. Exactly. And that's exactly what I was thinking as well listening to it. I was going to say it's like he's envisioning this like you know purplehaired dyed social justice warrior and he's able to write off the concerns that that that you know a stereotype is expressing as this person has just you know mental illness that they are opposed to patriarchy or whatever it is but again and what we're discussing there is kind

[\[10:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=621s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Of exactly what Pace was bringing into the conversation there of the issues with Robin Khart Harris going on Jordan Peterson's podcast and the fact that through kind of the early 2020s Jordan Peterson's podcast that like we said kind of this noted transphobe was hosting all of these psychedelic researchers to kind of innocuously discuss their research in a way. But Jordan Peterson in particular does this thing that we highlight which is that he has experts on and then gives these examples that the experts then justify and like kind of provide credence to that justify his worldviews. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do dog whistle versions of these really like fascist ideas, patriarchal ideas that then because they're packaged in a way that he's not revealing his full ideology, he's soliciting, this was the point that Russ had made right before that clip, he's soliciting them to kind of offer their research as in

[\[11:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=681s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Confirming the belief system that Jordan Peterson is offering. And so it's an example of how psychedelic researchers over the past decade have been laundering fascist ideas whether or not they're aware of the fact they're doing that by agreeing with the euphemistic version of a fascist idea and saying yes psychedelic research supports this idea. It's lending credibility to that narrative and doing no due diligence \[laughter\] to see who they're talking to really. Well, I mean it is it's about, you know, who can get who has the biggest platform, who is likely to lead to additional funding. It's not like they're accidentally ending up on leftist platforms, you know?

[\[12:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=728s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's only \[laughter\] in one direction. Yeah. I mean, Robin was so thirsty that he was like tweeting at Elon Musk to fund his projects. It reminds me of the studies about you know the anti- athoritarian views and whatever that Roman car Harrison crew did. I think it was like you know it more or less makes you psychedelics make you more in more like inclined toward nature and more inclined toward anti- athoritarianism. And then later studies again sort of backtracked on that and said well it's all about context and it's like what was his you know what were the goals of actually even doing that work and then you know was the backtrack sort of some sort of prerequisite to him being able to like get into these more right-wing scenes and whatnot.

[\[12:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=779s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. I mean I would just say perhaps a bit loosely but there's evidence for this. you know that when you're like a peer-reviewed a prolific publisher in the peer review and you're doing these kinds of studies that are coming out of limited number of patients in clinical trials and yet it seems like there's always a new question set proving something it's called slicing the sausage you know you have one clinical trial but you know 84 clinical questionnaires that you know questions that they go through well that's I mean gez that's 18 papers at least you know, and so in a lot of ways it's not great science because you have sort of you look at what the questionnaires say, but you don't really have a specific hypothesis about it in the first place, you know.

[\[13:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=828s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So that's how a lot of this stuff happens. I don't think that was necessarily the case here because in terms of like the rhetorical landscape that existed in the field back when those earlier studies came out. It was very useful to be able to say, "Oh, just, you know, give people psychedelics and it's going to make people pro- environmental, pro democracy, like all these like that." That's kind of where the headsp space of the field was at the time. So, I don't think it was just a random thing. I think it was like I don't think it's random but I would say that one of the reasons why some of the you know experimental design for these assertions was so thin you know like very very small groups of people is because it's tossed in on another study that was you know really about depression or something you know so as well about that second episode I mean the thesis of it you could say is that the Jordan Peterson Elon Musk ideological orbit is has been really advancing psychedelics as a weapon to kill what they conceive of as the woke

[\[14:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=888s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Mind virus, which are kind of progressive values in general, so-called transgender ideology, which is a propaganda term. And you know, now that's even encroaching into leftist thought in general is being criminalized under that sort of umbrella. And so I think we just wanted to make sure that people were aware of some of the really diabolical uses that some of these groups with a lot of power and money are envisioning for psychedelics. Yeah. And I think Nishay and I could probably talk about this forever considering we already said we had six hours at least on those first two episodes. I would love to put the rest of the team here on the spot real quick and see are there any takeaways that you all got out of the series that you wanted to discuss.

[\[15:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=935s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) If not, I've got some questions I can certainly toss out there, but I wanted to toss it to you all first so I'm not hogging the space here talking about my own work. I mean I would say that like some of the things that came out of the interview with Caleb were really interesting and revealing in the sense that like having you know discussed this amongst the team for a while the idea of you know okay well if for instance there's no barrier to a right-wing embrace eventually you know there could be given certain shifts in the political landscape. Okay, here we are, right? We've been here for a while now, but at the level of the Trump administration, this has certainly reached the widest possible audience, you know, on the right.

[\[16:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=982s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Okay. Well, if this then we would expect the right to use psychedelics to advance the general right project. And so I think that the way that you all discuss these issues as focusing in on one of the aspects of a right-wing project for American culture, you know, a smashing of the nonheteronormative, the antiatriarchal kind of threads in American culture. This is an example of psychedelics being put towards right-wing ends. you know, in this case, you know, a harmful and abusive psychotherrapeutic intervention. And, you know, when I was listening to you talk about the history, you know, in episode one of conversion therapy as you, you know, go through sort of what the medical consensus is on this that it is in fact, you know, counter

[\[17:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1042s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Therapeutic. It is definitionally iatrogenic harm in so far as the person can even be called a caregiver or medical professional in any sense if they're practicing this. You know, the history of it is pretty clear. You know, I remember reading, you know, in a biographical piece. I believe it was autobiographical about Lou Reed who fronted, you know, Velvet Underground famously was what is it? an irstwile lover of David Bowie. He was a bisexual rockstar of a man and he was as a you know teenager as a youngster against his will submit submitted to electroshock therapy to allegedly cure his homosexuality. spoke about, you know, not being able to read more than a couple of sentences of staring off, you know, post electroshock for, you know, long periods of time and that this

[\[18:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1102s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Was this was an intervention to cure him, you know, it's it was always a bad idea. Yeah. I agree. I think this is probably going to be one of the first as the so like a lot of the formerly fringe Republican right-wing ideas have now seeped into the mainstream as the boomer conservatives dying off and the more like fascistic younger people are coming of age and gaining in the party. You can see this in Florida with Fishbach running against Donald's like and how popular he's becoming with these guys psychedelics and drugs that more libertarian strain is becoming more popular. I think you're probably, this is probably going to be one of the first waves of right-wing uses of psychedelics after you have not only the older people older Republicans who are now primed medically for this, you're going to have

[\[19:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1162s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) A younger cohort who's going to start experimenting with this. And so I think it's useful to start thinking about the different applications that the right is going to use and megaurches or group cohesion as a way to experience God. I think Rick Perry's sort of experiences so far will probably become more common place in Republican politics. So, I think it's probably smart to start thinking about, you know, how are they going to utilize psychedelics in ways that further advance their agenda. I just want to make two points that are related to what Normie just said. And, you know, one is like the model, you know, on the right for, you know, creating permission for something is is always a strong leader says it's okay.

[\[20:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1214s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I mean, that's what that's the heart of patriarchy is. That's what we see with the Trump administration and the Republican, you know, party in general falling in line to the point that they didn't have a platform. They literally were just saying whatever Trump says is what we believe. And that was really useful because what Trump says is often contradictory. It shifts. So, you know, the personal accounts of somebody like, you know, former Governor Rick Perry saying, "I get to see my dog again after, you know, doing, you know, I gain and five methoxy dimethylryptamine." You know, these provide these communities with the example of, you know, a righteous Christian man and Republican politician did it so I can too, you know. And like what Normie had said earlier, which might to some ears like be a little confusing.

[\[21:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1264s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) What do you mean this younger fascistic demographic? Well, I mean the reality is is that the younger like incel Andrew Tate pilled people, they're not, you know, they're not Trump supporters. Most of the guys in their, you know, 20s or mid20s at this point, you know, they cut their teeth on people like Nick Fuentes, you know, who's a Nazi. And, you know, on on social issues at one point said, you know, oh, I don't want to go back to 1950s values. He says, I want to go back to 1050\. You know, these are this is the America, this is Yal Qaeda. This is American Sharia law. and they'll rest at nothing less.

[\[21:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1310s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And there's no, you know, like there's no pillar of fascism or more than the gaining of power by any means necessary. And if psychedelics can fit in, then it will be utilized. In addition to the mega churches that Normie was mentioning, there's also a risk based on history of the Trump administration has been with ICE and everything else really developing out the concentration camp system in the United States and with the recent national security memorandum, you know, identified a lot of the transgender community and leftist anarchists as potential terrorist targets. there's a lot of risk of you know I'm not saying that things will definitely move in that direction but there might be more political prisoner sorts of rallying up and if the government has psychedelics in their toolkit they know the long history of CIA experimentation torture

[\[22:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1370s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) With psychedelics and so that's also a risk as well that you know fixing people's wrong think through these tools in a systematized way is, you know, it's not it's just a concern concerning real possibility. And just this isn't something that just exists on the right. David Bronner from MAPS, he supports prison using psychedelics for prison diversion as well. So, these aren't like I mean, I think that's a I was going to say these aren't crazy ideas. They are crazy ideas, but they're not just held by right-wing ideologues. when the point you bring in is exactly a point we had kind of in post once we had wrapped a lot of our recording and editing discussed about incorporating into the series and thought maybe it would be a takeaway that we could just discuss today that we thought was really important because it was kind of in the weeds but very relevant to the points we're making here which is that our first video kind of discusses the

[\[23:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1430s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) History of Stannislav Grath's characterization of homosexuality as a pathology that his attempts to kind of cure homosexual uality through psychedelic use. But one of the justifications for him doing that was that homosexuality was a criminalized identity and that he through doing conversion therapy with people was helping them avoid prison, was helping people avoid being legally prosecuted for these beliefs by helping them become more heteronormative and kind of characterizing his work that way. And one of the points we kind of discussed amongst ourselves was that this is completely relevant to today even from like not a forced like MK Ultra concentration camp standpoint necessarily.

[\[24:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1480s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) These could be very well-meaning people saying, "I'm helping you with developing more normative beliefs through therapy, through psychedelic use, through these kind of ways of shifting your identity and your beliefs to keep you out of government concentration camps, to keep you from being criminalized for your beliefs and that kind of thing. is it's his kind of incorrect understanding of what he was doing for queer people back then, I think, is just as relevant to people's identities today that might be shifted through psychedelic use. And part of the reason I wanted to touch on that during this conversation is because I think it's important for people working in the field to decide where their hard lines are.

[\[25:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1525s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I remember seeing this come up a lot when it was when Trump was first coming back to power and a lot of the academics who study fascism were seeing the writing on the wall of where things were heading. And I saw some pieces circulating that said, you know, over time fascism will kind of like groom you into going along with things. And so it's really important to at the outset before things get bad, decide where your lines are and then stick to those. And so I think it's really important for the psychedelic field to ask themselves, you know, the facilitators, practitioners to ask themselves if you're in a situation where you are presented with an option of helping an anarchist, you know, fix their mindset, is that something you're going to do if it's serving the state, you know, to do that?

[\[26:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1576s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Because it's like that same logic graph was using as Russ was pointing out could also be used to justify that kind of an intervention. What I found really interesting was just how prevalent these types were of views were with like just psychedelic heroes in general. I mean s obviously but then you look at like you know Timothy Liry talking about Alan Ginsburgg as like this you know example of how conversion therapy worked which it did not you know I mean Alan Ginsburg is gay like openly pedophile you know but Timothy Liry using this as an example and then also who else was it Ram DS you know and his Alpert and whatever like a lot of these figures that the psychedelic culture kind of puts on pedestals were just really in involved in this whole thing and like a lot of them now you know you look at people like Peter Teal and you know so forth they're gay and

[\[27:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1637s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like they're touting psychedelics it's just this really interesting kind of combination of like who are your heroes where are you drawing the lines I think it was it's enlightening in a way that I think you know you don't just get in you know reading be here now or whatever you know the history books of psychedelic literature and whatnot and you just it's kind new information that I think a lot of people might get, I guess, tripped up on their feelings of like the heroicism of these figures. I thought it was interesting how you touched upon Stan Grath's like, you know, very self-conscious attempts to steward his legacy and how aware he was that this kind of, you know, truthtelling about his own past and the things that he had done. his insistence that he did not participate in conversion therapy when he very clearly did is is a level of awareness that he does not want his legacy tarnished by the things that he actually did.

[\[28:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1689s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You know, that was a the kind of saga that I was really happy to get in conversation like the different pieces that went into that saga in conversation with one another because I think there's sort of disperate like notes that are spread kind of throughout the online space like these the calling out of Stan Gra's work kind of is relegated to like a little niche and then Stan Gra's response to it all and then the final finally the author's like response to the response of it like it gets convolut uded fast and like for people that aren't deep in it, it's not an easy saga to follow. So, I was really happy to kind of bring all three of those major pieces into conversation with one another and like explore his response to it, their response to that and like the back and forth between those researchers and Stan.

[\[28:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1739s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Definitely. It's the type of work that you know I think we aspire to do just in our collective efforts which is to create essentially lenses for perceiving the field and the world in a different way. So like for a lot of people after reading right-wing psychedelia when it came out they were no longer able to look at things the same way they had before. It was kind of shifting the discourse and people weren't able to kind of like forget that perspective. And so this as well like the pieces were out there but they weren't all assembled in an accessible way that you know certainly people have not been talking about this topic the way that we have talked about it in this series. So I hope that this can help to shift and enable more conversation about those connected topics.

[\[29:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1787s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Are there any therapists right now like in the South or former Confederate states that are like openly advertising this as a way to cure your you know your teenage child? So far I don't think so. Not openly. So, at the end of the series, we include a note. Caleb after we recorded followed up with us to say, you know, and it's it go it gets worse, you know, that Wendy Reese's now doing retreats of her own involved in psychedelic retreats. And the language that she uses to describe those retreats is similar to the language she uses to explain how psychedelics can fix people's homosexuality. So, it's still a euphemized there. I haven't seen any open, you know, like people being very explicit about it.

[\[30:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1836s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Part of the issue, like I remember watching an interview Wendy Reese was doing with someone else after, you know, her book came out and they were talking about the fact that they were getting a lot of push back from the Christian nationalist evangelical community for trying to advance psychedelics in their communities. But you can tell that like with the far-right interest and the increasing normalization that resistance from those groups is going to become less and less with time. That's just the way that things are heading. So I would not be surprised to see, you know, in a future year an example that is explicit like that. I can imagine this being absolutely a thing of someone who does these fly by night psychedelic therapist certification, sets up shop in, you know, Oklahoma and, you know, as the population is more primed to psychedelic therapy, absolutely, this will be a thing.

[\[31:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1895s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Well, and even in Colorado, I mean, Colorado is one of the states where you have the adult legal access for, you know, psilocybin currently. And since the Supreme Court just ruled the ban on conversion therapy there, you could very easily see people, you know, attempting to set up shops. So, I think it's really important for people to be aware that this could be an issue. Yeah. All the ingredients are there. There's a recipe. Whether or not somebody chooses to bake a cake and open a bakery is is really, you know, it's a it's in question right now. It's like the tornado watch warning distinction that we're talking about because there been tornado warnings recently, but the ingredients are there. That's where we're going to wrap the first half of this conversation about our recent conversion therapy series.

[\[32:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1941s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I just wanted to stop in here and say that if you appreciate the work that we are putting out currently or if you appreciate the work like what we're going to talk about in today's second segment that we've been doing for a long time, putting it out for free with the help of supporters like you, you can support us on Patreon. This is going to help us bring you informed takes on psychedelic news, original investigative journalism, and early access and bonus content that only you as a Patreon will have access to. If you would like to support the work we do, you can find us on patreon.com/psymposia. If not, feel free to just give us a like and subscribe on this video. that helps a lot as well to get our content out to other viewers like you who might be interested in what we have to say.

[\[33:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=1988s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And with that, we'll jump right back into our episode discussing the 10-year anniversary of Psymposia's coming out of the psychedelic closet series. The coming out of the closet, you know, series was really the first thing that I saw, you know, from Psymposia and it very much drew me in. I read all of the pieces and I believe as a result of that searched up the psychedelia documentary and you know became more familiar with Dr. Dr. Nish Devono's footprints at that time and you know was really key in seeking out you know Psymposia and the conference conferences that I had attended around that time and you know it was it had a lot of salience at that point as being a conversation about psychedelics that seemed to relate to you know broader questions of whether or not you know psychedelics were going to have this you know renaissance or is it was it going to be something that you could touch or interact with in your daily life and community.

[\[34:07\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2047s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And you know, here we are 10 years later and I mean I think that's very very much the case. Yeah. And to kind of second Pac's point, the coming out of the psychedelic closet series was one of the first interactions that I had with Psymposia as well. This was a series that was produced in 2016 as I was on the tail end of my college experience in journalism school and coming out wanting to write about psychedelics and just seeing all the same articles repeated over and over and over again about the same studies, all just this repetitive kind of media atmosphere around psychedelics and Psymposia happened to be one of the only outlets that was publishing these things that felt like they went past the surface level of the psychedelic space. They had a great like Ibegan conversation and then they had this coming out of the psychedelic closet series that was really interesting and I think we I hope we can get into some of the structure on because that was something as a writer that really interested me.

[\[35:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2103s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I'll show kind of the iconography for the series here was great too. This was by Beth Varden who created the kind of psychedelic logo for the series and this came out in 2016\. Nishay and Normmy I know worked very closely on this series. Do you guys want to talk about how this series came about? Yeah. Normally, you should explain the backstory. I had been in 20 in 2014\. I was at UMass Ammerst and I became good friends with Dorian Sean, the son of Lin Margalus and Carl Sean. He had gone to one of our conferences and then he lived in Ammerst and like I started banging around with them in at the cafe. we kind of connected over that and he was into psychedelics and because you know his father was kind of hanging around with a lot of people in the 60s and it was just an interest of his and he had been encouraging me to just to publish and to do cool \[expletive\] because like kind of what was around at the time was newagy and so we were looking for something

[\[36:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2164s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That was more just more interesting and less cheese and I had gone into the Amoris books the local bookshop there. And there was an edition of Boston magazine that had a I basically stole the format from Boston magazine which was an it was in an article on the green revolution the green new deal or something like that that it was a professor from UMass I forget his name but he basically had a how do we transition this is actually a super relevant debate right now with just the like how far we're falling behind in China and just the total lack of energy in the United States right now, but it was about how do we transition to like a new energy infrastructure and all that.

[\[36:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2213s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so basically he I haven't read it in a while so I'm just recalling. But he put out his argument and that was then sent to various other academics or writers and to comment on that and to offer either agree, disagree, rebut it or something like that. And then he had the final say. he read the reactions to it and either incorporated, disagreed, agreed about that position. I thought that was an interesting model to like to have some discourse in the space on because you know there was it was and I think Nay there was someone that had responded to your position that actually it's worth not coming out of the psychedelic closet and staying in for what I forget what their reasons were that it's either dangerous in the workplace or you don't want to reveal that like you're a psychedelic user and the consequences that can possibly come out of that.

[\[37:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2271s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So that was the point of doing that whole piece. Yeah. Advancing conversation and advancing the discourse. And even in one of my two pieces, I mentioned that, you know, it's good to challenge your thinking and ideas and take into account different people's perspectives in order to, you know, assess blind spots and to refine them. So it was a cool structure for that. Yeah. So you were kind of like the in the Boston magazine situation, the main author who sent out your argument to a number of other sources to be in conversation with and write their own essays in response. And I thought maybe for the conversation it would be cool to look just over the headlines and the subheads of the series pieces so we can kind of see the scope of the conversation that was happening.

[\[38:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2318s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So I made a little slideshow here of just those basics. So this was the first piece that you wrote, psychedelics and identity politics, the decadesl long war on drugs has created a situation in which the use of psychedelics is a social justice issue. The response piece after that was why I'm staying in the psychedelic closet. The piece that Normie was just mentioning, the demonization of psychedelic culture is not a social justice issue and using the language of social justice is damaging to those causes. They said another one, out yourself. 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. Another piece, the psychonauts dilemma. We got some interesting authors here. Yeah, we've got Julie Holland was the last one. This is Albert Garcia Ramo, who is a John's Hopkins psychedelic researcher.

[\[39:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2365s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I believe during an earlier era of psychedelic research in the 1950s through 70s, some scientists believed that in order to ethically administer psychedelics to others, it was necessary to first experience them oneself. And there's also the asymmetrical risk of coming out in queer and psychedelic communities. Kind of comparing those two communities and what the risk is coming out of out in different communities. The risk of coming out as queer is grossly unequal to the risk of disclosing as a psychedelic user. The final piece coming out in solidarity by the Tfairy. 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. And then finally, Nisha's concluding piece, the final thoughts. Regardless of what conclusions we draw, the topic of psychedelics and identity politics is important at a time when public assumptions about psychedelics are transforming.

[\[40:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2418s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, I just thought that gave a great scope of what was covered in the series, that there was disagreement between authors in the series that were in conversation with each other. And that was what really kind of turned me onto this whole series in the first place was this kind of this dialogue between authors and this kind of moving conversation. It was really cool to see. I guess it was a presentation first, right, at Yeah. And then but it was written here. I remember reading it because it was from 2015 and it was just called coming out of the psychedelic closet. So I guess you wrote that piece that Russell you just posted the very first one but then you just kind of transcript this one or something because this clearly seems to be the very first thing in the series. Nish's presentation at the we had a conference in 2015 called envision envisioning a post prohibition world.

[\[41:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2469s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And nay presented I believe you were your presentation there was coming out of the psychedelic closet. We published that and then I think we might have built on that to do a bigger series on that. So it was kind of a developing idea. So I had actually forgot forgotten that that was the case but yeah I was just seeing it on the our website. So yeah I did that presentation. I think that's why they had reached out to me because it was an interesting topic to expand on for the series. Yeah. And I could just give just a quick backstory to, you know, my interest in the topic. And I might have said this in my presentation with that original conference event that Psymposia did, but I didn't really understand when I first heard about the military's like don't ask don't tell policy because when I first as a child like heard about this idea, I didn't really understand what the big deal was of like cuz like I was like I don't feel like I need to go talking about my sexuality around work

[\[42:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2532s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And stuff like that. Like why would this matter? And it only clicked for me why it matters so much when I went from my undergraduate where I had come into psychedelics with a close group of friends together who all understood that important now side of myself into a context where for graduate school most people hadn't even heard of psychedelics before and the people who had had only heard of it as this like weird you a stigma stigmatized topic that was like from the ' 60s or whatever. And the feeling like I could not express my true self and my interests and the things that mattered most to me was so alienating and like disturbing to experience that it suddenly clicked for me and I was like, "Oh, when you cannot be yourself as you really are in like your day-to-day life, it takes a toll on

[\[43:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2593s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You. it has some kind of like shadow. It like affects your \[laughter\] your soul to move through the world like that. And so as I was confronting that realization, I started unpacking kind of what seemed to be a really interesting lessons that the psychedelic field could learn from the LGBT rights movement and the progress that had been made there. And in the initial years of being interested in this because I remember speak some of my earliest work in psychedelic communities was making the case for building out an interdisiplinary psychedelic studies with queer studies as kind of one of the justifications for like a queering of psychedelics.

[\[43:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2639s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But I also was very worried about offending people, you know, by making this connection. And so I went to the LGBT center at UPEN where I was a grad student and I spoke to them about this because I was like I'm personally feeling like there's a lot of important connections here to be made but I don't you know if this is like a appropriation I don't want to like make people upset. and they had a really interesting response to me, which was to say, you know, essentially when the LGBT movement first started getting going and LG the first LGBT centers started appearing on college campuses, there was a big push back along the lines as like I was starting to receive for my work, but from the civil rights community where people were saying, you know, this is a this is not as serious as, you know, the situation with people of color in this country especially.

[\[44:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2694s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And to equate what is a privileged recreational kind of thing from that perspective is the wrong thing to do. It's an appropriation that is equating two things that should not be equated and the harms are not comparable. And people would say, you know, it's like skin color you can't hide from, but you can hide who you, you know, what your sexuality is. And so it's not comparable. It's not the same sort of thing. And so as I started thinking more about it, you know, I realized that this actually is a direct extension of queer theory in itself because in some of the pieces that I or some of the literature that I cite, especially in my first article, the intro piece is talking about that quering is also about breaking down the binaries and hierarchies and assumptions that we have about, you know, putting people into boxes.

[\[45:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2747s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So in a previous episode we talked about identity politics as this you know there's a woke one version of identity politics which is like not it's not something that people like because people are like people see it as like a trauma Olympics or like people using specific identity categories to gain power or whatever it is. But the re like if you really dive into intersectionality and the idea that you know a more anarchist perspective on this topic, it's using these different identity categories not as absolute markers, but as like a way of seeing the connections and the ways that power operates across different identities, identity categories to be able to try to force people into living according to some normative standard.

[\[46:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2796s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the argument that I was making here is that we really shouldn't be playing a game of whack-a-ole and trying to protect some, you know, some protected classes at the expense of others, but to learn about those operations of power and oppression in order to create conditions where people can actually decide for themselves what they want to do with their bodies and minds and, you know, who they want to love and all of those connections. And so, so yeah, it was interesting to reread because I think that that was not just an appropriation, it was actually an extension of queer theory into it's like taking the terms of queer theory very seriously and seeing how it also applies to other non-normative ways of being in the world.

[\[47:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2843s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And I think the main thing maybe we haven't touched on here is what is psychedelic identity to you that you wanted to kind of bring out of the closet? Yeah. Well, that's it's a really interesting question. I would say my thinking on this has evolved over the years a bit now. So, at the time when I was writing, I wrote about how, you know, citing people like the Schulgans and Bill Richards, I made this argument that, you know, there's a certain percentage of people across cultures that are sort of driven to explore the kind of the underside of like, you know, what does this all mean kind of perspective. Like not everyone is wired that way, but some people are. And I think there's like an overlap with psychedelics.

[\[48:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2889s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) My argument was saying that I think that you can just like you can be gay without ever having sex. I think you can be a psychedelic person without ever having taken psychedelics. I think it's a part a reflection of that orientation towards you know not just the surface reality but like probing \[laughter\] deeper into the connections beyond appearances. So there's that aspect of it in time as like I've kind of the years since I wrote this original piece. I also think there's a lot of overlap for me with neurody divergence \[laughter\] like I think that that's like a big component of it. Like a lot of the people that I like the people a lot of people who psychotics really click with that I know are very neurody divergent people and it just like it like fits with the way that they think in the world and kind of like feels like a homecoming or familiar space to them.

[\[49:01\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2941s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I would say there's also in the transgender community, there's this concept of like egg energy where in like retrospect, like before you realize you're trans, you read old diaries or like see things that you said or did before and you're like, "Oh \[expletive\] like now I can see that, you know, I didn't realize back then, but I'm actually this, you know, this other gender." There's a lot of for me egg moments in reading these pieces both on the side of like I can I didn't realize even what anarchism was at the time but you can tell in some of the ways that I'm conceptualizing things I was like oh yeah I \[laughter\] was moving in that direction. It's like now that's how I'd identify and I could I was kind of you could see it then but I didn't realize it. I think that's connected to it as well. And then the other thing I was gonna say, the gender part was really funny to me because I was like, I actually, you know, identify more with being psychedelic than I do with my, you know, gender identity.

[\[49:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=2995s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And \[laughter\] I realized later it's like, oh, that's because I don't identify with being a woman. And I just didn't realize it \[laughter\] back then. But that you had written this before you had come out as nonbinary or whatever, right? Yeah. Big time. So that's when I was reading it. I was like, "Oh shit." Like I And you say my psychedelic identity is personally a bigger part of my life than my gender identity or sexual identity. Yes. Cuz I didn't like \[laughter\] feel really strongly about being a woman. So yeah, this is really funny. So there there's a lot of like nuance to it. And I don't think that there's necessarily like not everyone has to identify with my expression of psychedelic identity, but to me it did feel like the way that I move through the world was so informed by psychedelic thought and associations and perspectives that that it did feel like it informed the person I was.

[\[50:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3048s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it connected to like, you know, I think with psychedelics, it's not it's also about your right to self-determination with your mind. You know, it's like the type of person that you want to become. And because it's like a step further than just free speech because if you are preventing people from having certain types of experiences, you're preventing them from having certain kinds of thoughts to be able to speak. And so it's like a it's a form of control on that front as well. So just in terms of like a part of the value I think of this series was getting behind the fixed categories of identity in looking more at these underlying principles of how we allow people to operate in the world auton like from their own self-direction and with their own consent and self-determination in their communities is is essentially like a big takeaway.

[\[51:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3100s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think it's really interesting to compare this and your perspective on it 10 years later with just my life like in the sense of 10 years ago I was definitely like involved with psychedelics right but people weren't asking you know I wasn't necessarily just like out and exposed you know I wasn't telling everyone like oh I'm doing mushrooms all the time or whatever it is but then now 10 years you know since it's like I just finished a master's degree in psychedelics and consciousness studies. People ask what I do. People ask, you know, what have you been up to? I had a family reunion a week or so ago with a huge family that I haven't seen in years and years. And like they're asking me what I'm up to.

[\[52:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3146s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Oh, I just finished a master's degree in psychedelics and consciousness study. And it's like, you know, some of these people are Mormon and like they have views on homosexuality, psychedelics, whatever. But it was just so comfortable for me to finally to like say it, right? It's like, "Oh, yeah." And the reception was totally probably different than it would have been 10 years ago. And a lot of it is like, "Wow, that's so cutting edge." Like, "Oh, you're really getting into the industry before it's big and stuff like that." But it was a lot less of like the, oh, this guy's like weird, just drug addict or whatever, you know, which may have been the case that long ago. But it did felt feel more I think kind of freeing than I expected it to. Just to be able to like say, "Yeah, this is just part of how I who I am. This is what I do." Like this is what my career is too. And then also getting that sort of respectful like response, you know?

[\[53:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3196s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So I don't know what it would have been like if I was just out as a psychedelic person 10 years ago. M but I know that right now and with like I think the societal millu of how psychedelics are working it's a lot more I guess it's main it's more mainstream like it's not a surprise to people right like you were saying 10 years ago it's people in grad school didn't know anything about it except that it was bad or whatever and now it's different. Yeah. And I mean because this series and thanks for sharing that because yeah that's I've definitely heard similar accounts from other people as well just about like it's nice to just be able to talk to friends, family or whatever about it. But yeah 10 years ago I mean this that series was two years before Michael Pollen's book came out. And one of the things I just wanted to touch on quickly is that the world was very different back then.

[\[54:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3243s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And this series did really help to shift things because there were people like the Tfairy in her piece who said had been kind of thinking along these lines of like you know organizing more around this and connecting it to LGBT and other civil rights issues would be good but also having that hesitation that I had of like but are people going to get offended? And so it by charting out the rationale and how it connects up if we're going to join up with these other struggles did help a lot of people to feel more comfortable advancing that line of discussion. And it was just something like the researchers especially were not talking openly. It was much more taboo back then. And I even had a really amazing job interview at, you know, univers University University of California for tenure track job where I killed my presentation.

[\[54:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3294s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like it was so good. And then in the after, you know, the Q&A, someone stood up and like confronted me and had seen this series and said, "You're online talking about your drug use." and like and to the point that the search committee had to reach out to me afterwards and say I'm so sorry for the you know how offensive and like bigoted that professor was about your work because that's like I connected it so explicitly to like critical theory and like my academic work but so that that's just the way that the world was is people don't realize how different things were not all that long ago if they've come into the field like more more recently and I also wanted to point out just in terms of the impact just to show how different things were do you have that link to the Australia newspaper?

[\[55:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3342s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There was a national Australia print newspaper that was publishing a story on academics who study drugs who also have like lived experiences with drugs. So in the text sorry the text on the side it says few research few researchers working with prohibited drugs such as heroin and psychedelics admit inside knowledge of their use rates Jenny Valentish. But some argue that the culture of non-disclosure is irresponsible. So this was like the front page of the science section and they had the author had reached out to me specifically saying that she was having so much trouble finding someone in Australia who felt comfortable putting their picture on this story that \[laughter\] that they you know found my p my piece with Psymposia and asked if I would be comfortable with sharing my picture.

[\[56:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3389s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But so I think it's it goes a long way to communicate you \[laughter\] know this is this was not this was very innovative like a lot of our work at the time and then it just helps to shift things you know among other factors like Michael Pollen as well. Totally. The last thing I wanted to touch on is just especially in the follow-up piece at the end. What was so interesting to me rereading it after all this time is how many cult talking point cultist pseudocience talking points I was promoting of like oh it's this process and that you know psychedelic therapy unleash you psychedelic therapy is you know just kind of proven effective and people are being deprived of this and saying things that I've heard you know people like Michael Mhover who designed the maps MDMMA therapy saying like, you know, it's good for therapists to have their own experiences because they'll have insight into the unfolding process that's happening and

[\[57:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3449s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Saying stuff along the lines of there was one more thing I said that it's preposterous to think that people who have their own experience could be, you know, lose their objectivity and be kind of overly enthusiastic. And it's funny for me because like now I've seen that all over the place and now I have like a much more caution about all of those things. But it's funny because like a lot of the people who have attacked us in my work over the past two years, like since the FDA hearing and the rejection of the first application, have come at me with positions that I have evolved past and be and become more nuanced about. So it's like they a lot of these people I don't even think understand how much I contributed to actually building this entire field in the first place. and they're newer often times than me and just don't understand that like you know I know what it's like to think like these people think because I used to be there too and it's only because I've had a lot of experiences since then to know oh

[\[58:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3512s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There's more going on here than this is is is letting on but I do just as a last point to say I do think that it's interesting that you can I could already see the tensions that would later evolve into the rupture between my perspective and the mainstream of the field even as I was promoting these ideas especially because a lot of those more anarchist leaning like we need to deconstruct the terms that were operating with and look at the underlying power dynamics is kind of like following through on those tendencies is what made me need to apply that lens to the psychedelic field as well and I certainly did not want to.

[\[59:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3558s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I mean, it's like I was ne like I never had a community growing up that I felt so close to as I felt with the psychedelic community. And so, it was a tremendous pain for me, like a real loss and sacrifice to have to come forward with this information. It was a harm to me to put me in a position where I needed to, you know, warn the public about what was happening and lose the community that was such a big part of my identity, you know, but I felt like I didn't really have a choice to do anything else. Yeah. Strong moral compass. Yeah. It's a neurode divergence. \[laughter\] Again, justice hyperfixation is pretty common.

[\[1:00:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3604s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I mean it's to the point of psychedelic identity to me to do those things. I mean if it's if thinking outside the box and going against the norm is like the ba some of the basis of what that means then like yeah the if the hegemonic like culture is generally saying ignore these things for to get this across the finish line. like ignore these kind of things that are affecting more marginalized people then kind of the psychedelic thing to do is to come out of the norm there and say what needs to be said. I totally agree. Yeah. I do think psychedelics you know Psymposia is this sort of like expression of that aspect of psychedelic perspective of like questioning authority and you know lifting up the stones and seeing what's underneath them.

[\[1:00:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3653s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But, you know, I think with time that will become clearer to a lot of people. But we're still there's so much power and money on the line right now. And it's so easy because people have been propagandized with these narratives about like evil leftists and you know all these ideas that it's easy to see through the lens of the powerful at us. But I think that's part of why we just keep doing our work and keep putting these podcasts out to kind of create a record for the future. Yeah. I'm stoked to have the psychedelic conversion therapy series out. That's something that's been in the works for a long time and I think will provide a lens for hopefully a lot of people moving forward into the future. And just want to say thanks Norm and Nay for coming together on the psychedelic closet series because I think it brought together a lot of our current team and some of the dynamics that shaped it.

[\[1:01:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC8km-VWmc&t=3701s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So I'm happy to reflect on all this. Yeah. Thanks so much for the opportunity. It was fun to reread