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Profit: The medicalization of psychedelics

Will psychedelics be reduced to an elite product that enhances status and feeds egos, as yoga and meditation have been found to do in some Western contexts?

Geoff Bathje

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably ascertained that we at TripOut believe the statement “capitalism is problematic” is objective truth. This article from chacruna.net attempts to synthesize the arguments against the profitization motives in the medicalization of MDMA and Psilocybin.

Image: Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple” by Theodoor Rombouts. Credit: http://www.kmska.be/nl/collectie/catalogus/

Book: Review of the “first textbook on psychedelic research”

David Wilder of Think Wilder reviews an advance copy of the self-published research textbook Medical Psychedelics by Dr. Oliver Rimle Hovmand. Wilder’s video review is posted below and is ~9 minutes long, and his written review is here. If you haven’t heard of David Wilder, he is a sharp and intellectual blogger focusing on psychedelics and self-exploration and he releases a “weekly psychoactive recap” called “This Week in Psychedelics.”

Notable: Researcher Amanda Feilding

From a totally fascinating Wired article about Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March who is a primary researcher of LSD as a powerful potential tool for mental health clinicians:

This is the future of therapy as Feilding sees it: You enter a clinic with your mind in a certain unwanted setting. Perhaps you’re ruminating over some kind of trauma. You meet with a therapist and do a relatively large dose of LSD, followed by smaller doses down the line, known as microdosing. (This has come into vogue of late, especially among Silicon Valley types who believe a minute dose of LSD makes them more creative without all the pesky hallucinations.)

“You need the peak experience to break through and change the setting,” Feilding says. “And then the microdose experience can give a little booster along the way and make it more energetic and vital and a bit more lively.”

Which sounds like something the authorities wouldn’t be so keen on. But medical officials in the UK and the US and elsewhere have actually been giving permission to study psychedelics of late. Still, the red tape is a nightmare, as are the costs. “There are three institutions in England which have a safe that can store psychoactive controlled substances,” Feilding says. “And then you’re meant to weigh them every week and have two people guarding the door. It’s insane. But I think it’s breaking down a little bit, and the more good results we can bring in, the better.”