Big Tech’s Psychedelics Grift | WIRING

But with all due respect to the concerned doctors, we have already crossed the Rubicon. The last indication that psychedelics aren’t just doctors was when MAPS appeared on Canada’s Mark Haden on Netflix. goop lab and he kindly nodded his head when Elise Loehn’s (now former) head of content spoke about staff taking mushrooms in Jamaica to “feel more creative” or “have a psycho-spiritual experience”. Doctors let this mission move every time their COOs allow them to function as their mouthpieces and every time they corrupt the corporate that is corrupt in their name.

Despite their profits it depends on convincing you that you need a professional — professionals them hire — it happens that most of these employers believe they have been healed without a specific and expensive protocol.

In the interview, the big bosses behind these clinics and research companies talk about taking psychedelics into non-medical situations and / or for reasons of personal growth, and they got the benefits anyway. Joe Green, an activist who helped raise $ 30 million for MAPS, say du The Wall Street Journal his experience with psychedelics helped him “rediscover the miracle”. Dylan Beynon, who founded the ketamine clinic Mindbloom, he said on the blog ZortziLo he was interested in psychedelic medicine after a friend recommended him to try MDMA. Also on investor he recommended psilocybin to Lars Wilde, the series entrepreneur who created Compass Pathways with George Goldsmith. (Compass’s main financiers are Peter Thiel and investor Christian Angermayer, the former travel he was with friends on a Caribbean beach.) Supposedly, these investor-friends were not moored as MDs.

So if these men were safely enjoying the benefits of psychedelics in a welfare context, why follow the medical path? Why not go for the full goop? First, the psychedelic underground market already exists, and wool-dyed spiritual seekers are unlikely to care whether the FDA has approved a drug, so they do not represent an untapped source of profit. But the bottom line is that it’s very unlikely that except for a few states, psychedelics will soon be legalized for widespread consumption, so using medicine as a backdoor allows technology companies to take advantage of a growing market before anyone else does.

Storing these drugs behind locked doors ensures they will have the best chance of accessing a particular type of customer: people with usable income or very good insurance, considering ketamine infusions and medical supervision and “processing” hours. it costs much more than a pill on the street with a therapist — populations that have historically been less able to get good health care or have been disproportionately punished for drug use (i.e., the poor) will be left out. This way, they can judge potential clients who may be afraid of the risks or who associate drug use with degeneration and addiction, and their doubts will be reduced by a medical printer.

Sure, many parties refer to the “democratization” of their services from time to time, but that’s part of their long-standing utopian deception. Over time, their hungry monopolists inevitably emerge. For example, a supporter of David Bronner Oregon bill to make psilocybin legal in therapeutic settings recently accused Ways to try to “mobilize the opposition” against Compass Legalization, as Compass is the only one that provides the service to have more control of the market. (Compass’s general manager told Vicer that he “wanted to have a conversation” about the bill.)

And among all the groups that define mental well-being and tell you how to get it, it would be hard for you to find worse than white tech boys with money. Their obsession with global connectivity has taken us a long way away from each other emotionally (ironically comfortable, because they may refer to “disconnection” as a symptom of depression, making it equivalent to the mental health of firefighters). The ubiquity of social media has shown us the dark side of self-optimization, and how platforms treat individual user data. Finally, prioritizing growth over care means that companies tend to rise before they fail, leaving a trail of burnt, unfit, and unsuitable workers, which is wrong when you work with vulnerable populations. Many previous sessions on mental health care have been marred by scandals and inefficiencies with such companies Talkspace that they were accused of opacity and unethical behavior, and others like it BetterHelp With a more benevolent sin of excessive promise — an amazing therapist, a 24/7 call! —And giving too little with an unresponsive bot.

Psychedelics are not caught our attention only for gross capitalist reasons. A lot of people are suffering, and psychedelics can it radically changes people’s thinking and leads to significant personal growth, sometimes after a single use — I consider myself one of those who have had positive experiences. It is important to be able to test those who feel that psychedelics will benefit.

But instead of giving authority to a group with a long history of deteriorating our mental and spiritual health, what if we listened to those who experienced using psychedelic cures to heal people? If we want to honor the way psychedelics have been created in indigenous communities for thousands of years — this is an attempt to be fair, but often expressive — we will turn to psychedelic practitioners, the doula and others. drivers, many of whom have been operating underground for years for fear of prosecution.

Ideally, we would work to decriminalize, regulate, and legalize the federal use of psychedelic recreation by public decision-making, and we would educate individuals on how to prepare for a safe and enjoyable trip. This type of policy change would be implemented real the revolution we need.