Frontiers in Psychology
December 10, 2021
Brian A. Pace, Neşe Devenot
65 citations
Media and industry advocates claim psychedelics promote environmental concern and liberal politics, but historical and contemporary evidence shows many users remain authoritarian or become radicalized after use. The authors argue that psychedelics do not inherently shift political beliefs in any particular direction; rather, contextual factors of set and setting determine the outcome. Any worldview-challenging experience, including psychedelics, can precipitate political shifts in any direction. The historical record supports psychedelics as "politically pluripotent," non-specific amplifiers of political set and setting. Conservative, hierarchy-based ideologies can assimilate psychedelic experiences of interconnection, as seen in figures like Jordan Peterson and neo-Nazi groups.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 21, 2023
James Davies, Brian A. Pace, Neşe Devenot
29 citations
Psychedelic medicine is promoted as a novel solution to the mental health crisis, but the psychedelics industry adopts profit-driven approaches similar to those that undermined earlier antidepressants like SSRIs. The liberatory rhetoric of psychedelic medicalization actually promotes individualized treatments for distress, distracting from systemic changes needed to address root causes like inequality, precarity, exploitation, and ecological collapse. Through mechanisms of depoliticization, productivization, pathologization, commodification, and de-collectivization, the industry aligns with neoliberal ideology rather than disrupting the psychopharmaceutical status quo. The authors conclude that psychedelics must decouple from neoliberal incentives to achieve durable improvements in well-being.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
December 29, 2023
Neşe Devenot, Brian A. Pace, Jason Slot et al.
1 citation
The field of psychedelic scholarship is expanding rapidly across clinical research, neuroscience, pharmacology, and the humanities. This special issue introduces the Psychedemia 2022 conference, hosted by the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education at The Ohio State University, which brought together diverse academic disciplines to discuss integrating psychedelics into society. The conference built on the first Psychedemia in 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania, which helped establish Psychedelic Studies as an interdisciplinary field. As psychedelic research gains mainstream acceptance and a projected multi-billion-dollar medical market emerges, academics have a crucial role in articulating stakeholder concerns and shaping policy, theory, and methodology across social, legal, economic, and environmental dimensions.