Queering Psychedelics II

This 2-day conference is part of Chacruna’s Women, Gender Diversity, and Sexual Minorities speaker series. It highlights the voices of queer visionaries within the psychedelic community as well as examines the history of psychedelics from queer and non-binary perspectives. As the so-called psychedelic renaissance reaches a pivotal moment of mainstream interest and regulatory legitimacy, it is vital that traditionally under-represented communities share a seat at the table and have their voices heard so as to ensure access to all the benefits that psychedelics and plant medicine offer. Additionally, it is vital that queer spaces be established for exploring the unique needs, gifts, and strengths that LGBTQI communities bring to psychedelics and psychedelic medicine.

More information here.

Launch of Queering Psychedelics: From Oppression to Liberation in Psychedelic Medicine

Publisher: Synergetic Press

Editors: Alex Belser, Clancy Cavnar and Bia Labate

As the psychedelic resurgence reaches a pivotal moment of mainstream interest and regulatory legitimacy, Queering Psychedelics aims to foster accessibility and diversity in psychedelic science, practice, and discourses by addressing and dismantling sexist, heteronormative, transphobic, and homophobic forms of oppression in the psychedelic movement. This collected volume spans a broad range of perspectives from queer academic researchers, LGBTQIA+ clinicians, indigenous two-spirit activists, transgender autodidacts, and queer neo-shamans. Each chapter articulates essential insights on the cultural heritages, implications for current research and clinical work, and transformative healing potential of psychedelic medicine and queer identity.In probing a largely uncharted relationship, the book traces vast and colorful history of the enchanted, wayward, and weird as well as the concrete ways in which queer folk have fundamentally shaped the substance, style, and spirituality of the psychedelic movement, and been harmed by its heteronormative applications. Inclusive of the intersectional and liberatory applications of queerness, the volumeintegrates indigenous outlooks on psychedelics, gender roles, and identity and seeks to ally its struggle with those of other marginalized groups: women, people of color, the disabled, the poor, and people residing in the global south. The book also grapples with how modern psychedelic research might address the unique needs and traumas of sexual and gender minorities—populations that can suffer from challenging mental health conditions brought on by social exclusion, pathologization, criminalization, and stigmatization. Queering Psychedelics interrogates the continuing radical potential of queer psychedelia in today’s era of assimilation and increasingly codified and discursively managed identities paving the way for the movement’s liberatory potential for all people.