The State Of The Psychedelic Renaissance | Shelby Hartman
This episode will explore the current state of the so-called psychedelic renaissance—where it’s going well, where its going poorly, and where it might be going at all.
Our guest is Shelby Hartman.
Shelby Hartman is the co-founder and Publisher of DoubleBlind, a media company at the forefront of the psychedelic movement. She’s reported for Rolling Stone, VICE, Playboy, Quartz, LA Weekly, and the Huffington Post, among others. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, Business Insider, KCRW, Bustle, and Forbes, and she’s been invited to speak at SXSW, Horizons: Perspectives in Psychedelics, and Harvard Law School. In 2020, she was named by Forbes as a female leader in cannabis and psychedelics. She’s a graduate of Columbia Journalism School.
She joins Adventures Through The Mind for Episode 211 to map what is actually happening in the psychedelic renaissance right now; from the rise of for-profit “corporadelic” pharma and the FDA approval track, to city-level decriminalisation, to the unregulated grey market where lab tests found almost no psilocybin in products sold as mushrooms.
We explore biopiracy and indigenous reciprocity around iboga and plant medicine; who will actually get access to legal psychedelics and on whose terms; whether the clinical trial is even the right research design; and why she argues psychedelics are a lifelong relationship rather than a one-trip cure.
Hartman points out how many personal questions this field won’t answer for you. If you’re weighing whether now is the right time, or working through what an experience brought up, my <a href=”https://www.jameswjesso.com/psychedelic-integration-coaching/”>psychedelic integration coaching</a> offers one-on-one, drug-positive support.
Portier Supplies make the Portalbox, a handmade wooden vessel built specifically to honour the medicine of DMT. It’s a lockable case in sustainable wood with velvet and satin inlays, airtight vials, a 0.001g precision scale, and a guidebook and journal — everything the experience actually asks for, in one considered object rather than a drawer full of odds and ends. Their work won a Psychedelic Design Award in 2025, and they also make the Ceremonybox, tailored to mushroom tea. I own a Portalbox myself, and I can tell you it is genuinely beautiful, and an incredible way to honour your medicine.
Shelby Hartman is the co-founder and Publisher of DoubleBlind, a media company at the forefront of the psychedelic movement. She’s reported for Rolling Stone, VICE, Playboy, Quartz, LA Weekly, and the Huffington Post, among others. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, Business Insider, KCRW, Bustle, and Forbes, and she’s been invited to speak at SXSW, Horizons: Perspectives in Psychedelics, and Harvard Law School. In 2020, she was named by Forbes as a female leader in cannabis and psychedelics. She’s a graduate of Columbia Journalism School.
