How Identity Politics Poisons The Psychedelic Renaissance

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Adventures Through The Mind podcast promotional artwork for episode 205 with guest Thomas Hatsis, author of Psychedelic Injustice, featuring psychedelic-themed illustration with tiger, brain imagery, and chemical compound structures Thomas Hatsis is a public speaker, psychedelic community leader, host of the Entheo Historian YouTube channel, and author of five books in the field of psychedelic history and practice: The Witches Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic (2015), Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States, (2018), Microdosing Magic: A Psychedelic Spellbook (2018), LSD: The Wonderchild: The Golden Age of Psychedelic Research in the 1950s (2021), and Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance (2025). Since 2015, Hatsis has gone on several countrywide book tours and appeared on three GaiamTV shows. During that time, he also co-founded a vibrant psychedelic society, Psanctum, in Portland, Oregon. In 2023, Hatsis had the honor of receiving the last thirty-four boxes of the Timothy Leary archive to catalogue, digitize, and preserve.

Thomas Hatsis joins us for episode 205 to discuss his new book Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance.

Together we discuss some pretty divisive topics: the distinction between social justice and critical social justice, how certain narratives are being imposed on the psychedelic movement, implicit bias research, decolonization rhetoric, the drug war’s actual causes, and contested claims about psychedelic history.

This one might get spicy for you.
Enjoy responsibly.

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Relevant Links

📚 GET THE BOOK: Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance
READ TOM’s SUBSTACK: https://tomhatsis.substack.com/
FOLLOW TOM ON INSTAGRAM: @TOM.HATSIS
Check Tom Out On YouTube @TomHatsisTalk for his culture war content and @EntheoHistorian for his psychedelic history content

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Episode Breakdown

(00:00) Opening
(06:40) Interview Begins
(07:32) Confronting The Imposition Of Controversy
(10:10) The difference between Social Justice and Critical Social Justice
(14:34) “The Narrative”
(18:57) How “The Narrative” is being imposed up the psychedelic movement
(25:57) What is the Psychedelic Renaissance such that Critical Social Justice is undermining it
(34:46) the Critical Social Justice playbook is antithetical to the themes of psychedelic healing
(36:23) Patreon Thanks
(39:47) Why so hard, on the Left?
(45:06) “Pro-Fa” ideological attacks in Psychedelia (Psymposia)
(53:52) The “Theorists” and how they are compromising the psychedelic movement (Chacruna)
(1:00:21) Discussing the realities and falsehoods of “implicit biases”
(1:07:45) The Psychedelic Social Justice Warrior, well-meaning but misinformed
(1:09:41) A quick discussion the the importance of quality citations
(1:12:28) The Three Specific “Narratives” Undermining Psychedelia
(1:13:09) The “Decolonize Narrative”
(1:17:01) A quick aside considering “a different way of knowing”
(1:17:50) Using inaccurate narratives about indigenous peoples to prop up the “decolonize narrative”
(1:20:45) There was very little psychedelic use amongst indigenous people in North America
(1:25:51) The “Racist Narrative”, and how racism is not fuelling the drug war
(1:32:08) Dr. Carl Hart and the fallacy of denouncing psychedelic exceptionalism
(1:41:49) Oregon’s Failed Drug Decriminalization
(1:47:59) A short aside sharing anecdotes about video game addiction
(1:50:30) The “Gender Narrative”, the shield and the spear
(1:55:52) The inaccurate portrayal of psychedelic gay conversion therapy
(1:58:41) Concluding The Interview, Follow Up Links and Social
(2:00:43) Follow Up Links and Socials
(2:03:37) Outro

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Candice 4 days ago Reply

Interesting touch points all up in this 😉.
1. Maria Sabina popped into my head as a woman who used psychedelics outside the reach of western feminism; and,
2. There is an interesting… hypocrisy? Unintended cognitive dissonance?… amongst many in the psychedelic community. Years ago, my first real glimpse of this was during an aya ceremony. No one talked about any of the darker parts of this medicine’s use, particularly in terms of psychic warfare between shamans. It was love, and light, and healing! Imagine my surprise when, during my journey, I find myself engaging in psychic battle with a shaman on a different continent… and, without knowledge of the eagle/condor symbolism, my psychic peace offering was a vision of the eagle and the condor soaring together through the sky above all countries. 🧐 The shaman was blowing what seemed to be psychic darts straight into me. After, during the – ahem – “integration circle”, everyone is sharing their lovely healing experiences. My turn… I speak up, still a bit traumatized and trembling, and share my story. Boy, that felt like a big ol’ energetic bummer for everybody 😂 After, I had several people in this community explain to me the basics of western psychology (as if I was not already fully versed). They used terms like, creative imagination, my dark/shadow side, etc, and how this was just my mind/psyche essentially battling itself. Erm. Excuse me? You are supposedly coming from a place of decentering, decolonization, the western world is full of capitalist colonial bs… but now, suddenly, the indigenous people who have been using this plant medicine for centuries are inferior to your western knowledge? It’s all stories their psychedls made up and they’re too dumb to understand this? 🫠
So yeah, this kind of convoluted split mind fracture that most suffer from does not go away or get healed through the use of psychedelics. Sometimes, psychedelics kick off a potentially catastrophic chain of physiological events that can and do lead to the idiocy, narcissism, and outright cult behavior so prevalent throughout these spaces today.

1 Comment

Candice 4 days ago Reply
Interesting touch points all up in this 😉.
1. Maria Sabina popped into my head as a woman who used psychedelics outside the reach of western feminism; and,
2. There is an interesting… hypocrisy? Unintended cognitive dissonance?… amongst many in the psychedelic community. Years ago, my first real glimpse of this was during an aya ceremony. No one talked about any of the darker parts of this medicine’s use, particularly in terms of psychic warfare between shamans. It was love, and light, and healing! Imagine my surprise when, during my journey, I find myself engaging in psychic battle with a shaman on a different continent… and, without knowledge of the eagle/condor symbolism, my psychic peace offering was a vision of the eagle and the condor soaring together through the sky above all countries. 🧐 The shaman was blowing what seemed to be psychic darts straight into me. After, during the – ahem – “integration circle”, everyone is sharing their lovely healing experiences. My turn… I speak up, still a bit traumatized and trembling, and share my story. Boy, that felt like a big ol’ energetic bummer for everybody 😂 After, I had several people in this community explain to me the basics of western psychology (as if I was not already fully versed). They used terms like, creative imagination, my dark/shadow side, etc, and how this was just my mind/psyche essentially battling itself. Erm. Excuse me? You are supposedly coming from a place of decentering, decolonization, the western world is full of capitalist colonial bs… but now, suddenly, the indigenous people who have been using this plant medicine for centuries are inferior to your western knowledge? It’s all stories their psychedls made up and they’re too dumb to understand this? 🫠
So yeah, this kind of convoluted split mind fracture that most suffer from does not go away or get healed through the use of psychedelics. Sometimes, psychedelics kick off a potentially catastrophic chain of physiological events that can and do lead to the idiocy, narcissism, and outright cult behavior so prevalent throughout these spaces today.

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How Identity Politics Poisons The Psychedelic Renaissance | Tom Hatsis ~ ATTMind Podcast 205