THE PSYCHEDELIC MOVEMENT IS IN A VERY WEIRD PLACE

How does raving fit into a field increasingly dominated by right-wing legislators, Big Pharma, and traumatized war vets?

There has been a lot of discussion in the psychedelic scene about where the movement is heading in an era when MAHA, Big Pharma, and Silicon Valley are the biggest drivers of psychedelic policy, capital, and culture. Drawing from my freewheeling, often hilarious, and sometimes harrowing forays into this inspiring and insane industry over the past few years, this essay is my attempt to take stock of how we got to this pivotal turning point, and where raving—as an act of temporary estrangement that reveals the ironies of default reality—fits into this mess.

In June 2023, I attended Psychedelic Science, the largest psychedelic conference in the world. The five-day event took place in a sprawling convention center in downtown Denver, attracting 12,000 attendees from 52 countries, including not just the biggest scientific experts, but also random celebrities, politicians, and billionaires who’d decided to attach their brands to tripping.

On the main stage, nepo baby Jaden Smith, NFL player Aaron Rodgers, and Boomer rockstar Melissa Etheridge yapped about how much ayahuasca had changed their lives, while in the side rooms, wiley entrepreneurs hustled to raise Series A funding while the money spigot from deep-pocketed investors like soap mogul Dr Bronner and tech bro Christian Angermayer was still flowing. In the fluorescent-lit, carpeted halls, briefcase-toting Pharma investors sipped kava mocktails next to rat-tailed hippies, while buttoned-up therapists snapped selfies with feathered shamans, and DMT-vaping psychonauts swapped esoteric trip reports with galaxy brain researchers. Even though direct sales of psychedelics was still illegal in Colorado, vendors in the exhibition hall still hawked pounds of shrooms wrapped in giant plastic bags, while offering samples of LSD microdoses to passersby.

It was a surreal scene that spoke to the power of MAPS—the influential psychedelic advocacy organization behind the conference—as well as its charismatic, 69-year-old founder Rick Doblin, who I would often spot heading out to the Burner-inflected afterparties as I returned to the hotel at 2am, joint dangling from his lips. The psychedelic industry had hit a high point in the hype cycle, buoyed by early clinical trial results in the 2010s that demonstrated how psychedelics are effective for mental health disorders such as depression and PTSD. Emerging from the shadows of prohibition, these substances were quickly shedding their reputations for decadence and delinquency—instead being cast as a paradigm shift in mental health care. Everyone expected that Lykos, the for-profit Pharma arm of MAPS, would fulfill its promise to get FDA approval for MDMA-assisted therapy within the next year or two. In this window of time, it was like the industry was holding its breath, and everything felt possible—as long as you believed.

Some of the more colorful attendees of Psychedelic Science (all photos by me)

In the summer of 2025, I returned to Denver for the next edition of Psychedelic Science. Only 8,000 people were in attendance this time, and the previous edition’s atmosphere of frenzied excitement had dissipated from the building. In the two long years, since the last conference, the dream of psychedelic legalization had been dashed after the FDA rejected Lykos’ application for MDMA-assisted therapy, citing insufficient data, issues with clinical trial design, and a host of other concerns—including whether the drug’s euphoric effects could lead to addiction. Sexual misconduct by a pair of therapists who participated in the trial also led to intense public scrutiny on the ethics of psychedelic therapy, and Psymposia, the leftist watchdog group that aggressively amplified these concerns, was blamed for torpedoing MAPS/Lykos’ efforts and sowing division.

As legalization stalled, funding dried up and stocks collapsed, leading to several high-profile psychedelic startups like Field Trip Health and Silo Wellness to shut down and file for bankruptcy. Industry-wide turbulence seemed to suggest cracks in the dominant systems that were struggling to integrate these powerful tools. Was it even possible for clinical trials to measure the totality of the psychedelic experience? As companies tried to turn these slippery substances into ordinary medicines backed by insurance and co-pays, it seemed like they were also revealing the contradictions in capitalism, as well as cultural fears around pleasure and dependency.

At the conference, founders of psychedelic companies spoke candidly on panels about their failures, including how they had overestimated the public’s desire for expensive psychedelic treatments—leading to the closure of luxury ketamine clinics once hyped as the future of medicine. Some of these CEOs also admitted that investing in social reciprocity programs with indigenous communities were “distractions”—mistakes that detracted from their profit-seeking goals. Many conversations, both on and off stage, revolved around the dark side of ketamine, with the lack of proper regulatory oversight and potential for addiction leading many to wonder if ketamine clinics were a preview of what could go wrong if other psychedelics are commercialized too quickly.

Even the exhibition hall that previously felt like an open-air drug market had been cleaned up, with vendors no longer openly selling psychedelics; indigenous shamans offering sniffs of hapé (sacred tobacco snuff) even got in trouble with security. While the adrenaline rush of unadulterated hope had been neutered by the collective comedown, in many ways, the atmosphere also felt more grounded and connected to reality.. There was no longer a sense that anyone could start a psychedelic company with a pitch deck and a dream.

Conference merch... would you cop?

Now that MDMA was no longer the frontrunner for FDA approval, the industry’s attention shifted towards ibogaine, a South African shrub known to be particularly effective as a treatment for addiction. Just a few days before the conference, Texas Governor Greg Abbott had signed Senate Bill 2308, allocating $50 million in public funding to study ibogaine as a treatment for opioid use disorder and other mental health conditions. Seemingly overnight, Texas became the biggest government funder for psychedelic research, with conservative politicians like ex-governor Rick Perry now these drugs’ biggest proponents. War veterans, who suffer from suicide and addiction at outsized rates, were now the moral center of the psychedelic movement’s more militarized and MAHA direction—strategically highlighted in fundraising, lobbying, and PR efforts because of their bipartisan appeal. Who could be so heartless as to deny life-saving care to vets?

I wandered around the conference in a miasma of increasing confusion and dread. Psychedelics have historical ties to the hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-war movement, but in this befuddling new era, they were being championed by Navy SEALS, Republican legislators, and military vets who spoke about healing the trauma of warfare as a patriotic duty. Meanwhile, MAPS’ attempt to legalize MDMA-assisted psychotherapy had seemingly failed in part because they failed a leftist group’s purity test, but the companies poised to become the new front-runners, Compass and AtaiBeckley, are venture-backed biotech companies with ruthlessly commercial and IP-driven strategies that leave little regard for public benefit. Psychedelic legalization seemed closer than ever to gaining bipartisan, institutional support—but at what cost?