The Psychedelic Renaissance in Mental Health Has A Business Strategy—And A Right-Wing Lobby
It's been a long, strange trip for psychedelics, from counterculture to multi-billion dollar mental health industry.
Psychedelic use has come a long way from the era when Republican President Richard Nixon declared acid-dropping psychologist Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America” to today, when right-wing conservatives champion hallucinogens as a panacea for mental illness and support their widespread commercialization.
Where Hippies and Yippies and New Left radicals in the 1960s and 1970s experimented with mind-bending psychedelics with the goal of “expanding consciousness” and having “far-out” experiences, nowadays there’s talk of “psychedelic therapy,” the “psychedelic drug market” and “regulatory risk.”
This transformation of psychedelics into a “value investment opportunity” has brought together Silicon Valley billionaires, ultra-right figures, and conservative Republican politicians.
The list of rightwing icons who have openly promoted hallucinogens includes Jordan Peterson, Q-Shaman, Palantir founder Peter Thiel, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently promised cong…