SPEAKERS

Psychedelic medicines were historically used as “conversion therapies” to convert lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people to become cisgender heterosexuals. In recent years, the psychedelic community has largely ignored how psychedelic drugs were employed as tools of oppression targeting LGBTQ people in anti-therapeutic ways. We have yet to reckon with the historical harms inflicted on sexual minority people, as many of those harms continue to be subtly perpetrated today in psychedelic practices. I will offer a roadmap for how to confront structural heterosexism and transphobia at every level in the psychedelic research and practice communities. The only way to dismantle non-affirming practices against LGBTQ people in psychedelic research is for all of us to take proactive steps on every level. Specifically, we should strive to: retire the “traditional” male/female dyad and replace with gender neutral dyads; acknowledge that sexual minority stress causes disproportionate harm to LGBTQ people; research the question of differential responses between LGBTQ individuals and a heteronormative population; create new affirmative therapies by, with, and for LGBTQ people; research how psychedelics lead to changes in sexual orientation and gender identity and affect internalized homophobia; pursue sex and sexuality research; access queer wisdom and experience; and ally with other disenfranchised groups and get intersectional in our policies and practices. Finally, I will ask how we can queer the psychedelic “mystical experience” which is theorized in a narrow monistic lineage. Queer spirituality, like psychedelic spirituality, can be embodied, relational, political, and visionary.