The… [psychiatrization] of psychedelics…
…monopolization is aided by society’s general belief that individuals who do not choose the medically sanctioned way to get better are doing something deviant… today’s psychedelic reboot, however, leaves behind the countercultural stuff of lore in favor of professionalism, doctors’ visits, and aggressively marketed treatments for diseases of the brain… psychiatry is socially vested with the power to define abnormal behavior and is the central place in our society where one seeks a cure for what that profession has defined as pathological – a sort of scientific parsing and cleansing of deviance once left to religion. What happens when you marry that kind of discursive power with well-funded marketing schemes and the quest for profits?
…the idea that Leary, in particular, spoiled the entire enterprise of bringing psychedelics into conventional medicine is more “performative” than fact, a way of creating a straw man in order to define and encourage a new, more surgical version of psychedelic use that is sober, hygienic, cleaned of politics and bias, and the antithesis of a hippie happening… any field that seeks to ameliorate human suffering has deeply noble elements. But… are wrong to characterize psychiatry as somehow cleansed of politics and bias. Its power as judge and jury in the incarceration of individuals in institutions and hospitals, its participation in the medicalization of natural human complexities, its history of draconian practices on and stigmatization of marginalized groups are a few examples of its political force. The authors are correct about the dangers of overexuberance. But, ironically, the talk of miracles and utopia is largely coming from their own professional community… like all cures, this will take human effort, since any attempt to decommodify psychedelics as magic pills for pathologized problems threatens to weaken a remarkably eloquent and powerful sales pitch. The most conscientious of healers and the most dedicated investors have one ethic in common: a commitment to place the needs of their constituents above their own. The current renaissance would do well to protect the Hippocratic mission of the former group.
Original Article (Jacobin):
The corporatization of psychedelics would be a disaster
Artwork Fair Use: Scray
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