Specialist Panel - MEDICALISATION AND RECIPROCITY IN PSYCHEDELIC TREATMENT @Medicine Festival '21

'Psychedelics in a changing World: medicalisation, reciprocity and planetary healing' With: Ben Sessa, Gabriel Amezcua, Nick von Christierson, David Luke, Andrea Langlois & Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner. This is a recording of a fascinating panel chaired by Chasing Consciousness in the talks tent of Medicine Festival programmed by Ruby Reed. It included psychologists, psychiatrists, psychedelic entrepreneurs and activists at the top of their field. The panel gave a nuanced and positive overview of the issues associated with the now inevitable medicalisation of these psychedelic compounds. With great sensitivity they approached the very difficult issue of how to honour the roots of this therapy in indigenous shamanism, without reducing it to just money or token indigenous board members. Despite positive predictions for the future it became clear by the end of the talk just how complex the issue of reciprocity is. You can check our interview with Ashleigh Murphy Beiner of the Imperial College team on 'Testing psychedelics for depression' here. And look out for future interviews with panelists Dr. Ben Sessa and David Luke to come soon! 00:00 Introduction to the speakers 02:49 Medicalisation: Just a success story or are there shadows to call out early in the process? 03:10 Ben Sessa: safe, effective medicines as alternatives to long term pharmaceutical 05:00 Getting to the root cause of the problem rather than papering over the symptoms 06:40 'A psychiatric renaissance' 09:20 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: Learning from the shadow to confront worldwide depression 15:40 Designing ethical psychedelic treatment models that match its uniqueness 16:15 David Luke: Biomedical model VS subjective psychological model 18:00 Bio-Psycho-social-spiritual models may not work with medicalisation 21:00 Nick Van Christiersen of Woven Science 22:00 Being inspired by Indigenous models: Diagnosis, preparation, peak experience, integration in community 23:00 Psychedelic treatment is a threat to big pharma 24:00 Andrea Langlois: Keeping the door more widely open than just to medicalisation 25:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Accessibility, decolonisation, inclusion of indigenous people in the medical process 28:00 Andrea Langlois: The indigenous idea of Reciprocity. The ailments of modern society like depression and climate change are a call to come back into a relationship of reciprocity with Gaia 31:00 Risk of hijacking of reciprocity, to green wash profiteering 32:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Giving and getting, participation, engagement, respect not money 36:00 Do you think they really want to be ‘preserved’!? 39:00 Nick Van Christiersen: reparations before reciprocity 42:00 David Luke: Is it our right to give them to have a seat at the table!? 45:00 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: We have so much to learn and adapt from the indigenous methodology 47:00 The newly founded Association for Psychedelic Therapies 48:00 Ben Sessa: Reciprocity between carer and patient 53:00 Andrea Langlois: Indigenous knowledge should be understood as science and decriminalised 59:00 Ben Sessa: Getting it over the line - decriminalisation 1:01:50 David Luke: Changing our whole world view through psychedelics, to reboot the culture of a species in crisis 1:06:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Psychedelics are confined mostly to privileged white people when they are most needed by vulnerable minorities 1:08:00 De-Regulation of substances, accessibility for poor communities with trauma and PTSD 1:11:00 Andrea Langlois: Earth practice and our own western relationship with plants and the natural world 1:18:00 Closing comments