[00:00:12] Pascal: Hello, welcome to One Degree Shifts. I'm your host, Pascal Tremblay. I'm the co founder of Nektar, and today I'm really honored and excited to be joined by Dr. Nicholas Powers. He's an associate professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury, and hi, welcome.
[00:00:29] Nicholas: It is really good to be here. Thank you.
[00:00:31] Pascal: Yeah, thanks you for thank you for being here.
Um, so Nicholas wrote a book, which came out actually this week. Congratulations on that. How did this week feel for you actually now that you launched your book? It's not your first book. I think you've written two or three before, but how did this one feel?
[00:00:47] Nicholas: It felt like watching a child go into kindergarten for the first day. And you've prepped it, I've made sure its shoes were on right, and the shoelaces were tied, and I walked my book out to the open door of publishing, and it went out into the world, and it's kind of, you know, it's in the school now, and it's going to meet new people, it's going to go down hallways it's never been before, and the book is going to meet, like, its teachers, and it's just going to start to grow up. in public now. And at this point, all I can do is stand back and watch it as it grows, maybe help it with its homework once in a while. But at this point it's on its own.
[00:01:30] Pascal: Mm. It's a beautiful analogy. And I'll read the synopsis because I think it's beautifully written. Uh, it's called Black Psychedelic Revolution, From Trauma to Liberation. How Psychedelics Can Heal Historical, Intergenerational, and Racialized Trauma. An Afro futuristic take on black psychedelia toward joy and liberation.
And it goes on to share, the mainstream has long seen psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege, money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment with drugs without risking arrest or worse. Despite psychedelics as deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultural practices, most psychedelic spaces have excluded Black people and other people of color.
But psychedelics like psilocybin, are not just for the rarified liberal elite, they're definitely not just for white folks. Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full scale societal healing, and I'd love that you go into that societal healing, we'll talk more about that later, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power, the promised land as envisioned by Martin Luther King Jr.
And finally, in Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Powers charts how psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma. He shows that these medicines unlock a return to oneself, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and beingness, otherwise disrupted by whiteness, and explores the psychedelics ability to transform individual wellness, even as they transcend it.
Drugs taken with therapy can heal, but drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation. That's really beautiful. What prompted you to write the book and why write it now?
[00:03:17] Nicholas: I was contacted by North Atlantic Books a few years ago. The acquisition editor asked After seeing my interviews online and reading a few articles, asked me, would you like to write a book about race and psychedelics? And at first my head inflated like a hot air balloon. I was thinking about money and glory and fame.
I was like, Oh, I'm going to be the big shit. And so at first it was, uh, a project that was being driven by vanity. And as I started opening my notebook and rough draft ideas, you know, my son is with me all the time. And I began to just look at him. And ask, well, what can this book do for him? What message can this book have that would make his life possible? And those questions for me are high risk questions, because he's going to see a world wracked by global warming. He's probably going to see a world More deeply divided by income inequality. So the poor will be poor. There may not be a middle class and there may be just kind of economic warlords with their territories. And I don't want him to live in that world. And that hot air balloon of my ego quickly began to deflate. And it just, the air went out like, and I thought there's two books I could write. There's what I call the Oprah book, which is, you know, fame, glory. It's easy. It's palatable. It's something that is easily
digestible by the great masses of people.
And there's this other book that opens a vision of social revolution, powered by psychedelics. And I knew that even though it's riskier, it may not have as large of an audience, that's the book that needs to be written, because that's the book that if the message is heard, and made into reality, that he and all the kids I see on the playground, May have a chance years and years and years from now, you know decades from now They may have a chance So I started writing and once I stepped away from the Oprah book and started writing the real book Everything just started flowing at the place because it was really a love letter to my son It was a love letter to New York City. It was a love letter to the future and Everything started clicking into place until it I felt like I wasn't writing the book, that the book was writing itself through me, that I was channeling some greater force.
The core idea that was something I saw repeatedly in black literature, and it was the scene of, like, say, Malcolm X discovering the history of slavery and by reading, uh, accounts of slavery from abolitionists while he was in jail.
And him. Realizing that the United States is kind of one big white supremacist trap and him returning to himself He shaved his straightened hair. He got rid of the zoot suit and he started becoming Malcolm X, right? It was the same thing with Sarah Shakur You know, when she became politicized, she realized that she was straightening her hair and the people when she was growing up as a child would bleach their skin, you know, or try to lighten their skin.
[00:07:09] Nicholas: And again, when she became politicized, she let her natural hair grow. She began to adopt an African based name. And I saw this return to the body over and over and over again. And once I saw that within the black community, American literary canon, and then the African diasporic canon.
So Caribbean and African. I began to see it
everywhere. I saw it in women's literature, women escaping the male gaze and burning their bras and, and demanding pay for domestic care, demanding equal pay, like escaping male, um, caricatures of women. I saw it in the gay liberation, literature in the gay American literary canon where gay men and women were escaping from what straight people and they wanted to return to their authentic selves.
And finally, I saw it with the worker and I went back and I looked even at Hegel and Marx and there it was in Hegel's Master Slave Dialectic and the Phenomenology of Spirit. I think it came out in 1807. Karl Marx's, um, uh, Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts and his Communist Manifesto. Basically it has all of his early work.
He's talking about, you know, The worker alienated by their labor because they produce things they no longer control and value. They know no longer own. They seize the means of production and take back to themselves. And they return
to themselves and over and over again, I saw this return to the body. And so finally, this helped me understand that one role that psychedelics can do is with the proper set setting and container.
So therapy, but political therapy, that it could help people return from being alienated and the power structures that they live in, which is a classic, repeating, repeating. intellectual and emotional reaction that I've seen over and over and over and over again. So
that was the core of the book.
[00:09:18] Pascal: Right. It's a beautiful time that all of this came together. It's such a poignant time in history. We're kind of, you know, in late stage capitalism and sort of wrangling with, well, Trump just came into power about four days ago and already he's axing stuff around civil rights and, racial equity and, uh, Systems of support, right?
So we already, it's a very important with climate change. And I'm, I really relate to that given. I also have a son. I think about this a lot. It's like the future we want to see in the world.
[00:09:46] Nicholas: And while you were writing the book and doing your research and yeah, maybe share as well from your lived experience, what is the reality of, of psychedelics today and black communities and maybe even go back into the brief history of, of the relationship between the two.
So growing up, I never really saw a lot of psychedelic use, whether like, so I grew up in New York. I grew up in the Northeast corridor. Like I was born in New York. My family's from New York, the New York weekends, grandparent. And I never really saw in my neighborhoods and my family's a lot of psychedelic use. I saw drug use, but the drugs were generally drugs of escapism. And not necessarily
[00:10:28] Nicholas: of reflection. You know, there was
alcohol, it was weed, it was cocaine, crack.
Um,
[00:10:35] Pascal: and I
[00:10:38] Nicholas: drugs used to escape the pain of life, but not really a drug used to explore the inner world. And. My first experience really was really my mom's story. My mom telling me about, uh, her use of psychedelics as a hippie and activist protester in New York in the sixties, right? So that was kind of the moment when you had two rising countercultures.
You had the hippie counterculture
at which psychedelics specifically LSD and magic mushroom psilocybin was one of the main, um, lubricative agents, right? It lubricated people's minds out of the mainstream and Also, the rise of the black power movement, the young lords. And so they all kind of were, you know, in the same cafes in the same clubs, dancing, sharing drugs, sharing each other. and so my mom told me stories about it Then when I got I went into a liberal arts college. It was a really, really artsy college called Emerson. And it was there and it was mostly white college, right? There was a, I mean, it was a very small
amount of black and Latino and Asian. And, but, you know, we were there, but it was mostly white and it was very artistic.
And there was a lot of raves and we went to the rave scene and drove a bus to some abandoned factory and. Did MDMA and underneath the bright multicolored lights and everyone's sweating and dancing and the room is filling up with body heat. It felt like I was in this amniotic fluid in this kind of womb and we're all being reborn and we're all like hugging and kissing and cuddling. And we were breaking through the walls that we were
Instructed to keep up and we were taking off the mask that we had been given our middle class mask, our race mask, our gender mask, our, you know, our religious
mask. All of these were just, and then we were dancing on the mask until they were just like little bits and pieces of, you know, Broken tissue on the ground and we're just stomping on them with our feet because we're just so happy to be human again to touch each other's raw skin again, you know, to kiss each other again to laugh again as Children. And so in that rave scene, there was this incubation of the
1960s ethos of the new Adam returning to Eden. And then we would be reborn at the end of the rave and, you know, smelling like dried sweat and grinding our teeth, get on the bus, go back to the college. And there are, you know, I read Allen Ginsberg's Howl and William Burroughs and Amiri Baraka and Octavio Paz and all the poets.
And, So, we were getting well versed in a counterculture, and I was learning that psychedelics actually had this countercultural frame, moral frame, about rebelling against the establishment. And that's how I, I kind of initially discovered psychedelics, but it was never really big in the Black and Latino communities, in my neighborhood and my friends or family. I really discovered that Oddly enough, through my mom's stories and then at college, you know, kind of a white dominant,
uh, kind of, I would say artsy college Okay. Okay. Okay. I kind of stopped doing psychedelics and then I went to Burning Man in 2002 that I really discovered psychedelics also as a therapeutic
something
that could actually heal my trauma, um, in 2002.
And after that, that was When the journey began for me. to ask the questions. Well, what role can psychedelics have in the lives of my family, my friends, my neighborhoods, my people. And I began to kind of have a retrospective look backwards. And I thought, I thought about, you know, the families that were broken.
I thought about, you know, You know, my friends who saw their fathers on crack. I thought
about My uh, mom telling me about her really good friend who she lost to crack and cocaine. I thought about, um, my my friends who were just filled sometimes with a lot of confusion and anger. And didn't know really where to go to or really why they were so angry or so upset.
And I just thought how many of the people I knew in my life could have been helped if we had a good journey together. And if, and if we had taken, um, psychedelics, not because we needed to escape from the world, but because we were trying to rediscover the one that was inside of us.
But those questions came much later, you know, much later,
[00:15:36] Pascal: Right. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, uh, exploration phase that you had. And beyond that, to the African roots of the medicine, to like the Bwiti people and Iboga and all the traditions that also came from there as well. There's a, there's a rich history, a rich tapestry of, of Black psychedelic use in the world.
And I love that moment you shared about the sort of time you had it with that, those raves. And, um, can you share a little bit more of that feeling of, um, you're in this, lived experience and this body that has been oppressed and had centuries of slavery and segregation and systemic racism that has left, in general, the Black community with profound intergenerational trauma.
And here you are piercing through that bubble and rediscovering yourself. In power, in community, in connection, can you share a little bit more how that felt for you as a community with your friends?
[00:16:34] Nicholas: You know, I think the one way I was able to bridge them was that when I was in college, I think it was like maybe, I think it was my sophomore year. At that point, my mom lived in Hartford and in Hartford, I had gotten to known a kind of Rasta community and, you know, they were kind of telling me about Rastafari and, and then I was, uh, I also had a mentor who was also a professor. And
so, and he had long dreads. And so I really began to investigate Rastafari.
And so, you know, I was listening to Bob Marley and Malcolm X. And.
to sort a
And so finally one day I sat down and I had two friends of mine twist dreads into my hair.
I want And I got my, my dreads began to grow. And as my dreads began to grow and I hung out. with the local Rastas who were in Boston,
just a they were, you know, we would smoke weed. I Would hear through them, these kinds of mystical visions that were very Afrocentric. And in that altered consciousness, it was only weed, you know but in that altered consciousness, we would sometimes play music, we would just talk. Sometimes we kind of like musical talk a little bit. I wouldn't call it rap, But you know, just kind of this vibe.
Having dreads was a way of connecting me to, a mystical underground within the African and Latino diaspora. And in the Latinos, Rastas, but not as many, but there was definitely a lot of Santeria, which is a, syncretic religious tradition.
You may see them dressed all in white at Coney Island,
offering gifts to the ancestors.
few And so I began to connect this mystical, syncretic, religious tradition underground of Rastas and Santeria with the Malcolm X, with the Octavio Paz, with the Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and that was a way to see that even within the diaspora, there were these mystical tradition
traditions that also relied on altered states of consciousness, but not LSD, not really magic mushrooms, not MDMA.
And, and the thing is that a lot of my friends in the college who were of color, right. You know, so Latino, Black American, Caribbean American, you know, maybe one or second generation African. Again, we were very few On a mostly white campus. But I, I knew that they began to be afraid for me because, you know, we talk all the time, we're really good friends, but they was saw that I was
experimenting with the psychedelics and that my dreads were growing and for them, they were getting high fades and they were starting to wear business suits and business dresses and, you know, getting their resume polished and they were, they were using college to get into.
The mainstream corporate world, because that's where they went to college to do. And so when they saw me becoming, you know, more on the kind of creative extreme edge and the kind of, um, intellectual cliff and exploring experiences with, with psychedelics that they would pull me aside and be like, Hey man, are you okay?
Are you really sure you want to do this? And, you know, people are watching you and be careful.
I And we began to split ways, not out of any
animosity, but they just, I was going to a place they couldn't go, you know, they,
they were escaping from
intergenerational poverty. There were the, maybe the first in the family to go to college.
Emerson wasn't cheap. So they had to get a good job to pay everything back. And, you know, honestly, so did I, but I guess I was maybe just. I was following this light and I just couldn't stop following it. There was just something I needed to experience. And the one of the doorways was a tab of acid. And I just opened that doorway and went through the light to get to the other side. Uh, and it was such a beautiful light that I had to go.
[00:21:00] Pascal: In the book, you shared that psychedelics offer a chance to reconnect with authentic selfhood, free from the masks imposed by survival in racist systems. And as minorities, whether it's racial, social, or minorities, that those communities are oftentimes the overlap with the least psychedelically familiar communities.
So you were living on that. Edge there as you were, uh, leaving college. Basically, you were in the zone where it doesn't quite often overlap, basically.
[00:21:30] Nicholas: Yeah. And then after college, you know, I kept my dreads and, but then I became a reporter and actually eventually psychedelics fell out of my life. And it was. The pressures of you got to pay bills, you got to show up to work. And, you know, there I am with my dreads, but people loved my articles.
And so I had to carry the pride I had in being countercultural, and the pride I had in being a writer. and a good worker into this, into these spaces. and but eventually psychedelics really kind of fell by the wayside. I felt that life was getting small. I couldn't really describe it, but I felt suffocated. Like the circle was closing around me. Like I was going to get, I was on the conveyor belt to normal town. You know, I was ahead of, there was a fiance, there was a fiance ahead at the time. wE were doing all the, like the, normal things were on the, conveyor belt and there was something about it that just felt wrong. I don't know. I couldn't explain it.
And then 2001, September happens in 2001.
And Okay. Okay. the air smelled like chalk. Uh, I remember this one person carrying this tattered, giant, tattered American flag. Must have been like five feet long. Uh, up And down the street screaming. Uh,
All
I remember people walking around with candles, looking for their loved ones who were crushed underneath the rubble.
And in that year, all of us had this,
bye.
the echoes of everyone screaming that was inside of our bodies. And we were just shaking all the time. And my friends gave me an invite to Burning Man. And I was just kind of lost at that point.
And I went there. And I hated it at first. Cause I was just like these fucking hippies, you know, like fuck them. I was really angry at them. Cause like, I just like, you know, how can people have fun when all this is happening? And then there was a guy and he gave me some ecstasy and acid. His name was Tony.
He had a very thick New York accent. And we kind of looked at each other and we didn't really have to say too much. And he's like, I know what you're going through. So he gave me ecstasy and acid. He didn't lie to me. He just said, look, it's not a cure, but it's going to open up a door. And it did. And I took it. And that was the
first time when it felt like, my body was erased.
up
And I was just a cloud
and forth.
hovering above the desert. I didn't even feel like a body anymore. And the stars were falling down like snow and I was crying and laughing and I kind of vomited up 9 11 in a sense, not literally, not in a gooey way, but just coughing and screaming and crying.
And when I came back to the to the burning man, I felt a catharsis purged clean. And when I came back, flew back on a flight to New York
and I got off at JFK, I remember standing at the, you know, waiting for the train. I had my poncho, I was still covered with dust.
And I felt my body open, my, my chest could breathe, my
muscles were loose. And all of that anger and tension from 9 11 had gone out of my body. So that was the first time I had therapy with psychedelics. And that was a very powerful turning point for me to understand what trauma feels like in the body.
What it feels to ingest psychedelics, in that case, I was candy flipping at LSD and MDMA, to go through, like, therapeutic, wild healing in the middle of nowhere. And then to come back, feel that the trauma had been purged from my body. And it was like being a big 165 or 175 pound tube of toothpaste and having it all squeezed out of you. So that was a
big lesson for me.
Okay. totally not a micro dose.
[00:26:02] Pascal: Um, so I think this is this, these experiences you're sharing is, it's really touching on one of the key questions I want to ask you today, which is, And a really big thread of the book as well, which is how can psychedelics heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma which individually all three of these things are really heavy and dense and deep and powerful.
So how can psychedelics do that? You shared one story, but how can we take these medicines, and like you say in the book, it's not just about individual healing, but healing a whole nation. How do we, how do we do that? It's a big question. You don't have to have all the answers.
Hi. Yeah. Hi. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:04] Nicholas: and it has bulldozed its way into the mainstream media where the story of psychedelics has changed significantly and dramatically. So, in that way, it's, it's hit a real big success and then recently that it kind of hit a snag because the FDA, um, has not approved, uh, maps, you know, application to make MDMA legal for psychedelic therapy. And I bring that up because the medical model, I think for communities of color, black and Latino specifically in urban areas, I think it's going to be the very, the first on ramp, you know, and I think we already have, we don't have to wait for the FDA.
We already have weed is legal.
Ketamine is legal. There's lots of, not say lots, but there are some, uh, black run ketamine therapy clinics, and also just. Some very good ketamine therapy clinics. Um, they're not black run, but they're incredible. And so we already have on ramps.
And those on ramps use the medical model, which is combining therapy with treatment that I myself have experienced.
Yeah.
So for me, what, to answer your question, Directly now is
make
and saying that there are some practical applications for communities of color and basically where is the pain? Where is the pain? That's what that's your aim. Aim at the pain and aiming at the pain means that for a lot of families.
name?
weren't able to be there because of mass incarceration or because of poverty or because of drug use and, uh, some kids were raised by their grandparents and so they had, they were seeing their parents, grandparents, um, in a sense, you know, getting old and sometimes dying, you know, a little bit early.
And terminal diseases like cancer are high, hypertension, heart attacks, heart disease, all of these things are, um, are higher in communities of color. Well, one of the places of incredible success
is hospice care and dealing with terminal illnesses. Psychedelics have shown to be really helpful because they allow for people to experience a temporary psychological death.
to
eventually the trip subsides, the chemicals subside, and then the person's ego comes back, but they've experienced this mini death, and it, in, a sense, helps them practice for the big death. So hospice care, terminal care, so that's a big place, especially because, again, a lot of our grandparents,
um, higher rates of terminal illnesses, um, wind up dying younger. you know, the other place is for people who have been dealt dealing with homicides and gun violence. Well, psychedelics again have been used to help soldiers coming back from Um, Afghanistan coming back from Iraq coming back and have lost friends have dealt with gun violence literally on a systemic scale.
Well, there's lots
of gun violence, unfortunately, in some of the poorest neighborhoods, and there are teens, and this Is probably controversial, but there are teens, uh, and even younger than teens, like middle school kids who have been deeply, deeply shocked and wounded by gun violence. What would happen if we wind up treating gun violence with psychedelic therapy, literally ketamine and saying, Combining this with therapy could help these kids heal from the loss of their friends. Um,
third, is what about combining psychedelics with violence interruption? There's violence interruption groups that basically go and try to stop, um, beefs and brawls from escalating into gun violence. Well, again, what if you took some of the, um, the members of these different.
crews and said, you know, look, It's either juvie or jail or like, let's do some psychedelic therapy.
And I think the great thing about psychedelic therapy is that it's so powerful that it actually erases, however briefly the machismo, right. And the
kind of armor that you wear sometimes as a man of color, I wore that armor for way too long. And that, you know, so, you know, cause if you're in regular therapy, you can bullshit the therapist, right.
Or just put up a wall. But under psychedelics that that overpowers that, you know, so what if he had violence interrupters who use psychedelics as an aid? So
there's that ability. And then finally, you know, like all communities. Um, you know, there's abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse that people that have a snowball effect.
So it starts off as a child, and then if that has a snowball effect, if if that negative self image of those insults of that abuse of that molestation, if that's not treated, early, then it has a snowball effect and it winds up growing into self destructive behavior as adults. And that self destructive behavior can, it can cause families to split
apart, you know, people to get divorced.
It can cause, um, addictions, um, lots of alcohol use. It could cause self destructive behavior at your jobs, self sabotage. It can cause, um, Um, promiscuity again, I'm not trying to be sex negative, but again, just an unhealthy, uh, promiscuity, no boundaries. Um, there's just so many different ways that all the forms of abuse show up, you know?
So again, psychedelic therapy has to be very, very effective in this. Um, so, For me, there's already some very clear needs that you can say we have proof that psychedelic therapy has Effectiveness with this particular kind of symptom this prompt this problem this
neurosis and That if we set up then Center So this is where we go to the more kind of programmatic part of this answer, which is It should be supported by Medicaid and Medicare. This should be supported through government programs and to make it accessible to the very people who are traumatized the most.
And this is where the third level, which is where I think the medical model trends is it transitions into a revolutionary model? Because if you really take the medical model seriously, a lot of pain is
not just The happenstance of life.
Not all, but there's a great amount of pain that we deal with that's inherited from the past. Yeah. and was created by even more forms of violent oppression in the past that deformed family systems and family dynamics, passed that on to kids in the form of trauma. And the kids created ego defenses, which sometimes created more trauma for the next generation. And so
we have inherited trauma and that. then there is the current levels of oppression, mass incarceration, wars, poverty, and that That's current. And so now people can say, well, wait, if we really wanted to stop trauma, we can't just stop at personal individual therapy. We have to think about how is the system itself that we're living with also creating trauma. And like, even in the United States, there's, um, it was like 340 some million people in the United States, 344, I think, million people. There's 140 million people who are like a paycheck away from poverty. They're like the working poor, 140 million people. That's almost half the country. There's, um, 14 million kids who go hungry. There's 44, 000, people who die every year from no health care. There's almost 800, 000 homeless people in the United States. And this is the richest country in the world. And people are sleeping in their cars, skipping medicine so they can get food like that systemic trauma. So people
then go from the medical model, which is Medicaid, Medicare unions to go to the next level, which is holding ceremonies, You were at the African meeting ground, Um, other places of historical import and for people then to have set setting and container ceremonies that allow them to question not just their lives, but the society. And that to me is when the medical model model reaches its logical conclusion and it becomes a revolutionary model.
[00:35:56] Pascal: Do you see the level of access, um, sort of policy and funding sort of being at the forefront of starting to change the story? And also, you mentioned it, which I want to touch on the cultural. Uh, oppression and specifically to the, uh, psychedelic space, like it, it's been a very white dominated culture since the 60s and 70s.
So, how do you see Disevolving in terms of including more folks, adding more voices, truly having a community that reflects the teachings of the medicines and to support black communities better and to support black voices more, um, and to create a system and a vehicle for healing that is authentic and also really compassionate, um, and more inclusive.
[00:36:47] Nicholas: You know, I think the, the main need, at least for the, for psychedelic revolution is that there has to be. more psychedelic therapists trained. It's again, it's not the majority by any, any means, but there's a sizable amount of black and Latino indigenous and Asian. Um,
Everybody's
folks who are coming out of the psychedelic closet have, have, can bear witness to the healing that psychedelics have done to their lives.
Also just the opening of their imagination, being able to see other worlds are possible.
it. Okay. I'm
like pollen being blown from a flower, that
it.
if they
were kind of blown across like and just kind of cast across the country, like where people come from and are able to start offering underground cell network organized psychedelic therapy. in other words, not waiting for LSD, MDMA and. Mushrooms to be legalized like ketamine is legal And weed is legal, you know I'm sure all that will happen in due time transcript.
but to start creating underground networks that are Very well organized But
well trained people who are already trying to do the healing now.
language is,
And I think the one of the things that the already existing underground network can do is to try to train more people. Now there are trainings that happen at legal institutions. Like I literally see them on the email a lot and that's also a path to pursue. Um, but my only concern is that ultimately every what I hear from people who are spaceholders and therapists, psychedelic therapist, is that much of what you learn happens on the job. Like you can learn theory. You can learn about safety, learn about
protocol and institutions, and those are helpful and necessary, but in terms of actually like getting like up to your elbows and someone's like subconscious and really helping them through a hard trip and
trying to help them integrate what they've discovered about themselves, you know, into into their lives that that, you know, that's something that takes the wisdom of people have been doing this for decades, and some of that is not going to be found.
in a formal institution. Some will, but some won't. So I would
say right now the biggest for me, and it could be wrong, but for me, the biggest, um, next step is really starting to get a whole cadre of avant garde, um, BIPOC, you know, people of color therapists who are able to handle these materials, these ceremonies, the psychedelic therapy, um, and increase that number and really begin to, um, work in the communities.
because I think right now we're getting close to having the number of people who are coming out of the psychedelic closet and telling their stories, but we're nowhere near the number of
therapists.
[00:40:07] Pascal: Yeah, yeah, and I think I, adjacent to that, and you're right, there's definitely a huge need around that and adjacent to that, I think, is the space itself reflecting in words, Like, what's the relationship that we have with systems of power and how are we replicating these systems of oppression within our own work in our own lives?
So that. We're recreating the systems that created the trauma in the first place without necessarily realizing it. So when I speak about that, I speak about people who are in this space already. It hasn't been a very inclusive space. It's felt very white dominated. It has been very white dominated. And so adjacent to the structures and the policies and the training and the outreach and the community work as a space itself, we need to reflect on those things and how And we've talked about this on our last call that, uh, there's a bit of, uh, tricking of the ego sometimes into thinking, well, and asking ourselves, like, am I still supporting the systems of oppression, or capitalism, or nationalism, and that we can sort of trip up ourselves into thinking that we're actually really doing the right thing.
Creating something that's truly healing, but in reality, we're recreating systems of oppression. And I don't say that to finger point or to shame. We're all in the process of unlearning a lot of things. But can you share a little bit more about that and the importance of that to create a space that includes more folks?
[00:41:34] Nicholas: Yeah, I think there's a tension. And so a lot of my friends hold spaces. They hold retreats. Many are in the sacred valley in Peru. Um, some are holding, uh, tree, uh, spaces in the desert, you know, whether it's the Nevada desert, Arizona, uh, some are doing retreats in upstate New York. I mean, everywhere, every state there's people doing retreats.
And the tension is, is uh, For those who've done a
lot of psychedelic journeys and see the system pretty clearly, like they see that, Hey man, this capitalism, it's destroying the planet. It destroys people's souls with materialism. It, you know, it's a system that takes a living rose and dips it in gold thinking that it's more beautiful than the living rose.
And what you've done is you killed a rose and, you know, and you have this kind of gosh, you know, ugly piece of art. So they, they see that this is what capitalism is doing and they are oftentimes, I would say, in the kind of, um, new age, spiritual, holistic, healing world. And they offer retreats, they go to places like Ryan Beck and others, and they offer classes.
And
Um,
tension I see in that. And that leads to these kinds of compromises where you have very expensive retreats where, you know, they can cost a couple of thousand dollars, you know, and the reality is, is not many working class people are going to pay a couple of thousand dollars to fly by plane, to go to some, you know, another country.
and do ayahuasca and get great vegan food, maybe a massage and all that. And then, you know,
fly back. Um, And, then the people who can
been a that time. you. fly back home, you have a very individual personal healing that's happened, which has value. It's been that like has value because you. know, there's a, but there's this other part of it that's missing, which is that then you. have to kind of cocoon away from.
I guess in spiritual language or religious language would be
called the fallen world, right? The world of vulgar materialism. And you wind up cocooning yourself more and more away from that world and deeper and deeper into this kind of like more spiritual, religious or esoteric world because you, you, you want to preserve your healing.
You want to keep your healing. safe from those who would corrupt it, you know, or break it, break it. And I think that that's for me, why in the end that that model that we're existing right now is. It's kind of it hits a dead end because at some point it doesn't become sustainable and that because of the inner contradictions within that model, speaking now directly to your point, we cannot be as inclusive as we want to be.
We're never going to include, like, even if you're a white. Holistic retreat director and you want to include people of color. Great include people of color, but you may only include people of color who are middle or upper class who can afford it or maybe a token working class person who's on a, Okay. Um,
by making psychedelic therapy accessible to working
class people where they live in the city that they live, in the neighborhoods that they live, so that this way, the more people go in And out of the therapy, they talk in the same streets, they hang out at the same bodega, they sit on the same steps, cornrowing each other's hair.
for
share gossip. Like, in other words, the psychedelic
I hope
not removed. And then when it comes back, it's encased in this kind of spiritual formaldehyde, but that it's a living thing that starts to build on the streets. And that's why I think the psychedelic therapy with, you know, Medicaid, Medicare, union, health insurance, whatever, as long as it's in the city and it's accessible to people where they are.
That means that those who really do want to kind of run the retreat world, will actually have more of a larger pool because there, will just be more people who are interested in it, more people who grew up with it. And so for them, they'll be like, Hey, you know what? Why would, why would I want to go on some cruise, you know, you know, very expensive, like eat all you can buffet cruise, or I can go on the psychedelic retreat and really do some interesting work with my, with my wife, with my husband.
Um, with my family and we can really wind up healing some of the things that are causing us to break apart.
[00:47:07] Pascal: in. Yes, yes, that's well said. And to go even deeper into this, this, uh, this question that I asked earlier, am I still supporting the systems of oppression? Um, we talked about this on our last call that you shared that there's a sort of spiritual purity container, uh, in the space that can happen.
Um, and that we haven't figured out how to truly brief be free so we can look at other ways to mask that and I'd love for you to share a little bit more about that performative spirituality, um, masking continued involvement in capitalist systems because as you shared, we can be caught in the feedback loop.
Am I using a performance of spiritual purity or of indigenous loyalty or allyship as a way of kind of misdirecting my own ego from recognizing that I'm still involved in a system of power?
[00:48:01] Nicholas: As I promote this book, black psychedelic revolution, I always have to be careful of not selling myself off as like, Oh, I'm an example of a totally healed man. You know what I mean? Like, I wish, um, uh, you know, I am so full of shit. I've got my hypocrisies and still working through traumas and all that stuff.
Um, you know, lost people because of it, you know? Um, but what I can say is as imperfect as I am, because I think imperfection
it's not like the cold or the flu that you can get like medicine or your immune system can heal. You know, and that flaw, you know, whether it's because what our body experiences is a
little bit different from what the story that our mind tells the body, but, you know, we're always going to be flawed.
So I'd never want, ever promote like the idea that you do psychedelics and you're going to be spiritually pure and healed. And I think that's why I stay, I stay away from a certain kind of performance. I don't use what I would say is kind of like new age word salad. Um, because I don't, it doesn't fit for me and it doesn't fit the reality that I've lived when I do hear it. see that
within the kind of new age, holistic health circles, I see people dressed in white and et cetera, that when I hear the words like transformation and healing and, um,
how
and chakra alignment and ancestors, like, I mean, I respect that this is the language that people are using as a kind of a compass. To help guide them towards a kind of post capitalist, post colonial world system. I do get the sense that it's because there's this contradiction that we want to escape from this capitalist. You know, um, very cruel, extractive kind of product
of colonial colonialism world. And at the, same time, we, many of us have to still live in it, get paychecks. and what happens is that that contradiction is then In a sense suppressed by a kind of performance that I am fully healed and that I can now heal you. or I can help you on your healing. But I have to, in some ways, prove that I am in this kind of spiritual zone. And this kind of performance of what I
would call
going to be able to make a fully achieved spiritual state,
what we then do is we cut um, becomes a, way of,
cut a piece of
it's a it's a symptom of an unresolved conflict that is not being resolved.
In the economy of the holistic world,
right? We know. another world is possible. We want to get out of capitalism, but we're still trapped inside of it. and so the way to kind of paper it over is, is to say, well, I'm healed personally because we can't point to a big social movement that has finally dismantled this exploitive world, capitalist world and recreated a more democratic socialist world, more equitable world.
We haven't done that. So we can't say that. But what I'm healed. as I can perform a certain spiritual authenticity. So for me, um, when I hear that, when I see that,
um, on one hand, I have great compassion because I think that Those who I know who are In that world are really trying to struggle against slipping back into, um, capitalism.
And at the same time, they have to kind of sell spiritual authenticity to customers who are then going to buy their courses. And.
For me, I mean, of course I want people to buy the book, but because that's not how I pay my rent, I don't have to perform spiritual authenticity, you know, um, do you know what I mean?
I don't have to do that particular presentation because I'm not selling myself as a spiritually realized person to customers who are going to buy my course or who are going to subscribe to me or who are going to give me donations. So that's the difference. You know, and that's why I have compassion for people who are on that path because I think it is a very, very hard
[00:52:55] Nicholas: path because of what happens is, is everyone is selling their spiritual health there that I am spiritually realized what happens is a bottleneck because everyone's kind of selling the same thing and they're trying to sell the same thing to a certain amount of customers and sometimes it wind up swapping, you know, customers and people are fighting over a limited pie.
One of the things that would really break this open is getting working class people because most of the world is working class. And if psychedelic therapy is, is presented to the working masses in a language that they can recognize and in a physical way that they can actually access
[00:53:36] Nicholas: that's affordable or free. You just grow the pool, like all of a sudden you just grow that pool. Right. And people may not have to sell themselves, their spirituality, um, to customers because like, in other words, the pressure is decreased and maybe people
can relax a little bit on that, on that performance.
[00:54:00] Pascal: right. And you, you alluded to it, uh, in our previous call, which is people want the 500 Gucci bag, but they won't pay the 500. So they'll get a cheap knockoff
and still wear it and say, yeah, I've got the Gucci bag. Right. And, um, I think what, and yeah, just, A lot of compassion as well for all the roads that we're in.
And I love that you were kind of really honest. It's like, yeah, I'm still, you know, traumatized and I'm still, you know, doing shitty things and I do as well. And I do shitty things sometimes and I'm not fully healed and I'm constantly exploring what these topics mean to myself and constantly reflecting.
I think the, the, the invitation is to constantly reflect in, um, in areas that. Uh, in our being, in our actions, where racism is still present, where colonialism is still present, where capitalism is still present, and being real with it, and being honest, and being compassionate towards that, and also get community support, um, and surround yourself with people with different perspectives, different lived experiences.
Like you said, the working class has often been left behind and there's more BIPOC people in the world than white people. Um, so who's not in the room and who's not being a part of this that we can all learn from and reflect in compassion and, and, and support one another. I think that this idea of community is so important in moving the space forward to be more inclusive.
[00:55:21] Nicholas: I think what I've found is that, and just to kind of make it blunt, is that the white people who are in the new age holistic world, are in some ways the least white people I've ever seen. You know what I mean? It's like they are oftentimes deeply studying traditions that are outside of the European heritage. Some of them do study traditions in the European heritage. Many of them are studying, like, you know, uh, ancient, you know, Hindu practices. They're deeply researching, you know, uh, the economies of Native Americans and peyote to try to be very careful and to spread the word like, hey, let's, let's kind of chill out on the peyote because it's destroying
the land like, like, you know, like white people, not again, not all like, you know, want to paint with a big brush,
but, you know, The white people who I see in the new age holistic circles tend to be very passionate about, I would say, being global citizens and citizens of
Okay.
show us. You know, and I think one of the consequences of having psychedelic experiences that you've integrated into you is that psychedelics generally dissolve your ego, and then they can expose to you your own false self images. And I think if you live in a racialized society where the power hierarchy is color
coded that wherever you are, whether you're black, Latino, Asian, indigenous, whether you're white, whether you're mixed race, that you are probably going to confront your own racial false images of yourself and others. Like I know I have. And I'm, I don't think I'm that particularly like unique or special, you know, so if I'm just kind of like everyone else, like I've gone through that journey and there were lots of false images that I
had to let go of, of myself, of others, my own history. I can imagine that the white practitioners of this probably also have confronted to some degree their own whiteness.
And they're even their people's heritage and legacy next to other heritage and other legacies. You probably have a larger perspective. Um, and I think that's the sensibility that I generally get from practitioners in the field is that psychedelics in this particular set setting and container of world citizenship.
Of spiritual transcendence, not always, not always, but it does sometimes and often lead to a larger perspective that is, I think, multiculturalism at its best,
right? A deep appreciation of difference, a deep appreciation of different types of moralities, even if you don't agree with them. A deep empathy with others were not only different but are considered the enemy
Finn,
and an enlarging of your imagination to see that where scarcity
S College
you've been told scarcity is is actually abundance and that scarcity is the illusion and that actually the world has enough food. It has enough space. It has enough for everyone. And that's generally
both the realization that the 1968 counterculture hate Ashbery hippies had. And I think that for psychedelic practitioners today again, not all, but many do come to that place, that city on a hill, they see it, they have experienced it.
And, be so that's why I think that, um, when I go into the holistic new age world, I
Uh,
There's a kind of global south
Are you
aesthetic. You see people with bindi's. You see people with, you know, white, you see people with indigenous earrings from different tribal backgrounds. You see people with african mud cloth.
You see people bringing in different kind of Egyptian comedic languages and like, in other words, and it's all kind of mixing. And what I find healthy about that is that in the mixing that maybe people will take bits and pieces and apply it to today in a way that's more relevant to what's happening now, because I don't think that fundamentalism or fetishizing
Bye
cultural past is very helpful.
I've always been like, you can symbols and practices and ceremonies from the past. But how do you reconfigure them to answer the needs of the presence? We're living now. So for me, I think there's a healthy part of this kind of mixing And borrowing and interchanging. And then hopefully in all of that, people be like, Okay, well, what are the pieces and how do they come together in a way that lets me let's all of us live easier now. Um, so I'm like, yeah, you know, just do it all.
[01:00:37] Pascal: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. It's a beautiful tapestry we're weaving. Um, and you're right, there is a lot of multiculturalism in the space, and there's a lot of people that are much more globally oriented, um, than, than in the past.
And the last question that, and it's a great bridge that you shared this, is the last question is how do we make the space work well for true societal and inclusive healing?
So in the book, you talk a lot about the revolutionary potential of psychedelics and catalyzing mass. Social and political change, and I think that's it's such a poignant time to talk about that because what you just shared to me speaks a lot about the pressure, right? The sort of urgency of like the time and space we're in and the beautiful solutions that that are emerging and need to emerge to counteract.
The systems that we've been working off of for centuries. And so there's something really beautiful. Like the pressure in the concrete is pushing out the most beautiful flower. And it's, it's churning, it's pressuring, it's allowing us to grow. And it's difficult sometimes we're all learning how to do that, but there's something very energetic that wants to emerge out of this.
And we, you touched on this already in terms of. The practicalities of creating spaces, in terms of creating the right training programs, in terms of speaking to the communities and healing where they're located. You spoke about the importance of connection and community. You talked about the levels of access.
And you also talked about creating different structures. So, how do we move from this vision that you have? And truly create social change on a global scale. What's your, what's your dream like vision for that?
[01:02:23] Nicholas: Open doors at, uh, social workers who can use psychedelic therapy in the cities. Open, uh, therapy centers that open in the favelas, uh, in the hoods, in the barrios, in, you know, the trailer parks. Make it accessible. Um, have alongside of it, you know, political education so that people can begin to ask questions.
Basically have three layers, right, the cell network model, which is going to always be underground, have the legal model, which is the therapy centers that people can go to social workers union, Medicaid, Medicare, and then have, um, also
The kind of revolutionary model where maybe people go to places of historical importance and really begin to ask questions.
Um, and create art and political ideals, et cetera. And then on top of that, um, or alongside that, there was a church disco that was, uh, renovated and turned into a house music, deep house music, um, dance club called Limelight in New York. And I just loved it, because you know people were, like, tripping their balls off there.
You know, MDMA, everything.
And, um, What I love about that idea is, you know, imagine having, you know, all like converting churches into dance clubs, right? And, but almost making it like a California sober, right? No alcohol allowed. But you can do some mild psychedelic and that there's a kind of a ceremony before the
dancing and there's consent workshops and behavior, you know, breasts, you know, even if it's just a half hour, just consent workshops, breath work, and then eventually, come on, let's just get into some good hot dancing and, you know, California sober, like no alcohol, but you can, you know, and then have these churches around.
So like you have the underground network, you have the legal therapy, but then you also have the cultural. Part, right? And maybe these places can, you know, have legal use for psychedelics in them. Um,
and then eventually Answer that there's a there's a huge hunger in the world for
Unity for being able to see other people as part of the same family.
We you know, we all want an end to poverty Maybe not all, but like most of us want an end to poverty. Most of us want to feel safe walking in our cities. Most of us want the wars to stop and we want to be able to see each other as human beings first and then the other categories second. And
saying.
revolutionary therapy has an answer for that It answers that hunger because or of the theology, when you say, like, I'm returning to my body, but I'm returning to my body with you and then with you and you too, and everyone else and you over there, and we're all returning to our bodies. together We
look at the holy text that, we've all have inherited whether it's the Torah the Baba Gita the Quran We look at these and we think it's almost as if these are old skins that, now we can let go of Because the actual holy word is our body.
The only holy scripture is our sweat because this body is I'm Has is the holy word of the DNA like this is this is something that life has created You
over like millions of years. And for our species, we've been around for about what, 200, 000 years. And so this body is the form that life is taking for a brief moment in time in the universe.
There's only a brief moment of time that human beings will exist. And this is it. And so all the emotions that a human being can feel, imagine returning to the body with each other and saying, we're all human. And let's start with that
first. And from there, build cities. From there, create jobs. From there, offer free healthcare.
From there, teach the kids to see human first. From there, respect and give respect. And space to those who are weaker. Give respect, Um,
to those who are strangers. In other words, human first. Because we're only here for a little bit. And begin to devalue
the things that keep us separate, like materialism.
Like dipping the rose in gold and saying this is more valuable than the living rose. The living rose is more valuable because the living rose is us too. It's, it, it comes from a seed. It blossoms, it releases a beautiful scent. It, it hugs the sun. And then it wilts and then it dies. Just like we were born, we grow, we have our moment in the sun, and then we wilt and then we die.
It's better to give each other living roses than gold. So I would say a return not only to the body, but a return to the value that all of this is ephemeral. And that every second is
like, a little diamond and every breath is like a little pearl and every heartbeat is like a little pearl and that's what's important like to share the time together.
Um, And so. that I think that message or that kind of mystical experience that comes from psychedelics is what can answer this human cry that's rising over the earth like a, like a tsunami. There's this cry and hue over the planet. Please stop that. the war. Please, you know, up the sexual trafficking of women's.
Please stop the hunger, hunger of Children. Like, please, why do like there's more than enough for everyone. We don't. Why? Why are we fighting over illusions? And I think that one of the nice things It's like one of the healthiest things that psychedelics can do is clean the doors of perception. I think it could free us from the illusions that we're fighting over and return us to the reality, which is that we
live hmm.
We live with each other.
We have just brief a little bit of time and then we die and we should. Let's, let's be here while we're here. Yeah.
[01:08:48] Pascal: Just Shanti says that once we connect to the interbeing of ourselves with the rest of the world and we can stop suffering, uh, and alleviate suffering in ourselves and with others. And what you share on, um, what you just shared about to me is really inspiring because we talk about.
political change. We talk about systemic change. We talk about political change. We're ripe for political revolution in this world. And yet it starts with the everyday moments. And that's why our tagline at Dictar is everyday is a ceremony is because in all these moments, you can start to reframe the narrative.
You can reframe your relationships. You can practice this. I can practice this right now with my own body and, and, and my relationship to you right now, I can practice this into being. Right here right now and that can happen every day with everyone in every moment So I find that empowering because the system is so disempowering in a lot of ways But we can take our power back with our actions in our everyday moments.
So, um, thank you so much for sharing We can talk for hours. Where can people get your book? It's out as of this week Let us know how we can
[01:09:57] Nicholas: So if
you look up beautiful book
Yeah, thank you. By the way, like the conversation, chef's kiss, chef's kiss. It was, it flowed really well. Um, people can look for the book. They can get the book at black psychic, excuse me, black psychedelic, uh, com black psychedelic revolution. Sorry. Black psychedelic revolution. com it's right there. Um, and it also has the basic principles. There's going to be. On the site. I'm going to in a couple of days just need to just all this just started folks I'm going to put in a free Uh, three
part Or, a four part course, Uh, so that people can hear both the political history of psychedelics and then what the vision of black psychedelic revolution exactly is, and you know, why we're calling for Medicaid and Medicare and union health insurance and et cetera, and the different ways that communities of color.
can plug into psychedelics in a way that is a practical, uh, efficient answer to some of the pain that has been wrecking our lives, wrecking our lives.
Um, So that's going to be on the site soon. Um, But, yeah, feel free if you like audio books and you go on, black psychedelic revolution dot com, you have access to an audio book.
You also have, um, access to the book itself. It'll come to you pretty quick. And then, um, the last thing I'll say is that we, Uh, we
of who are
are building a team. Both of sound engineers cameras, but we're also building places to get space and training for therapists and we would like to buy this spring or by this summer, um, get therapists out and get the get the people out onto the parks and hold, um, psychedelic narrative healing with weed.
In other words, they can smoke and drink or eat edibles and do some yoga and work. on their autobiography. And I teach literature and I've done this. I want to help them do this. Uh, and also
direct people who are interested to black run or Latino, uh, ketamine clinics where they can start to do ketamine therapy.
So, uh, we'll be asking for help, which is either if you can actually donate skills or if you want to donate money, or if you want to donate, uh, a connection to someone, that would be great. Cause we want to, um, scale it up and build it out.
[01:12:29] Pascal: Beautiful and I I have a copy of the book. It's a really good book. It's very powerful Um, and also when when are you going to be an oprah?
I'll see why not
[01:12:43] Nicholas: don't know if I'd even, I don't know, man. I don't know. I, oh man, you caught me on that one. I have no idea. I'm good, man. I want the message to get out there, but that's, I don't want to dilute it. You know?
[01:12:57] Pascal: I would get this book in the hands of people of color in the halls of power everywhere, politicians, people in positions that they can do systemic change in a very powerful way. It is a powerful book. So thank you so much, Nicholas. I really appreciate your work and your wisdom and hope to see you in person in Bali one day if you come visit.
But yeah, thanks for being on the podcast.
[01:13:20] Nicholas: Thank you, brother. You have a good night. Blessings to your family.
[01:13:23] Pascal: Likewise to you as well. Take care. Okay. Thank you
