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How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized traumaan Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation The mainstream has long viewed psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment. Though psychedelics have deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultures, Western psychedelic spaces have historically excluded People of Colorbut the radical healing of psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine arent just for a rarefied elite. And theyre definitely not just for white people. Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and powerthe Promised Land as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr. Risqué? Sure. But its true. In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to ones self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whitenessand he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation. Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POCspecifically Black peoplefrom the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of good vs. bad drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.
How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized traumaan Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation
The mainstream has long viewed psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment. Though psychedelics have deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultures, Western psychedelic spaces have historically excluded People of Colorbut the radical healing of psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine arent just for a rarefied elite. And theyre definitely not just for white people.
Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and powerthe Promised Land as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Risqué? Sure. But its true.
In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to ones self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whitenessand he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.
Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POCspecifically Black peoplefrom the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of good vs. bad drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.