Psychedelics at the Crossroads: Medicine, Politics, and Culture Wars

History shows politics can make or break psychedelic medicine, will we repeat the 1960s backlash, or finally move forward? 

In this free episode of Divergent States, we explore the uneasy intersection of psychedelics and politics. MDMA remains a Schedule I drug—classified as dangerous with no medical use—while at the same time advancing through FDA Phase III trials. This contradiction highlights the limbo psychedelics face today: criminalized on one side, medicalized on the other.

We revisit the lessons of the 1960s, when political backlash ended promising psychedelic research for decades, and compare them to today’s fast-changing landscape. With figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. championing psychedelic medicine, the risk of partisan branding looms large. Can the psychedelic renaissance avoid being reduced to culture war ammunition?

From Oregon and Colorado’s legalization models to global perspectives like Australia’s, we unpack the fragile future of access, safety, and legitimacy. And we emphasize why independent media, grassroots communities, and diverse voices are essential to keeping psychedelics rooted in healing rather than political agendas.

🔑 Key Points

• Psychedelics remain Schedule I but are simultaneously advancing toward FDA approval.
• The 1960s crackdown shows the danger of entanglement with politics and culture wars.
• Public opinion has shifted rapidly, with mainstream endorsements from figures like Oprah and Michael Pollan.
• Risks of polarizing association (e.g., RFK Jr.) could trigger backlash despite strong science.
• Oregon’s tightly regulated model vs. Colorado’s more open system—pros, cons, and accessibility challenges.
• Potential for a two-tiered system: expensive legal clinics vs. criminalized underground use.
• Independent media and grassroots communities play a key role in shaping the narrative.
• Psychedelics could follow three futures: medicalized/corporate, grassroots/underground, or partisan football.
• Safety concerns are emerging with unregulated “gas station mushrooms” and microdose products.
• Global models like Australia’s nationwide legalization offer lessons for the U.S. path ahead.

Chapters

00:00 – The Psychedelic Contradiction
MDMA is Schedule I and in FDA Phase III trials — the legal/medical limbo.

02:00 – Why Politics Are Dangerous
Why Divergent States avoids partisan debates, and how culture wars derail progress.

06:30 – Lessons from the 1960s
How Timothy Leary, Nixon, and the War on Drugs shut down decades of psychedelic science.

09:45 – The Risk of Polarization
RFK Jr., vaccines, and how associating psychedelics with a single figure fuels backlash.

15:00 – Fragile Legitimacy
Medical, cultural, and political legitimacy — and how easily it can collapse.

20:20 – Can Psychedelics Unite Us?
Hope for bipartisan support, parallels with cannabis legalization.

24:00 – Global Models & Access
Oregon vs. Colorado, Australia’s legalization, and fears of a two-tiered system.

27:30 – Grassroots vs. Corporate Paths
Safety concerns with “gas station mushrooms,” microdosing hype, and corporate oversight.

31:00 – Pop Culture & Microdosing
South Park satire, normalization, and the line between humor a

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Transcript

0:17

Welcome back to Divergent States. MDMA is still a Schedule I drug. On paper, absolute prohibition. There's no accepted medical use, high potential for abuse. It's in the government's harshest category. But at the same time, MDMA is in Phase III clinical trials, fast-tracked by the FDA. So which is it? Is it a dangerous street drug, or is it a breakthrough medicine? That's the limbo psychedelics live in right now. Criminalized on one side, medicalized on the other. And now they're getting pulled into something even riskier, politics. You've got presidential candidates out there like RFK Jr. talking openly about psychedelic medicine. And sure, I might agree with him on that single issue, but almost every single thing else he says, I couldn't disagree more. And that's where the unease comes in with me. Because the last time psychedelics became political symbols in the 1960s, the backlash shut it all down for half a century. And that's the tightrope we're walking today. The science is strong. The healing is real. But once politics start using psychedelics as prop, we're at risk of another crackdown. So Brian, let me throw it to you real quick. Yeah. When you see psychedelics sliding into presidential talking points, what's your reaction? I think at first, like, it's kind of like you said, like, it's exciting because, you know, I want to see more therapies come out and, you know, medical use that we talk about. But, you know, it's like you said, it doesn't really, you know, it doesn't really help a whole lot if you don't align with that presidential candidate. You don't align with or, know, whoever the politics are. But at the same time, like, I'm hoping that, you know, psychedelics here in this conversation are going to maybe help kind of bridge the gap a little bit that we have between parties. So I don't know. It's up in the air for me, I would say. Right. And that's really the problem I see with a lot of stuff is it's tying too closely to the culture, any kind of culture wars or anything. And to me, really, you know, the medicine is more important than, you know, the medicine is more important than politics, you know, the people being healed and saved with that. you know, like we don't allow politics on the subreddit. And the reason, because of that, because it intends to fall into personalities and culture too often, it's too divisive. we made a rule a long time ago, the only politics that we really talk about are legalization campaigns. you know, initiatives such as like Arizona's Ibogaine Initiative, veteran services. We tend to stay out of the general melee. So, you know, I figured we could do this episode and we'll talk about it a little bit. Maybe, you know, kind of explain to everyone and our listeners out there. This is why. Politics are so dangerous with psychedelics. Yeah. So yeah, we're going to sit back and listen to some music from sandbags. I think he spells that S N D B G Z something. Yeah. What is that? Yeah. He's got some cool trans music. He's got an EP out there, Chosen Path. You guys check them out on Spotify. We're going to sit back and listen to it and we'll come back and talk about the rest of this politics and psychedelics. Imagine you you Search for the better you Imagine threes, I see your energy is your destiny, no go- This path is forever. You're stuck in cracks. Promise it's for the better. you you you This is for the matter All right. So first, I think we'll go a little bit into the history of psychedelics and why this kind of this came to mind. We talked, we had a thread come up on the subreddit where it was about how psychedelics sold their soul. And we had a lot of, there's some really good conversation in there and it started making me think. So I sat down and wrote something, I think, and I thought that this would be a great. a great place to kind of make a, what would you call it? collaboration piece to go with the article that was written. So I guess they're really the best place to start with how the culture war goes is the 1960s. uh Back in the 1960s, they had real science coming after psychedelics. LSD therapy was at Spring Grove Hospital in Maryland. Harvard was experimenting with psilocybin. Stanislav Graf, was working with LSD and there were some really good results coming out of the 60s, especially when it came to like alcoholism and depression and end of life anxiety. Dude, that's crazy, because I had no idea about any of that stuff. Right. mean, yeah, like I think Bill, I think it Bill W. He's one of the founders of AA. He actually wrote a letter later in life talking about how LSD should be part of their program for ending alcoholism. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. LSD is like, that was some of the earliest best uses they found for it was just alcoholism. one trip, one good trip of high dose trips could almost cure someone of alcoholism overnight, which was just amazing. Yeah, but really, that was the point. We had some really great medical and mental health issues come out of that era, but that's not the story that ended up sticking around. Timothy Leary's call to turn on TuneIn and DropOut made for a better headline than any kind of peer-reviewed article ever could. Um, psychedelics became synonymous. know, Nixon did a lot of that. He made psychedelics synonymous with the counterculture movement, anti-war protests, you know, the kids were getting into trouble. so psychedelics became the symbol of that. And that framing is what gave the Nixon administration the excuse to declare a war on drugs. They pushed forward with Controlled Substances Act and overnight research collapse. And so the lessons that we really got from those sixties is when psychedelics get too tightly bound to political or cultural movements, they become vulnerable to backlash. Science and healing become secondary to optics and power struggles. And so that's what I see. That's, that's my fear of what happens when we start looking at psychedelics. as part of the culture war, as part of the politics. We lose sight of the medicine, of the healing. like, fast forward today, 60 years, and we're in the middle of the psychedelic renaissance. Clinical trials, rib name assisted therapy, as I mentioned earlier, and phase three with the FDA. Oregon and Colorado have rolled out legal psilocybe programs, legal psychedelic programs, really. Colorado's doing great things, even though I hear their trying to push a law to limit personal use now. We'll see what happens there, but you know, public opinion has shifted really quickly. All of a sudden, mean, Oprah, what a couple of months ago came out with her thing with Michael Pollan talking about how psychedelics can help people with PTSD and help with mental health. And so it's, moving fast. You can see how the psychedelic renaissance is pushed into the mainstream so quick. Yeah. But at the same time, that danger is still there. Politics is circling the psychedelics once again. Consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He's been an outspoken advocate for psychedelic medicine, advocating for its role in treating trauma, expanding mental health care. And on this issue, I agree with him, you know, but on nearly every other issue that he has, I disagree with him. Sometimes fierce. You mean you agree with the smallpox vaccination? Yeah, the vaccination stuff, as Kirsten Sinema was trying to push the gold star science, I can't get behind that because I see, you know, like the measles outbreaks down in Dallas. know, that would that, you know, reflecting back on that moment, what I would say now is how could you trust their so-called gold star science when you have measles outbreaks or, you know, you're trying to kill vaccinations? that save lives. Yeah. So there's very much there's and that's that's part of why I wanted to talk about this again today is just to kind of, you know, we can we it's part to pretend that the politics aren't there is just naive. Right. So like I said, on nearly every other issue with him, I disagree with him. And, and I've seen how the stories get written. If psychedelics get too tightly close to a single polarizing figure. It won't matter what the data says. Right. It matter what the evidence says. Psychedelics will get lumped into that same culture war, framed as a partisan agenda and dismissed by anyone who sees the figure as an enemy. And so what worries me not, what worries me the most is not RFK Jr. himself, but the tendency of our system to reduce complex issues into symbols or meaning. Psychedelics are too important to be reduced to a political brand. It's kind of the key to it. And that's, that's. what we've been kind of going up against since day one really. ah Do you think that backlash was inevitable or could psychedelics stay separate from the politics? That's a really good question. I've been thinking about that as you've been talking. We've already seen it become part of politics, you know, back in the 60s, as you said. I feel like back then, too, people were less connected. was, you know, it's kind of easier to push propaganda when it's when your only news is coming from the newspaper, like three or four channels on TV. But now we're connected on social media. But I don't know, like, at the same time, like, I could see psychedelics just being lumped into like, that's just what people who go to festivals do. and those people are, you know, they're crazy. They think weird things. Like, that would be my concern with psychedelics. Then it pulls away from, like you said, like, there's a lot of medical research that was going on even back in the day. mean, there's like the whole reason it was starting to have a rise in the first place. Right. I think you made a good point there with you saying we have a lot more information than before. I think that's going to be a lot of the key to getting past a lot of that to keep it from getting too tightly intertwined with politics. Kind what we're talking about here is we have that education now. We have all the information at our fingertips as much as we can. Well, as we've seen that we have a lot of really strong entrepreneurs that are pushing these agendas along too. We've had a chance to speak with a lot of them. if, you know, everybody else that's out there doing the same thing as them is half as bright and just as talented, like, I think psychedelics will make a strong move. But at the same time, like I feel you, I don't want, but we're learning about here and the things that psychedelics can do for society. don't really think it belongs in one category. Yeah, I think if history teaches us anything, it's politics can make or break these medicines. And today we're seeing kind of those same currents again. um So, know, psychedelics are still schedule one, as I mentioned. But a lot of it, as we see, it's, you know, there are phase three trials right now. believe maps is trying to get kind of resubmit their application now, which shouldn't be too long. And the way the, the administration's acting, they're going to fast track a lot of these psychedelic, fast track a lot of these psychedelic medicines. And to me, that's, that's a great thing. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I could, that's the whole thing. It's, uh but the result of it, I was, what I'm afraid of is you're going to end up with a two tier system. You'll have legal trials in future clinics and it's going to be legal but expensive there. Right. But criminal everywhere else. And that selective enforcement really isn't about freedom, it's about control. Well, yeah, and then once it's on that level too, then it's like extra criminal. You know what I'm saying? Right. You know, it's like we deal with this in the cannabis industry all the time. You know, somebody will steal like an eighth that's like 10 bucks at the store, but they don't realize that they're going to be charged as if they stole a prescription medicine like like Oxycontin or Kalanapin or something like that. Like it's it's not good to it. It's it's worse in terms of like what you can get in trouble for. Yeah, it's so much more tightly controlled. And we see that even in like legal medical states with the marijuana, you know, it gets so under control. Just kind of, makes it hard for some people to be able to get it all the time. Kind of the same problem we're looking at here. Right now psychedelic medicine is fragile. The science is strong. Public legitimacy is still under construction. There's medical legitimacy now. Researchers doing peer-reviewed journals, clinical trials, FDA pathways. But those gains can be done done really quickly if the public narrative shifts away from the science. There's cultural legitimacy. I said, even Oprah's kind of came in and put her two cents in psychedelics have re re-inhered the mainstream conversation through veterans, survivors and community healing stories. And that's a powerful basis support, but it could really be undercut if psychedelics are seen as the project or a passion project of just one political faction. right? So kind of along the same lines, political legitimacy, lawmakers are watching closely. If psychedelics become synonymous with the RFK junior issue or any one politician's issue, their opponents will line up to fight it. And so that's kind of part of it as we're talking about, you know, it can't be behind any one politician or make it any one party's agenda. It needs to be above the politics. Yeah, my hope is that... we'll see kind of across both parties an embrace of psychedelics and embracing embracing psychedelics. I think if we see that there's potential that we can. That's my hope is that psychedelics will actually maybe if it does become this political thing will actually be something kind of brings us all together that we can all agree on that. Hey, like we might not agree on how to deal with immigration. We might not agree with where our priorities are as a country, but we can agree. that we all want to see everybody have better mental health and we want to take care of our citizens and we're going to allow this medicine back into society. Hopefully that's something that can happen. Yeah. And I think we could learn from cannabis legalization a lot from there. Cause there was a lot of good bipartisan and a lot of places. There's some really good bipartisan coalitions that came together to get cannabis legalized for everyone, for patients. so hopefully, you know, it could still, it could still face backlash if it's framed as like a partisan thing, but they could easily, you know, psychedelics could suffer the same fate, but you know, or worse, you know, a repeat of the sixties crackdowns. So that's, that's part of it is just trying to keep that legitimacy and, know, to keep the, the eyes, keep our eyes on the science and the evidence. That's, that's part of why we're here. It's a lot of why we're here. It's why independent media, you know, it's such a good, such a good thing. You know, if you guys are enjoying this, you're listening now come join us, patreon.com, Divergent States, join up there. We'll have little bit more of the conversation there, so yeah, join us on Divergent States Patreon. This is why independent media and community storytellers matter. We can't control which politicians attach themselves to the psychedelics, but we can shape how the story gets told. As the founder of Psychonaut, now the world's largest forum dedicated to the safe use of psychedelics and host with Brian here, co-host of the Divergent States podcast, we see how powerful unfiltered community rooted storytelling can be. Online and podcasts, conferences, people are documenting what psychedelics mean in practice. Healing trauma, enhanced creativity and reconnecting people with themselves and each other. That story is bigger than any political figure or culture war. And keeping it bigger than the politics is really the key to avoiding that kind of backlash. You know, we've made a deliberate choice here on the podcast to not have gurus No party lines, no campaign slogans. Instead, we would try really hard to feature researchers, veterans, artists, activists, and thought leaders who are shaping the psychedelic landscape from the ground up. People like Rick Doblin, Leonard Picard, Ann Wagner, Hamilton Morris, and Reggie Watts. And soon we'll be sitting now with Joe Moore of psychedelics today. He's going to be doing an AMA on the subreddit too. The point isn't to stay apolitical out of fear. It's to keep psychedelics in their rightful frame, their medicines, their tools, and their cultural forces that belong to everyone. And they can't survive another round of being reduced to partisan ammunition. The difference between now and the 1960s is we have stronger foundations. The research is more robust. The community is larger, more diverse, better organized. But that doesn't mean that we're immune from the same traps. If politicians succeed in branding psychedelics as their issue, that backlash will come. The opponents won't care about phase three's trials or John Hopkins data. They'll care about defeating whoever they see on their side of the issue. And that are on their side of the aisle. And in that process, patients, veterans, survivors of trauma, people struggling with depression will lose access to therapies they desperately need. And we can't let that happen again. So, I mean, from your perspective, does it feel like progress or is it just kind of a new crackdown with this? I would say it looks like progress compared to what I've seen, like how psychedelics were framed in the past. You know, especially when I was in the military. Like, they seemed very fucking illegal at that time. And now it doesn't seem like it's that illegal. Like, you know, I'm thinking back to, you 2007. You know, that's, you that's when I went in. So, and now in 2025, I mean, there was a giant psychedelic conference. It's not the first one. uh is now opening up, I think, psilocybin and ibogaine treatment. got, you know, these all these amazing nonprofit programs that are sponsoring veterans and other people to go and try these things out and doing more research. And so to me, from my from where I sit, that looks like a lot of progress. But what about you? How do you feel about? I think it depends on the model. The, the, Oregon model I see up there is having a little bit of struggles. The prices ranges are kind of going out of control, like 10 grand per session. Cause it's so tightly controlled, but I see like the Colorado model is doing really well. Like it's there, everybody's open to it. Um, the microdosing, like they're opening up clinics, like the Colorado model. I would definitely say it depends on the model. I prefer. Who had, I prefer the Colorado model. What I'd really like to do, hopefully for an upcoming show, we're going to do this is talk to somebody from Australia who is studying to be a psychedelic therapist over there. They've had it legalized over there since 2023. So be kind of cool to talk to somebody who's had it, you know, and lives in a country where it's been legalized nationwide. We've got a pretty good base over there in Australia. So maybe somebody down there can hook us up, find somebody we can talk to. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, they can leave us a comment. Head us up on Patreon. We'll be sure to hit you up there. Yeah. Yeah. Headed in the subreddits. Yeah. But what I see in the fear that I've got, like I said, it depends on the, the model and the two, problem that I see results like with, with Oregon's model, for instance, is it ends up with a two tier system legal for trials and future, future clinics. It's criminal for everyone else. So, so keeping psychedelics safe from politics doesn't really mean ignoring politics altogether. Policy reform is essential, but reform must be grounded in broad coalitions, transparent science, and independent storytelling. That way no single figure can claim ownership and no single backlash can undo the process. Independent media has a critical role here. Our job is to archive the stories that matter, highlight the voices that don't always get heard. and refuse to let the narrative collapse into another culture war. That means being willing to criticize both politicians and corporations when they overreach. It means holding space for nuance and contradiction, and it means putting patients, not politicians, at the center of the story. Psychedelics have always had the power to disrupt, to heal, and to connect. The power is why they were feared in the 60s and why they're returning now. But if we want them to survive this time, we can't let history repeat itself. So... as I see it as we're talking with all this. You know, there's really three paths forward with this. We've got the medicalized and corporate route, psychedelics, tightly controlled treatments, grassroots and underground, be number two, community healing, risk of criminalization though. And then three is political football. Psychedelics is partisan weapons. Which future dominates will depend on how the culture, you know, holds its own. So it's really not up to us. It's up to you, the listener. out there, our audience out there listening right now. know, Brian, do you think there's that grassroots has a chance to survive once money and politics take over? I think there will always be grassroots, you know? Like there's always someone that's like, I grow mown wheat. You know, like I think there's always going to be a group of people that are willing to get together at a party and or, you know, like get together as a group and go, okay, let's take some acid and just have fun. I think that'll always, always be there. But I do want to say one thing. I just read this article the other day about how some of these like, you know, there's a lot of microdose. stuff out there right now and they throw in these other mushrooms like it like it fucking matters or something like and you got to be careful with those things. just read this article about like some people have been getting poisoned taking some of these these brands. So I'm hoping that though I don't want like a lot of corporate involvement in this but at least when those companies come in and they they bear a risk of being sued and they want a good name for their company and their product. they at least kind of clean that problem up a little bit. Whereas right now we're like, remember when cannabis wasn't legal yet? And then we had all these CBD companies coming in and like basically just making this stuff in their garage and there's no safety. There's no FDA, nothing there to like, you know, checks and balances to ensure that these products are safe. And then we see people getting hurt from it. And I'm starting to see this happen now. people taking advantage of this idea of, you know, microdosing, psilocybin, things like that. It's like, got to be really careful out there. I don't know. I'm hoping for like a two path system where like we have that safety net of the big dogs making quality products, but then also that space to enjoy it on a community level. Yeah, we, we, I kind of talked about this with Ali Schaefer back in the day. She, when she was on with her episode, by the way, it's blowing up like whole it's become our number two episode of all time. Holy shit. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Ali Schaefer. We were talking about that a little bit about like the gas station mushrooms. She had, you know, she was out with her boyfriend and Utah and there's all these fucking mushrooms on the shelves and nobody, nobody knows what the fuck they are. So, yeah, what could you do? So is there any sign you're really looking for? I think it'll really start to take shape here in the future of which way it's going to end up going. Is there any sign that you're looking for? You think you'd see how it's going to go? ah I think right now I'm just looking for like, when's it going to be one of these trials and medical practice is going to be more available for everybody and it would be less of a niche kind of rich kid thing because it's, you know, it's expensive, very expensive. So it's kind of limited to who can go and do that. That's the sign I'm looking for is like when can the average, you know, the average American access this these products. Yeah, that's a good point. When will the average American be able to, when can the soccer mom pick up a microdose? I think there's probably a good gauge. Yeah. man, can you imagine this? Right. now. Dropping off the kids. Drop it on the kids. take your microdose spray of LSD. It kind of reminds me of, I don't know if you watch South Park, but they're one of their latest episodes with rain, tally, micro- They're doing their ketamine microdose. Yeah. They're K hole in the whole time. There's like, it's a microdose. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, it was pretty funny. I kind of, recognize that that culture that's, we see that a lot in the culture and it's, I'm glad that, you know, as it gets more, more accepted and more open out there, I think that we'll see less of that, you know, kind of the early adopters or the People like that kind of, don't know. I don't know. There's a reason South Park is it's satire. You know what mean? They're really good at calling out what we are fucking up in society. Right, right. We just don't have to get so personal. know. But yeah, no, it's, and so, I think as it gets more and more accepted in society, and I think you're right. I think once we see how the, um, how well it does and the mass market, once you start seeing how readily available it is, that's really going to be kind of the, the bell, bellwether, I guess you'd say of how things are going. Right. Yeah. You know, these conversations matter because we refuse to let the culture be flattened into campaign slogans or investor decks. You know, we're not aligned to parties or corporations. We're aligned with people. Keep this alive. Yeah. So yeah, we've had a great, I think, you know what, let's, let's take a listen. We're to listen to a little bit more of Sandbags a little bit. And then I think we'll come back and for the Patreon listeners, we're going to be talking a little more. for, for everybody else, come join the Patreon. Follow us on Spotify, follow us on Apple. Click like, join us on YouTube, give us a review. Those are simple free ways to help support us if you like us, but or Patreon or maybe, you know, that's just not something that you do. I know I'm kind of like that. I don't really sign up for Patreon stuff myself. So, but that this is a free way that you can help us out. You can like the posts, you can share them. Yeah. You put a comment in there and put a comment in there. You comment on the Spotify, send a comment on YouTube. Yeah. And if you feel like you want to support independent psychedelic media, come over to Patreon. We've got videos. put up all the, um, the, the shorts and promos I make. throw those all up on Spotify so you can keep them all in one place. Like we do extended episodes all the time. Like we're about to do now. So you guys come join us on the, uh, join us on the Patreon talk a little more, a little bit more laid back. Hey, and you'll really be wanting those when we got like Reggie Watts on, Right. Well, we're sitting back talking. You want to be in on part of that conversation, come over there and join it. Yeah. But so we'll head over there and we'll talk to you guys next time.