Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) is proud to partner with Psymposia for the #PsychedelicsBecause campaign. Psymposia, a group of collaborative social activism projects based on psychedelics, plants, and policy, brought forward this campaign with the aim of ending the stigma of psychedelic use in our society by advocating for individuals to come forward and share their personal experiences with psychedelics. This can be done by tweeting, posting on Facebook and Instagram, or submitting a story or video coupled with the hashtag #PsychedelicsBecause .
Scientific research on psychedelics has been uncovering the potential for bringing about states which can play a positive role in some people’s healing and well-being, such as spiritual experiences, states of insight, or a sense of connectedness. Yet the production, trafficking, and possession of psychedelics remain highly controlled and punishable by law, and psychedelics are marked as having “no medical use”. The current classification of psychedelics is incorrect and immoral, is a significant obstacle to conducting crucial research,and is preventing access to a class of substances with a low risk and addiction profile and with the potential to provoke powerful positive experiences in controlled settings, rather than creating a regulated context within which this use can be properly conducted.
The current stigmatization of psychedelic use is based on uneducated propaganda, which instills fear instead of creating safety, resulting in uneducated recreational use of psychedelics. This notion of fearing psychedelic use inhibits harm reduction practices and maximizes risks by failing to help people acquire an understanding of set, setting, and how to deal with difficult experiences. Associating psychedelic use with “bad trips”, or with the notion that they inducing mental illness, is in itself harmful. Scientific research has demonstrated that psychedelic use can indeed increase mental well-being and can heal relationships with the self and others, while population studies have shown no link between mental health problems and psychedelic use. By opening the doorway and bringing educated understanding of psychedelic substances we can reduce harm, increase transformative experiences, and reverse propaganda that every experience may end up being a “bad trip”.
#PsychedelicsBecause aims to actively:
- Share stories humanizing the diversity of psychedelic users
- Increase awareness around the benefits of psychedelics
- Shift public attitudes and Reverse decades of negative stigma surrounding psychedelic and psychoactive drugs
- Educate people about current scientific research
- Promote psychedelic harm reduction by understanding the true risks and how to manage them
- Help end arrests, incarceration, and criminalization associated with global drug prohibition
- Unite psychedelic, drug policy reform, and harm reduction movements
Come out of the closet and share your psychedelic experience on social media today with the hashtag #PsychedelicsBecause. Together we can shift the global view on psychedelic use to bring a true evidence and scientific based perception of the therapeutic and transformative properties psychedelics have to offer us.
*Before sharing your experiences publicly, please evaluate whether you wish to present yourself as a drug or psychedelic user, and whether there may be any risk associated with doing so.*
Evan Loster
Board member