Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 from 12:00-1:30pm PDT

This upcoming forum will examine the compelling case of the Clusterbusters, a group of ordinary individuals debilitated by excruciating cluster headaches who developed their own treatment using home-grown psilocybin mushrooms. The forum will explore how such mutual-aid networks address the needs of patients overlooked by for-profit healthcare models and traditional drug development. It will also consider the role psychedelics play in alleviating the emotional and psychological suffering that often accompanies chronic pain. Speakers will discuss critical questions around how these decentralized, patient-led approaches to psychedelic therapy might serve as models for broader healthcare transformation. In addition, the forum will explore the ethics of “naturalistic research” or “cyberbotany” (where academics collect experiential data from online psychedelic communities), as well as the moral considerations of developing and distributing psychedelics within the underground, while resisting commodification in a capitalist system. The discussion will feature Joanna Kempner, author of "Psychedelic Outlaws" and an award-winning sociologist of science, medicine, and inequality; Tehseen Noorani, a critical social scientist with interests in the phenomenology, epistemology, and therapeutic potential of psychedelic and 'psychotic' experiences; and Nicolas Langlitz, a medical doctor by training, as well as an anthropologist and historian of science and medicine. Join us for this thought-provoking dialogue on what the aboveground might owe the underground?

Joanna Kempner, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University, is an award-winning sociologist of science, medicine, and inequality, and the author of Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette Books 2024) and Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health (Chicago 2014). Kempner’s research gives voice to those without power and asks challenging questions about how medicine talks about, understands, and makes policies for those it serves. Kempner has held visiting positions and fellowships at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, and has served on multiple editorial boards and in leadership positions across academia. Her research appears in top journals across multiple disciplines, including Science, PLoS Medicine, Neurology, and Social Science & Medicine and is often featured in the media. You can learn more about Professor Kempner at www.joannakempner.com.

Tehseen is a critical social scientist interested in the phenomenological, epistemic, and therapeutic nature of two sets of extreme experiences – those produced through the use of psychedelics, and those arising unprompted and often pathologised as ‘psychotic’. His research tries to offer insights into how these sets of extreme experiences are understood, including through first-person inquiry, traditional knowledges, and contemporary scientific investigations. At the University of Auckland, Tehseen co-leads ‘Community Strategising about Psychedelic Therapy in Aotearoa’, an 18-month, philanthropically-funded project. He also convenes the international, multi-disciplinary, ‘Reimagining Psychedelic Trials’ working group.

Nicolas Langlitz, a medical doctor by training, is an anthropologist and historian of science and medicine who uses ethnographic fieldwork to think through philosophical questions. He wrote three books: Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists (2020), Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain (2012), and Die Zeit der Psychoanalyse: Lacan und das Problem der Sitzungsdauer (2005). He is Professor of Anthropology and director of the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at The New School for Social Research in New York.

What Does Psychedelic Medicine Owe the Underground?