Can we go beyond healing the victims of violence to stopping it? What role does the reemergence of psychedelics play as war and climate change threaten our future?

Many within the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance promise that with legalization and therapeutic set and setting, trauma can be cured. Yet as the momentum surrounding psychedelics increasingly shifts towards individual therapy within a corporate model, the counterculture ethos of radical visions, consonance, and consciousness-expansion are being left behind.

Psychedelic Alchemy guest speaker Nicholas Powers, PhD believes that psychedelics must leave the lab and therapy office to give humanity a chance to reimagine itself, and challenge our current path of self-destruction. Remarkably, personal therapy mirrors what happens in social movements: wounded souls return to their real selves, real bodies often discarding former identities like old skin. But according to Powers, we must go beyond healing the individual to healing our history and collective trauma.

Join Dr. Powers in conversation with Naropa faculty Andrew Schelling for a lively discussion about how patriarchy, militarism, and poverty distort self-image and censor consciousness, and how a re-imagined psychedelic social movement can begin to repair these damages.