Psychedelics, like many new technologies, have exposed the world as a resource to be exploited, with humans as the exploitable entities, while neglecting the prevention of issues afflicting them. This dynamic, which Heidegger termed enframing, reduces everything— including ancient medicines and human experiences—to standing reserve, mere resources awaiting optimization and exploitation.
The delicate tension here lies in avoiding false binaries: one can deeply believe in psychedelics' therapeutic potential while remaining critically opposed to their blatant instrumentalization for profit and power perpetuation. This is precisely what Walter Benjamin identified as the return of the same under the cloak of newness: capitalism repackaging traditional practices as innovative solutions while maintaining existing hierarchies.
Modern colonialism reveals itself most nakedly in the rush to patent slightly modified molecules of traditionally used substances. This intellectual property colonialism, dressed in the language of innovation, capitalizes on fundamental flaws in the patent system itself, allowing corporations to claim ownership over marginally altered versions of medicines used by indigenous cultures for millennia.
What does it reveal about our society when corporate wellness initiatives propose integrating psychedelics through Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), with market analysts salivating over calculations projecting access to one billion human beings living with mental health conditions? This reification—the process by which systemic workplace issues become naturalized as individual mental health problems—exemplifies how late capitalism logic targets symptoms while leaving deeper systemic conditions untouched. Do workers require powerful psychedelic interventions to become optimized in their jobs? Similarly, are teenagers really in need of psychedelic therapy for mental health, or might society benefit from examining how social media reshapes their developing minds?
Medicalizing mental health does not work if one aims to tackle the underlying causes of population-level increases in mental and emotional distress. But it works very well if one's trying to come up with a solution others in power agree with, like psychedelics - a pattern the Lexapro playbook demonstrated years ago, Benjamin's return of the same.
This work-in-progress explores the dangers of re-medicalizing psychedelics and commercializing transcendent experiences while overlooking the systemic conditions affecting people in the first place. Consider it a provocation, aimed at sparking critical dialogue about how these revolutionary medicines might truly serve human flourishing rather than being reduced to tools for maintaining productive function within broken systems.
