Britain's Cannabis Gold Rush - Part One: The Evidence Gap | Psychedelics-Community
Medical cannabis has been legal in Britain since 2018, with a wave of private clinics arising in the aftermath. Is the sector overhyping the drug?
Ed Prideaux
Hello!
Psychology, psychedelia, history, music, religion, philosophy.
I do feature writing (BBC, FT, Guardian, Independent, VICE, Spectator, UnHerd, etc.)
I am particularly interested in critical reflections on the psychedelic movement.
I have also conducted research on Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD)
and the risks of psychedelic drugs. I co-wrote and hosted a BBC Radio 4 broadcast
on these topics called Trip Shocked:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programm...
I used to work for the Perception Restoration Foundation.
https://www.perception.foundation
Get in touch: eddie.prideaux@gmail.com
Are Britain's Ketamine Clinics in Need of Regulation? Part Two: Delivery, Testimonials, and Regulation | Psychedelics-Community
In part two of our deep dive into Britain's ketamine clinics, we explore the murky territories of promotion, testimonials and marketing. What are the ethical limits of marketing around psychoactive drugs? Does ketamine's experimental status imply that few, if any, positive claims be made? And how much autonomy should we ascribe to society's most vulnerable people - not least when they're paying five figure sums?
Are Britain's Ketamine Clinics in Need of Regulation? Part Two: Delivery, Testimonials, and Regulation | Psychedelics-Community
In this second half of a deep-dive into Britain's ketamine clinics, we find exemplary practice, changed lives - and possible oversights in marketing and safety.
Are Britain's Ketamine Clinics in Need of Regulation? Part One: The Claims | Psychedelics-Community
One commercial forecast estimated the US ketamine-clinic market at $3.41 billion in 2023 and projected it to reach $6.9 billion by 2030. The UK market, meanwhile, has attracted less press and regulatory scrutiny. We investigate and find evidence of possible over-promotion.
Psychedelics, Memory, and the Feeling of Truth | Psychedelics-Community
Can psychedelic drugs retrieve traumatic memories? Participants in clinical trials and therapy patients often report the spontaneous recall of childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse. Recalling these memories may engender a sense of relief that years of suffering and strange relationships may at last be explained. Yet many of these memories may be false.
Psychedelic Technoaesthetics: The Material and Meaning of Psychedelic Music | Psychedelics-Community
‘The End’ by The Doors was recorded in late 1966. If a time machine were available, and an acetate smuggled from the Los Angeles recording studio to the surrounding households the year before, its effect would have been staggering.
What if we played a track from 2026 to audiences in 2025?
We aren't shocked anymore.
Has psychedelia stopped working?
Is Recreational Drug Use Immoral? A Critical Look at Tim Hsiao's Argument | Psychedelics-Community
Timothy Hsiao is a controversial Christian thinker. He defends factory farming and supports the Second Amendment. He writes in support of beating children and waging the war on drugs.Hsiao holds that mind-altering drugs are unethical beyond very narrow and well-defined exceptions. He condemns all recreational use as an immoral misuse of our faculties, the ones that make us free and human.
The Blinding Problem: Placebos, Expectancy, and the Crisis of Evidence in Psychedelic Medicine | Psychedelics-Community
Physicians from various continents over time have sworn by the healing powers of crocodile dung, fox lung, the powder of precious stones, and moss scraped from the skulls of victims of violent death. They had reason to prescribe them: these remedies sometimes worked.
Psychedelics and the Fragmented Self
Rather than simply 'dissolving' the self, the psychedelic state may leave it fragmented — along psychological, social and economic lines.
The Subtle Harms of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Facilitation (Part 2) | Chemical Collective
The Meaghan Buisson case is enough to illustrate why psychedelic therapy can be, safeguards notwithstanding, a dangerous enterprise. Is the power imbalance realised and enhanced by 'transpersonal' psychologies a recipe for harm?
The Subtle Harms of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Facilitation (Part 1) | Chemical Collective
Psychotherapy is often treated as one of the unquestioned goods of modern life, such that to criticise it is to risk appearing to deny mental suffering itself. What about its dangers - and how do those interact with psychedelics?
Let’s Talk About Non-Responders in Psychedelic Therapy | Chemical Collective
For a decade, many headlines, documentaries, and investor pitch decks have sold a singular story: that compounds like psilocybin and MDMA are capable of resetting the depressed brain and resolving trauma overnight. On August 9, 2024, that narrative collided with regulatory reality.
Psychedelic Bullshit? An Evaluation of The Immortality Key | Chemical Collective
Does Brian Muraresku's bestseller 'The Immortality Key' demonstrate that early Christians - and perhaps even Jesus himself - were consumers of a psychedelic-spiked communion wine? Unsurprisingly, no.
High on Power: How Much Does Ketamine Explain Elon Musk's Erratic Behaviour? | Chemical Collective
Does Elon Musk's alleged abuse of ketamine explain anything about his political behaviour? Is this a sign of 'drug-ism'? Or is it another symptom of a reality TV culture in which systematic problems are rendered in terms of colourful characters we watch on our phones?
The Potential Benefits of Psychedelics for Trans People | Chemical Collective
Transgender and gender-diverse people are living through an acute mental health emergency. Suicide attempt rates among American trans youth run at 40-50% in most surveys. Many are turning to psychedelic therapy for help. What are the risks and benefits?
The Philosophy of Mysticism: Perennialism vs Constructivism | Chemical Collective
Do mystical experiences reveal a shared transcendent reality? Or, like any other category of contingent experience, are they better understood as products of their cultures? These questions mark one of the defining controversies in the modern study of religion, as well as shaping the extent to which we can co-exist in a hyper-globalised polis.
Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip | Chemical Collective
What unfolded during a terrifying mushroom trip in Hawaii between 1988 and 1989 would change Terence McKenna’s relationship with psychedelics – and perhaps reshape the message he shared with the world for the rest of his life.
Order, Chaos, and Consciousness: Examining the Entropic Brain Hypothesis | Chemical Collective
How does the coordinated activity of billions of neurons give rise to the richness of subjective experience?
Among the many frameworks proposed is the Entropic Brain Hypothesis (EBH). First articulated by Robin Carhart-Harris and colleagues in 2014, EBH argues that the quality of consciousness can be indexed by the entropy – the randomness or diversity – of brain activity patterns.
Is it true?
The Psychedelic Experience Illustrates the Appearance-Reality Distinction | Chemical Collective
What is a hallucination, exactly? What do we mean by 'real'? I consider the contributions of A.J. Ayer, Wittgenstein, Donald Hoffman and others.
Non-Consensual Dosing in Psychedelic History | Chemical Collective
Today, we all accept that dosing people with psychedelic drugs is wrong. But this cannot be taken for granted, for it was an extremely popular practice in the 1960s. Some would theorise, for instance, that the 1960s began as a cultural phenomenon with a particular spiking incident in 1965 – around whose aftermath the whole Generation’s predatory character can be understood.
Load More Articles
