As this blog has already registered, sexual abuse scandals surround the psychedelic renaissance. The matter is serious and deserves attention, but it is doubtful that a mixture of sentimentality, personalism and sensationalism is the adequate recipe to shed light on the problem, as the new podcast Cover Story has done.
Launched by New York Magazine, the investigative podcast dedicates its first season to “Power Trip”, a series in English that explores the case of abuse suffered by Lily Kay Ross as a user of consciousness-altering substances. Ross is also the main figure behind Psymposia, a non-profit page that promises to “offer left-wing perspectives on drugs, politics and culture.”
New episodes will be released every Tuesday. I heard the first one, “I See a Sh*tshow” (which should perhaps translate to “I see m* in the fan”), Ross’s answer to presenter iO Tillett Wright’s question about what she witnessed in the psychedelic scene. And I didn’t like it.
Ross adopts an almost mellow tone to recount his college drug experiences and grief after his mother’s death. Maybe it would work with a more anonymous character, but it sounds strange for a protagonist who militates in the area to appeal to sentimentality punctuated by calculated catchphrases.
She took the trouble to include in the very first episode a kind of politically correct insurance: she says that she was discouraged from filing the complaint because she could, alone (“singlehandedly”), bring down the psychedelic rebirth. Obviously a personalist exaggeration, but also a trap: anyone who doesn’t enjoy their trip may be seen as a censor in a serious case of abuse.
Script and audio text reach the point of embarrassment, as in the final hook of the first chapter in which Wright asks, in a cavernous voice, that Ross begin to narrate the abuse suffered. She replies, with almost humorous joviality, “Are you ready to tighten your seat belts?”
Listen in the next episode, of course. But already in this debut program, the somewhat sensationalist duo points to the figure of Françoise Bourzat, whom the reader has already encountered here. It is the Californian therapist of French origin exposed in Will Hall’s infamous essay that shook the world of psychedelia, he also sexually involved with Bourzat.
Anyone interested in more information and less sensation is recommended to read Hall’s text. Another unmissable work is Clancy Cavnar’s essay on homophobic inclinations in the psychedelic field (available in Portuguese), and not only in the distant past, which this blog also dealt with in the aforementioned post.
There is a risk, as Michael Pollan warned, that cases of sexual abuse — which exist and perhaps are not few — will become the new version, now with some weight in reality, of reports of suicides allegedly induced by LSD. This fanciful news was crucial to stigmatizing psychedelics and justifying decades of prohibition that research is just beginning to reverse.
Finally, if you want to know more about the history and new developments in science in this area, including in Brazil, look for my book “Psiconautas – Viagens com a Ciência Psicodélica Brasileira”.
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Chad-98Weaver, a distinguished author at NewsBulletin247, excels in the craft of article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a penchant for storytelling, Chad delivers informative and engaging content that resonates with readers across various subjects. His contributions are a testament to his dedication and expertise in the field of journalism.
