Required Reading for Psychedelic Entrepreneurs and Investors: Part 1
Required Reading for Psychedelic Entrepreneurs and Investors: Part 1
A Biopsychosocial Framework
Welcome to The Trip Report, a newsletter for the builders of the emerging psychedelic ecosystem on the business, policy, and impact of psychedelics.
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Required Reading for Psychedelic Entrepreneurs and Investors: Part 1
The NFL playoffs are on here in America.
Playoffs?…Playoffs?!?!?!
Normally this wouldn’t matter but my wife is from Wisconsin.
Only one thing matters when you’re from Wisconsin—the Green Bay Packers.
Tonight the Packers are playing the San Francisco 49ers (it’s not looking good).
While I was cleaning up dinner in the kitchen an exciting play took place as evidenced by a shriek from the living room.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Packers got the ball on a first and now they have a 10."
Any football fan would know this sentence is unintelligible—but you kinda know what she means
If you don’t know football you wouldn’t know this makes no sense. But if you do, and you heard this comment you would question her understanding.
She kinda gets football. She understands the idea of a first down. She knows what is going on—she just doesn’t know how to talk about it.
What’s this have to do with psychedelics?
As psychedelic entrepreneurs, advocates and investors promoting their therapeutic use, it would be helpful to have a basic understanding of these conditions and to speak about them intelligently.
You don’t want to understand the conditions you are seeking to treat the way my wife understands football.
Enthusiasm combined with a lack of understanding is not the look you should be going for when discussing the treatment of addiction, PTSD or depression with psychedelics.
But there is a deeper, more important reason.
Such foundational knowledge will drive home the importance of what conventional medicine has gotten rid of—set and setting, therapeutic relationships, complex feedback systems that generate mind-body-heart conditions, straightforward and reasonable pricing, and others— and reinforce the need to “get this right.”
How do we get this right?
Writing the Trip Report has afforded me the chance to connect with many entrepreneurs building the psychedelic ecosystem, many of the activists, advocates and non-profit folks who have paved the way since the advent of prohibition.
There is a common concern: “How do we get this right?"
Many are concerned about the commercialization of psychedelics for reasons that include but are not limited to:
Concerns about access to low income/uninsured
A recapitulation to Nixonian-era prohibition (yes, still in play but winds of change are building)
Mistrust of capitalism in general and pharmaceuticals in particular
Resentment of the wealthy (I’d hate to be a billionaire these days)
Concerns about cultural appropriation
However, I believe that if the builders of this ecosystem have an understanding of these conditions based on the biopsychosocial framework and experience with psychedelic-assisted therapy then the chances of “getting this thing right” will be greater.
Conditions of the Soul—The Biopsychosocial Framework
The conditions we are seeking to address—Addiction, Depression, PTSD, Anxiety— are far from straightforward and require a broader contextualization, conceptualization, and understanding than mere neurobiology and neurocircuitry.
To that end, here are a few resources that are accessible for the non-technical and promote useful understandings for these conditions of the soul;
In The Realm of Hungry Ghost: Close Encounters with Addiction
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
In Part II we’ll look at resources that shed light on the perspectives of previous generations of psychedelic culture, therapy, and traditional context.
Thanks for reading.