From Crack to Psychedelics: Frontiers in Psychosis Work - 2 x 45 minute sessions- Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work: Zak Mucha, LCSW
- The Psychedelic Therapy Train Wreck: Ethical Responses To A Corrupt Industry - Will Hall, MA, DIplPW, Phd Candidate
Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work: Zak Mucha, LCSWWorking with a population suffering severe psychotic symptoms, homelessness, and addictions, a non-traditional clinical frame can allow for psychodynamic work. The patient’s relationship to a clinician is more than meds and case management and can be created in a clinical frame not limited to the corners of a physical office. This presentation will consider Bionian and Lacanian structures to examine the possibilities of joining with a patient in their worlds, both internal and external, to understand how psychotic symptoms can hold a narrative of past trauma and possess the hope for an emerging self.
The Psychedelic Therapy Train Wreck: Ethical Responses To A Corrupt Industry - Will Hall, MA, DIplPW, Phd CandidateDrugs are winning the war on drugs, and it's time to end criminalization of underground psychoactive substances, including psychedelics, less socially accepted than alcohol and nicotine (or psychiatric medications). Harm reduction policies are essential. But proposed medicalization schemes betray the informed consent vital to harm reduction: the new "psychedelic revival" peddles psychedelic exceptionalism hype based in shoddy research, driven by a corrupt decades-old network of new age zealots with a glaring track record of abusing patients under the cover of a code of silence.
"Psychedelic therapy" would put powerful suggestibility, disinhibiting, and vulnerability drugs in the hands of status and money hungry professionals already proven to systematically misuse their power. As the psychiatric system struggles with the decline of the SSRI brand and a lack of products for the PTSD market, are new drugs to play with the solution, or just a repeat of everything wrong with psychiatry? And if commercialization, as tried with cannabis, risks disastrous Brave New World implications in a dystopian capitalist society already desperate to escape and tranquilize, what is the way forward?
Fortunately, new voices are breaking the psychedelic hype bubble: an emerging "critical psychedelic studies" provides a crucial new perspective with wide implications for everyone engaged with the social response to psychosis. In this context, two central myths about psychosis need to be overcome - that anyone with a psychosis diagnosis or history cannot use psychedelics meaningfully in their lives, and that psychosis is just another diagnostic market to benefit from the magic powers of these new wonder drugs. Join us for a sober check-in on how survivors, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers can respond to the new psychedelic revival, and what visions we need for decriminalization of psychedelics from the perspective of innovating our systems and responses to psychosis, not just reinforcing them.
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