In this episode, Joe Moore interviews Melissa Lavasani, Founder and Executive Director of the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition. She begins by detailing her dark path to finding psychedelics and how she really struggled with coming out of the psychedelic closet and becoming a public figure after she was asked to essentially be the figurehead for DC’s Initiative 81 campaign. She talks about the birth of the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition and the group’s goals; her concerns with psychedelics following the same route as the cannabis gold rush; the frustrations of so many people still having a moral opposition to drugs; and the problems with peyote, of which she feels nobody other than Indigenous communities should be using. Lavasani is featured in Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” docuseries on Netflix, and she discusses why she thinks she was in the mescaline episode, her feelings on being lumped in with groups that don’t agree with her on peyote use, and how the Decriminalize Nature battles have brought all of the conflicts with Indigenous communities and the booming psychedelic renaissance to light.
The post PT338 – Melissa Lavasani – The Power of Storytelling, The Preservation of Peyote, and “How to Change Your Mind” appeared first on Psychedelics Today.
