Rick Doblin: The Man Behind the 'Psychedelic '20s'

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

In June, I traveled to Denver with Zach Weissmueller to cover the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, which was organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group that has been working to gain approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and related ailments since the late 1980s. We produced a 30-minute documentary about what is rightly called today's "psychedelic renaissance," or a new flourishing of substances and subcultures that mostly went underground at the end of the 1960s. The documentary tells the history of psychedelics and how today's proponents of better living through chemistry are doing things in a very different way than Timothy Leary and others did back in the '60s. Rather than confront and antagonize the mainstream, MAPS is working within the system. You can watch the documentary here.

MAPS founder Rick Doblin is, more than any other single person, the man behind today's psychedelic renaissance. Reason has been writing about him and MAPS for decades and his goal of getting Food and Drug Administration approval for MDMA-assisted therapy is on the near horizon (he predicts it will happen within a year). We spoke about a lot of topics related to drug policy, self-actualization, and the relationship between mainstream culture and countercultures.

Doblin, who earned a Ph.D. in public policy to help him be more effective in changing laws, is a deep and nuanced thinker about the nuts and bolts of legislation and social change along with the more abstract and visionary "cognitive liberty" he hopes to accelerate. He's also one of the increasingly rare people who has built wide-ranging, beyond-partisan coalitions to effect policy change (at the opening of the MAPS conference in Denver, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a liberal Democrat, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a conservative Republican, both spoke). Long-lasting social change only happens when a true consensus forms, and it takes a lot of work to build that sort of agreement, especially when you're talking about something as powerful and scary to many as psychedelics.

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