Hello friends and psychonauts!
If you recognize this greeting, you most likely encountered it after signing up to receive email updates from the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club, a student organization that meets weekly at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst!
I first discovered the UMass Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club during my first semester on campus in Spring 2022. A recent transfer to the university resuming my undergraduate studies in Anthropology after a gap year, I was constantly searching for promising opportunities to feel a part of my new campus community. It was a poster much like this one, also hanging in the Franklin Dining Commons, that caught my attention on one of my first days as a UMass student and stuck in my consciousness long after I snapped a picture to send to a friend back home and moved on with my day.
I engaged members of the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club many times that year during some of their famous “two-table dinners” at the Franklin Dining Commons (also known as Frank) where the attendees of the weekly full-body community meeting are invited to “continue the conversation” over communal meals that sometimes last longer than the meeting itself. Despite these positive first impressions of the community built around the club, it took me until the end of the Fall 2022 semester to attend my first formal meeting and form the connection which would later inspire me to conduct research with the organization for the duration of the Spring 2023 semester, my last as an undergraduate student.
I was moved to do research in this setting because I was so interested in the community of care and knowledge-sharing that the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club has managed to build in the three short years since its founding without taking on registered student organization (RSO) status at the university, which grants additional support and recognition to student organizations who apply and are accepted for RSO classification. The Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club prides itself on the informal, non-hierarchical leadership dynamic of its steering committee and a collaboration-based approach to meetings that relies on the input of general body members. Examining the communication between members of the steering committee as well as other “more experienced” senior participants and newer “less experienced” attendees, I wanted to find examples of the ways in which language use builds this community and encourages a transition of knowledge and power “handed down” from one cohort of leaders to the next.
To conduct the research in this study, I conducted approximately seven hours of participant observation across five different open meetings occurring from 5:30-6:30 pm on Monday nights: the March 6th presentation on “The Neural Mechanisms of Psychedelics”, the March 27th “Where do you stand?” debate about psychedelic beliefs and practices, the April 3rd Self-Care & Community Social, the April 24th partnership with guest speaker and psychedelic integration guide Hakim Noah, and the May 1st talking circle centered around “Trip & Experience Sharing”.
The first two sessions of participant observation were hosted indoors in the Bartlett Hall auditorium and the last three happened outdoors on the lawn between Durfee Conservatory and French Hall, with each meeting including an optional and informal Frank dinner discussion from 6:30-9:00 pm following the formal meeting. In addition to attending these meetings and discussions, I also conducted a one-on-one interview with the current “lead organizer” of the club’s steering committee and recorded forty minutes of conversation between current and prospective steering committee members during an end-of-semester meeting about the upcoming change in leadership.
Beyond these in-person interactions, I utilized the presence of the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club maintained through their weekly emails, Instagram account (@.MultiPsychClub), and outreach materials in the building of a “linguistic landscape” which explores the ways in which leadership communicates with other members and the greater UMass community about the club. This “linguistic landscape” included the compilation of eighteen images and captions highlighting email communications, social media use, presentation slides, and digital/physical promotional materials.
By the time my research with the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club ended, I had certainly observed the “non-hierarchical, collaboration-based” approach to leadership and communication that had been pitched to me at the first meeting I attended in Fall 2022 and will not deny the presence of a member-oriented approach to these weekly meetings.
However, I found in my semester-long observation that communication of knowledge and care in this space happened primarily through the top-down delivery of information, advice, and encouragement from “more experienced” members to “less experienced” ones and not equally across those in attendance. I found that even in settings where all participants are given “equal” opportunity to participate in the sharing of information and creation of care, there was a consistent inevitability that some members of the group would take on roles of “knowledge-sharers” while others fill the role of “knowledge-seekers” in this space where one’s ‘experiences’ build their social capital and credibility with the group.
When reviewing my field notes from the research experience, I was unsurprised by how many times I made reference to this power dynamic between members who consider themselves more experienced in the science or use of psychedelics and those who would readily admit to being ‘inexperienced’ because they have never used a psychedelic substance. In the fourteen pages of field notes that I compiled between March 6th and May 1st, I counted thirty-six specific references to leadership and knowledge-sharing dynamics within the group.
In particular, the meetings centered around Psychedelic Neuroscience and Trip/Experience Sharing were the ones that yielded the most observations about how the club relies on its leaders, both formal and informal, to hold and disseminate valuable information to ‘newcomers’. In both meetings, the majority of questions within the session came from a member who had verbalized a lack of ‘experience’ and were directed specifically towards members of the group with the credibility and social capital that has come with sharing their experiences. Questions ranged from the ethics of certain psychedelic practices to safe use for neurodivergent individuals to how one should handle an emergency situation involving a person on psychedelic substances and were almost exclusively answered by a member of the steering committee with demonstrated knowledge and credibility regarding the topic at hand, with other members with established experience and standing in the group contributing knowledge when the steering committee could not and where their unique lived experiences were useful/relevant.
Of this group dynamic, the current lead organizer (referred to hereafter as ‘K’) and I joked in our one-on-one interview:
K: This is not all about use.
And like “oh you’ve had to have had this high-dose mushroom experience,
to be a member”.
Like it it doesn’t have to be that at all?
And it’s–
OL: To be on the e-board you have to experience ego death yeah?
K: Of course of course.
OL: [laughter]
K: That’s that’s to be the wizard you have to do that!
OL: [laughter]
And while we were able to poke fun at the idea that one must have a certain level of experience with psychedelic substances to be viewed as a leader within the space, there is some truth to the idea that members who have had more ‘experiences’ and are more willing to share information/advice or answer questions as they are asked are the same members who are regarded as holders and disseminators of knowledge, whether they are on the steering committee or not. While the club’s ethos may assert (at the beginning of most meetings, in fact) that “use is not a prerequisite for admission”, having experience with psychedelics that one is willing to share for the benefit of other, less-experienced members certainly creates an opportunity for those more-experienced participants to be leaders of thought.
This was noticeably true in the Psychedelic Neuroscience presentation, where the members of the steering committee were directed questions grounded in what the group knew to be true about their organizing members. The student leaders who are also members of the university’s Meditation Club were posed questions about mindfulness and intention-setting when tripping, those who study neuroscience received questions from newcomers about the chemical makeup of certain psychedelics and their effects on the brain, a member of the steering committee who is also an EMT fielded many of the questions about safe use and harm reduction (both in this meeting and throughout the semester).
K: … he [the past lead organizer] is like “I’ll leave it behind to [K and other members of the steering committee when I leave”
Um so there were things like that absolutely.
Um so I guess that’s how I have gone on to become an organizer,
And you know [the past lead organizer] gave me practice with things,
like sending like the weekly email out.
Like here’s like a template for that.
And like so I inherited a bunch of like,
kinda practices and habits that he had as a leader.
And some which I think,
I left kind behind,
and like just…
Things that are you know,
I guess relating to how I conduct myself generally,
and that just comes out in how I choose to speak to the group.
OL: Mmh-hmm.
K: Um but anyway,
in terms of how that’s gonna go…
I think it’s gonna be a similar process…
You know passing it on to other people too,
is like uh setting up a good meeting in which,
you know we talk to you know,
our steering committee and we kind just talk to each other,
and um…
I dunno I wanna gauge the interest and and the space,
that people [have?]
OL: [Yeah!]
K: To lead.
Who do- are there people in the steering committee that are feeling called,
to be like the person that you know,
signs that email at the end of every week.
And takes that on as a responsibility.
Or do you wanna be the person that,
when everybody gets to the club you say,
“Hey welcome to the club and like,
here’s what we’re doing today!”
OL: Mmh-hmm.
K: So there needs to be like a,
a somewhat intentional conversation,
about that um…
And I- and I don’t even have like,
I don’t think I have a super biased preference about it.
But it- but I’m crossing my fingers,
and I’m hopeful that like,
I have people that wanna take that on.
Cause what you asked- your question,
you hint at something that I worry about a lot,
which is “is this gonna continue to live like after I’m gone,”
and like… I’m definitely one of the last original people,
that was here at the start of this.
I felt awed and honored to be watching this semester as this young club answered questions of learning and leadership quietly, perhaps even unknowingly, with the ways that members teach each other and build each other up. Even as the majority of this knowledge is passed on from above instead of generated from within, it is still the foundation of the club community that those with experience are willing to use it to educate and encourage those without. In this space, there is no looking down on those with less information. Only the impulse to empower them through helping them learn and grow. Through the verbalizing of experience from those at the ‘top’ and of questions posed from those at the ‘bottom’ of this knowledge-sharing hierarchy, members of the Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Club are identifying their current leaders and creating new ones in the process.
It is a beautiful thing to witness, this passing of the torch. This creation of community, of care. This handing down of knowledge from those who once sought it to those currently seeking it. This leaving of a legacy.