It is early morning. The smell of stale smoke hangs in air so damp and hot it feels like I’m in Singapore, not a few hours drive north of Sydney. I am clothed entirely in cheesecloth as I argue online with a chatbot while hoping the power stays on long enough make a cup of increasingly expensive coffee. No one told me existential dread could be so…sweaty.
Welcome to issue #20 of The Ethical Trip! In this issue:
What should you look for in a psychedelic training course?
Is our access to AI like Mutually Assured Destruction?
Why is it bad to upset your stakeholders?
For all this, plus jokes that some of you (still) won’t let me stop writing, read on!
But first: Thank you to everyone who has helped spread the word about my work and double-mega-thanks to people supporting me via buy me a coffee cacti. Special thanks also to this fortnight’s sponsor: Legal Innovative Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Professional Practitioners (LIMPPP.) More from them at the end, if you can scroll that far.
Table of Contents
Industry Insights:
What should I look for in a psychedelic training course?
As psychedelic therapeutic practices move towards above-ground legal practice and underground psychedelic use increases, interest in education and training around psychedelics and their therapeutic use is high. So it’s no surprise the number of course on offer have exploded to meet demand (and cash in on enthusiastic students while they can.)
Which one to choose, though?
I can’t answer that, but I did put together a non-exhaustive list of factors to consider when selecting course of training or education in psychedelic practice or therapy.
Read the whole story here: What should I look for in a psychedelic training course?
Want to help upgrade my budget from ‘Seed Collection’ to ‘Diggers Club’? Support me via Buy Me a Coffee.
Philosophical Brief: Nuclear Winter of My Discontent
In a blog post called The Nuclear Knowledge War, an unnamed bot working off the prompt: 'nuclear knowledge war. you need ai to compete with ai. run with it.' made the argument that 'AI' tools such as LLMs are so dangerous that their existence and widespread use is analogous to the existence of nuclear weapons. Based on this, it went on to make hugely dubious but very exciting-sounding recommendations on how we should react.
I got angry about this and spent a disproportionate amount of time writing about why it was wrong.
It’s a longer read, but you’ll still waste less time than I did writing it: No, the answer to AI isn’t Mutually Assured Destruction
Bonus video: don’t upset your stakeholders
A word from our sponsor: LIMPPP
Greetings, fellow teachers and seekers! I, Orinoco Visionwolf, have emerged from my 375th jungle retreat to announce that I have seen the light! I have pivoted away from selling dangerous medical devices and skincare products for Jung-obsessed incels to an area with vastly more financial liquidity, I mean, potential to do good for the world.
As the number of above-ground psychedelic professionals grows, so has the need for nonprofit organisations that charge these professionals hefty membership fees to tell them things they should already know. Seeing that this was still an underserved niche, I have founded Legal Innovative Multidisciplinary Psychedelic Professional Practitioners, aka LIMPPP, to bring order to the chaos.
I anticipate that we will be the peak body for everything psychedelic, worldwide, by mid-2027, with a total addressable market of approximately 70 million professionals and a projected revenue from membership of around one trillion dollars per year.
This is my passion. No one is more LIMPPP than me.
Just between friends, being LIMPPP is a means to an end. What I really want is to get into the Society Of Financially Triumphant Psychedelic Organic Oligarchs (SOFTPOO.) All I can think about is being in SOFTPOO. Peter Thiel said they’d let me in if I could make more money than Elon.
So, now I just need to make the whole world LIMPPP, in order to enter SOFTPOO.
I am currently 69,999,999 members short of this goal. Due to spending all my Seed Serum profits on 24-carat gold purge buckets for my favourite curandero, I don’t have the money for a website or email address of my own. So if you are interested in being LIMPPP with me, reply to this email with a $1000 USD energy transfer or NFT of equivalent value.
LIMPPP: Just because there’s no profit, doesn’t mean there’s no advantage!🥀
If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
As always, all feedback and suggestions are welcome, and I promise* to not satirise you without mercy. Also, the research roundup will be back next edition (I ran out of time, sorry!)
*Unless you deserve it.
PS:
I told my doctor that the next Holotropic workshop I did would definitely cure my depression.
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ he replied.
Written on Worimi lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Icon by Freepik from Flaticon
