Did you hear about MAPS starting a new organisation, MAPS Australia? And did you know that they tapped me on the shoulder to be its Executive Director?

If you did, you may or may not have noticed that my post announcing this on LinkedIn was an April Fools joke, of admittedly dubious quality. If you feel sheepish about this, please don’t. Or a least take comfort in that I was way more mortified that anyone took me seriously.

Some people got it. It’s not like there weren’t any red flags. I don’t generally ask for ‘energy transfers,’ as a euphemism for money (I will just send you the invoice.) I do not think I have many friends at Mind Medicine Australia. Our relationships are more typified by mutual annoyance and seemingly intractable differences of opinion. (Tania, if you’re reading this, tell Peter I’m ready to unblock him on LinkedIn.)

Nor have I ever ended a communication with ‘Namaste.’ Nothing wrong with that, just that I have none of the religious, cultural, or vocational (yoga teacher) reasons to do so.

Whatever the case, people generally ate it up. Lots of congratulatory comments. Even a few DMs, including offers to help out the new organisation. Replying to these was particularly awkward, though everyone was very nice about it.

Anyway, I think there are some interesting points we can take away from this:

Despite the criticism over MDMA trials, subsequent failure to secure FDA approval, and the whole MAPS PBC becomes Lykos becomes Resilient Pharmaceuticals - all of which have damaged MAPS’ relationship with grassroots communities, there’s still widespread support for their original mission and the MAPS brand. This disjunction makes me wonder how divorced the idea of MAPS is from it’s more complicated reality. Whatever the case, this is an idea that still has power.

Is it fair to speculate on whether peoples’ willingness to accept this indicates disillusion or dissatisfaction with existing psychedelic organisations here? Probably not, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. This is especially ironic for the orgs advocating for therapeutic access, as Australia, arguably, has made more progress towards legal clinical psilocybin and MDMA therapy than the US. Therefore, tentatively, I’d suggest this isn’t just about tangible changes in policy.

Deserved or not, MAPS brings a certain sense of legitimacy. Perhaps that’s part of the puzzle too.

Apparently, the idea of me being executive director of our own national MAPS is pretty plausible. Once I’d gotten over the profound anxiety of people taking me seriously, this was quite nice. I shouldn’t be super surprised though. As I said in a follow up post, I have led a national organisation on a tiny budget, and it’d be nice to be paid to do something similar (which ‘executive director’ at least partially implies.)

I like to think that part of why people went with the MAPS angle, despite its baggage, is my reputation and values. Whatever other mistakes I would make, excessively pandering to corporate pharmaceutical interests, failing to take ethical concerns seriously, or letting belief get ahead of evidence would not be among them.

A less charitable interpretation of this is that co-opting critical voices in the sector is plausible, and that my name could be used to pre-emptively launder MAPS Australia’s reputation. This doesn’t always turn out badly for both parties. People and organisations are sometimes capable of change for the better. But I’d hate to end up like early Greenpeace member and former president of Greenpeace Canada, Patrick Moore, who went from being a celebrated activist to mercenary ‘industry consultant’/shill.

With that in mind, yes, I am 100% open to offers of employment. Just don’t expect me to accept if it’s a PR exercise rather than genuine commitment to doing better.

It should be obvious, but people aren’t reading your linked in posts that carefully. In fact, if I’ve shown anything, it’s that with the right combination of reputation, words and images, you can shortcut people’s critical facilities very effectively.

This is cool if you’re selling something, and you can be sure I will dwell on how to utilize this effect in future.

But it also shows how vulnerable we are to grift and misdirection under the right conditions. I could have gotten a long way with this before most people would have called me on it. If I’d been deliberately deceptive, I’m willing to bet I could have extracted quite a few donations before anyone noticed. Think about that next time you see something on social media that pushes your buttons enough for you to open your wallet.

I’m aware fortnight is a bit of a change of pace. I’m actually a week early (or, as more observant readers will note, late) but I’m travelling from next week and won’t have the time & internet connectivity to post again until May, at which point things will go back to some version of normal.

Huge thanks to everyone supporting this work. Whether it’s feedback, sharing, contributing a few dollars a month via buy me a coffee cactus, or making a purchase from my etsy store, it all makes a big difference to me and I’m deeply grateful.

Written on Worimi lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.

Icon by Freepik from Flaticon