Look, I’m not here to rain on the parade. I’ve sat with clients who’ve found genuine relief through clinically guided sessions, and the peer-reviewed data is hard to ignore. But I’m deeply cautious about the overselling. We’re treating consciousness like a circuit board you can just upgrade with the right voltage. The psyche isn’t a simple switch. Carl Jung kept hammering on how confronting the shadow requires integration, not just a chemical bypass. You can’t outsource your individuation to a lab-synthesized alkaloid. Tarot’s been whispering the same thing for centuries—look at The Hermit. It’s not about blinding yourself to the dark; it’s about walking into it with a lantern, slowly, willingly. AI might hand us a dozen new compounds by next year, but if we’re just chasing the peak without doing the ground work, we’re gonna keep bumping our heads against the same walls.

I’m not anti-tech. I wire buildings for a living. But I’ve watched too many people mistake a trip for transformation. Real change is messy. It’s grounding, not just sparks. If this new wave of synthetic entheogens comes through, I hope we pair it with actual therapeutic