Black Psychedelic Revolution

How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma—an Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation

The mainstream has long viewed psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment. Though psychedelics have deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultures, Western psychedelic spaces have historically excluded People of Color—but the radical healing of psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine aren’t just for a rarefied elite. And they’re definitely not just for white people.

Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power—the “Promised Land” as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Risqué? Sure. But it’s true.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POC—specifically Black people—from the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of “good” vs. “bad” drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.“White supremacy is relentless, but so are we. Black Psychedelic Revolution helps
us see how we can begin to get free. Once that happens, we’ll be unstoppable.”
—SIA HENRY, JD, senior policy associate, MAPS
 
“Dr. Powers dares us to dream into existence a new reality in which psychedelic medicine gives Black people an opportunity to heal generations of trauma, allowing us to emerge whole, connected, and beautiful.”
—SOI PIMI WITAN, Shipibo medicine practitioner
 
“Black Psychedelic Revolution invites the working class to flip the table rather than
beg for token seats.”
—HEATHER HARVEY, cofounder of Black Revolutionary Theatre WorkshopNicholas Powers is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury. Powers has presented talks and reports from the Psychedelic Renaissance since 2017. He has written for numerous psychedelic publications from Lucid News to Double Blind. Alongside published articles, he has given talks at Naropa University and Chacruna. Powers has published three books with Upset Press. The first is a book of poetry, the second a mix of reportage from disaster zones, protests, and Burning Man. The third is a political vampire novel. He regularly attends Wild Seeds Writers Retreat and Cave Canem Black poetry workshops. Powers lives in Brooklyn with his son.