The Enlightened Esquire

There’s an aspect of organizing psychedelic businesses that always seems elusive and incomplete — benefit sharing.

What does it mean? How does it feel? What does it look like? Is it enough? How do I explain it? How should it be built into a business model? How can a business demonstrate it is culturally competent without seeming exploitative?

We discuss the issue. Then comes grappling with questions not asked before, and certainly not yet answered.

How does a broader society isolate and alienate entire ceremonial practices decade after decade, then show up in the same space ready to capitalize on those cultures and practices?

How can entire fields and organizations balance honoring while not appropriating? If a medical-based model replicates indigenous ceremonial practices, is it honoring the community source, or mocking it? If they proceed without any connection to the ceremonial practice, is it sacrilege?

Where does intellectual property fit in? Ibogaine: a 100-year-old medicine, patent pending?

How can entire sectors reconcile producing the profitable psychedelic business model when their society has barred indigenous and ancient practitioners from the same opportunity for so very, very long? Are reciprocity trusts or other reciprocity organizations enough? Which ones?

Please share how your institution, your organization, your clients and patients, and you are navigating this — and what benefit-sharing or reciprocity mechanisms you use now, or would like to see developed. If you had one piece of advice for a newly emerging psychedelic organization, clinic, or facilitator who wants to honor others and share benefit, what would it be?

First shared on LinkedIn by Deja Correia, J.D. Educational only; not legal advice.