New world. New manifesto.
Over the past year, the Psychedelic Society has grown. We’ve welcomed new event coordinators, expanded our online programme and begun supporting people to build communities across the UK. As more people become part of this work, we want to share what we hope it will serve.
We care about what happens after an event: whether someone leaves with a friendship they can turn to, feels able to have a conversation they’ve been avoiding, or finds something they want to contribute to. We also want somewhere to ask the bigger questions together. What matters to us? What do we owe one another? How do we live well in the time we have?
This manifesto is our attempt to put that purpose into words, and give ourselves something to be accountable to as we grow.
The Psychedelic Society Manifesto
What makes a life worth living? What kind of world do we want to help create? How can we serve?
These questions can surface at any time: when someone we love dies, when a relationship ends, when we reach something we’ve worked towards and find ourselves wondering what comes next. They can also arrive in moments of joy, when we feel how precious being alive is and want to give more of ourselves to it.
We believe there should be places where we can bring these questions and explore how to live by our answers.
Meaning grows through relationship
Much of our culture encourages us to treat life as an individual project. Build a career. Become successful. Work on yourself. There is less guidance on how to belong, how to care for one another, or how to take responsibility for the life we share.
We believe these are central to a good life. Meaning grows through loving people, making things together, caring for a place and doing work that matters to someone beyond ourselves. It also grows through paying attention: to our own experience, to the living world, and to all that we cannot fully explain.
Since 2014, the Psychedelic Society has brought people together to explore these relationships through psychedelics, contemplative practices, creativity and shared experience.
What we believe
An experience can open something. Living it takes practice.
Psychedelic experiences can profoundly change how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. So can meditation, movement, time in nature, ceremony and an honest conversation. We value many ways of exploring consciousness, and welcome people with different beliefs and experiences.
What matters is how we carry what we discover into our lives: how we treat people, what we give our attention to, and the choices we make.
We need people we can keep coming back to.
An experience may leave us feeling open, unsettled, inspired or unsure. We need relationships where we can speak honestly about it, be challenged with care, and find support over time. Building those relationships takes patience, trust and a willingness to show up for each other.
Belonging comes with responsibility.
We want a community where people can receive care and find ways to offer it. That might mean welcoming someone new, listening when it is difficult, sharing a skill or helping something local take root. Each of us has a part in shaping the culture we share.
Curiosity and care belong together.
We take the possibilities and risks of psychedelics seriously. We draw on research, lived experience and traditions of practice, making room for disagreement and acknowledging what we do not know. People deserve honest information, respect for their boundaries and the freedom to decide what is right for them.
What we do
We run events, courses, retreats and gatherings in London, online and increasingly across the UK. We bring together researchers, practitioners, artists, philosophers and people exploring these questions in their own lives.
Through our community leads programme, we support people to build gatherings where they live. Our hope is that meeting once becomes knowing one another over time, with room for local people to shape what their community needs.
As a not-for-profit worker co-operative, we want the way we organise ourselves to reflect the care and shared responsibility we believe in. Our growth should help more people take part and give something back.
An invitation
You do not need to have taken psychedelics or hold any particular belief to belong here. You can arrive curious, sceptical, hopeful or unsure.
Bring your questions, your experience and whatever you have to offer. We want to build a community where we can ask more of life, care for one another, and work out together what is ours to do.
