[00:00:20] Raad: Today my guest is Ifetayo Harvey, who founded the People of Color Psychedelic Collective. The People of Color Psychedelic Collective educates and builds community with people of color interested in psychedelics and ending the war on drugs. In 2022, Open Society Foundation named Ifetayo a 2022 Soros Justice Fellow.

[00:00:37] Raad: Thanks so much for joining the podcast. 

[00:00:39] Ifetayo: Thank you, Raad. Thank you for having me. 

[00:00:41] Raad: We shared the stage in New York at Athenaeum a couple of months ago, which was fantastic. My sister's already a big fan. She's, she heard of your story. She heard you present. And then she's asked me about you. I want to start right away by opening up the conversation about psychedelics in the Black community.

[00:00:57] Raad: There seems to be the prominence of cannabis that's more popular in, let's say, Black media or in music and culture. But I come at this question from not just necessarily about the experience of Black communities, but people of color in general.

[00:01:11] Raad: Being in tech, I often hear about CEOs and, high powered individuals taking acid and going on these retreats and peak performance on this stuff. But, When it comes to, minorities and smoking weed and things like that, it seems to be shunned and criminalized so openly, whereas anybody who tends to be a C E O or whatever could talk about taking acid in a forest.

[00:01:35] Raad: So to me, there's such a disparity in the way it our culture considers who is allowed to escape their bodies, who is allowed to explore their consciousness versus not. So let's start there, let me throw this to you.

[00:01:47] Raad: Why is there a difference in the way psychedelics is experienced or consumed or portrayed in the Black community versus cannabis?

[00:01:56] Ifetayo: I think that cannabis has been present in the U. S. longer than psychedelics. And when I say present, it has been more widespread, more popularized for a longer period. If you look at a lot of the early drug policy laws in the U. S., going to the late 1800s, early 1900s, cannabis started to become associated with Mexican migrants. Things like psilocybin mushrooms LSD became popularized so much later. Maybe the 50s and 60s. I think that has something to do with it. Cannabis is also... Because it's been around longer in the U. S. It's more readily available to buy on the street. It's a lot harder to find psychedelics.

[00:02:44] Ifetayo: That said, I think that Black people have been using psychedelics in different forms for a long time. Obviously we know about Iboga in Gabon, that's associated with the Bwiti people. And I know that there are probably so many other forms of what you call traditional medicine, plant medicine throughout the African continent.

[00:03:13] Ifetayo: When we look at contemporary uses of psychedelics, going back to the 60s and 70s, there are a lot of Black artists who use psychedelics as a way to make art, music, or to influence their work. I think you can look at... People like George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, even yeah, oh yeah, Jimi Hendrix, of course.

[00:03:40] Ifetayo: Yeah, but even some, some of the R& B groups like The Commodores or The Temptations, Four Top, I think they also incorporated some elements of psychedelic rock into their music. So I think that, Black people in the U. S. are forced to be quieter about our drug use, because we know that the man is watching and surveillance has been a reality for a lot of us, for me, but also going back to the civil rights movement. There are paid informants and I guess in Black consciousness, we're always aware that, the man is watching in one way or the other.

[00:04:18] Ifetayo: When it comes to talking about drug use, we've learned to talk in codes, and learned not to talk on the phone about it, definitely not talk to the media about it. So I think that's why you don't hear as much from Black folks about psychedelics, but now, we hear lots of rappers, singers talk about their psychedelic use.

[00:04:41] Ifetayo: I forget what rapper, I'm forgetting his name, but I know there was like an acid rap album. Future Song, a few years ago, Molly Percocet, was extremely popular. And some people may not consider Molly a psychedelic, but there are some camps of folks who do. So I think that it's not necessarily about us using it less.

[00:05:03] Ifetayo: I think there is evidence for that but I think it's about how it looks different. And I also think that Black folks tend to use substances less than our white counterparts. That's just a, that's my theory, that's not proven. But in 2013, the ACLU released a report on cannabis arrests. Around possession and it looked at every single state and across the U. S. Black people were up to four times as likely four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis use or possession, even though the rates that we use cannabis are similar to white folks, if not less, so I think that reality comes into play in terms of like how we talk about psychedelics and psychedelics have also been associated with white folks for a long time, like the hippie movement, and so for those of us who've never tried psychedelics, There's that hesitancy because we're like, Oh, this is some white people shit.

[00:06:09] Ifetayo: I'm not fucking with that. Cause in, in the Black community, a lot of times we see like white people shit is living on the edge unnecessarily and being Black will already have you living on the edge in the U.S. Just because our skin color is just a signal for so many racist biases.

[00:06:31] Raad: I think it's such an important point to keep in mind. And I was going to ask you, maybe there is something also there about the experience of the substance itself that makes it less appropriate. For example, can I imagine just anyone being able to drop some acid and dance in a weird way in a park?

[00:06:46] Ifetayo: No, Someone would call the cops on us. 

[00:06:48] Raad: If you're crawling on all fours saying hey, is this real? And then, yeah, who has the luxury of doing that? And who gets to be, who gets to be experienced as a hostile person in that environment? So I think there's something definitely about the sort of head spaces, the mind spaces that you tend to go to on the substances.

[00:07:06] Raad: The way that you're treated when you are acting a particular way, not even being hostile, but the way you're allowed to express yourself, right? And the politics of that is really interesting to me, so I appreciate you talking about it. 

[00:07:19] Ifetayo: Yeah I was going to say that, we as a people have had in our history all forms of autonomy stripped away from us, right? And these substances hit towards ha having that loss of control again in some way. And so I think that, for us that is scary, because we've had to fight to get that autonomy back.

[00:07:43] Ifetayo: So Dipping in the psychedelics can be scary because it's okay that loss of control and then you know The idea of being in the public eye with it. That's also just so many layers to it, right? 

[00:07:56] Raad: With that said I also think that you know The kind of music that tends to come out Generalizing broadly, I'm by no way or means a R& B or a hip hop enthusiast.

[00:08:06] Raad: I know a few songs here and there, but when I first heard ASAP Rocky's LSD, I was like, wow, this is a very different A$ AP Rocky. In the 50s and 60s, you shared with me before on a call about your mother's experience growing up in that time in the civil rights movement.

[00:08:22] Raad: Tell me a little bit about. Her experience, as you've, heard from her growing up in that time, experimenting with psychedelics, and then her attitude had changed, but for different reasons.

[00:08:33] Raad: Tell me a little bit about, her experience growing up at that time as you know it now. 

[00:08:37] Ifetayo: Yeah, so my mom is from a really small town in Georgia probably like 2000 people. And when she was growing up, she was born December 1st, 1955, the same day that Rosa Parks got arrested on the bus in Birmingham.

[00:08:53] Ifetayo: But my mom grew up with racism, very blatant racism. She was shot. With a BB gun by a white man when she was 10 years old started working as a domestic when she was 13 for. Some of the white folks in her town, so that, shaped her perspective in terms of politics. And then along with that, my mom was going to segregated schools up until the 70s.

[00:09:19] Ifetayo: And it was when she started going to school with white kids that she got introduced to cannabis. And, she liked it and. By the time she was in her twenties, she moved down to Orlando, Florida, and started, getting out of that small town mindset was meeting a lot of folks who were immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, and she would tell me, a lot of times, she, on her break at work, she would be smoking a joint with her friends that's when things, It started to shift in American culture.

[00:09:52] Ifetayo: And she told me about one of the times that she took acid she went on a bike ride to a park, and there was a water fountain, and it was like oozing out all these colors, and I know that her and her friends at the time experimented with like mescaline acid. And yeah, she went to Pink Floyd shows, saw the laser lights and love Pink Floyd.

[00:10:13] Ifetayo: And she also told me then that's when she started seeing people use heroin too. And it wasn't something that she tried, but she witnessed some folks using heroin around her age. As a kid, she would play Pink Floyd really loud in the house. My family had their own stereo system and we always played music super loud.

[00:10:34] Ifetayo: And Pink Floyd music used to scare me as a kid because it was so out there. But then as I got older, I had an interest in history and I would always ask my mom questions about her upbringing. And, my mom grew up very poor and again, saw a lot of blatant racism. And as I became a teenager, she started telling me about, how the cops had taken one of her uncles and beat him up for no reason and put him in jail.

[00:11:07] Ifetayo: And when I was in eighth grade, I had this project to do the history of music of the sixties and seventies. So that's when I started like. Thinking about psychedelics, but as a 14 year old, you don't really have a grasp on it unless you take it. And I wasn't interested in taking it, but I was really fascinated by that particular part of history.

[00:11:31] Ifetayo: And so as I got older I, I, I love all the music, the British invasion, the Motown, Stax records But I always had the kind of this cloud hanging over me as a kid because my dad went to prison and he was deported and There are also other things going on that I didn't know how to talk about my family kept that away from me a lot of times because they didn't want to involve me in that kind of thing and so as I got older my mom share with me that she smoked weed and I didn't know that my whole life.

[00:12:12] Ifetayo: I didn't know my mom smoked weed, but she started smoking in front of me when I was like 17. 

[00:12:18] Raad: What sparked that? If she was, if this was being hidden all the, or it was taboo in your family, how did it just come up? 

[00:12:25] Ifetayo: I don't know. That's a good question. I think she just... I think she realized that I was at the age now where she could see it or I could see it and be okay.

[00:12:36] Raad: Was it like a cautionary tale or more if you want to smoke it, just Be safe smoke and do what you want. 

[00:12:42] Ifetayo: Yeah, she did say that she did say that. My mom back in 1989 my mom got arrested for possession with intent to sell in a small town in South Carolina and two of my siblings were in the car, so she temporarily lost custody of my siblings and ended up, going to court. She didn't do any prison time but she was prosecuted by one of the Murdaws. And if you don't know who the Murdolls are they're a powerful family in Hampton County, South Carolina.

[00:13:16] Ifetayo: Netflix and HBO did a special on them recently because they're very corrupt, even though they had a huge hand in running that county for many generations. So I think she was also cautious of that, like bringing the, her smoking in front of me. But once I got to college, she was. Like, watching Netflix documentaries on the whole meth craze, and she's I don't care if you smoke reefer, but, don't do any meth.

[00:13:46] Ifetayo: So yeah she, I don't know what sparked that change in her, but I think it was just her being tired of hiding it all those years, and her figuring that we're old enough. It's okay. Yeah. 

[00:13:59] Raad: I'm obviously going to ask you. Later in the podcast about what she thinks about your work now, given that you're talking about substances and decriminalization and so on.

[00:14:07] Raad: I want to go to your father's story because I think that's, when you first spoke about him or when I first heard about it, it felt like a very challenging, difficult thing to go through, but a very healing process as well, given that you've reconciled. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened to your father?

[00:14:25] Ifetayo: Yes, so my dad immigrated to the U. S. from Jamaica in his younger days. And he was a migrant worker who got introduced to drug selling through his migrant work. And he... He was involved in selling drugs for some years. As a kid, I didn't know any of this stuff because, again, my parents kept that away from me.

[00:14:52] Ifetayo: He was just my dad. And I knew him as a mechanic. But my dad had been on the run for over a decade. And he was yeah, evading arrest. And eventually... His right hand man snitched on him and they found my dad and arrested him. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for cocaine trafficking. He was incarcerated in Florida.

[00:15:18] Ifetayo: I grew up in South Carolina, so I didn't see my dad while he was incarcerated. He served about half of his sentence, about eight years and was deported immediately after. I grew up with my dad up until the age of 4 or 5, and then he went to prison, got out, and then reconciled with him when I was 16 in person.

[00:15:40] Ifetayo: Throughout his Time in prison. We wrote letters to each other. And when he got out, that's when we started talking on the phone. And when I was teen, he was 

[00:15:50] Raad: in the US Private. When he got out or you said he was deported to Jamaica 

[00:15:54] Ifetayo: right after he was deported. Right after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, when I was a teenager, I had a part time job and I saved money to get a passport and to buy a ticket to Jamaica because I wanted to meet him again and, rebuild our relationship.

[00:16:12] Ifetayo: And my dad had a hard life growing up. He Was pretty much abandoned by his parents. And Jamaica is very common for people to go to places like England, Canada, the U. S. to go work and meet their kids with another family member. And so that's basically what happened to him. And in some ways that set him up for the life that he had in the U.

[00:16:37] Ifetayo: S. but. It was really about him trying to make money for himself and his family in Jamaica because Jamaica is a very poor country. And selling drugs was a profitable industry. It still is. Everyone uses drugs, yeah. 

[00:16:53] Raad: Yeah, I think a lot of people don't recognize when the livelihood that at stake, drug dealing isn't just about getting rich.

[00:17:00] Raad: It's about actually supporting a community of people where there's no work, not enough, not enough opportunity to do other things. It's that's the only work you get. 

[00:17:11] Ifetayo: Oh, 

[00:17:11] Raad: yeah. Yeah. People want the sort of local gangster or the crime lead there because they will bring opportunity to the community and some money will flow in for right or wrong. It's still what it is.

[00:17:25] Raad: People still want livelihoods, right? And we feel abandoned by our government and all the escalates to that. What was it like meeting your dad in Jamaica for the first time? 

[00:17:34] Ifetayo: It was, it was awkward in a lot of ways because here's this man who we look a lot alike. We have similar characteristics, but I haven't seen him in so long.

[00:17:47] Ifetayo: And in some ways it felt like... Finding the missing piece of the puzzle that you've been working on for many years and ultimately, it's a journey still, even though he's been out for over, almost 20 years now. We missed out on a lot of things, like a lot of time together, all of those Benchmark parts of your life, like graduation puberty, all this thing.

[00:18:14] Ifetayo: So if in some ways it was overwhelming because I was seeing him for the first time in years, but also being in Jamaica too, was a, was like my first time traveling. As a semi adult, and so taking all the surroundings in, and the culture, and it was funny because I went to Jamaica thinking that I would be able to understand Patois and Boy, was I fooled, my dad, he was really excited.

[00:18:46] Ifetayo: He introduced me to a lot of our family members there, a lot of his friends. And we would be sitting in someone's house and they, be in a conversation. And I, after a while, I just like my eyes would glaze over. He's are you okay? And I'm just like. I have no idea what y'all are talking about.

[00:19:03] Ifetayo: So yeah, it's been a, it's been a journey just catching up on that side of myself. And he was very protective of me. Very he loves cooking for me that kind of thing. Just catching up, making up for lost time. Yeah. Yeah, and I wanted to also touch on your last point as well about when people get so desperate they turn to certain avenues for money, and I think that's so true.

[00:19:31] Ifetayo: Even in Jamaica, being a contract killer is It's own job, like you can pay someone 1, 000 to go kill someone for you and it's Unfortunate, it's messed up. But that has become the way of life there So so I think it's easy for folks to you know look at a drug seller and judge their life, but also not understand what it's like to be in their shoes and understand that you know there's a supply and demand here, and someone has to do it, whether, you like it or not, but oftentimes, drug dealers are, they're harm reductionists, they're support, they're community members philanthropists even.

[00:20:17] Ifetayo: So I think that, we have to challenge this notion of what a drug dealer looks like. 

[00:20:22] Raad: Absolutely. And there's always a pyramid. Yes, the money is being made at the bottom of the pyramid, but the money also flows up. So who is the one making the money? They don't get replaced, right?

[00:20:32] Raad: The head is usually somebody in government or high up. Somebody who is, funneling the, or guiding the systems to turn a blind eye. And when they, when somebody falls out of favor that's what happens. I'm speaking for Bangladesh, and again it's organized crime. But yeah, I do agree with you.

[00:20:48] Raad: I think we have to challenge. All the aspects of society that we deem to be bad or poor or to be corrupt and so on. Corruption in some ways leads to employment, leads to opportunity. The gap that the state or private sector is not going to fill or is not filling. It's some way, some possible way for people to, come up out of their dire situation.

[00:21:11] Raad: I totally agree with you. It's very easy to just turn a blind eye or criticize or judge people. Same with homelessness, I find, when you see somebody out on the street asking for money and somebody, the person's like being snotty and go Oh, if I give you money, you'll only use it for drugs.

[00:21:25] Raad: I'm like, that's what I'm going to use it for. What's why you're judging? Yeah. What's the problem here? 

[00:21:31] Ifetayo: Exactly. Exactly. It all boils down to us not liking or approving of certain people's drug use over others. Yeah. 

[00:21:40] Raad: Speaking of which so for, up till the age of 17, you weren't aware of your parents or your mom's drug use in the past.

[00:21:47] Raad: Sounds like you weren't really doing anything at that time. Walk me through a little bit about your journey with substances yourself.

[00:21:54] Ifetayo: Yeah. So I'll preface this by saying that I was as a kid, very nerdy and super obedient, goody two shoes. I was a little sneaky too, but and so because of that, and because of my dad being incarcerated for selling drugs, I always thought that Oh if I stay away from that stuff, then I'll be successful.

[00:22:18] Ifetayo: I won't get into any trouble. When I got to high school, I got introduced to alcohol. My high school had somewhat of a drinking culture. And yeah, I remember my first time getting drunk when I was 15, taking three shots of vodka. But alcohol wasn't like a big thing for me in high school.

[00:22:39] Ifetayo: I tried it like here and there, but not often. And then my senior year of high school, one of my friends, we were just hanging out, she introduced me to weed and. I was like, okay, like he's teaching me how to smoke a bowl and I'm like, okay. But I didn't know what to expect but I had a great time. I ended up just geeking out the whole time, laughing like crazy.

[00:23:03] Ifetayo: I couldn't stop laughing the whole night. We even had another friend come over, and he was someone who was like, he just liked talking by himself, and I was just like, holding back laughter the entire time. So that was a, I had a really good experience with me. And then when I got to college, I went from South Carolina to Massachusetts for college, and that was a huge culture shock for me.

[00:23:25] Ifetayo: Just being in a, a cold state where it like snowed four feet off the ground and being around rich kids who went to private school or boarding school, and whose parents could afford to shell out 60, 000 a year for college is a huge culture shock. And I started using weed to cope with that, to cope with anxiety, to cope with doing my schoolwork, and it actually helped me.

[00:23:52] Ifetayo: Yeah, I remember drafting one of my papers. For one of my history classes, I was like stoned out of my mind and I drafted the paper high and then went back sober and wrote the actual paper. But I got the highest grade in the class. And so I don't think it was the weed putting the knowledge in my head, but I think the weed was dulling that anxiety that I had.

[00:24:14] Ifetayo: Got in the way of me doing my homework. And then so yeah, I became a stoner in college and I had some friends who I would smoke every night with. And that was a routine, smoke a bowl, shit talk, gossip, that kind of thing. Then go to bed and then let's see, junior year, that's when some of my friends started, no, I would say earlier than that, I started hearing about Molly.

[00:24:40] Ifetayo: People partying with it and I had no interest in it, but my senior year of college, I got diagnosed with major depressive disorder and I was really depressed my senior year. I had over committed myself with my extracurriculars and was just doing so much on campus and then the depression hit and I'm like, oh, crap, what am I going to do?

[00:25:05] Ifetayo: And so I was already in therapy at that point. I started seeing the psychiatrist, and she told me that, Hey, we can prescribe you Lovitrin or Celexa. And I was scared of that, I have some friends who use antidepressants and they work really well for them. So no judgment to people who do use them, but I was scared of it cause I never used anything like that before.

[00:25:30] Ifetayo: And my mom is what I call a folk herbalist. And so she was always very skeptical of pharmaceutical drugs. And so I had this decision to make do I want to try this SSRI or there's pretty much no alternative here except like exercising, changing my diet, but that's a totally different thing.

[00:25:53] Ifetayo: And so I was stuck. I didn't know what to do. But in October 2013, the Drug Policy Alliance invited me to their conference in Denver, Colorado. And I was going to speak about my experience of growing up with my dad in prison, and how the war on drugs affected my family. And I did not know what I was getting myself into, I was 21, speaking in front of an audience of 1, 100 people, I ended up breaking down and crying during my speech.

[00:26:22] Ifetayo: But it was a very cathartic moment for me. And then after that was all over, going to different panels, I come across this panel on end of life treatment and psychedelics that was talking about, people with cancer using LSD and. I'm sitting in the back of this room, I'm like, Huh, this kind of makes sense.

[00:26:44] Ifetayo: I don't know why, but it just did. And I've always had a, I guess a philosophical interest in death. And, again, I never used shaggy dogs, but... Something in my head clicked, and I told myself I'm going to try mushrooms. And after the conference was over, I go back to school in Massachusetts. I'm asking my friends, like, how do I do mushrooms?

[00:27:07] Ifetayo: And they tell me like, take three and a half grams, it's gonna taste nasty, but eat it with some peanut butter, like a peanut butter sandwich or something go out in the woods, make sure you have a sitter with you, someone you trust, so I was like, okay, again, the nerdy side of me, I'm like taking all the notes and making sure everything's good.

[00:27:28] Ifetayo: I ended up getting some mushrooms from the person that I got weed from. And one Saturday, I... Ate the mushrooms, my friend Allison, who is a psychology major. She's a therapist now. She she was my sitter. So we went out into the woods. We had this really beautiful nature trail at my college and I just went in thinking that like I was desperate.

[00:27:55] Ifetayo: I wanted to heal. I wanted to feel better because I was struggling with suicidal ideation. I was thinking about dying. All the time. Passively, and so I wanted to feel something different. And so we're on this beautiful nature trail and I'm like, just waiting for it to kick in. And then I start seeing subtle signs that.

[00:28:17] Ifetayo: It's starting like I was looking at the water and it's like glistening more than usual. I'm looking at the plants and the trees and they're like, breathing and I'm like oh, man, I'm feeling something and the nausea started to hit me, too. And I didn't know about that. I was like, oh, man, I feel like I got too drunk or something.

[00:28:36] Ifetayo: I'm about to vomit and I ended up vomiting. But after that, the journey was actually really healing for me in the sense that. I felt joy like I hadn't felt joy in a really long time, and I laughed so deeply that, I was reminded of what it feels to laugh with joy, but I also cry too, I would go from crying to laughing.

[00:29:05] Ifetayo: But it just, it reminded me of why life is beautiful, why life is also difficult, and painful sometimes too, but it, the mushrooms showed me the beauty of life, just seeing the plants breathe, and for most of my life, I aligned myself with being an atheist or agnostic, and That journey showed me that huh, maybe there is more out there than you know what you've seen and so that totally, you know shifted my perspective and By the end of my senior year like literally a few days before graduation.

[00:29:44] Ifetayo: I got Me and five of my friends to trip together to and it was a great experience. Yeah, so that was the beginning of my experience and, I've gone on to journey with other substances as well. I like to just be educated about what I'm using so I know, how to take care of myself, but mushrooms are my first, I would say, I also consider cannabis a psychedelic as well.

[00:30:11] Ifetayo: I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences with cannabis. So those are like my first two loves, yeah. 

[00:30:18] Raad: What is it like now telling your mom if you have told her about your second leg experience? How does she process it? Oh man. Have you spoken to her about it? 

[00:30:26] Ifetayo: Yeah. Yeah. So funny.

[00:30:30] Ifetayo: I got I think about a year after I graduated college, I was still trying to find my place in the world job wise and so I moved back in with my mom and two of my brothers were there as well and I ended up, I think I got them to take mushrooms once, like we took mushrooms together, but not like in a super far.

[00:30:51] Ifetayo: I'm sure how It was just informal and my brothers were scared. My mom was a little scared, too. She's Oh, I'm in my 60s now. I can't be taking, these things like I used to be. And so it was like a small dose we took together. But it was pretty cool. And so since. That was probably 2015, but a lot has changed since 2015.

[00:31:12] Ifetayo: Some of my other siblings have gotten into psychedelics. One of my sisters she started learning how to grow mushrooms. One of my brothers started learning how to grow mushrooms. So they're. Much more enthusiastic about it now. My sister gave my mom these mushroom chocolates, like micro doses. So she takes them here and that here and there and I'll ask her, I'm like, how is it?

[00:31:35] Ifetayo: And she's oh, it's great. Gives me energy. I get to, do all the stuff that I need to do. So my mom likes it. She doesn't take like a big dose, but She's open to it. I told her about my experience with Wachumo, also known as San Pedro. And she was, she said that she would be up to try it.

[00:31:55] Ifetayo: So she's been really supportive. I think she just wants me to be safe and don't do anything dumb. But I think she's up for it. You know for herself and for me and I think she's just really surprised at me and who I've become because I was a really painfully shy socially anxious kid growing up and so now to see me as a person who advocates and who speaks in front of large audiences I think that's the biggest surprise for her Not the drugs, yeah 

[00:32:25] Raad: How do you guys process?

[00:32:27] Raad: If at all, the fact that this is still illegal, considering that, when you mentioned how the war on drugs has affected your family historically, what does it feel like right now? Was there a process to go through or does it just feel different now? 

[00:32:43] Ifetayo: I think it does feel different for her because she grew up in an era where.

[00:32:48] Ifetayo: Surveillance was a real thing that people cared about, and now with my generation, people will just straight up text me like, hey man, want some weed, and she's appalled when people do that. Even just talking on the phone, if someone mentions weed, she'll just hang up the phone.

[00:33:04] Ifetayo: Cause she's from that era where, people would tap your phone. I remember. I forget. I think we were in Washington state. We went to a dispensary together and that was such a big experience for her because she never thought the day would come where cannabis was legalized in anywhere in the U.

[00:33:26] Ifetayo: S. And so walking into the store and being able to buy it and talk to someone about it, not having to hide it is such a huge change from, yeah. Even the nineties. So I think that there's been more acceptance, like on the social side, civic side. My mom is. Has always been very opinionated.

[00:33:48] Ifetayo: She's, I've known her to always be on a soapbox and very political growing up. And so she always talks about just how a lot of our laws in the U. S. are counterproductive, inhumane, wasteful. So she's always talked about these kinds of things and to. I guess for it to actually be a reality is like affirming for us as a family, because we were involved in it before it was trendy or cool. 

[00:34:21] Raad: Yeah, and in some ways, the battle is still disproportional, right? For people of color, right? So even if, anybody can go and buy my shoes, I think at least the perception of the fear of being incarcerated, of being screwed over. by the state, perhaps, personally affects people of color. Which is a great segue to my last part of the interview.

[00:34:42] Raad: It's around your work in people of color psychedelic like collective. Tell me a little bit about how that came to be. Why did you feel called to build this organization? And what is your mandate? What are you trying to get done? 

[00:34:54] Ifetayo: I find that a lot of things in my life that come to fruition aren't necessarily things that I intentionally put a certain thought into or a certain outcome.

[00:35:06] Ifetayo: And the People of Color Psychedelic Collective started as an informal group on Zoom back in 2017. That And this is after, I worked at MAPS briefly in 2015, left after 8 months, but I still wanted to be involved in psychedelics, and so when I moved to New York in 2016, I was going to like events at the Alchemist's Kitchen writing, I wrote a piece for Symposia, and I just found that I There wasn't anyone in the space really talking about race in a way that made sense.

[00:35:43] Ifetayo: And after writing that piece, Why the Psychedelic Community is so White, I realized a lot of people were hitting me up and saying Oh, I read that piece, it resonated with me a lot. And so I got invited to this meeting via Zoom in 2017, and it was a whole bunch of people, there were even white folks there, and we were just talking about all the issues around lack of diversity and inclusion in the psychedelic field.

[00:36:09] Ifetayo: At one point someone said oh why don't we just give Nazis psychedelics? And I'm like, hold up, why are we even talking about this? It's Can we not? And so after that, I, after that initial call, I was like, I felt like I need to be the one to facilitate. These calls going forward, because I had experience facilitating workshops and I want to continue to build this space up.

[00:36:37] Ifetayo: And so we would have calls like once a month starting out and some of our early projects. We got invited by the Philly Psychedelic Society, the Washington, D. C. Psychedelic Society, to talk about Patriarchy and Psychedelics, how that shows up, and then we partnered with an organization called Cosmos Enstrales.

[00:36:59] Ifetayo: It's in Spanish, so I apologize for butchering it, but we fundraised 10, 000 for the archive of Maria Sabina in Oaxaca, Mexico. And I think that's when we really started to see a need for this work. We had a lot of supporters who were like yeah, keep going. Even though we didn't have any money, we were volunteering.

[00:37:22] Ifetayo: We're just doing this in our free time. And 2019 rolls around and we decide that we want to do a conference. We're sketching out this idea. One of my friends Vincent Rado, he's Oh, I know a venue in DC that will host y'all. And I'm like, okay, skeptical. He brings me out to DC to check out the Eaton hotel and they were very, welcoming, willing to work with us, gave us a venue for free. And so we're like, okay, now we have to do this conference. How are we going to do it? We have the idea, we have the venue, but so we ended up fundraising another 10, 000 to put off this conference and, advertise all this stuff, bringing speakers.

[00:38:02] Ifetayo: It was really like. We hit the ground running with it and as we're planning it, we're like, no one's going to come to this conference. We didn't think we're like, we're going to get like 20 people tops y'all. And so it was scary just putting ourselves out there and not knowing what the outcome was going to be, but we ended up getting like a full house of people like 100 folks came out and we have people from other parts of the country.

[00:38:28] Ifetayo: I remember speaking to folks from. Detroit from Arizona. One woman took a bus up from North Carolina, and I was just like in all of that because it just exceeded my expectations. And I just noticed that, even after the conference was over, we're packing up the room, people are still standing around talking.

[00:38:49] Ifetayo: So it just reminded me how much this work is needed, how how there was such a hunger for. Spaces like ours and so that same year we had a retreat in New Mexico, very small, but my friend that Williams letter, she's her house. And it was a really great retreat. 6 women. I also spoke at the women's visionary Congress that year in Oakland.

[00:39:15] Ifetayo: And I gave a talk on why intentional spaces for people of color are important. And so I started just getting, as I stepped out and shared our message, people just naturally gravitated towards just wanting to support. And after that talk I gave in Oakland this woman, Madeline McElwain, she's an attorney, came up to me and said Hey, I want to help you guys become a nonprofit.

[00:39:41] Ifetayo: And so from 2019 up until 2023, Madeline worked with us pro bono to help us get our 501c3. Without the generous support of so many people in the space who believed in our work, believed in our mission, we wouldn't be here. So it's, it was really grassroots and I had no intentions for this project, but, or what started off as a project.

[00:40:07] Ifetayo: But ultimately, our mission is really about educating people because information can be a tool asset a weapon. And I believe that we've been misinformed about drugs and drug use here in the U. S. And so re educating ourselves in our communities about. Drugs, the real risks associated with them without all the propaganda.

[00:40:30] Ifetayo: Talk about why drugs are fun. People use drugs for fun. And that's okay. We live in a very Pleasure averse society. Where people feel guilt for engaging with pleasure. And That's a big part of our work. Educating people on the many different topics within psychedelics. And the war on drugs.

[00:40:51] Ifetayo: And creating spaces where people can build community with one another because I know for a lot of folks of color who are interested in psychedelics, they're always, the token in their group, with the white kids, they don't feel like, they have a group of their own people. To talk about these things with so that's what I'm going to show is that we're not alone Even though it may feel that way there's plenty of us doing these things who've been doing this work quietly way before I was even thought about so 

[00:41:22] Raad: No, I love that.

[00:41:23] Raad: I also love your framing around We live in a very pleasure of our society Which is a strange thing to say in some way because you're like Everywhere people are doing eating too much watching too many things on their phone all the time But I think the kind of pleasure you're talking about is like an unmediated joy, right?

[00:41:38] Raad: Where it's yeah, just joy, connecting, laughing, doing the things that human beings do. It's not like here, just go be a foodie for whatever. That's the only thing you could do. I just find that the pleasure and joy in, in the society they live in today are very interesting ideas in a way because people live too much in their heads, not enough in their body and in their hearts, right?

[00:42:00] Raad: As a closing question, if at all, what would you recommend or advise people who are on the periphery, are hearing about psychedelics, happen to be people of color, have heard about it, are interested or curious, but scared or afraid or apprehensive at the same time.

[00:42:15] Raad: What would you say to them?

[00:42:16] Ifetayo: I would say that it's okay to be scared and apprehensive. It's that's okay don't try to fight that feeling so much just work through it if you want to work through it. Unpack why you're afraid why you're hesitant. I think by confronting it head on It's better because if you don't and decide to take the substance anyway, then those fears are going to come back up during your journey.

[00:42:41] Ifetayo: So it's good to do a lot of the work ahead of time before you even think about taking a substance. You know yourself and know where you stand on these things, because ultimately it's going to come out one way or the other. So I always suggest people to not only impact those things, impacted misconceptions you have around drugs, but also build a routine of care for yourself that involves other people.

[00:43:09] Ifetayo: We talked about self care, which is one facet of it. But. Also, think about who's your support system. Who do you need to call when things get rough? And build that as like a regular practice, and it can look a lot of different ways, calling your mom or your dad or your sister once a week or something like that.

[00:43:28] Ifetayo: Doing yoga before you go to sleep at night doing meditation, especially if you have significant trauma. I always suggest building a self care routine that touches on the mind, but also the body as well. Yeah, meditation, journaling yoga, fitness. Building that routine will help you be able to handle ayahuasca.

[00:43:53] Ifetayo: But it's just going to help you just have that foundation. Because if something scary does come up in the trip, you at least have... a routine of taking care of yourself. And you know that there are some things that, hey, if things start to feel scary in this trip, maybe I can journal. Maybe I can turn on a meditation track.

[00:44:12] Ifetayo: Or maybe I can just run around and dance or something. Everyone doesn't have that luxury. Some people are so desperate where they just have to jump right in. And, hey, that's okay too. I'm not knocking anyone's way of getting into it. But for folks who are hesitant on the fence, educate yourself.

[00:44:30] Ifetayo: There's lots of resources out there. Care about other people's journeys. Start small. You don't have to take three and a half grams of mushrooms like I did my first time. That's a lot. I don't know if I would recommend that. Yeah, I don't think I would recommend that to people. I started off with a lot, but you don't have to do that.

[00:44:46] Ifetayo: You can start really small. Start where you're comfortable. Or work your way up and also have a plan to do some aftercare after your journey's over, what do you want to do to take care of yourself? 

[00:44:58] Raad: Yeah I would heed that advice myself. If it's brilliant, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing your story.

[00:45:04] Raad: Your story and the story of your family and the community is reflective of a lot of people, a lot of communities around the world . And so I think work you're doing is inspiring and I appreciate you being on the podcast. 

[00:45:15] Ifetayo: Thank you, Raad. Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. 

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