Thank you.
I think it's a good example that you chose—psilocybin—because one of the communities that I work with is the Mazatec community in the Sierra Mazateca in Mexico, who are recognized as being the people who introduced the west to psilocybin mushrooms.
Actually, I posed this question to some of my partners there: What does it mean to them that there are people taking synthetic psilocybin in a pill, and does it work the same way? One of the leaders I work with leads a community organization there, and he also leads traditional ceremonies. He doesn't say that it's not going work or that it's bad or wrong to do it that way but just sort of comments on what it is like for a Mazatec mushroom harvester. They go out on the mountainside and they pick wild psilocybin mushrooms, and those mushrooms are going to be coming from a different context, one that reflects all of the relationships that are in place on that mountainside where they're growing.
I think that with psychedelic medicine in general, if we look at psychedelics versus other herbal remedies, over three-quarters of our pharmaceuticals that come from plants originate in indigenous and traditional societies. How can we avoid appropriation or the commodification of these things in this case? I think that recognizing the roots of the practices and trying to get ahead of the alienation of these plants from their places of origin and from the knowledge systems that inform them is one way: just having a better education around the histories, the cultures and also the contemporary struggles of the people who stewarded those medicines and are still stewarding them. I think—