Appleman on the Psychedelic Renaissance and the Lingering Shadow of Eugenics

Laura I. Appleman, Willamette University School of Law, has published Psychedelic Renaissance and the Lingering Shadow of Eugenics. Here is the abstract.

This Essay situates the contemporary psychedelic renaissance within a long, cyclical history of psychoactive exploration, regulation, and exclusion. Tracing the intertwined genealogies of psychedelics, eugenics, and capitalism from the nineteenth century to the present, it argues that each “rebirth” of chemical enlightenment has carried with it the same shadow: anxieties about purity, hierarchy, and control. From early 19th-century nitrous oxide experiments through Progressive Era drug criminalization and the mid-century counterculture, the boundaries between “medicine” and “drug” have functioned as instruments of social stratification. Today’s techno-spiritual revival, shaped by transhumanism, corporadelics, and conspiritualist movements, reanimates these hierarchies under the guise of therapeutic innovation and human optimization. By recovering the eugenic foundations of prior psychedelic eras, this Essay warns that our latest renaissance risks reproducing the same inequities it professes to transcend.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.