Is Kink the Guru Psychedelic Culture’s Been Looking For?

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Good morning and welcome to another edition of The Drop In! We're kicking things off with a story written by Monica Cadena about the parallels between psychedelic and kink cultures. Bet you’ve never thought about them before, have you?

Here’s the tea: The mainstreaming of psychedelics, at least as a topic of conversation, has largely centered on trauma, safety, and somatics. Which is extremely valid! But the kink and BDSM communities have been practicing intentional, consent-based exploration of altered states for decades. In many ways, it feels like psychedelic culture is trying to reinvent the wheel when it really should be taking notes and figuring out how to integrate the finely tuned structures of other long-established subcultures. Monica’s story dives into how these embodied traditions can inform a more grounded, responsible approach to consuming psychedelics, one rooted in communication, care, mutual trust, and ultimately, ethics.

Learn more about this and a psychedelics + kink event this weekend in the Bay! If you keep scrolling, you’ll find pieces on Sasha Shulgin, Brandon Boyd, and you’ll find links on how to help our medicine community in Jamaica, who were just ravaged by a category five hurricane.

In community 🫶🏾,

Mary Carreón
Editor-In-Chief

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What Psychedelic Culture Can Learn From Kink About Consent, Care, and Embodiment

Kink communities offer a masterclass in ethics, communication, and embodied consent, serving as a reminder to psychedelic culture that pleasure and responsibility can coexist.

By Monica Cadena

On November 8 and 9, Oakland will host Sex & Psychedelics: An Evening Salon, a two-night gathering at Akoma, an entheogenic church, and Clio’s, the city’s newest literary and nightlife space, exploring the intersection of psychedelics, intimacy, and embodied presence. The event, part of Global Psychedelic Week, brings the conversation out of private circles and into the public sphere, inviting people to reflect on how we engage altered states, not only for healing, but for connection, agency, and collective transformation.

As psychedelics move through mainstream culture, the conversation has rightly focused on trauma, somatics, and safety. Sexual ethics, power dynamics, consent culture, and boundary literacy are central themes across the psychedelic field, often revealing where it falls short, and where the community, culture, and industry needs to grow.

Yet alongside this vital work, another question is emerging: What can psychedelic communities learn from those who have been practicing intentional, embodied, consent-centered exploration for decades? Ask anyone rooted in kink, BDSM, or sex-positive spaces, and they’ll tell you that the groundwork is already there.

In kink spaces, nothing begins without clarity: intentions, desires, limits, safe words, aftercare, and emotional capacity. What appears to be spontaneity from the outside is, in reality, underpinned by rigor, effective communication, and trust. Psychedelic communities talk about “set and setting”; kink communities talk about “scene negotiation,” which is a structured, explicit conversation about expectations, emotional safety, boundaries, and desired experience before entering an altered state together. Where journey work emphasizes integration, kink culture has long normalized aftercare, tending to the body and nervous system during the return to baseline.

As psychedelics gain legitimacy in clinical and policy spaces, there’s value in not losing sight of the wisdom found in embodied subcultures, or communities that have built ethical containers for intensity, vulnerability, and transformation outside institutional systems.

Dr. Carl Hart famously encourages people to “come out of the psychedelic closet.” Not as rebellion, but as responsibility to challenge stigma, disrupt fear-based narratives, and expand public understanding through honesty and lived experience.

Just as psychedelics have long existed in the shadows, so too has sex. Both have been misunderstood, pathologized, feared, and policed. Both challenge dominant narratives about control, autonomy, and what the body is “allowed” to feel. And both invite us into deeper questions of power, trust, safety, freedom, and embodied truth.

To “come out” in either realm — with psychedelics or sexuality — is to declare that curiosity and integrity can coexist. That pleasure and responsibility are not opposites. That we deserve spaces to explore without shame, sensationalism, or collapse into harm or dogma.

That’s what makes the timing of Global Psychedelic Week, and events like Sex & Psychedelics: An Evening Salon, especially meaningful. The gathering brings together thinkers and culture-shapers — including Bia Labate, Reggie Harris, Mikaela de la Myco, Laura Mae Northrup, Ayize Jama-Everett, Monica Cadena, Emily Savage, Sura Hertzberg, Dr. Ido Cohen, Xochitl Bernadette Moreno, and more — for a multi-format exploration of altered states, consent culture, and embodied knowing.

Rather than treating psychedelics and sexuality as spectacle or shock, the event approaches these topics as critical terrains of cultural study and ethical practice — asking what it means to engage altered states responsibly, with care and curiosity guiding the way.

Learn more about the two-night event here. Check the “DoubleBlind Digs” section of this email to get your discount code!

What Are the Effects of Psychedelics on COVID-19 and Chronic Pain?

As the world barrels toward collective amnesia about Covid-19, millions are still living with its aftermath. Our Friday Feature dives into the growing underground movement of Long Covid patients turning to psychedelics for relief—from psilocybin ceremonies by the Ottawa River to clinical trials at NYU.

Writer Mercedes Grant unpacks the stories of those experimenting at the edges of medicine: a martial artist whose depression and chronic pain vanished after one psilocybin session; a doctor-turned-patient launching research on psychedelics for Long Covid; and the activists bridging Indigenous knowledge with modern science to build new models of care.

What emerges is a portrait of people reclaiming their health—and their hope—through community, ceremony, and consciousness expansion, while mainstream medicine scrambles to catch up.

Upgrade your subscription to read the full story THIS Friday.

DoubleBlind Digs

• HELP MEDICINE FAM IN JAMAICA #1: Residents of Maggotty in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, are urgently seeking help after the devastation of Hurricane Melissa. A GoFundMe campaign is now underway. Donate here.

• HELP MEDICINE FAM IN JAMAICA #2: Wonderland is collecting donations to support the Rastafari Indigenous Village in Jamaica through their site. They are asking supporters to specify “RIV” in the notes to ensure funds go directly toward rebuilding the community. Donate here.

• GET KINKY: On November 8–9 in Oakland, join Sex & Psychedelics: An Evening Salon, a two-night immersion where altered states meet intimacy, consent, ritual, and conversation at the intersection of psychedelics and sexuality. Use community code MUSHLOVE for 25% off. Learn more here.

• MDMA THERAPY: Therapists and mental-health pros are being invited into a bold new frontier — the MDMA-assisted therapy training titled ‘The Wounded Healer,’ designed to help clinicians unpack their own wounds so they can better guide others. Learn more here.

• PSYCHEDELIC AUCTION: Bid to own a rare collector’s piece — The Collective Awakening signed by the icons of psychedelia — in support of the mission of The Pearl. Learn more about it here.

Together With Kabbalah Experience

Embodying the Tree of Life: A Course & Ceremonial Journey

Explore how ancient Kabbalistic wisdom meets embodied practice in this 14-session journey and ceremonial retreat. Awaken balance, creativity, and connection through mindful movement and ritual.

🌿 Join the Journey.

Mention DoubleBlind in your free Discovery Call and get 20% off when you register.