DoubleBlind Magazine: Identity Politics and the Principle of Psychedelics in Alternative News Coverage

Abstract

With the recent rise in interest in psychedelic drugs in North America there has been a stark and correlated trend of their integration into mainstream corporate structures. Within this contemporary context, this paper explores the possibility of spaces for alternative discourse about these substances through alternative media source DoubleBlind Magazine. This paper argues that an alternative discourse about psychedelics means adequately accounting for embodied experiences of marginalized people and their experience of psychedelic drugs. Linda Martín Alcoff contends that to achieve freedom, phenomenological identity politics must be included and considered. This paper connects Martín Alcoff’s ideas to the principle of interconnectedness - a value that comes out of 1960s psychedelic counterculture and a major noted effect of many psychedelic drug experiences. This principle of anti-hierarchical interconnectedness is a good way of understanding alternative magazine and online news blog DoubleBlind’s progressive coverage of today’s psychedelic movement. This interconnectedness between oneself and others is an important aspect of the psychedelic experience for many and is what guides the magazine’s view of what journalism and media coverage should be with respect to psychedelics: anti-hierarchical, inclusive, and respectful of all people taking psychedelic drugs.