Word Up welcomes Dr, Nicholas Powers to discuss his latest work Black Psychedelic Revolution, on how psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma—an Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation. In conversation with Powers will be journalist Sidney Fussell.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance.
In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.
Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th St.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The mainstream has long viewed psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment. Though psychedelics have deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultures, Western psychedelic spaces have historically excluded People of Color—but the radical healing of psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine aren’t just for a rarefied elite. And they’re definitely not just for white people.
Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power—the “Promised Land” as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Risqué? Sure. But it’s true.
In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.
Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POC—specifically Black people—from the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of “good” vs. “bad” drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicholas Powers, PhD, is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury. Powers has presented talks and reports from the Psychedelic Renaissance since 2017. He has written for numerous psychedelic publications from Lucid News to Double Blind. Alongside published articles, he has given talks at Naropa University and Chacruna. Powers has published three books with Upset Press. The first is a book of poetry, the second a mix of reportage from disaster zones, protests, and Burning Man. The third is a political vampire novel. He regularly attends Wild Seeds Writers Retreat and Cave Canem Black poetry workshops. Powers currently lives in Brooklyn with his son. To learn more, visit blackpsychedelicrevolution.com.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Sidney Fussell is an NYC-based filmmaker and technology journalist. His writing has appeared in WIRED Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Time. His forthcoming feature documentary, #WhileBlack, is supported by the Ford Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Fund, and the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.