Alta Journal: “The Gentrification of Consciousness”
© Jason Henry
EXCERPT FROM THE ARTICLE, WRITTEN BY ROBERTO LOVATO:
When I speak with Herrera by Zoom, she recites the many obstacles — prohibitive cost, misdiagnosis, the drug war and policing, and familial and cultural skepticism about the substances, among others — that therapists treating poor and non-white clients must overcome in their efforts to provide psychedelic-assisted care. These and other dynamics turn every corner of the Mission and other gentrifying neighborhoods, she says, into areas of psychic conflict, places where intergenerational trauma clashes with intergenerational wealth. It’s a combat zone that Herrera and others I speak with believe is critical to acknowledge if they’re to overcome the gentrification of consciousness in and beyond the clinics. Much the way that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are pioneering space travel for the ultra-wealthy, many entrepreneurs and their investors are putting scientific and medical advances out of reach of the communities they displace and fly over.
“The medicines help people understand that what they carry into this world is not just their trauma but the trauma in their lineage, inherited trauma,” says Herrera.
One result of mixing these transformative substances with gentrification is what Herrera and others call “spiritual bypassing.” People in the Mission and beyond endure traumatic experiences, she says, by telling themselves, “ ‘Everything is fine. Everything is perfect. We’re all good.’ But they’re saying this, and they’re avoiding what’s actually happening, including very obvious things like the fact that our communities are still being oppressed, still being assaulted, and still dying. It’s ironic, given how the Bay Area is perceived as a kind of safe space.”