Beyond Electric Kool-Aid: Santa Cruz emerges as a leader in the psychedelic revolution

“So, do you … um, like, microdose?”

It’s not exactly a comfortable question to ask someone you just met. Not too long ago, such a thing would have been whispered, often out of one side of the mouth, and sometimes met with incomprehension — “Do I micro-what?” But nowadays, it’s getting easier. In terms of its level of appropriateness for cocktail chatter, it’s moved from the equivalent of “Do you have dirty pictures on your phone?” to more like “Have you tried intermittent fasting?”

Microdosing is now common enough that it seems superfluous to explain what it is, but here goes anyway: It’s the term for ingesting very small doses of a drug or other psychoactive substance, almost always used in reference to psychedelics, to glean some benefits from it without embarking on a full-blown psychedelic experience. Microdosing is trendy enough, at least on the West Coast, that it is threatening to become just another fatuous lifestyle hack like keto or meditation apps. But many advocates for it claim that it is a profound and genuine pathway to stronger mental health and deeper self-awareness.

“Are you … uh, y’know, microdosing now?”

Again, this isn’t like small talk about the weather. You’re not going to float that out there standing in line at Safeway. But, in some places, it seems not only right, but immediately pertinent. 

In case you’re interested, yes, I do microdose — or rather, I have microdosed, a handful of times. That’s what I tell people — or feel I am compelled to tell people — at the monthly First Friday gathering at Green Magic Yoga in downtown Santa Cruz. Green Magic hosts a public event every month under the banner of the Santa Cruz Psychedelic Society. It’s a small space, living-room sized, that fills up quickly. There are a few tables, distributing information about psychedelic therapy or showcasing psychedelic art, and a small stage from which speakers address a rapt audience on any number of topics from psychedelics’ effect on creativity to their role in death and dying. Neither shoes nor tawdry drug-culture exchanges are allowed in the room. 

I’m here to learn — not necessarily about psychedelics, but more about Santa Cruz’s role in an emerging subculture. To hear the evangelists of the movement tell it, psychedelic culture is on the verge of breaking through into mainstream culture like the head of a great whale emerging from the depths of the sea. 

Santa Cruz’s psychedelic legacy

To the degree that’s true, I figure that Santa Cruz — long considered a hippie wildlife preserve, where freak flags have flown for more than 50 years — must be playing a leading role. How could it not? Nearly 60 years ago now, Santa Cruz was the site of the first-ever “Acid Test,” immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It was a party (technically on a farm in Soquel) attended by, among others, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and a few musicians who had not yet christened themselves the Grateful Dead, and enlivened by not-exactly-micro doses of LSD and other psychedelics, which were not even illegal at the time. In 2020, the city of Santa Cruz became only the third municipality in the U.S. to decriminalize some psychedelics for personal use. In between those two poles, there have been countless “psychonauts,” through the generations, exploring the uses of LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and other drugs for a thousand reasons, from partying on the weekend to searching for God. (Psychedelics are a group of mood-altering and consciousness-changing substances that are roughly divided between synthetic drugs like LSD and naturally occuring or “entheogenic” substances that historically have been used as sacraments in spiritual contexts.)

In conversations I’ve had at Green Magic Yoga and elsewhere, some folks will insist that the use of psychedelics, especially psilocybin or magic mushrooms, is much more widespread in Santa Cruz than I could imagine. The tipping point, I was told by different people several times, was the 2018 publication of “How to Change Your Mind” by prominent Berkeley-based writer Michael Pollan, certainly one of the most influential writers, at least in Santa Cruz, of the past decade. Pollan’s book not only outlined the leading-edge science connecting psychedelic therapy to many positive outcomes in the realm of addiction, trauma and depression, it also chronicled Pollan’s own use of psychedelics. 

Grace Cepe founded the Santa Cruz Psychedelic Society. She talks of the “Michael Pollan Effect.” Though she had begun her research into psychedelics before the publication of the book, she said she was amazed at how the book influenced the emergence of psychedelic culture.

“I don’t think psychedelics would have been integrated into society the way that it has without Michael Pollan’s book,” she said.

“That book was earth-shattering,” said comedian Shane Mauss, “in the sense of how the psychedelic world was before that book, and how it was after.” Mauss himself is another lead indicator of psychedelia’s emerging cultural power. His stand-up comedy act is themed on psychedelic experiences. (He performs live at the Rio Theatre on April 27.)

Psychedelics today exist in a bizarre liminal space between underground and out in the open. Despite being decriminalized in Santa Cruz, almost all substances designated as psychedelic are technically illegal to sell or possess on the state and federal levels. (City attorney Anthony Condotti said of the decriminalization resolution, “What it means is that the council has given policy direction to the police department to deprioritize those types of crimes.” It does not stop state or federal officials from coming into Santa Cruz to make arrests, however.) Whether they are stuck in that legal limbo or simply passing through on their way to full legitimacy is a question that almost everyone in the psychedelic community is pondering.

The in-between space

Mainstream American culture has, of course, reckoned with psychedelics before. That was in the 1960s when LSD and other psychedelics were both given credit for giant leaps forward in creativity and spiritual consciousness — we can thank acid for the Beatles’ “Revolver,” to take only one example — and blamed for the wreckage of countless lives in the fallout from the drug generation. Any serious and open-minded research into psychedelics, such as what was going on at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur at the time, was trapped between the poles represented by two larger-than-life personalities: grinning pop guru Timothy Leary, with his talk of spiking the nation’s water supply with LSD, and President Richard Nixon, whose anti-drug policies led to the adoption of the Controlled Substance Act, and the beginnings of the “War on Drugs.” With that, psychedelics were entombed in taboo and criminality for generations. 

I began dabbling in psychedelics while in college in the 1980s, more than a decade after they were made illegal, though I put them aside when I entered the working world and started a family. A few years ago, I was hanging out with a small group of friends. Someone brought up psychedelic drugs, and everyone in the room had a story or two of personal experiences with them, to the amazement and entertainment of all. What most astonished me afterward was that I had known these friends for many years and yet I had no clue they had these, in some cases, profound and moving experiences. Nor did they know it about me, or each other.

My friends and I are part of the generation that has lived their entire adult lives in the psychedelic taboo zone. But that’s not necessarily the case with younger people. A few weeks ago, I participated in a microdosing hike, under the auspices of the Santa Cruz Psychedelic Society. Only two or three of the participants among 20 or so were 50 or older; everyone else was considerably younger. 

A new cautious approach

The SCPS is led by Javiera Köstner and Sebastian Beca, the owners/operators of Green Magic Yoga. The couple, both of whom are originally from Chile, came to Santa Cruz in 2020 from Marin County, partly because Santa Cruz had decriminalized psychedelics. If Timothy Leary was the symbol of the everybody-must-get-stoned approach of the 1960s era, Köstner and Beca are emblematic of a much more serious and respectful approach to psychedelics. They both seem to be warm and sweet-natured people, but they have none of the blissed-out tie-dye tripping-through-daisies vibe of the Leary stereotype.

The two had participated in the burgeoning San Francisco psychedelic scene and wanted to be part of something similar in Santa Cruz. They have made psychedelics and cannabis a central part of their business, offering everything from yoga classes to sessions in breathwork. Javi and Seba, as they are known in their small community, are big believers in the potential of psychedelics to heal and transform lives. But they are also mindful, perhaps in a way that previous generations were not, of the dangers that lurk along the way.

“We’re navigating the edges,” said Beca, “and we’re hopeful that can be done with intentionality and safety, and maybe even an awareness that we need to slow it down a little bit. A lot of people say in our community, move at the speed of trust. Let’s bring it down. And let’s not get overly excited about this.”

That cautious approach is also part of the Santa Cruz psychedelics legacy. For many years, Santa Cruz was the official home of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the most high-profile nonprofit in the psychedelic world, which successfully funded and promoted much of the crucial research that forms the basis of the medical promise of psychedelics. MAPS also worked with the federal government in approving clinical trials, most notably for the drug MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. If psychedelics ever become fully legal as a therapeutic tool, then MAPS will have played an essential role in making that happen. 

In addition to its main work in exploring real-world benefits of psychedelics, MAPS has also set a tone on a cultural level with its serious, above-board ethic. In Santa Cruz and beyond, psychedelics have emerged most prominently in the health-and-wellness community and in the therapeutic world as a means to help those in pain or addiction, or those suffering from the aftereffects of trauma. Already, many therapists are embracing ketamine, a psychedelic-adjacent substance that is legal for therapeutic use. Perhaps this methodical approach represents a kind of wising up from the days of “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out.” 

Sandra Dreisbach is a big player on the Santa Cruz psychedelic scene. She is a former UCSC bioethics professor who now works at an organization she co-founded called Ethical Psychedelic International Community (EPIC), as a “psychedelics ethics specialist.” Dreisbach said a slow, careful approach to psychedelics is essential. “It’s like switching from an ax tool to a chainsaw,” she said. “Everyone wants to use a chainsaw, but you gotta respect it because it’s so much more powerful.”

Personal journeys

Most of the local people I spoke to were willing to talk about their experiences with psychedelics but, citing job and social concerns, only under a pseudonym, to which I agreed. 

Tracy Cantu (not her real name) told me that she began using psychedelics almost two years ago as a way to get herself off pharmaceutical SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) depression/anxiety meds. She microdoses with psilocybin mushrooms. “I’ll do like a sub-perceptible dose,” she said. “The capsules, I make them myself. I get mushrooms and then I weigh them out and put them into little capsules, perhaps like a month or two at a time, and then I’ll take them every other day.”

Concerned about the long-term effects of SSRIs and distrustful of Big Pharma, Tracy also felt vulnerable to thoughts of suicide without the SSRIs. She tends to view microdosing as “a mood regulator” in her day-to-day life, but she’s also experienced the much more rigorous and demanding psychedelic ayahuasca, during a guided session in 2022. The cumulative effect of both the microdosing and the ayahuasca session was a shift in perspective: “I consider myself pretty much agnostic with a bit of a spiritual tendency,” she said. “When you’re on these medicines or substances or sacraments — people have different names for them — you have access to these other ways of experiencing the world. It makes you realize, Oh, I don’t know shit. You think you know, but you don’t. So it opens you up.”

Another regular user of psilocybin from Santa Cruz, David Pendley (not his real name) is a highly trained professional in the medical field. He said that, among doctors, nurses and others in his field, the stigma against psychedelics is fading, but there’s still a lot of ignorance among those who don’t necessarily work in mental health.

Pendley said that he microdoses for mental health purposes — he had also taken SSRIs for depression — but mostly, for him, psychedelics are the key component of a spiritual practice that has changed his life. He’s part of a spiritual community, based in the East Bay, what he calls a “postmodern entheogenic multi-sacrament church” of, he estimates, fewer than 200 or so “tithing members.” 

Once a purely secular person, he found that psychedelics transformed his thinking about the non-material world. “It was how I was introduced to the Divine,” he said. “I’m no longer an agnostic person. Deep in my bones, there are things I now know, and I have this relationship I didn’t have before.”

Decrim and SCPS

The Santa Cruz Psychedelic Society is not explicitly a spiritual organization, but more a social network of people interested in psychedelics, whether it’s for spiritual practice, mental health and healing purposes, or as a pathway to greater creativity and artistic expression. Its First Friday events will often feature guest speakers on a variety of topics from the latest research in neuroscience as related to psychedelics to their role in easing the journey for those at the end of life. Any sale or exchange of illegal substances at the society’s sponsored events is prohibited.

The SCPS dates back to 2020. UC Santa Cruz grad Grace Cepe founded the group as a kind of meetup for like-minded people just a couple of weeks before the pandemic shutdown.

“Our first meeting was a potluck at the Resource Center for Nonviolence,” said Cepe, who now works as a communications manager at MAPS. “And we drew about 30 people that night. I remember being really surprised at the turnout. I was expecting only, like, 10 people to show up, mostly my friends.”

Much of the talk at that first meeting was about the recently passed “decrim” measure at the city council. Westside resident Athonia Cappelli was one of the core group that spent months crafting and pushing the decrim resolution. She said her group was inspired by the efforts of the Santa Cruz organization Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) to decriminalize cannabis a generation earlier. 

A few months prior, Cappelli had been to a meeting in a remote part of the Santa Cruz Mountains where people were taking psychedelics and talking about their experiences with trauma. She was moved by the testimony of those attending, strengthening her conviction that people should be free to pursue these substances “and not be in fear that [law enforcement] was going to break down their door.”

 Oakland had recently passed a decrim measure, so Cappelli and her co-founders (the UCSC chapter of the nonprofit Students for Sensible Drug Policy was a big player in the decrim movement locally as well) went to the Santa Cruz City Council with a similar idea. Assisted by a key alliance with then-newly installed mayor (now county supervisor) Justin Cummings, the decrim measure passed unanimously at the council. (Cummings, who holds a Ph.D. in environmental and evolutionary biology, has publicly touted the health benefits of psychedelics.)

“We couldn’t believe that it passed like that,” said Cappelli of the unanimous vote. “We all kinda jumped up excitedly at the city council meeting because we really thought it would be a super close vote.”

The decrim measure and the founding of the SCPS were blessed with good timing. Both events took place in the early months of 2020 and, if either had been delayed, the pandemic might have wiped out any movement toward psychedelics in Santa Cruz. The SCPS was able to have one meeting before the shutdown. After that, it became a kind of online book club through Zoom. 

Cepe eventually took a full-time job with MAPS, and then handed off leadership duties of the Psychedelic Society to Köstner and Beca, the newly arrived couple from Marin. Neither had much experience leading such organizations, but they embraced it. With a loose membership of about 150 local people, Köstner and Beca began leading “integration circles” online. Integration circles are simply conversations about psychedelic experiences with others, private and free from judgment. 

“It’s a coming-out community,” said Beca of how he and Köstner envisioned the SCPS. “You know, where can I speak safely that I use these things? That I use them to heal? To ask questions about them? Or, I’ve had an experience and I want to talk about it, without stigma or shame.”

As pandemic restrictions began to loosen, the Psychedelic Society expanded, establishing a monthly First Friday event at Green Magic Yoga’s studio on Squid Row next to the Santa Cruz Art Center, and with microdosing hikes in various sites around Santa Cruz County. Anyone is welcome to take part in the hikes, and actual dosing with psychedelics is purely optional. 

Where are we going?

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late March, I took a microdose of psilocybin (generally thought of as about one-tenth of the strength of a full-on heavy dose, or about 0.25 or 0.3 grams). Then, I met up with about 20 people, including Köstner and Beca who acted as the guides, for a hike in the Pogonip area of Santa Cruz. I announced at the beginning that I was a journalist on assignment, but that I would not use names or descriptions of anyone present. 

The hike lasted about two hours, but time seemed much more elastic than normal to me. Maybe it was the effects of the psilocybin, or the effects of conversations I had with strangers that were curiously more intimate and genuine than you might have with friends in a walk through the woods. Folks I spoke to told me of their struggles with anxiety or depression or grief, and how psychedelics helped them regain their emotional equilibrium. 

Eventually, we arrived at the famous “rock garden” at Pogonip, a nook in the redwoods characterized by hundreds of small stacks of rocks, many of them decorated by small items and memorabilia left behind by countless visitors. I was not “tripping” in the conventional sense, but there was no doubt it was an elevated experience. Some said meaningful words, others read or recited poems. I felt the cool forest air caress my lungs. Two people I had known for years had recently died, both of them younger than I am. We so rarely take the time to deeply feel the miracle of being alive. I felt it at that moment.

So where is this new psychedelic renaissance leading? Will microdosing become as common and mundane as, say, vegetarianism or going to the gym? Will “macro” dosing — many people call high-dose experiences “journeys” — bring a new sense of mysticism to American life? Whatever direction it turns, Santa Cruz could very well be one of the places leading the way.

Since Santa Cruz became only the third municipality in the U.S. to decriminalize psychedelics, many more have followed suit, including Washington, D.C., with statewide decrim measures in Colorado and Oregon. Last October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) that would have decriminalized naturally occurring psychedelics throughout California. 

Athonia Cappelli, who helped lead the local decrim effort, said that she is considering launching a similar effort at the county level. 

As for the wider effects of the mainstreaming of psychedelics, writer and neuroscientist Katherine MacLean, who has been at the forefront of research in the field, told me that magic mushrooms probably won’t penetrate deeply into mainstream American culture, but other compounds could.

“Psilocybin is a little bit harder to predict as I kind of look out into the future,” said MacLean. “I really wonder if the public will ever be OK with the risk-benefit ratio of classic psychedelics, or are we always going to push a little bit and then have to step back and push a little bit and step back? I don’t think it’s a chemical that’s for everybody. And it may be that only 20 or 30% of the population ever gets interested in psilocybin. Whereas I could see MDMA being a lot more accepted.”

Ethicist Sandra Dreisbach told me that much more work needs to be done to bring psychedelic culture out of the curious in-between space that it is in today. 

“Psychedelics and plant medicines can be beautiful, powerful, deeply meaningful,” she said. “And whether you’re doing it for fun, whether you’re doing it to heal from a trauma, or trying to find meaning at the end of your life, that’s your business. And you should have the ability and the right and the access to do that safely and in a supportive way, in a community that’s educated about it. It seems sometimes like the biggest crime in places like Santa Cruz, that otherwise is so supportive of recreational use and even therapeutic use, is that it’s not talked about more and that we don’t educate people more about it. We should be the leaders in this space. I think in a lot of ways we are, but you can’t see that we are.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.