Plant medicine advocate sees a “glaring problem” in how people with depression “don’t know where to go” when institutions ignore “what really has been working throughout human history”
In covering the psychedelics community in Massachusetts over the last 16 months, I’ve been fortunate to meet a stunningly diverse coalition of advocates, both here in New England and around the globe. One of them is Cambridge resident Mia Cara Cosco, the founder of Psychedelic Salons, a group that provides “mystical yet professional community gatherings, retreats, and ceremonies dedicated to psychedelic medicine and therapy.”
Cosco currently works for the research platform Quantified Citizen on its Code Red project, an observational study focused on the impact of psychedelic use on the female menstrual cycle. In our interview ahead of the next Psychedelic Salon, which takes place in the Boston area this Saturday, I spoke with Cosco about her personal journey from starting as a straight-laced, social sciences-minded child of British Columbia to becoming perpetually fascinated with psychedelic science, women’s health, and community building.
JG: When and why did you first become interested in psychedelics?
MCC: My journey started when I was seven and I lost my mother, because at that point, like a happy, pretty normal upbringing in childhood really became sort of more of a tragic story—not directly for me, but indirectly I was experiencing and living within a tragic story. And so I became very interested in social psychology and mental health because my mom had grappled with her mental health. From there, it was really easy and intuitive to want to study psychology. So at age 12, I distinctly remember at a career fair wanting to become a psychologist.
When I went off to school at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I got my degree in psychology, and while I was in university my path really expanded, because I suddenly became aware of psychedelic research. So I was pretty narrow minded, atheistic. Growing up, I was just not like a believer that there was a benevolent higher power or anything like that, if there was one. … I went into university being pretty atheistic and pretty narrow minded, and when I was learning about antidepressants and anti anxiety medication in university, I became pretty disillusioned with the actual results I was seeing for people with actual diagnoses of depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc.
My friends at UBC let me know about psychedelic research at the time that was happening over at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, NYU, and others. I had basically no knowledge of what LSD or psilocybin was back in 2013 and 2014, and hadn’t even personally experienced cannabis, because I was very afraid of what psychedelics or anything hallucinogenic would do to me. I liked being in control. But my therapist at the time actually, kind of subtly, didn’t directly say, but indirectly suggested that it is important that I should open my mind for my mental health.
So with that, I did. I’ve had loving, wonderful experiences with psychedelics. My spirituality inevitably expanded, and I proceeded … on a journey of overcoming and moving through the grief of losing my mother. I graduated, but I didn’t want to do my master’s degree because I was kind of disillusioned with a lot of narrow minded attitudes I was encountering in my colleagues within psychology. I wasn’t sure where that was coming from, and I was pretty disappointed that some of my friends and colleagues who were going to become therapists were quite judgmental, narrow minded, and operated within this [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual] worshiping worldview.
Instead of my original plan, I proceeded on this journey of working in venture capital to fund psychedelic research and starting psychedelic meetup groups educational events outside of university. I met Dr. Manesh Girn in 2014 in a class at UBC, where we hit it off instantly. Together, Dr. Girn and I started the UBC Psychedelic Society together.
After graduating, I eventually founded Psychedelic Salons in 2019 after I decided to work in venture capital, in part because I was missing my psychedelic community, but also because I wanted to raise money for psychedelic research and create a more elevated sort of psychedelic enthusiast or almost guild-type of group. So I began bridging my connections in the venture capital world with my friends and peers who were excited about psychedelics, and together we raised $10,000 in Canadian dollars (CAD) for psychedelic research and MAPS Canada.
As for how I got to Boston, I’ve always wanted to move to the East Coast, actually, because in Canada, if you’re west coast born and raised, it can be like a bit of a small world. It’s been an interesting adventure, but Psychedelic Salons are in Boston now. The community is awesome and is snowballing.
What are some of the interesting, positive community-building moments or topics of conversation that have come out of digging into some of these headier issues at your Psychedelic Salons?
I’m really inspired by the community. I know that’s kind of a cheesy answer, but it is true in that when people come to a psychedelic salon, I’m shaking their hand, I’m offering them tea, I’m looking into their eyes, and I’m asking them about what brings them here and maybe a crucial experience of mortality they experience in an intimate, psychedelic journey.
But I’m also like, Who are you? What do you do for work? Who’s your family? What are you looking forward to in life? Because, while I don’t like small talk as much as the next person, it is important to get a sense of the whole person coming to this event—who’s entrusting some of their most spiritual experiences to a group of people they’ve never met before.
For example, one person that has come multiple times and is such a sweetheart—she always wears a mushroom sweater when she comes to the salons. And she is a stock broker, working as a day trader in her daily life, which I think is so unique and was not on my “psychedelic bingo card.” And when she joins us, she wants to talk about psychedelic stocks and how money is perceived differently through the psychedelic experiences we have. … because people don’t get into this space because it’s lucrative. They can go to biotech or pharma for that!
I also get a lot of ideas from what’s in the news, like for example, wanting to talk about healthcare, insurance, grief versus greed, and everything related to the recent [Luigi Mangione] shooting that happened. … I had a psychedelic salon that was about women’s menstrual health specifically, and the women in attendance had some great questions to ask, so we had this great discussion with women from all ages about our health. At the time, I just thought about how beautiful it can be to just come together and have this super vulnerable, deep, intimate conversation. To bypass all the small talk … that’s kind of a psychedelic journey in itself.
As interest in psychedelics continues to gain traction around the world, what do you see as the best and worst case scenarios for both the future of psychedelics in the US, Canada, and beyond?
I would say the best case scenario of psychedelics is that there is more acceptance of these substances in the medical industry and in the mainstream media.
I would love for the world to see it the way Maria Sabina saw it, for example, as a medicine and as a tool for spiritual experience. I also would love for the entire field of psychology to really prioritize compassion, prioritize humanity, prioritize more like trauma-informed language, and less prescriptive models based on having a chip on their shoulder for not being like a traditional neurosurgeon that saves lives. For example, psychologists can be happy knowing that they actually do a lot of invisible good.
The worst case scenario, honestly, is that it goes that the psychedelic industry goes into this sort of wellness tail spin. There is really an interesting intersection right now with how the definition of wellness has changed from 10 years ago. Ten years ago, you know, wellness was like Joe Dispenza and Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mate, and we were all like, yes, these books … are … like, sacred texts [with] stories from these people who really had these helpful mental health redefining, paradigm shifting experiences and life work that they were doing, but now it’s becoming like this thing where we’re censoring language about around wellness because of like political stratagems, and we’re also, unfortunately, you know, like wellness is becoming, like wellness is, unfortunately, a term being used by, I think, a lot of conspiracy theorizing, and that’s a lot of noise.
What would you say to parents, families, and individuals who might be against or are still on the fence about the use of, decriminalization, and/or legalization of psychedelics?
I would really get curious. Honestly. I would say very little, and I would mostly ask a lot of questions, because usually it has something to do with propaganda. So I can just say, Okay, well, actually, they’re not addictive. And here’s why, here’s the neurochemistry of it.
I would also say that usually people don’t actually know what psychedelics are, either. And there are people who, if it doesn’t come from a doctor’s mouth, they don’t believe it. Which is where usually I’d say, OK, let me illustrate some examples of where doctors have really gone wrong. There’s been misdiagnosis, there’s been foul play. There’s been doctors who’ve gone to jail. Doctors are humans. They’re not gods.
And usually a part of me does get angry, because it sets the movement back. But I’m also thinking that I understand because I was there once, because I was highly misinformed, and I wasn’t willing to educate myself until I came to a problem. … Also I was seeing a glaring problem in that people who have/had depression, like my mom, were not getting the help they needed and didn’t know where to go because no one was talking about what really has been working throughout human history.
What’s next for your personal and organizational advocacy work?
I’m currently meeting with agents to work on getting my book published, which is really the next step for me. It really is the cornerstone of everything I talk about. And when people want to get to know me or what I am passionate about, I just want to point to the book and be like, The research and everything is in there. So that’ll be interesting.
I also would love to make sure Psychedelic Salons are something that we do collaborations with people on. So for example, I recently collaborated with a well-known flower shop in Boston for our Death Salons, which is great because I’m also looking to collaborate with chapels and chaplains to reach people who are grieving. For now, I’m just going to keep spreading the gospel about psychedelics and I won’t stop anytime soon.
Aside from yourself, who are some other leaders, innovators or advocates in the psychedelic science community that you think more people should know about and hear from?
I think it’s really important to honor the people who have come before us, like Stan Grof, Roland Griffiths, and Mark Hayden from MAPS Canada. Rick Doblin is also very much an inspiring person for me, considering how much he has kept on advocating and beating the drum of psychedelics when it wasn’t cool and it wasn’t trendy. So really, honoring the people and respecting the people who were advocating for these medicines in the west when it wasn’t cool. But also making sure that they’re not advocating for it in a sense, where they’re stripping it of its indigeneity, but truly honoring and respecting the indigeneity of plant medicines.
More info on the next Psychedelic Salons on Saturday, Jan. 25 here
