Founder of Connecticut for Accessible Psychedelic Medicine tells TJM: “When people see that their own lives can improve, it builds a community [that] is willing to fight.”
While Talking Joints Memo coverage of the psychedelic renaissance has largely focused on Massachusetts activism, the New England advocacy community is not confined to the commonwealth. Among others, advocates just south of the border in Connecticut have been laying the groundwork for a duly rapid ascension to the forefront of the national movement.
One activist involved with that charge, 28-year-old Victor Constanza, is a founder of Connecticut for Accessible Psychedelic Medicine, and has a significant vision for the future of psychedelics in the northeast. A first-generation Guatemalan-American, Constanza’s father hails from the Xinca Tribe, an indigenous Mesoamerican culture that is still grappling with the residual impact of colonization in Guatemala today.
An experienced community organizer, they first became active in the immigration movement due to many family members being undocumented. After getting deeply involved with the political scene in their home state on that front, Constanza wound up working for the SEIU as a healthcare labor organizer focused on nursing homes.
In addition to their leadership of CAPM and work as a trained drug and alcohol recovery counselor, Constanza is enrolled to soon begin pursuing a bachelor’s degree in behavioral neuroscience at Quinnipiac University. We asked a range of questions at the intersection of their vast experience relevant to psychedelics.
Gorsline: When and why did you first become interested in psychedelics?
Constanza: I am a longtime community organizer. I first started to become active in the immigration movement due to a lot of my family members being undocumented. I did not want to see family members being separated for improving their lives. Because of my start of activism, I became very involved with the political scene in Connecticut.
Working for SEIU 1199NE, which is a healthcare union, my job was to create unions from non-union nursing homes. This is where I felt like I learned how to truly build movements as labor unions are historically successful in bringing people together for a common cause of improving their lives. Their training is very strict, but I felt like I became a real organizer because of it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a mental health crisis that will be felt for decades. Despite suffering from mental health issues already, this time period led to a giant decline. I was drinking way more, struggle with suicide ideation, really putting myself in dangerous situations, and emotionally abusing those who were close to me. I ended up losing the respect from the organizer community in the state because of it, and lost my job with SEIU.
After a DUI accident, which I still highly regret, I took my recovery seriously. Recovery is really hard, but it was not my first time trying. Before the pandemic, I have tried countless Intensive Outpatient Programs and tried medicines like Vivitrol to curb alcohol cravings. Nothing really worked.
When taking recovery seriously, I was put in these kinds of programs again, but despite my serious mindset, nothing was working. In July of last year, I was very close to a full relapse. I stopped seeing the point of trying to get better. I was at a point of attempting suicide, again, as it was not my first time. It was painful.
I was told about psilocybin helping with addiction. I heard of this because I read How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan in 2019, but did not think much of it. I just saw it as an interesting idea. But because of how severe my mental stability was, I was willing to try it out.
I did a lot of research before even doing my first trip. I had to learn about dosing, how important intention was, the experience itself, and how to do it safely.
After my first trip, it was my first time where I felt clarity in my life. My cravings for alcohol were gone. I no longer was suicidal. My depression was gone. I never knew that this was possible.
After doing two more trips, I told myself, Why aren’t there people trying to make this legal for use. I learned about what others have done across the country. I saw that my organizing background can still be used to start a true movement in Connecticut.
I do have to say, this is not a cure. There is still a lot of work I have to do. Anxiety, impulsivity, and emotional regulation are still huge issues for me. But have my symptoms decreased drastically? Yes. I do not crave alcohol and my depressional symptoms are at a near zero. I have not thought of suicide since the first trip.
How did the idea for Connecticut for Accessible Psychedelic Medicine come about, and how did you and your team at CAPM get started?
CAPM started after I made a video explaining my experience with psilocybin, and the group itself was born online. At the time. I still had some communication with active community networks, and the dominoes fell after that. For example, my video was shared to a cannabis advocacy group, the Cannawarriors. Their community members, specifically Jason Ortiz and Joseph Raymond Accetullo—both longtime activists in the cannabis movement—introduced me to folks like Sam Evans and Erin Doolittle who were already part of decriminalization efforts. They were very supportive and that is how I started developing a group. I was invited to table to many organizations, specifically the High Bazaar. This is where a base was starting to develop.
The community, specifically the High Bazaar where Accetullo is a co-founder, opened the doors to meeting more and more people who wanted to be part of the movement. Once I saw that the group became sizable, I wanted CAPM to be a group run by a number of people, not just myself. We had people from mental health providers, nurses, academics, researchers, politicians, activists, religious figures, businesses, and personal users join. This is where a steering committee was formed who are the leadership of CAPM.
Thankfully, leadership is made up of both veteran organizers and mental health providers. We want our group to be transparent, so we started holding in-person and Zoom community meetings. We would strategize with our members and leadership on how to educate our state and to pass decriminalization laws. CAPM is not just me. CAPM is a community. I am trying to develop this organization to be one like a union. We are not there yet, but the foundation has been made.
So far, what we have been successful with, is having an event with leaders across the country on the effects, benefits, and legality of psilocybin for legislators and how much psilocybin has been covered in media networks in the state. We see these things as successes as we are trying to fight the bias and we were just created in October of 2023.
Increased access to psychedelics has quickly become one of the unifying issues in American politics, with advocates hailing from all corners of the political theater and socioeconomic classes. That’s strikingly similar to the labor union resurgence of the last 10 years. Based on your prior experience as a union organizer, how can psychedelic advocates and thought leaders alike effectively transcend traditional political ties to further diversify the ranks of activists in this new psychedelic renaissance?
People can learn a lot from union organizers when it comes to any kind of movement building. At the core, what brings people together is how can their own lives improve. At the end of the day, it was about them. But we also have to keep the message that people can only win if we all fight together.
Intersectionality is what [leads to] a winning movement. One must unite race, gender, and sexuality when building a movement. But, at the same time, understand the struggles of each community and what boundaries they face from their own identities. Most importantly, when people see that their own lives can improve, it builds a community [that] is willing to fight.
In the psychedelic community, we have to be very blatant to say that life does not have to be this way. We have to say that people’s fears and anxieties can be improved. We have to say that there is a way to finally feel like fighting for your life. We have to say that psychedelics will improve your life, even if you do not have a disorder. We have to say that psychedelics have the potential to save your life and to finally feel free.
One of the biggest concerns surrounding psilocybin-assisted therapy is the high cost of treatment sessions. How do you think this issue can be addressed—be it legislatively, commercially, or otherwise—to make psychedelic medicine more accessible to a wider range of patients?
Honestly, a lot of these issues can be solved only through legislation. Laws must be passed to cap pricing of treatment sessions and the drugs themselves and allow state/health insurances to cover it:
Trying to make a profit off the [indigenous] cultural history of psilocybin and where it comes from is disrespectful to the indigenous communities that if you needed help, would [provide it to you] for free. The way where treatment is allowed in some states only benefits those who are well-off financially or rich.
Another challenge facing potential psychedelic therapy providers in Oregon and Colorado so far is the high cost of certification and licensing for clinicians who want to provide psilocybin-assisted therapy. What are your thoughts on how to address this barrier and encourage more mental health professionals to enter this field?
There should be laws that ensure training and certification programs for practitioners are affordable. Money will always be a boundary, but the more people who are trained, the more availability of these services will be allowed. The state or federal government should support pathways for anyone to seek training, ideally for free.
By encouraging folks to enter this field, there has to be a lot of organizing on breaking the stigma and bringing the education to them. This can be done by doing educational events or presentations constantly, having pro-psychedelic organizations reach out to them about these opportunities, and constant exposure about the benefits in mass media.
Psychedelic colonization has been a hotbutton intersectional issue across generations within the psychedelic activist community, and Indigenous American access to certain psychedelic plants (such as Peyote, Mescaline, etc.) that are considered sacraments are often at the center of this hotly contested topic. In your opinion, what are some considerations that non-indigenous/non-POC psychedelic advocates should consider when educating themselves about the contemptuous history behind this issue?
People should remember that psychedelics are an indigenous medicine—not an idea made by modern medicine. It is being understood on how it works and how to make it safe by modern medicine, but the credit does not belong to them. They should also include people of all races to be part of executive decisions and sections of their organization. Be willing to let BIPOC lead the conversation and the movement. Be willing to be a true ally. Do not think you are above someone just because you went to school, or had training, or that you made your own organization. White activists have to understand the history of marginalized communities and how they ended up being oppressed. Also, researchers and providers who are in this space must be supportive of decriminalization.
As psychedelic medicine continues to gain traction around the world, what do you see as the best-case and worst-case scenarios for its future in the United States?
The best case scenario: It is decriminalized for personal use; people are allowed to grow their own; people are allowed to share and gift. If people want to seek a modern way to take psychedelics, they are allowed to do so, but also allow folks to look for holistic and/or community—as this is the way it has always been taken—based on ways to take their trip. Obviously, people should still receive training in this sector.
If people are trying to make a business in the psychedelic world, that license for any sector (commercial, training, etc) is allowed for anyone to avoid a monopoly or corporatization and high pricing. And, that treatment should be covered by all insurances.
If mass production does become a thing, there has to be a regulatory body.
The worst case scenario is that it is only allowed for medical services and its pricing for it is high. Along with people going to jail for possession and growing.
Addicts and addiction recovery advocates are often some of the most overlooked and misjudged demographics in the psychedelic community. As a drug and alcohol abuse counselor by trade and as someone who has struggled with substance abuse yourself, how have psychedelics benefited your own recovery and your work as a counselor to others seeking healing of their own?
To be clear—under current federal and state law, I’m unable to talk about psychedelics with clients.
However, outside the workplace, I do talk about how much it has benefited me to others who I meet that are in recovery. Even the organization we run, we provide education if people want to learn how to use it safely.
Could you speak to some of the core issues and common misconceptions that you’ve encountered in your work as a psychedelic advocate?
What I see is that people see it as some crazy drug that will make you insane or that people use all the time. While trips can be intense, it is safer than cannabis. And as we know, people are not using psilocybin all the time. Maybe if they are microdosing.
The other issues I have seen people bring up are how production can be made safely. People are more in support of some sort of a regulatory body. With the opioid crisis, there is a bias that everything has fentanyl. A regulatory body would get rid of this fear, even though we have not heard of psilocybin products being mixed with an opiate.
The other issue has to be with driving under the influence. As we know, microdosing does not induce a trip, and I will say, you should be good to drive if you are doing it this way. But with a macro-dose, I do not see how a person can even drive. But, can it happen, yes, but I will predict that it would be supremely rare.
What would you say to parents, families, and individuals who might be against or still on the fence about the use, decriminalization, and/or legalization of psychedelics?
Look at the anecdotal and researched evidence. It has saved lives. Why would anyone be against something that will do so much good? I would even tell them to try a microdose. You will not be high, you will just have a pleasant day.
What’s next for your personal and organizational advocacy work?
Earning my bachelor’s degree in behavioral neuroscience at Quinnipiac University and working alongside my fellow activists to pass a better decriminalization bill in Connecticut. Previous attempts at drafting psychedelic legislation were written without us, as we did not exist yet, and did not include home cultivation and personal distribution provisions. That said, we will continue to educate our state as well as work together to create a true network for activists across the northeast. I believe this fight is not led by one person, but with all of us.
Aside from yourself, who are some other leaders, innovators, and/or advocates in the psychedelic science community that you think more people should know about and hear from?
I’d encourage you to check some of our other local leaders, such as Erin Doolittle, founder of Wholeness House Hartford, who is continuously doing education seminars in the state. She is our educational director for CAPM.
Check out CAPM on LinkedIn here
