The Austin Chronic: SXSW Is High on Psychedelics, as Cannabis Programming Wanes

Our society's rapid adoption of powerful tools that may drastically alter the way we live will be a trending topic at South by Southwest 2024. I'm not talking about artificial intelligence, but rather magic mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, and ketamine.

SXSW's Psychedelics track is one of the March Conference's growing sectors. Programming includes 30-plus panels, sessions, and meetups ranging from a discussion about psychedelics in end-of-life care to a presentation about policy reform from Rick Doblin, a popular Joe Rogan Experience guest, to panels where venture capitalists brainstorm funding research & development for illicit substances to gain FDA approval.

SXSW has been turned on to psychoactive substances for five years, launching a Cannabis track in 2018, then minting a Psychedelics section last year.

"When we added Psychedelics it immediately almost doubled attendance from what Cannabis had been receiving," says Adam Wode, Conference programming manager for SXSW. "There's a huge demand and a lot of folks who are eager to be viewed as thought leaders in the space, so they'd love a mainstream speaking opportunity like SXSW. People interested in psychedelics are looking for ways to have psychedelic medicine be part of normalized mainstream conversation."

This follows a national awakening on consciousness-altering substances. Psilocybin mushrooms are now legal in Oregon and Colorado, ketamine is widely accessible as a therapeutic, and MDMA has been designated a "breakthrough therapy" for post-traumatic stress disorder by the Food & Drug Administration.

As such, psychedelics are now being enthusiastically embraced by unlikely audiences, like the wellness community and the startup scene. It's something that SXSW seems to be self-aware about, since one of their earliest panels on the topic was titled the Ethics of Mainstreaming Psychedelics.

"We don't want to overload the track with nothing but VCs that are investing in the space," Wode explains. "A lot of these substances have been around for thousands of years and some very much belong to Indigenous communities. That needs to be kept in mind when different groups are asking, 'How can we trademark and license this and sell it to the masses?' So we're always thinking about creating a balance in programming – with academics looking at it in terms of mental health and the cultural communities behind psychedelics having their story told – so it isn't completely steered toward letting capitalism do capitalism in this space."

SXSW's "tracks" are essentially umbrella topics that programming is built around. This year, cannabis lost that status. Where SXSW 2019 featured 40 cannabis sessions, the current schedule lists only three marijuana-focused talks.

Wode, who had led the Cannabis track, says SXSWeed has faced several challenges. It proved tough to book a steady supply of marquee speakers, having already hosted the likes of Steve DeAngelo, Ricky Williams, and John Boehner; the industry has endured a tough year with mom-and-pop businesses going under or being acquired by multistate operators; and it's difficult to compete nationally in a state with regressive weed laws.

"There's hundreds or thousands of cannabis-specific events where they can do so much more than what we can do at SXSW, being in Texas," he explains. "We couldn't take sponsorship money from any brand that directly touched the plant, for example."

But according to Wode, the biggest challenge was reconciling his optimism about legalization.

"If you would have asked me in 2018 what programming the track today would be like, I would have thought that if you had a Democratic president, House, and Senate, federal legalization would be happening and it would unlock all this opportunity for the industry. Because that hasn't materialized, it kind of put a ceiling on everything."