As archetypal tricksters, psychedelics continue to defy explanation. Invoking Cardea, the trickster goddess of the hinge, I want this talk to open some questions for us to play with: if psychedelics produce such weird and unruly experiences, why are they therapeutic, and what else might they be? I’ll draw on my research, from psychedelic clinical trials, through to sites where we find related kinds of extreme experiences. I’ll also open up a dialogue with the Cardea founders about the trickster energies that give the name to their own work.

Tehseen Noorani is a researcher interested in the intersections of psychedelic and ‘psychotic’ or mad experiences. He has a PhD studying the hearing voices movement, a postdoc spearheading qualitative research for the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research centre and has written on the medicalisation of psychedelics. He’s a part-time scholar-in-residence for Tactogen Public Benefit Corporation and an ambassador to The Fireside Project, and was a co-organizer of the 2021 conference, Psychedelics, Madness & Awakening: Harm Reduction and Future Visions. Since 2022 he has facilitated ‘Rethinking Psychedelic Trials, an interdisciplinary working group focused on methodological questions in the study of psychedelics.