🫠 Psychonaut POV

PRESENTED BY SCHOOL OF PSYCHEDELICS 🤝

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Ismail “Izzy” Ali stumbled into psychedelic policy work the way most people find their calling—through a healthy mix of teenage rebellion and haphazard web surfing, of course. Now, as co-executive director of MAPS, he’s helping steer the OG psychedelic nonprofit through its biggest transition in 40 years.

We asked Izzy how his Islamic faith shaped his philosophy on psychedelics, where he sees the bleeding edge of psychedelic policy reform today, and why MAPS is narrowing its strategic focus for the chapter ahead.

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What first pulled you into psychedelic policy work? How did you end up at MAPS?

My interest in social change, broadly speaking, started early. Growing up as a third-culture, mixed-race kid in California, and being raised Muslim and politically socialized by the post-9/11 era, my initial interest was around peace, conflict, and international relationships. I found my way to psychedelics separately. I was born and raised in Fresno, California, and there's no way to grow up in Fresno without coming into some contact with the underground drug scene.

For many years, those were two separate aspects of my life. I studied debate and civil rights advocacy by day and went to raves by night. It wasn't until my early twenties that I realized drug policy and these bigger geopolitical questions were actually connected. I had seen them as silos, but psychedelic exploration was such a key part of my understanding of the world.

I first encountered MAPS through StumbleUpon in 2005 as a teenager looking up drugs on the internet. Then 10 years later in law school, colleagues at both the Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU suggested MAPS when I expressed interest in psychedelic policy, which didn't really exist yet as a field of its own. In 2015, I met Rick Doblin and Natalie Ginsberg and started volunteering right away. As soon as I realized I could apply legal civil rights advocacy to this personal interest, it was over. I've been doing that for the last 10 years.

Has your background as a Muslim shaped the way you think about psychedelics?

There are two aspects here. One is my experience as an impacted identity in the post-9/11 era. Until then, many American Muslims were more conservative, but the US government's militarization, surveillance, and suspicion pointed at Muslims and Muslim countries after 9/11 pushed away this demographic who were otherwise socially aligned with conservatives on a lot of issues like family values and fiscal responsibility. As a teenager, I took on this identity of an impacted class and developed a behavioral fixation on “being good.” It was the classic model minority thing, where I needed to be really solid in school, pursue excellence, work twice as hard, and so on. This was all happening right when I encountered psychedelics at 16.

The faith I'd been raised in felt true and meaningful in many ways, but I didn't like certain aspects of institutional Islam—the homophobia, patriarchy, and some of the political complexities. I felt aligned with Islam conceptually but was rejecting institutional religion. Psychedelics gave me a place to put my spirituality outside the institution.

The other aspect is about the substances themselves. In Islam, you're not permitted to use intoxicating substances that “curtain the mind.” As a teenager using psychedelics, I was like, “I don't feel like I'm curtaining my mind. I'm unveiling it.” Curtaining is the opposite of revealing, and psyche-delic literally means “mind revealing.” My relationship to Islam helped me develop a deeper analysis around intention of use, context of use, and what substances are doing versus not doing. Intention really matters; people certainly use psychedelics to veil or bypass, too.

MAPS is trying co-leadership for the first time. What are the different strengths you and Betty bring to the table? How do you two complement each other?

Betty and I have worked together for about a decade. I met her while I was still in law school and she was executive director at SSDP. She came to MAPS about six years ago as director of communications and has been holding the voice of MAPS while I was on the policy side. We were the two most senior directors at the organization before being brought into co-executive directorship.

Betty draws from a long view of drug policy and a multimodal perspective from her years in the cannabis world. When you hear her talk, she brings examples from the cannabis movement because we can now see where our path with psychedelics is similar or different.

My focus and expertise is really in psychedelics directly, because of my personal relationship with them, my work with MAPS, and my familial connection to traditional use. I've developed a deep understanding of our movement and how psychedelics show up not just in therapeutic containers, but also their social imprint.

Betty has more experience being accountable to a board, managing budgets and insurance, and the nuts and bolts of nonprofit operations. I bring more of the vision of what's needed to create a more just, compassionate, and responsible psychedelic ecosystem. The nice thing is we're both learning from each other and creating something bigger than any one of us could do alone.

What's your strategy for getting to the “post-prohibition future” you keep talking about?

MAPS is at a turning point. It’s kind of like a midlife crisis in the sense that we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary next April. If MAPS stays relevant, it can be a leader for another 40 years. But the question is, what is relevant in the movement today?

Creating legal access to psychedelics through the medical system was very edgy for a long time, but now you've got biotech companies moving forward in that space. There’s enough momentum that it would continue even if MAPS disappeared tomorrow. If MAPS’s role is to expand the edges of access, then we need to figure out which edges we’re uniquely capable of pushing outward.

One such edge is the whole diagnosis framework. When you legalize through the FDA, you need a diagnosis to get access. But if I want to get therapy, I don't need a diagnosis. If I want cosmetic surgery, for that matter, I don't need a diagnosis. With the state-level psychedelic programs, what we're talking about is elective care. If you're 21 or over, you can participate without needing to be sick first.

This idea is one new front edge to me. We're interested in working with couples, formerly incarcerated individuals, and people impacted by social or relational issues. Anyone who chooses to work with psychedelics for personal growth or healing outside of a diagnosis ought to have access, too.

The bigger shift is MAPS moving into a technical advisory role. We're focusing on professional education—not just therapists and first responders, but also regulators. Everyone focuses on politicians during campaigns, but guess who has to actually implement these laws? Agency administrators. They want to do it responsibly but often lack technical expertise. We're uniquely positioned to provide that support. It's less visible work than campaigns, but it's how you actually build sustainable systems.

If you could get any group on board with psychedelic reform, who would it be? What partnerships are you most excited about building?

The first that comes to mind is the larger climate movement and ecological justice world. More and more people are waking up to the urgency of this issue, and it just so happens that studies show a connection between psychedelics and nature relatedness. When people use psychedelics, they feel more connected to Earth and the world around them. That feels like low-hanging fruit.

Another is the professional guilds. We had speakers from the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers at Psychedelic Science this year. These are the professional communities that will be tasked with implementing these programs. They're our safety net when crises occur, so we’re eager to engage.

The third is religious and spiritual communities, including indigenous traditions. I don’t just mean spiritual leaders and clergy, although there’s some opportunity there, as well. I’m thinking more of the overlap between social justice and religious communities where people say, "My faith tells me it's my duty to make the world a better place." A lot of people are connected to some sort of spiritual practice. The question is how we will apply this impulse in a way that's pro-social and brings more compassion and responsibility to the space.

Want more from Izzy?

Pick up MAPS' free integration workbook, or support the organization’s next chapter by becoming a member.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.