🫠 Psychonaut POV

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Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s proposing we rebrand plant medicine as planet medicine. All in favor, reply and say “aye.” 🌎

Marissa Feinberg isn’t one to shy away from a big, hairy, audacious goal. In this case, it’s existential. For years, she’s been trying to convince people to care about the planet, but her biggest breakthrough came when she saw how psychedelics changed people’s relationship to nature.

We asked Marissa why psychedelics inspire climate action, how young people are managing eco-anxiety, and what it’ll take to catalyze the kind of systemic change our planet desperately needs.

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How did you discover that psychedelics might be key to solving the climate crisis?

I can't take credit for discovering the connection personally, but I can tell you how I came to this work. I spent about 20 years in the environmental social impact space. My greatest contribution was co-founding Green Spaces, a co-working space for environmental social change makers that eventually became part of the global Impact Hub network.

After eight years of running events every day, I was burnt out. So I started consulting and eventually fell into psychedelics through client work. I helped a ketamine therapy center go from idea to inception and become one of the leading brands in the category. But some part of me felt guilty. Why was I spending all this time on ketamine when we're in an escalating climate crisis?

Then one of my clients in regenerative agriculture said to me, "Environmental problems are human problems. It's the humans destroying the planet." That was an aha moment. I started to contemplate how these worlds weren’t so separate after all.

We started Psychedelics for Climate Action (PSYCA) with a simple panel in New York. I had heard Bennet Zelner, Ph.D. speak at the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society about “Connected Leadership.” He told us about a program he was running with the University of Maryland where he took business leaders to the Netherlands and presented regenerative business models. At first, the leaders said, "I don't get it." Then two psilocybin sessions later, one of them looked up and said, "It all makes sense." That man went on to start a mental health company.

When I was still grappling with the separation between healing people versus healing the planet, Bennet looked at me and said, "It's all the same." That time it landed because I’d been doing my own inner work and was the most open I’d ever been in my life.

Walk us through PSYCA’s core insight. How exactly do psychedelics help people show up differently for climate action?

We have a twofold messaging platform that took us a while to develop. For the psychedelic community, we say: psychedelics can inspire a profound oneness with all life and a remembering that we are nature. So we invite you to join our mission to transform this awareness into meaningful climate action.

For the climate community, we ask: with countless solutions available, why are we still in this crisis? Clearly participation in the solutions is the problem. And beneath that is a consciousness shift.

The consciousness shift is about reconnection—to nature, to self, to community. It's about feeling your power and agency for climate action at a time when it's being cut off. It's about collective stewardship, being inspired to take change, and supporting people in your community who want to make this change. Because we can't just leave it up to the government. We saw with the LA fires that mutual aid efforts were instrumental. That is, people helping other people.

I grapple even with saying "nature" because that perpetuates the illusion of separation. If we harm our home and where we come from, we're harming ourselves. The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe; it’s all part of us. The consciousness shift that psychedelics evoke is a remembering that we don’t just rely on nature. We are nature.

Climate anxiety is crushing young people right now. Can psychedelics help people move from paralysis to empowerment around climate issues?

People really need tools to cope with the reality of the situation. Younger generations in particular are so attuned with what's happening. They have a whole life ahead of them, so they're asking, "How are we going to make it? What's this world going to look like?"

Climate anxiety is real, and managing it is a balance. You don’t want to bury your head in the sand. But if you don’t give yourself space, you can't function. For example, when the LA fires were happening, I was in close communication with my cousins living there. I couldn’t deny the reality of the situation from my privileged position in New York. But I also needed to keep moving forward, to do work that's beneficial to the planet, to support my family and friends as they were going through a crisis.

Eco-anxiety is one of the fastest growing concerns in mental health. For people struggling with it, psychedelics can be healing. Our PSYCA member Isabel Santis, Ph.D., just completed research exploring how intentional psychedelic use can transform the experience of eco-anxiety from paralyzing distress to deeper equanimity, resilience, and a renewed sense of purpose. Practically, that might look like a microdosing protocol to help someone move forward and feel more balanced day to day. Or it could be larger journey work. The Community Leaders Resilience Fund is organizing journeys for climate leaders and also supporting victims of disaster.

People can counter existential dread by taking action as well, even if they don’t work in climate. Many volunteer initiatives exist, from participating in a beach clean up to calling environmental voters in swing states. They can also use more eco-friendly products in their daily lives. For example, I’ve been working with Earthly Insight, a more conscious AI that uses less energy and donates to rewilding efforts. We all have a shared collective impact, and these small differences in our consumer product choices add up and make a big difference.

Psychedelic experiences are deeply personal. So how does an individual consciousness shift translate to the kind of collective action required for something as big and systemic as climate change?

I see it happening in a number of ways. On the individual level, psychedelics are tools for embodiment. If I feel more embodied and centered, I'm going to participate in my community in a more abundant, expansive way than if I'm stuck in fear and contraction. I say this as a reminder to myself as someone who's ambitious and passionate, running a nonprofit while doing PR for clients like InnerMost, New York’s newest psychedelic therapy innovation center, and Mission Within Foundation, a leading nonprofit providing psychedelic therapy for veterans and first responders. The climate crisis and mental health are both heavy and close to my heart. Still, there are moments I must come up for air. Sustaining myself is a constant balancing act.

But it goes beyond individual work. Think about people in positions of leadership, whether they’re business executives, community organizers, or people with influence. When these leaders have more inner peace and clarity, they're more likely to make decisions that consider the collective good. We need people who can see the bigger picture and act from a place of connection rather than separation.

I'm not anti-capitalist by any means. There's a whole movement around B Corps, social enterprise, and social impact. I worked with some of the people who created a lot of those frameworks. I believe business can be a force for good. Ultimately, it comes down to the scale at which these ideas catch on and whether leaders are applying them earnestly or greenwashing.

What's your strategy for reaching the scale where PSYCA can actually move the needle on climate?

We've got some larger initiatives rolling out. At our Earth Month event, Jon Burmeister, a philosophy professor at the University of Mount St. Vincent, and neuroscientist Melanie Pincus presented this idea: what if there was a protocol to inhabit nature through journey work?

We did a whole session collecting data on what this might look like. What's the preparation? What happens during the journey? What's the integration? One of the ideas that came up, for instance, was to have people examine a leaf under a magnifying glass while they’re in an expanded state of consciousness.

So far, we’ve been attracting people at the intersection of psychedelics and climate action. Admittedly, we’re preaching to the choir a bit. But if you can take these ideas to your friends and say, "Let's go on a nature walk and do these practices together," that brings people into the ecosystem who might not otherwise come.

Every year during Climate Week, we host “preparation” and “integration” events, aligned with the psychedelic theme. Right now, we're talking to a funder about piloting a new “integration” initiative in October. We’d organize a nature walk, either in Central Park or upstate. Since it's in New York, it would be without psychedelics, but people could have the option to work with legal psychoactive plants like cacao, blue lotus, or cannabis. Others might just choose to connect with the earth as medicine and hold the intention to be with each other in community.

We’re opening our event this year with a ceremony led by Manari Ushigua Santi to get right into the heart. It will be a consciousness-expanding experience without medicine. Manari talks about how millions have experienced this consciousness shift. But we still have millions more to go. At PSYCA, we’re building community and an ecosystem to acknowledge these connections and see what grows from here.

Want more from Marissa?

Become a member of the Psychedelics for Climate Action community, or get involved in organizing future programs.

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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.