WHO IS STEPHEN REID?

Our statement

We are a collective of women, men and non-binary people who have come together to share our experiences of abusive behaviour through our connections with Stephen Reid, the founder of the Psychedelic Society UK, and the groups he was or is still associated with.

By publishing this statement and the accompanying testimonies, we hope to:

1. Support those who have told us of their traumatic experiences with Reid or his enablers

2. Inform organisations and individuals about the allegations so that appropriate steps can be taken 

3. Support existing efforts to prevent further potential abuse within spiritual and Burner communities, and beyond.

Background

Reid has also founded several organisations and communities that promote psychedelics as a route to consciousness expansion, enlightenment, and mental wellbeing. These include Dandelion, Psychedelic Experience Weekends, and the informal UK co-creation/Burner community Find The Others. In each case, with the exception of Dandelion, Reid has distanced himself from the organisations he founded, for reasons that this website will make clear.

On his website, Reid describes himself as a ‘cultural changemaker’. In our shared experience the cultural changes he creates can lead to the normalisation of damaging and abusive behaviour towards women and psychologically at-risk people. 

The testimonies we share here include allegations of abuse of power, but also allegations of a sexual and psychological nature.

Reid’s conduct is the focus of these testimonies. A number of allegations within them also refer to the actions of others who attended these events, or organised their own. From our collective experience, this environment – which was not solely attributable to Reid – fostered an event culture where pushing people past their sexual and psychological boundaries was not only accepted, but encouraged.

Despite this, Reid has successfully pursued leadership roles in organisations such as the Green Party and Extinction Rebellion in recent years. Against the backdrop of the testimonies, this raises concerns that toxic practices may exist in other organisations which Reid is associated with.

The physical and psychological safety of people in these organisations relies on an informal whisper network of those who are aware of past incidents. This whisper network has doubtless reduced harms, but did not prevent the alleged abuses of power from recurring at events organised by Reid and his associates. Attempts to ‘call in’ Reid after allegations have been made and have mediations with him have kept the concerns about his behaviour under wraps.

This public statement is a last recourse. The testimonies that sit alongside it have been written by individuals who have witnessed or experienced firsthand the destructive behaviour of Reid and of those who enable him.

Patterns of abusive behaviour

By 2017, a number of people had raised concerns about  Reid’s behaviour, though they did not all know of each other’s experiences and remained isolated. At the same time, Reid was increasingly seen as a kind of guru within the community he’d created. He cultivated a shamanistic persona that made him seem remote, mysterious, and benevolent. He maintained the infrastructure for psychedelic events, paid for a London storage space for equipment, developed an app to facilitate co-organising, and covered outstanding costs. People responded to Reid with admiration and gratitude. He rejected being described as a leader, preferring the term ‘initiator’. 

Our shared experience suggests that Reid leveraged his high status within communities he created in a number of ways. 

1. Allegations of manipulative and harmful behaviour towards women. A number of the testimonies refer to experiences of Reid transgressing boundaries in his relationships with women, particularly when they are high on hallucinogens. 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15

Such behaviour can contribute to a sexist culture in these communities, where men use feminist language but ultimately feel free to behave harmfully with no consequences. When women raise concerns about these power dynamics, they are sidelined. 2, 13

2. High-risk drug consumption Some signatories of this letter believe that hallucinogens and plant medicines should be legalised, particularly for therapeutic purposes, whilst others do not. We all understand that taking hallucinogens carries a risk of creating or intensifying vulnerable states, from becoming highly suggestible to experiencing temporary psychosis. 

A number of the testimonies describe Reid providing and encouraging taking hallucinogenic drugs at the parties he co-organised. Reid was trusted and praised as a ‘psychonaut,’ an advanced hallucinogenic practitioner. However, from the allegations in the testimonials we have observed an apparent pattern of Reid failing to take responsibility in the aftermath of challenging or traumatic experiences arising at these events and leaving others, often women, to pick up the pieces. Furthermore when others enquire with Reid about his problematic behaviour when under the influence of drugs, he has a history of denying that it occurred. As with sexual liberation, we believe that the communities he has created claim to offer the potential for healing from psychological trauma, but in practice fail to prevent further harms from occurring. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11

3. Lack of empathy, lack of remorse. Reid is a highly perceptive and charismatic person. Our testimonials discuss individual experiences of Reid being quick to read them, charm them, persuading them to go along with his wishes, and then becoming distant or evasive when they no longer serve his needs. 

In our collective experience, when people inform Reid of how his behaviour impacted them, he has not reacted with empathy, concern or surprise. In the three cases we know of where he has apologised for his conduct, it can be seen as self protecting and transactional - two of those three cases involve money.

The patterns described in the testimonies suggest to us that Reid has not understood the harm his behaviour has caused (even if he rejects the substance of the allegations), and fails to anticipate or address similar instances of poor behaviour within the communities where he holds leadership/’initiator’ status. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15.

Supremacist community culture

Reid and those who have helped him build his networks (Find The Others, Dandelion, etc.), pitch the gatherings run by these communities as a space outside the dominant culture, where vulnerability, interdependence and loving-kindness are prized. They attract many people who are seeking those things, and signatories of this statement can attest that these events are frequently creative, playful and transformative for the majority of participants.

In these spaces, influence, power, or ‘social capital’ is accrued through initiating co-created events and being highly visible there. The ‘do-ocracy’ of such events raises the profile of able-bodied, white or white-passing, middle class, cis, heteronormative, Oxbridge-educated and generally privileged people who are able to organise ambitious events and tailor them to their own needs in the process. 

• When people of colour have disclosed incidents of racist behaviour, offered educational workshops about intersectionality, or objected to persistent cultural appropriation, they have often been ignored, told not to impose on others, or been asked to conduct themselves in a ‘light’ way that can be ‘heard’.

• When neurodivergent people have experienced exclusion and shaming as a result of not being able to ‘go with the flow’, they are sidelined. When they have ‘gone with the flow’ and had traumatising experiences, their suffering is dismissed.

• When women are sexually targeted and discarded by men at these events, it’s up to them to work through that experience in private and with compassion for the harm-doer. 

In our experience, straight white cis middle class men with no disabilities tend to benefit the most from the ‘do-ocratic’ structure. When these organisers are invited to address concerns or challenges, their lack of enthusiasm is evident, and changes made – recruiting a POC co-organiser at the last minute, creating an app – are tokenistic. 

Whether intentionally or otherwise, the organisations and communities established by Reid propagate hierarchical, unaccountable and repressive behaviour. That they are presented as explorative, transformative and inclusive is misleading at best, deceitful at worst.

A number of individuals’ experience of when issues around lack of accountability and inclusion have been raised, is for Reid to suggest that he is unable to exert influence over the community he initiated and the organisations he founded. He has also left organisations and communities he founded (including the Psychedelic Society, Psychedelic Experience Weekends, and Find The Others), where issues had been raised.

2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Why this statement exists

The authors of this statement have wrestled with what fair and meaningful accountability looks like for a long time. Some of us have struggled with the fallout from experiences  described in the testimonies, on our own or in therapy, for years. It is only in coming together as a group early in 2020 that we have been able to see the recurring patterns of behaviour since as far back as 2010. 

Though our collective silence has protected us in some ways, remaining silent after having shared these experiences will not help others. We hope that speaking out helps fellow former or current members of Reid’s networks to feel less alone. And we hope to raise awareness of such patterns of behaviour that may be occurring in other communities focused on spirituality and consciousness. 

As of June 2021, searching ‘Stephen Reid psychedelics' online brings up links that promote Reid’s worldview without caveats. The concerns raised by many remain suppressed. Meanwhile, Reid enjoys a growing influence within conscious communities in Devon, within XR, and within the international Burner community. 

Early in 2020 Reid co-organised and held The Atlantic Assemblage, an event in the style of those described above. Through the Psychedelic Society, he also announced Totnes Convergence, a conference across seven venues in Totnes. Though this was cancelled due to COVID-19, representatives of Greenpeace, Schumacher College and other respected organisations were due to take part. 

We believe that institutions or individuals that work with Reid should be able to do so with an awareness of these allegations and our collective experiences.

We believe in peacefully raising awareness and transformative justice. We feel empowered to take this step thanks to the #MeToo movement, and the active support of SoManyOfUs. We are deeply grateful to Tarana Burke, for the bravery of her and countless others who have built this movement. We hope that this statement and testimonies will help create space for positive changes to emerge, and give strength and solace to unknown others with similar stories.

To members of Reid’s community and Reid’s supporters, we’d like to say that we felt the shock, betrayal, confusion, and anger that the testimonies may cause you to feel. We hope that, like us, you will recognise the importance of naming these issues so they can be appropriately addressed.  

We approached Reid for comments regarding the allegations referred to here and detailed in the testimonies two days before the launch of this site. His response was as follows:

Thank you for giving me a chance to respond to the allegations.

Whilst I am willing to prepare a public response, I want to make it clear I am also open to participating in a mediation/accountability process with any or all of the people involved.

Would you be able to make those involved aware of this and see if they would prefer such a process?

We do not intend to enter into a mediation process with Reid. We observe that a past mediation with him (and, we add, other processes including group interventions and 1-2-1 meetings) did not lead to positive change, and positive change is what we seek. We have shared some specific demands for transformative justice on our FAQ page should Reid or members of the community wish to take concrete action as a result of reading this statement.

After the site launched Reid published the more detailed response to this statement and the testimonials, and we have chosen to host this fuller response here. We note that in the initial version of Reid's full response, he opted to use the full names of two individuals (7, 9) who testified that they have been harmed by his sexual conduct towards them. He has since edited their names out.

Our overall impression of Reid's response is that it showcases many of the red flags that are detailed in the statement and in the testimonies. We thank Reid for his full response.

Update: we are sharing formal public responses from the organisations referenced in this statement, and in individual testimonies. We share them here in the interest of allowing readers of this site to see how these organisations choose to respond to allegations of psychological and sexual abuse.

• Statement from the Psychedelic Society/Dandelion Collective. Content note: this statement links to triggering content.

We are aware of a counter-website launched by Reid’s friends less than 48 hours after this site’s publication. We will not be linking to this website as we feel that a significant proportion of its contents are seriously harmful to survivors of sexual and psychological abuse.

Update: A week after the launch of this website, Reid published a blog post, which we are linking to alongside his initial reply, reflecting on our suggested actions for transformative justice (see FAQ). We welcome Reid’s public acceptance of our testimonies and our requests, whilst feeling that his conduct behind the scenes – e.g. soliciting his newsletter subscribers to provide testimonials for the damaging counter-website referred to above – has demonstrated that genuine change will be an ongoing process.

We continue to focus on supporting people who are disclosing their experiences of abusive behaviour in connection with Reid and his organisations. We are an unpaid group of volunteers, and our overall aim is to go slowly, allowing space for reflection and care for those harmed by a ‘move fast and break stuff’ culture.

We will not be publishing any further content from Reid and we will instead, as we feel others should, continue to focus our energies on listening to survivors and supporting safeguarding efforts.

If you have been affected by the people and issues we describe in this statement, contact us for confidential support. If you would like to share a testimony either as a witness, or as a survivor, please get in touch. You can reach us through the contact form on this website.