As the so-called psychedelic renaissance increasingly gains momentum both in Massachusetts and across the country, a new generation of reform advocates and community organizers are emerging in real time, bucking political norms and carving out forward-thinking, inclusive community spaces for seasoned psychonauts and psychedelic-curious newbies alike.
Enter Tesserae LaSalle (they/them), a 28-year-old LGBTQ+ psychedelic community organizer and laboratory supervisor at Verne Bio whose decade-long journey to their dream job is a testament to resilience and intersectional advocacy. Raised on Wampanoag land in Massachusetts by a single nonbinary “Moddy,” LaSalle grew up below the poverty line in a historically greenlined town where theirs was one of the only families of color. After embracing their nonbinary identity in 2019 and earning a B.S. in biochemistry, they navigated intense frontline burnout performing COVID-19 tests at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. That experience catalyzed a major pivot toward plant medicine.
Today, armed with an M.S. in medical cannabis science and therapeutics, LaSalle sits at the dynamic intersection of biotech innovation and community healing—focusing on ethical psychedelic research while ensuring clean, genetically banked cannabis for patients. We sat down with LaSalle to discuss their scientific journey, grassroots organizing, and vision for an equitable future in the psychedelic and cannabis spaces.
When and why did you first become interested in psychedelics?
I was 15 years old at a local Massachusetts festival where I first tried mushroom chocolates. It was such an experience to microdose then—opening doors to trauma and grief, which I found myself letting go of, taking the weight of anxiety off of all that I had felt burdened to carry.
I was an avid cannabis smoker at that time but took a break from psychedelics after that experience because I was very young and did not have the tools to process. After experiencing the highs and lows of recreational psychedelic use, I eventually found a hypnotherapist that supported my journey and I noticed a profound difference in pairing therapy with psychedelics. I knew it was helping me in various ways, but didn’t know how to explain the science—which led me to my trek of becoming a biochemist and exploring the science of plant medicine.
Currently, I microdose psilocybin for my cPTSD, ADHD, PMDD, eating disorders, and Lyme disease. My quality of life has improved astronomically and I do not know where I would be without the holistic healing approach I cultivated.
What’s the origin story of Psyched for Pride?
Jamie Morey, the executive director and founder of Mass Healing, created the first Psyched for Pride event last year after seeing the role psychedelics played in one of her adult children’s healing around gender identity and related mental health issues and realizing the need for more queer-focused community support around psychedelic healing.
This year, the event has expanded into a fundraiser and launch party [on June 18] for Mass Healing’s newly forming Queer Psychedelic Community, which will be dedicated to queer-centered events and education all year long—as well starting a treatment access fund for equitable access—and I was asked to play a role in helping organize both. We’re partnering with Boston Psychedelic Society again, along with Rich Magaña from Queer in Cannabis, Jordan Whittaker from the Weedaker Group and New Dia. The event will feature speakers from the community sharing their stories, provide queer-centered mental health and wellness resources from a number of Boston based organizations and therapy groups, include an art auction I curated featuring local artists and a raffle with generous donations from queer-owned and allied businesses, plus brief stand up comedy set and ending with dancing and celebration with a live DJ and drag performances.
One of the biggest concerns surrounding the future of psychedelic medicine is the high cost of treatment sessions. How do you think this issue can be addressed—be it legislatively, commercially, or otherwise—to make psychedelic medicine more accessible to a broader range of participants?
I believe our taxes should fund centralized services for basic human needs — and psychedelic medicine should be no exception.
Cannabis rescheduling shows us one path: legal recognition as medicine opens doors to regulated access and insurance coverage. But cost alone isn’t the whole problem.
In a truly equitable system, Indigenous and Black communities wouldn’t be afterthoughts—they’d be leaders in designing and delivering these services, with meaningful benefit-sharing for the traditional knowledge that made this whole movement possible. Free access for communities that have been historically excluded would be one form of real reparation.
These medicines have been cultivated for thousands of years. A just path forward means honoring that history—not commodifying it—and treating access as a right, not a luxury.
Another challenge facing potential psilocybin therapy providers in Oregon and Colorado and ketamine-assisted therapy practitioners across the United States is the high cost of certification and licensing for clinicians who want to provide psilocybin-assisted therapy. What are your thoughts on how to address this barrier and encourage demographic diversity throughout both the psychedelic community and the mental healthcare industry at large?
High certification and licensing costs create the same problem as high treatment costs—they gatekeep who gets to participate, both as clients and as providers. Requiring an expensive therapy license to facilitate psychedelic sessions is elitist, and it shuts out the communities whose knowledge and lived experience are most needed in this space.
People have been doing this facilitation work for thousands of years. That observational, experiential knowledge can’t be dismissed just because it doesn’t come with a westernized credential. What’s needed is clear, accessible guidance and ethical standards—not prohibitive licensing requirements that ensure only wealthy, predominantly white practitioners can enter the field.
Bringing in Indigenous and Black facilitators is essential—not as a diversity checkbox, but because these communities have been doing this work longest and have the most to offer. I’ve heard too many stories from friends who’ve been in unethical psychedelic spaces—ayahuasca retreats, ketamine facilities—where people were abandoned during their journey or faced outright abuse. That’s what happens when profit drives the model. Pairing community-rooted facilitators with people trained in basic empathy and ethics is a far better standard than a costly license.
Grassroots advocates for psychedelic policy reform in the US and abroad have gained and maintained remarkable traction and influence while maintaining a remarkable amount of political and ideological diversity across the broader movement. As a member of the LBGTQ+ community and a psychedelic community leader in your own right, how do you see queer folx influencing future collaborative efforts across the grassroots psychedelic community in New England—be it to enact psychedelic policy reforms or to build a more sustainable, inclusive community at large?
To me, the queer spaces and communities truly promote sovereignty for all. If we see Indigenous connections to queer people—like my own of Palao’ana (meaning third gender in Chamorro), we are the people harnessing our masculine and feminine energy—which has been historically deemed as us having positions in society that require extreme empathy for everyone. Queer humans understand a level of oppression in so many facets, and especially trans women of color are facing atrocious violence in this country. The level of empathy that is needed in the psychedelic community can absolutely be mirrored in our community—by creating a safe and harmonious place to integrate into.
Because we are already fighting for provisions to guarantee our safety—specifically thinking of Chastity Bowick, Michael Del Rio, HelpAMG, Intersectional Innovation and Impact Labs, Queer in Cannabis, Mass Trans Political Coalition, PFLAG, Trans Emergency Fund, The Queer Neighborhood Council, Boston Budget Alliance, Fight for the Future, and many more organizations influencing our quality of life from New England all the way to DC— this would be another branch of advocating for our rights. The motive of decolonizing every facet of this system allows freedom for all and I believe plant medicines, including psychedelics, can be a vehicle to obtain agency.
As interest in psychedelics continues to grow across the United States and around the world, what do you see as the best-case and worst-case scenarios for its future in the United States?
The worst case is that things get worse before they get better. Exploitation and cultural appropriation are colonization’s whole playbook, and we’re already seeing it—pharmaceutical companies extracting from Indigenous practices, synthesizing traditional compounds for research and profit while communities see none of the benefits. That pattern has been going on for so long that many people are finally starting to see through it.
Which leads to the best case: people waking up to that reality and advocating for plant medicine to be honored and administered the way it was intended—holistically, communally, and with reverence for its origins.
But even that isn’t enough on its own. The deeper issue is that people are having these profound healing experiences and then returning to a system that was never built for their wellbeing. True integration is nearly impossible in that context. Real change means fighting for sovereignty across the board—not just in how we access these medicines, but in how we rebuild the systems around us. The goal isn’t just better psychedelic policy. It’s dismantling what isn’t working and building something together that actually serves all people.
What would you say to parents, families, and individuals who might be against or still on the fence about the use, decriminalization, and/or legalization of psychedelics?
These medicines have been used for thousands of years. Cannabis, for example, was prescribed by doctors in the early 20th century—it wasn’t until the waves of immigration that followed that racist, prejudiced rhetoric took hold and laid the groundwork for the war on drugs. The same story applies to psychedelics. And now the emerging research is validating what Indigenous and traditional communities have always known: these medicines are deeply compatible with our bodies and our healing.
For anyone on the fence, I’d point to decriminalization paired with real regulation—free testing facilities, trained facilitators, and publicly funded education that dismantles the stigma and gives people the information they need to make their own choices. The goal isn’t to push these medicines on anyone, but to restore agency to the individual.
We have co-evolved with these plants over millennia. They are part of our ancestral inheritance. Treating them as dangerous or criminal isn’t just scientifically unsupported—it’s a separation from something that has always belonged to us.
What’s next for your personal and organizational advocacy work?
I will continue to have events for humans to come feel safe to speak about intersectional healing and decolonizing the mind to find freedom. In my personal life—to create bonds with humans who share the same values and understand that we can build a better world together.
Aside from yourself, who are some other lead innovators, and/or advocates in the psychedelic community that you think more people should know about and hear from?
I recently went to a people of color psychedelic collective event where there were amazing speakers who have done the work to ethically research with indigenous communities and propagate research that is defying the white centric field that we are all indoctrinated into as scientists. The amazing humans who spoke at this event were Lianna Tullis, Rebekah Senãnãyaka, Miyabe Shields, Sean M. Viña, and Liz Rodrigues. There are incredible humans working extremely hard to decolonize these plant medicines in the western world.
I also commend various Indigenous communities around the world that are keeping their medicines and practices within their own communities. I see specifically with ibogaine becoming so prevalent in our research for veterans (which mind only selective veterans of specific backgrounds are in these trials)—communities within central Africa are maintaining agency with this Iboga plant. I think the preservation of cultural tradition and uplifting these communities who have cultivated these plants of interest is the most imperative aspect of progressing the psychedelic healing and research.
