Preamble
For as long as there have been people, there have been people who altered their own consciousness. The practice is older than any government that has tried to end it, and it has outlasted every one of them so far.
The last century made an exception of this ancient thing. It criminalized a category of experience, imprisoned people for the contents of their own minds, and called the result public health. That era is closing. What replaces it has not yet been finalized, and it is being decided now in legislatures, in licensing boards, and in the business plans of companies that did not exist ten years ago.
These inalienable rights are not granted by this document. They are recognized by it. States, clinics, churches, and corporations may honor them or violate them, but none of them confer them. They belong to a person by virtue of their own existence.
Nothing here argues that psychedelics are safe, that everyone should take them, or that what they reveal is true. This is an argument about who decides.
This is a draft, and it is meant to be a foundation for further review, comment, and modification. Everything named below descends from lineages that were not consulted, and from communities that carried this knowledge through the centuries when it was punished.
The Rights
Article I — Cognitive Liberty
Every person holds sovereignty over their own consciousness. The interior life is not a territory any government, corporation, or institution may claim or license. All other rights in this document follow from this one.
Article II — The Right to Know
Every person is entitled to accurate and current information about what these substances are, what they do, what they cost, and how they might harm.
Article III — The Right to Refuse
No person shall be compelled or coerced into a psychedelic experience whether it is framed as a treatment or as a requirement to belong to a community. The right to decline is absolute and does not expire once a session has begun.
Article IV — The Right of Access
Lawful paths to these substances shall not be confined to a single gate. A person’s access shall not depend on an established diagnosis, the purchase of a package, or being able to afford either.
Article V — Freedom from Punishment
No person shall be imprisoned, deported, fired, evicted, denied care, or separated from their children for the fact of what they have taken into their own body.
Article VI — The Right to Continuous Consent
Consent given before a session may be withdrawn during it. Every person entering an altered state is entitled to know in advance what will be done, by whom, and where the boundaries lie.
Article VII — The Right to a Guide of One’s Choosing
A person may choose their guide, change their guide, bring a witness of their own, or proceed with no guide at all.
Article VIII — The Right to Privacy of the Interior
What is disclosed in an altered state belongs to the person who disclosed it. It shall not be sold, mined, published, used by AI, or turned into evidence by a clinic, an app, an insurer, an employer, a court, or a researcher without that person’s specific and revocable permission.
Article IX — The Right to Ceremony
The use of these substances as sacrament or rite of passage is a matter of conscience. It requires no clinical justification and no license from the state to be legitimate.
Article X — The Right at the Threshold
The seriously ill, the dying, and the old shall not be the last in line. Where these substances can ease the passage or restore meaning at the end of a life, no person’s remaining time shall be spent waiting for a clinical trial to conclude.
Article XI — The Right to Integration
The experience does not end when the altered state does. Every person is entitled to competent and unhurried support afterward.
Article XII — The Right to Redress
When a person is harmed by a guide, a clinician, a church, or a company, there shall be an avenue for accounting. That Right does not depend on the harmed person’s credibility being measured against the word of an institution.
AI Disclaimer: The author generated the underlying intellectual ideas, research questions, interpretation of the documentation, and made all other decisions about the paper’s intellectual content. The author accepts full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the manuscript.
AI (Claude Cowork) was used to locate the following historic documents and provide a summary that was used by the author in the creation of a draft of a proposed Psychedelic Bill of Rights: Code of Hammurabi, Cyrus Cylinder, Laws of Solon, Twelve Tables, Magna Carta, Golden Bull of 1222, Golden Bull of 1356, Petition of Right, Massachusetts Body of Liberties, Habeas Corpus Act, English Bill of Rights, Act of Settlement, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Pennsylvania Constitution, Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, Massachusetts Constitution, United States Constitution, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, French Constitution of 1793, U.S. Bill of Rights, Haitian Declaration of Independence, Slavery Abolition Act, Declaration of Sentiments, Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, Weimar Constitution, Four Freedoms, United Nations Charter, American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, European Convention on Human Rights, European Social Charter, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Convention Against Torture, Convention on the Rights of the Child, American Convention on Human Rights, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, Constitution of South Africa, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Arab Charter on Human Rights, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Joe Dolce has proposed the following Amendment to the Psychedelic Bill of Rights: "the freedom to explore psychedelics for matters of awe, wonder, joy, fun, surprise, consciousness exploration, beauty, and plain ol' curiosity" This has been accepted and is on the docket for review, discussion, and final approval.
Nice one Jim