QAnon Shaman, Chloe Cole, and Laura Becker Promote LSD Use as Alternative to Transition

“For millennia these plants or fungi have been used to treat things like depression.”

by Evan Urquhart

Convicted Jan 6 insurrectionist Jacob Chansley, who is often referred to as the QAnon Shaman, shared a Twitter spaces event on Monday, January 15, with detransitioners Laura Becker and Chloe Cole. During a more than 2 hour conversation, one topic of conversation was psychedelic drugs as a potential alternative treatment for gender-affirming care. Becker shared her personal experience with LSD as having played a role in “healing,” crediting Jordan Peterson with influencing her acid trip. Cole shared the story of having taken LSD prior to her decision to detransition, crediting an acid trip with playing a role in her decision to cease identifying as trans.*

“Now, this is something that I would like to propose,” Chansley began, “Because psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca and stuff like that have been used to get people out of cyclical states of depression or anxiety or PTSD I would like to theorize that it’s entirely possible that individuals who are in this cyclical mindset regarding gender ideology and body dysphoria … I’m asserting that it’s entirely possible that things like psilocybin or ayahuasca or other psychedelics could have the capacity to disrupt that cyclical pattern in the brain.”

Becker strongly agreed, implying that she was eager to discuss the topic and had indicated as much to Chansley in advance.

“I’ve had extremely positive healing effects, primarily from using LSD,” Becker explained. “When we’re thinking about how we could treat severe gender issues or other issues or traumas we need to look at it very holistically. For me, LSD rewired my brain in a positive way … where it allowed me to experience serotonin and helped me to lift out of my baseline level of chemical depression and having serotonin issues.”

She continued, “But, then there’s also the social behavioral issues of psychedelics and that is so important of how we administer and the circumstances that the person is in, when they come back down, what support network do they have …  that’s why I go back to having older mentor figures, whether they be a therapist or somebody else, saying ok, I’ve now reset, how do I actually move forward and start to disentangle all of the things that I’ve just realized were illusions. For me that happened to be Jordan Peterson.”

Peterson’s vehement opposition to gender transition was among the things that raised his profile as a conservative personality. He has also promoted psychedelics as a method of restoring traditional hierarchies to the west. It’s unclear from Becker’s comments exactly what Peterson’s role in her drug trip or her decision to detransition was.

Chansley then clarified that he wasn’t advocating unsupervised illegal drug use. “I’m not saying that people with gender dysphoria should … go out and take large sums of mushrooms if they’re feeling confused, that might not be the best plan. I’m just saying that for millennia these plants or fungi have been used to treat things like depression, anxiety, to treat psychological issues by shamanic practitioners.” Chansley explained. (Remember, Chansley self-identifies as a shaman.)

Chansley then invited Chloe Cole to speak about her experiences with psychedelics. Cole spoke more briefly than Becker saying, in part, “I am not advocating for the use of these substances either … here in the states I believe it’s a schedule one substance, but it is a part of my story … I have used psychedelics before, towards the end of my transition, and it was part of what stopped me from continuing my transition, particularly my second trip on LSD.”

Unlike cross-sex hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, neither LSD nor any other psychedelic drug has any medical evidence to support its use in treating gender dysphoria, much less as part of conversion therapy to make a transgender person no longer trans. Anecdotally, several trans people this reporter confirmed that they remained transgender during and after their experiences with taking psychedelic drugs.

Assigned reached out to Chansley, Becker, and Cole for comment a few hours before publication, but had not received a reply by the time this story went to press. We will update our story to include any comment we receive.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story incorrectly described Becker’s use of LSD as having played a role in her detransition, a characterization based on a misunderstanding of her statements in the Twitter spaces event. After publication Becker responded to the story publicly to clarify the timing of her LSD use, which she says came after her detransition.

screenshot from Twitter.com