Dee Dee Goldpaugh – Embracing Pleasure: psychedelics and erotic energy as a path to healing beyond the medical model

Psychedelics can heal sexuality through an “embrace pleasure” framework that prioritizes erotic energy and embodied pleasure, not only symptom reduction in the clinical model. Dee Dee Goldpaugh, a clinical social worker and ketamine-assisted therapy provider, argues that mainstream psychedelic discourse has become overly medicalized and capitalistic, leaving out what comes after acute trauma healing, including community, spirituality, and sexual flourishing. She links the book’s aims to critiques of over-medicalization and to the cultural moment’s appetite for body connection. Goldpaugh explains how ceremonial experiences with ayahuasca and San Pedro (Wachuma) informed her personal healing and her definition of erotic energy as life force. She distinguishes healing pleasure from leisure and frames pleasure as a form of anti-capitalist resistance and community support. The conversation also raises contemporary ethical concerns, including how psychedelic practices should avoid harmful uses such as psychedelic-assisted conversion therapy without professional consensus.