Kai River Blevins

I’m Kai (they/them), a PhD Candidate in the Anthropology Department at George Washington University. I’m interested in why we experience the world in the ways we do, how our habits and relationships impact us, what it means to live a good life, and how we can create positive change for ourselves and our communities.

Currently, I’m working on a dissertation project about the integration of psychedelics into existing recreational drug markets in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Through focusing on language use and bodily behaviors, my project examines how psychedelics are represented, their appeal for both providers and consumers, how people’s relationship to the government and civil society is changing, the structure and operations of dispensaries, and the lived experience of people involved in recreational drug markets in the United States, among other topics. Given that so many people will access psychedelics outside of clinics in the coming years, it’s important to get a clear-eyed understanding of how recreational drug markets work and what people want from them. To learn more about the study, click here.

Beyond this project, I research contemporary psychedelic decriminalization efforts in the United States, write about psychedelic bioethics, and explore the relationship between science and nationalism in the history of psychedelic criminalization in the United States.