A long strange journey where psychedelic science, sociology, and academia converge

A bumpy start in high school didn't stop him from heading toward a focused and fruitful life as a professor who analyzes the impacts of psilocybin use on society.

For Jarrett Rose (M.A. sociology, 2016) – now an assistant professor in the Community and Behavioral Health program and the Department of Sociology at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in New York – the academic journey has been filled with obstacles and successes.

As a child, Rose was diagnosed with ADHD. “I found being in the classroom quite challenging, with the myriad stimuli very distracting to me,” he said. “I failed out of high school…and went to a continuation school my 11th-grade year.” He was able to graduate, but he wasn't on a path to college right away. “I was doing a lot of surfing, a lot of bodyboarding, a lot of playing in punk rock bands,” Rose said. He was, in essence, living a countercultural lifestyle.

It was a backpacking trip to Europe that stimulated his interest in academia, knowledge, history, and people. When he returned home, he began taking courses at a community college in Orange County, where he fell in love with social and behavioral sciences. From there he transferred as a sociology major to CSU Long Beach. 

At CSULB, he met interesting professors whose alternative lifestyles intrigued him. “They weren't working for the man, so to speak. They had really eclectic social lives and cultural interests. They were knowledgeable. They did what they were passionate about,” Rose said. “And I just thought, ‘Okay, maybe I could be the inspiring community college professor like these other folks who have inspired me.’”

Desire to learn more about ‘this strange existence’

He continued his academic journey by enrolling at SDSU in the master’s in sociology program. Here he found intellectual stimulation from professors like Mike Roberts, Jung Choi, Jill Esbenshade, Tom Semm, and Minjeong Kim. Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his mentors, he re-envisioned his goal of becoming a community college professor and set his sights on a full-fledged university professorship. “I was fascinated, and I needed to learn more about myself, about other people, about the trajectories that we take through this strange existence,” Rose said. 

His path toward a Ph.D. took him to York University in Toronto, where his comprehensive examinations brought him to the sociology of health and illness, with an emphasis on mental health. 

“It was around that same time that the “psychedelic renaissance” really started to manifest in the public eye, and it probably hit its highest point in 2018 when Michael Pollan published his New York Times best-selling book, ‘How to Change your Mind.’"

After reading the book, he was moved to apply his interests in sociology to the field of psychedelic science – most specifically, psychedelic-assisted therapy and psychedelic subcultures. Always interested in interdisciplinary research, he was attracted to the idea of blending sociology, psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and medicine into one project. 

By 2022, more twists and turns in life led him to a study of participants of a weeklong, group-based, psilocybin-assisted therapy retreat in Jamaica (where “magic mushrooms” are legal). “I'm intrigued by the way people connect during these therapeutic experiences, especially if the retreats take place over multiple days,” he said. Yet, over the course of 20 interviews with former retreat participants, one message consistently emerged from them: that he couldn’t fully grasp the sociocultural dynamics of the group-based retreat without experiencing it firsthand. 

After receiving grant funding, he traveled to Jamaica to conduct an ethnographic study of the retreat, focusing on how the organic creation of “therapeutic community” positively impacted mental health outcomes. “You arrive as an individual, but leave as a community member,” he said, describing the added influence of social and emotional bonding on personal transformation and healing. 

In a recent “Mind, Body, Health, & Politics” podcast interview (“11 Strangers, One Week—What Group Psychedelic Therapy Actually Looks Like”), Rose was invited to share that research with Dr. Richard Louis Miller, a practicing clinical psychologist who is a member of the original psychedelic assisted-therapy movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Rose was thrilled to speak with Miller and their talk offers an enlightening look at current research.

Psychedelics meet surf culture and continuing research

As a surfer, Rose recognized that not much in-depth research had explored the influence of psychedelics in surf culture – this despite the fact that one of the most iconic eras in surfing, the tradition of “soul surfing,” had been deeply intertwined with psychedelic drugs. “I started to read up on this history, and I found this really fascinating group called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love — [which was] connected to famous surfers of the day, and… the most infamous countercultural figure of the first psychedelic generation, Timothy Leary,” he said.

His essay,“Turn On, Tune In, and Paddle Out: A Cultural Theory of Psychedelic Amplification and Coproduction in the Soul Surfing Era” highlights the surf/psychedelics history. It appeared in the 2024 SDSU Press book ”Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing,” edited by: Kristin Lawler, University of Mount Saint Vincent sociology professor; Michael Roberts, SDSU sociology professor; and David Cline, SDSU history professor.  

Rose has also contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book with Leon Mach, associate professor in environmental policy and socioeconomic values at The School for Field Studies in Panama. Mach and Rose met at the 2023 Stoke Sessions International Conference at SDSU.

Rose’s chapter adopts a forward-looking lens, exploring how professional surfers’ use of psychedelics — past and present — shapes emerging visions of surfing’s future. “I'm taking values and philosophies surrounding psychedelics and project[ing] them outward to try and discern what the future looks like in terms of mental health, emotional intelligence, well-being, and masculinity.”

Rose plans to share the analyses and results at The Stoke Sessions 2.0 Conference October 9–12 at SDSU.

Rose considers himself privileged to be engaged in such an exciting and “vast puzzle of psychedelic and sociological studies.”