Society
Aydra Teeuwen
What We Say and What We Don’t – Stigma and Disclosure in Online Psilocybin Conversations
My name is Aydra Teeuwen, and I am a fourth-year Professional Communication student at Toronto Metropolitan University. I’ve always been drawn to questions more than answers. I’m naturally curious about how people think, what shapes their perspectives, and why certain topics feel easy to talk about while others don’t. That curiosity leans into philosophy, but also into creative expression. Through film, dance, and other forms of art that explore emotion, identity, and meaning in ways words sometimes can’t.
Studying communication has shifted how I see the world. It’s taught me that meaning is never fixed; it’s shaped by context, power, and the spaces we’re in. That perspective has influenced both my academic work and my everyday life.
Alongside my studies, I work at a restaurant in downtown Toronto, where I’ve taken on roles including serving, bartending, supervising, and administrative work. It’s an environment that has strengthened my ability to read people, adapt quickly, and communicate with intention. I genuinely enjoy the energy of hospitality; it’s fast-paced, people-driven, and rooted in connection.
My capstone project explores how stigma influences what people say — and don’t say — about psilocybin across platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok. What interests me most is not just what is shared, but what is held back. This project reflects my broader interest in communication as both expression and restraint, and in understanding how people navigate vulnerability, risk, and identity in digital spaces.
This project explores how stigma shapes communication about psilocybin (magic mushrooms) across social media platforms, focusing on what people choose to share and what they hold back. While psilocybin has gained increasing scientific legitimacy for its therapeutic potential, public conversations remain shaped by legal uncertainty, cultural stereotypes, and social risk. As a result, communication around the topic is often uneven, coded, or strategically limited.
To examine this, I conducted a qualitative analysis of 21 public posts across Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok. These platforms were selected because they offer different levels of anonymity, visibility, and audience interaction, which influence how openly users communicate. Posts were categorized into themes such as personal experience, informational content, opinions, and questions, with particular attention paid to tone, language, and patterns of disclosure.
The findings suggest that platform design plays a key role in shaping communication. Reddit, which allows for greater anonymity, tends to encourage more open and detailed discussions of personal experiences. In contrast, Instagram and TikTok, which are more public and identity-based, often feature more curated, simplified, or ambiguous content. Across all platforms, stigma remains present; not always explicitly, but through hesitation, humour, disclaimers, or the avoidance of certain details.
Overall, this research highlights how communication about psilocybin is not just about information sharing, but about navigating social risk. It demonstrates that what is left unsaid can be just as important as what is expressed, offering insight into how stigma continues to influence digital conversations even as public attitudes begin to shift.
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