Psychedelics and the Fear of Self-Examination
In recent years, the conversation surrounding psychedelics has grown harder and harder to ignore. Since as early as the 1950s though, its been understood that psychedelics may play a powerful role in the treatment of many of the mental disorders that ail us. But for many years, due in large part to the war on drugs, substances like LSD and psilocybin have remained illegal.
But only within the last couple of decades have the tides begun to turn. With a plethora of studies showing promising results about the value these substances can offer, more and more people have begun to speak out about their experiences. There are no shortage of celebrities, musicians and even athletes who have confessed to being helped by psychedelics. Most recently, Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers attributed his successful season to a trip he’d had on the controversial psychedelic known as “ayahuasca.”
One of the greatest potential uses for psychedelics could be in the field of psychiatry. According to many experts, a powerful psychedelic experience can be the equivalent of years worth of therapy condensed into a single afternoon. And where the drugs in psychiatrists’ arsenal help to mask the symptoms of peoples’ disorders, they never address the root causes. Patients could spend years on Lexapro or Welbutrin or Xanax and be no closer to addressing the underlying reasons for feeling the way they do.
This dependency is an unintended consequence of the current psychiatric model. Fortunately, psychedelics differ here. If common pharmaceuticals helped to address the root causes of peoples’ depression and anxiety, there would be no reason to go back to CVS each month. A good experience with psychedelics can negate the need for additional psychiatric intervention for months if not years. In many cases, single experiences on psilocybin have been enough to permanently treat even the most serious cases of anxiety and depression.
If the controlled LSD or mushroom trip were prescribed for depression as readily as some of these legal substances, it would be an incalculable hit for the industry that profits from our continued despair. We could stop justifying the existence of drugs that cause such comically expansive lists of side effects. We could stop “coughing, vomiting, internal bleeding and sometimes [dying],” over drugs that often don’t work any better than their placebo counterpart.
Apart from helping us to treat our underlying ailments, one of the most valuable uses for psychedelics is causing users to reevaluate their lives. It’s easy to become entrenched in our cycles. It’s easy to accept the way things are as the way that they always must be. On psychedelics, these facades can fall. It’s one of the most valuable features of the experience, but it can also be one of the most jarring.
People will often report during these trips that they feel in touch with some of the truths that they’ve lost sight of in their daily lives. We’re all told that “everything’s connected,” and “we’re all one,” and that “love is the most important thing in the world,” but it’s rare that we can feel it for ourselves. For many of us, these truths lose their meaning entirely as we dash passionlessly through this rat race of life. The reunion can often feel overbearing.
On psychedelics, people stop to smell the roses. They see the flowers along their path and revel in their beauty. They’re in touch with the inner children in their hardened adult bodies. They glean new perspective on this strange world we’ve designed.
That our cellphones are confounding future machines is almost impossible to deny, but it’s easily missed when we’re overthinking an email. That the internet has changed the world irrevocably is a fact of life, but it’s easily ignored when we’re AirDropping a meme.
That we’ve drifted wildly from our species’ natural course is evidenced in every cut tree and coke can. We’re so caught up in the minutia of our lives that we lose sight of the broad ways our world is changing. If everyone were to suddenly reckon with the unspoken realities of life it would bring about colossal changes in society.
But to truly examine our world can be scary. To examine even ourselves is more than some of us are prepared for.
It’s not difficult to see why psychedelics have faced such roadblocks on their pathway to legalization. To simply prove the value in these experiences isn’t enough. The issue of psychedelics is one that’s waist-deep in political and financial controversy. But even if we can brave this bureaucratic muck, we’ll still need to face our fears.
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