Spreading the Spores and the Seeds for Our Individual and Collective Healing: The Paradox of Psychedelics
In this age of the psychedelic renaissance, skeptics and critics abound. Psychedelics are re-emerging in mainstream culture and media for their therapeutic, medicinal, spiritual, and even professional benefits. Humanity is increasingly finding them integral to helping us individually and collectively find healing and wellness. Psychedelics and cannabis are re-emerging for their promise to help us heal from the multiple wounds of industrialization, late-stage capitalism, and an extended pandemic. We are witnessing this “Wild West” of the re-emerging psychedelic industries as we are being ravaged by the consequences of this extended pandemic and late-stage capitalism, with a population so profoundly spiritually and physically impoverished.
If you, like me, are watching the developments in the psychedelic space, you are likely also proverbially on the edge of your seat as new research and media on psychedelics and their healing properties spread like spores in the air, and as legal changes unfold in favor of psychedelics and earth medicines. The question that looms palpably in the air and across media platforms is whether our society will be able to develop a model going forward to harness the powers of psychedelics in a manner productive to individuals and society. Can psychedelics become more mainstreamed and medicalized, helping our nation and the greater world? Or will they be too destabilizing to our current cultural norms, too “dangerous” medically, culturally, or politically? Time will tell.
The paradox is that psychedelics are inherently destabilizing to cultural norms. They can help people better integrate into society and be the best versions of themselves on the one hand, and on the other hand they can push people over the edge to amplify their eccentricities. Psychedelics are known to be non-specific amplifiers, meaning that they amplify whatever emotions and thoughts that a person is having.
Given their nature, psychedelics are immensely powerful tools, extremely beneficial when used intentionally and in the right context, yet also fraught with potential dangers and risks. As Charlie Grob discussed of ayahuasca,
Without the structure of the UDV [União do Vegetal; “Union of the Plants”] … hoasca [sic for ayahuasca] experiences may be unpredictable and lead to an inflated sense of self. Within the ‘house of the UDV,’ however, the hoasca-induced state is controlled and directed ‘down the path of simplicity and humility’
(Grob, et al. 1996, p. 92).
Many researchers, scientists, and advocates argue that psychedelics need to be taken in the context of a cultural container; in our current paradigm, this translates to the therapeutic model (whether in a medical context, a religious context, or with underground therapists). As author and psychedelic advocate Don Lattin wrote in Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy:
Psychedelic drugs, as Aldous Huxley pointed out long ago, are double-edged swords. They can cut through delusion — or create it. Blasting our minds into an altered state of consciousness can provide a taste of enlightenment or a glimpse of insanity (Lattin, 2017, p. 195).
Given the destabilizing nature of psychedelics and their tendency to lead people toward a less materialist way of living, it’s short of miraculous that they are once again on the forefront of the current cultural landscape, particularly in mainstream media and research.
Yet it is precisely because we have reached new lows in this time of dystopian late-stage capitalism, with a raging pandemic and the overlapping mental health and substance abuse, crises, that the value of substances like cannabis, ayahuasca, and psilocybin mushrooms can no longer be suppressed. We are witnessing a race to medicalize and capitalize on psychedelics that may not have people’s best interests truly at hand, yet such an approach may nonetheless have its place in our industrialized world where much of society remains reliant on the medical model.
And while many people remain skeptical of these substances due to their incessant, decades-long stigmatization, for now, the seeds and spores have already started spreading. The growing, re-emerging medical and societal interest in psychedelics and cannabis offers blooms of promise that there is a better way forward — a way to live that encourages a more harmonious, grounded, embodied way of living. They offer a promise of the ability to live in tune with oneself, with each other, and with the environment, for our individual and collective well-being and healing.
References:
Bourzat, Françoise. (2019). Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth. North Atlantic Books.
Carhart-Harris, R.L, Roseman, L., Bolstridge, M., Demetriou, L., et al. (2017). “Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms.” Scientific Reports. 1307. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598–017–13282–7
Carhart-Harris, R. L. & Goodwin, G. M. (2017). The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present and Future. Neuropsychopharmacology, https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2017.84.
Grob, Charles, McKenna, D., et al. (1996). “Human Psychopharmacology of Hoasca, A Plant Hallucinogen Used in Ritual Context in Brazil.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 184, №2.
Hasler, F., Grimberg, U., Benz, M.A. et al. (2004). “Acute psychological and physiological effects of psilocybin in healthy humans: a double-blind, placebo-controlled dose-effect study. Psychopharmacology. 172: 145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-003-1640-6
Hendricks, P.S., Johnson, M.W., Griffiths, R.R. (2015). “Psilocybin, psychological distress, and suicidality.” Journal of Psychopharmacology. 29: 9, 1041–1043. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881115598338
Lake, Ricki & Epstein, Abby. (2018). Weed The People [video]. https://www.weedthepeoplemovie.com
Lattin, Don. (2017). Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy. Synergetic Press: Santa Fe and London.
Maroon, J., Bost, J. (April 26, 2018). Review of the neurological benefits of phytocannabinoids. 9:91. Retrieved from: http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint-articles/review-of-the-neurological-benefits-of-phytocannabinoids/
Merry Jane. (2021). The CBD Solution: How Cannabis, CBD, and Other Plant Allies Can Change Your Everyday Life. Lauren Wilson, ed. Chronicle Books: San Francisco.
Pollan, M. (2018). How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-change-your-mind-by-michael-pollan/
Studerus, E., Krometer, M., Hasler, E. et al. (2010). “Acute, subacute and long-term subjective effects of psilocybin in healthy humans: a pooled analysis of experimental studies.” Journal of Psychopharmacology. 25: 11, 1434–1452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881110382466
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