In this episode, Kyle and Michelle interviewreturn guest, Manesh Girn: Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University and co-author of over a dozen scientific publications, most recently on the neurocognitive processes behind creative thinking and the potentiality for psychedelics to enhance creativity.
Girn explains neuroplasticity and how it relates to the default-mode, salience, and other networks; how his paper maps the similarities between psychedelic mind states, dream states, and different types of thought; the distinctions between objective, subjective, spontaneous, and deliberate creativity; the difference between psychological and cognitive flexibility; how it’s an oversimplification to so strongly attribute ego dissolution to default-mode network interconnectivity, and how psilocybin affected people’s creativity and perceived insightfulness in a recent study inspired by his paper.
He also looks at some philosophical concepts from a scientific perspective: Do we really understand what ego dissolution is? Do ego death and a mystical experience always have to go hand-in-hand? Could a crazy idea that science wouldn’t qualify as “novel and useful” actually lead to both (after integrating the experience)? And is the true benefit from psychedelics in learning how to use the biological benefits of neuroplasticity in harmony with self-analysis and taking consistent steps toward lasting change?
Notable Quotes
“People are just thinking that psilocybin and LSD might be similar, but the thing with ketamine is that usually, you have to take repeated dosing. The effects maybe last a week, 2 weeks if you’re lucky, and then you [have] to do it again. And that’s because, I believe, in that context, you’re not working through the psychological content that emerged, you’re not making real, lasting change. You’re just getting this little push for a bit, and then you fall back into your patterns. And you get a push and you fall back. And if you want to be cynical, pharmaceutical companies will like that model because that means you’re a returning customer, indefinitely.” “We’re not just brains that are just disconnected from the external environment, just floating around in our heads. We’re deeply intertwined with the collective, with society, with people around us, with our nutrition, with everything going on. So therefore, taking all of these things into account [is] important, not just: ‘Forget the whole systemic cause for your issue; take this drug and maybe you’ll feel better’ in almost a Brave New World-type way. And that’s the standard way of approaching it a lot of times. So it irks me when they try to put psychedelics into this box too with these different things, which I think often, are just based [on] a fear of altered states and a fear of facing your inner demons a lot of the times. It’s like, why do that when you can take a drug and feel better, artificially?” “Obviously psychedelics aren’t a panacea that are going to work for everybody and solve everything, but I think what they do do is they draw attention to the need for inner work and the possibility of radical change, of personal transformation. Because a lot of people in their 30s, 40s, and above, perhaps, are like, ‘Oh this is who I am now. This anxiety, this depression, these bad habits: that’s just me. That’s just who I am’, which is a profoundly limiting narrative to take on, but a lot of people have that. And I think not even going through a psychedelic experience themselves, but it’s seeing other people in the media or their friends being able to change; they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s hope for changing and there’s hope for transformation.’”
Manesh is a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University and has been lead or co-author on over a dozen scientific publications and book chapters on topics including psychedelics, meditation, mind-wandering, and the default-mode network. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the default-mode network and he is also conducting research on the brain mechanisms underlying LSD, psilocybin, and DMT in collaboration with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and others from the Imperial College London Center for Psychedelic Research. In his free time, he also runs a YouTube channel, The Psychedelic Scientist, where he discusses the latest findings in psychedelic science in an easy to understand, but non-superficial form.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle are joined by lawyer and lead Policy Council at MAPS, Ismail L. Ali.
In the teams’ past coverage of Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 519, there has admittedly been some confusion about what exactly it entails, as well as judgments made without hearing from someone on the inside. So we felt it was time to have someone on the podcast who could explain it to all of us better, and Ali was the perfect candidate, having just been a witness at the California State Assembly Health Committee hearing on SB-519 and a member of MAPS (who has been working with Wiener’s team).
And he goes into SB-519 in depth: how it sets the groundwork for future reforms, why they went a different direction than Oregon, how MAPS has been involved, why the bill has changed (concerning expungement, ketamine, and possession limits), what lawmakers are most concerned about, Decriminalize Nature’s issues with the bill, and what he hopes comes next. He also talks about his path towards psychedelics and his family history with ayahuasca and facilitation, his concerns over monopolies and repeating the mistakes of the cannabis industry, what he’d like to see replace D.A.R.E., drug exceptionalism, and the importance of recognizing celebratory drug use as a legitimate healing tool.
Notable Quotes
“A lot of the media attention it’s gotten has been focused on it as a psychedelic decriminalization bill, but one thing that I just want to acknowledge is that it’s a little bit broader than that, in the sense that it also sets what I believe to be some really critical groundwork for future drug decriminalization or even regulated, adult-use legalization.” “The idea that not having named limits means unlimited possession is not real. What that means is that it’s unknown until there is an arrest and a case that determines [it], in which case it’s going to be the judge [or] the prosecution determining what that limit is, as opposed to the people who are actually advocating in support of the bill.”
“What if we decriminalized some of these psychedelic substances based on the premise that they’re safer, or based on the premise that they’re good for you in certain cases, in certain situations? I feel that that could really undermine efforts to be decriminalizing on criminal, legal, or human rights grounds- where it doesn’t matter if the drug is good for you or not, people shouldn’t be thrown in jail for ingesting it. I think that’s another sticky point that I think we, as a movement, really need to be talking about so we’re not leaving behind users of other drugs.”
“If we know that a drug is more likely to be adulterated, is more likely to be a risk, why are we keeping it in the underground, where there’s no accountability for people who adulterate it with substances that are significantly more harmful?”
Ismail L. Ali is Policy & Advocacy Counsel for MAPS, where he advocates to eliminate barriers to psychedelic therapy and research, develops and implements legal and policy strategy, and coordinates support for clinical research in Latin America. Ismail is licensed to practice law in the state of California and also serves as Vice-Chair of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy Board of Directors. Ismail earned his J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2016, after receiving his Bachelor’s in Philosophy from California State University, Fresno, in 2012, where he also studied writing and Spanish-language literature. As a law student, Ismail served as co-lead of Berkeley Law’s chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and worked for the ACLU of Northern California’s Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Project, and the International Human Rights Law Clinic at Berkeley Law. To first support his work at MAPS, Ismail received Berkeley Law’s Public Interest Fellowship. Ismail believes that psychedelic consciousness is a crucial piece of challenging oppression in all of its forms, and that legal access to psychedelics is an essential part of a progressive drug policy paradigm. He hopes to help develop and advocate for just, equitable, and creative alternatives to the failed war on drugs.
Stigma against PCP or “angel dust” contradicts the science of this misunderstood psychedelic. But, will the psychedelic community ever look at phencyclidine favorably?
The retro schlock horror of cannabis turning teenagers into murderous sex fiends is nothing but laughable today. The same Reefer Madness applied to psychedelic drugs like LSD or psilocybin “magic” mushrooms is also rightfully judged to be an absurd relic of the Nixon era. Even attitudes on heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine have slightly relaxed—sure, these drugs can be highly addictive, but few believe they turn you into a bloodthirsty monster.
Yet one narcotic still remains in the public consciousness as nothing but a lethal menace that will drive users into fugues of brutal rage: PCP.
Ever since its arrival on the black market in the 1960s, PCP, or phencyclidine, has been saddled with a reputation of extreme violence, cannibalism and superhuman strength. Urban legends of “angel dust” consumers breaking squad car doors off their hinges or bursting from handcuffs persist—despite the fact that scientific evidence for PCP causing any such behavior is non-existent, to put it lightly.
Like many other demonized drugs, such as ketamine or MDMA, PCP has a long history of therapeutic use. And PCP is a psychedelic, too, not just a dissociative anesthetic. But while drug policy reform advocates are pushing the Overton window when it comes to so-called “classic” psychedelics, PCP is notably left out of the conversation. But why?
“I am deeply disturbed that there is a deafening silence from the psychedelic community while fellow drug users continue to be brutalized as a result of PCP-related misapprehensions,” Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Columbia University wrote in his most recent book, Drug Use For Grownups. But he acknowledges a likely explanation: “Drawing attention to the fact that PCP is also a psychedelic might jeopardize the reputation, and thus the availability, of other psychedelics.”
PCP could be seen as another example of “psychedelic exceptionalism,” in which certain drugs are seen as “better” than others because they are used by certain people and not others. For example, the Decriminalize Nature movement has taken the U.S. by storm, loosening laws against “plant medicine” like ayahuasca, ibogaine and mescaline cactus, not to mention psilocybin fungi. But these laws—which have passed in at least seven cities, including Oakland, Ann Arbor and Cambridge—exclude other plant medicines like opium, coca leaf, khat and more.
The same narrow-mindedness or lack of political scrutiny could be said about PCP, according to Hart and other experts, such as Dr. Jason Wallach, a neuropsychopharmacologist and assistant pharmaceutical sciences professor at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Wallach has closely studied PCP, ketamine and related drugs like 3-MeO-PCP, publishing numerous reports on this class of drugs (known technically as arylcyclohexylamines), including a textbook chapter devoted to dissociative anesthetics.
“I don’t see anything about PCP that makes it inherently more dangerous than other dissociative drugs, like ketamine, for example,” Wallach tells Psychedelics Today. “I think the stigma around PCP is almost exclusively of the media’s creation.”
Understanding how that myth of PCP was created—and how the power structures it serves persist today—is essential for anyone who truly cares about drug policy reform.
A Brief History of Phencyclidine
Like many drugs, the profound psychoactivity of PCP was an unexpected discovery. On March 26, 1956, a medicinal chemist named Dr. Victor Maddox was developing various compounds for Parke-Davis and Company in Detroit, Michigan. Maddox showed one molecule, which he temporarily named GP 121, to his coworker, Dr. Graham Chen, who said it was the most unique compound that he had ever examined. This was phencyclidine, or PCP.
Structurally, PCP resembles a stupor-inducing drug that is produced in Corydalis cava flowers called bulbocapnine, which was used by the CIA in the agency’s Project MKUltra mind control experiments. Chen dubbed PCP a “cataleptoid anesthetic” and began giving it to animals. Some of the cats he injected with PCP would remain in a state of rigid, fixed posture for 24 hours, while a wild rhesus monkey became so calm it allowed researchers to jam their fingers in its mouth without biting.
Following further testing in animals, a Dr. Edward Domino revealed that PCP was much less toxic than opioids and human trials began around a year later. By 1963, PCP was patented and sold as a drug with the brand names Serynl and Sernylan, which come from the word “serenity.” (Not exactly the word most people associate with PCP today.)
“As patients were anesthetized with PCP, it became obvious that the drug, when properly administered by an anesthesiologist, was indeed very safe, far safer than most anesthetics that were then available,” Domino wrote in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs in 1980. But there was a problem. Some patients experienced “the sensation of feeling no arms or legs and being in outer space,” Domino wrote.
The side effects of PCP—hallucinations, delirium, confusion—were too much for many clinicians. Chemists quickly cooked up an alternative and in 1962, chemistry professor Calvin Stevens presented a new drug to the world: ketamine. PCP was voluntarily withdrawn from the market in 1965.
“PCP and ketamine are chemical cousins,” Hart tells Psychedelics Today. “So if you’re going to classify ketamine as a psychedelic thing, you have to classify PCP as a psychedelic.”
Yes, ketamine and PCP are very similar in nature. But while ketamine is heralded as the latest “breakthrough drug” for treating mental health—which it very well could be—PCP is still considered by some to be the “most dangerous drug.” But how dangerous is it really?
The Light and Dark Side of PCP
For Brian, who lives in the Washington, D.C. area, PCP was like “the boogie man.” He was familiar with stories of people taking it and stripping naked in the street, so he’s not sure what finally motivated him to try it. But a friend with sickle cell anemia was dipping cigarettes in liquid PCP—what locals call “the dipper”—and said, “If this guy has fucking sickle cell anemia and he’s not scared, I can’t let him go out by himself. So I hit it too.”
Brian, whose real name is not being used, says the first thing he noticed was ringing in his ears like an alarm going off in the distance, followed by a feeling of being immersed in water. On the phone, he made a warbly sound, like batteries dying in a cassette tape deck.
“It feels fucking odd and awkward,” Brian says. “But once you come down, it’s like clarity out of the chaos. I just descend it to a single cell organism and feel in tune with every fucking thing.”
Brian says he’s had multiple, profound psychedelic experiences on PCP. “I’ve literally had moments where I definitely feel that my fucking heightened crown chakra just exploded,” he says. “It actually exploded to a different consciousness, where I was an observer of myself.”
However, Brian, who has also used DMT and mushrooms, is first to admit that it’s “not all peaches and cream,” as he puts it. Several times, he says he’s woken up in the hospital. “It’s more chaotic, and more traumatizing and more negative than it has been positive,” he says. “But those positive times have been extremely fucking groundbreaking.”
Filmmaker and chemist Hamilton Morris has tried to show both sides of this drug. In fact, Morris says PCP was behind the entire genesis of his drug documentary series on Viceland, Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia. Morris recalls arguing with an executive producer about the show’s content, who said, essentially, “Well, you have to admit that some drugs are bad.”
Morris tells Psychedelics Today that he responded, “No, I don’t have to have to admit that at all. And he said, ‘Well, what about PCP? You couldn’t possibly say that PCP is good.’ And I said, certainly I could make the case that it’s not what people think it is. And that was sort of the origin of the show.”
Episode two, “A Positive PCP Story”, aired in 2016. It features Morris as he journeys across the U.S. to speak with PCP chemists, both clandestine and legitimate, as well as people like Timothy Wyllie, a British author, a founding member of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, and artist who illustrated sacred landscapes while under the influence of phencyclidine.
In contrast, Morris also interviews people who have struggled with PCP addiction, as well as Christ Bearer, a rapper who attempted suicide on PCP after amputating his penis. Christ Bearer survived his attempt, but now says he’s “proud” of what he did.
“He felt his penis had a negative impact on his life, and cutting it off allowed him to focus on his art,” Morris told The Guardian. “If he stands by it and thinks his life is better as a result, does that really mean he did something bad?”
Horrific self-amputation stories aside, it’s clear that PCP tales like these are anomalies. It doesn’t take much Googling to find almost identical stories involving alcohol. But few people are worried about booze driving people to such violence. Yet, when it comes to PCP, stories like this tend to rise to the top.
“What you shouldn’t do is then try to extrapolate that and say, ‘This is a normal response with PCP,’” Wallach says. (Side note: Wallach and Morris are friends. Wallach appears in the “Positive PCP Story” episode, and in 2014, Morris and Wallach published a scientific review of dissociative drugs, including ketamine and PCP.) “There absolutely have been horrible things that have happened while people were intoxicated. But you could say the same thing about any intoxicant, including ethanol. There’s no good, solid evidence that PCP has a higher propensity to cause this type of response.”
Morris has himself sampled PCP, both by snorting the hydrochloride salt and smoking the freebase. “My experiences with it were, on one hand, unremarkable,” Morris says. “Given that this is a substance that is almost exclusively associated with psychosis and adverse responses of one kind or another, the major takeaway for me was that whatever supposed problems are associated with this drug are not intrinsic problems of PCP. The problems [are] associated with poverty, lack of control over the dosing, black market distribution patterns, mental illness, and so on.”
The Future of PCP
Will the psychedelic community ever come to terms with PCP like it has other synthetic psychedelics like MDMA, LSD or ketamine? Similar horror stories and misperceptions have plagued these drugs in the past, but today most people recognize the medicinal and (relatively safe) recreational value of psychedelics. PCP seems to remain a hold-out.
“I think it’s certainly something that has been ignored partially because of its association with impoverished people who have no connection to the counterculture, really,” Morris says. “Maybe the biggest issue of all is that this is a substance that middle upper class people don’t use. So in order to really change people’s minds on a large scale, it’s often the case that people have to have direct experience with the substance.”
However, the people I spoke to for this article didn’t seem optimistic that the stigmatizing attitudes toward PCP would change any time soon.
“That sort of myth is too important to opinion makers in our society, including law enforcement, including some people who are trying to distance their favorite drug away from something like PCP,” Hart says. “PCP does not have an advocate. It’s bad enough you don’t have an advocate, you need to have a powerful advocate. And I don’t see PCP having such an advocate.”
Morris agrees perceptions about PCP have been hard to change, even after the success of his TV show. And even the most adventurous psychedelic startups probably won’t want to investigate the scientific, therapeutic value of PCP, although analogs of the drug gacyclidine (a PCP derivative) are being trialed for tinnitus treatment.
“I don’t predict anyone will advocate for that in the near future. But you never know,” Morris says. “It’s just another one of many instances of a substance that has a reputation that has been sculpted, not by any intrinsic property of the substance itself, but by the social framework in which it’s used.”
Troy Farahis an independent science and drug policy reporter that lives in Southern California with his wife and two dogs. His work has appeared in National Geographic, The Guardian, VICE, WIRED and others. He co-hosts the podcast Narcotica and can be found on Twitter @filth_filler or on his website troyfarah.com .
In this episode, Michelle and Joe interview writer, psychedelic advocate, and creator of the online community and non-profit, Black People Trip: Robin Divine.
Divine talks about her path from pandemic depression and knowing nothing about psychedelics to becoming a figurehead, mentor, and people-connector through her Black People Trip Instagram account. She talks about how psychedelics are not seen as options in the Black community partly due to a fear of being arrested, but also because so few Black people are open about therapy, and even fewer talk about psychedelic use. She discusses ways to destigmatize psychedelics in the Black community, the challenges of quickly becoming a representative for others in a new field, the difficulties of living paycheck-to-paycheck and trying to take time to integrate an experience, the extra work and small pieces of “fuckery” BIPOC people have to deal with that so many people don’t think about, “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, Carl Hart, drug exceptionalism and privilege, and the racism of the drug war.
And she talks about all she hopes to do with Black People Trip: a 4-week course on the basics of psychedelics, safety, and trip-sitting, a psychedelic equity fund for Black women, a BIPOC-centered conference, and the continued encouragement of more Black people getting involved in this space. If you follow Black People Trip on Instagram, you know that her last few months have been, in her own words, “hot trash,” and she could use some help. Donate via herGoFundMe or Venmo (@divinerobin) to help her get back to helping others.
Notable Quotes
“I think it’s going to be on Black people to actually get out into neighborhoods and share their own stories and teach each other, because honestly, for me, it helps for me to learn from someone that has a shared history and that looks like me and that I can relate to. I don’t want to go to a conference and hear from a white woman that has a different life story than me. I just can’t relate to that. I can’t relate. It’s all love, but I can’t relate. …I did a very brief ad campaign on my own page just to share Black folks’ stories. People were like, “Oh yes, I want to see more of that.” And it was really so simple, but just seeing someone’s face that they can connect with made a huge difference.”
“I’ve had so many women tell me that they’ll go to a group and they’re the only one. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, it was fine, but I wanted somebody else there.’ So I really want to create spaces where we aren’t the only– we’re it.” “We’re big on church. We love our church. I don’t, but a lot of Black folks do. And so the answer is supposed to be [that] if something is wrong, go to church. Pray it away, go repent or whatever we do, and mental health is not for us. Again, it’s something that white folks do. ‘We shouldn’t need that.’ So when people do go to therapy in the Black community, we’re seen as crazy, we’re labeled as weak, and who wants that? So we avoid it, and if we do go, we don’t talk about it. Me? I love therapy. I go twice a week. I tell everybody about it.”
“I’m in full support of Black-only spaces, the same way I’m in full support of queer-only spaces and women-only spaces. Sometimes you just don’t want to be on guard.” “I think about my own family and our own history of trauma and how I can literally visibly see it just being passed down. And I think if we had been able to sit together, Grandmother, Mother, and me, and just do mushrooms or have MDMA, how different would our lives be right now?”
Robin Divine is a writer, psychedelic advocate, and the creator of Black People Trip: an online community with a mission to raise awareness and create safe spaces for Black women interested in psychedelics.
Robin discovered psychedelics last year as she searched for relief from the symptoms of chronic depression. As she became more involved in the community, she noticed a definite lack of diversity. As a result, she started Black People Trip. Her goal is to raise awareness about psychedelics in marginalized communities. She is also in the process of establishing the Entheogenic Equity Fund, a non-profit which will raise funds to help make psychedelic therapy more financially accessible and available to Black women. Donations accepted via Vemno: @divinerobin
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, we’re back to the original team of Joe and Kyle, who start with some good PT news: the successful launch of our first Australian edition of Navigating Psychedelics, a “partnership of sorts” with Fruiting Bodies Collective, and a few teases of more big things to come…
They first discuss psychedelic research company, Numinus, being granted approval by Health Canada (essentially Canada’s FDA) to study MDMA-assisted therapy, and later discuss Michael Pollan’s newest book, This Is Your Mind On Plants and his previous works. And they report on the launch of The Psychae Institute, a $40m psychedelic medicine institute in Melbourne that will be studying MDMA and likely DMT (which would somehow only be the second study?!).
But most of this episode centers around two topics that keep coming up. First, sexual ethics and power dynamics within the facilitator-experiencer relationship: When is touch ok? What’s the real purpose behind it? Is the facilitator aware of what their actions could be doing? Can you trust them? How do you fully establish consent, and how do you trust someone’s consent when they’re in a non-ordinary state? Is it possible to have a psychedelic session without sexual energy coming up? And when is it ok for a facilitator and experiencer to have a relationship?
And the second big conversation is a classic, but pondered from a slightly different angle: Why do we mistrust big corporations and big pharma so much, when many of us can thank them for saving our lives? And this leads down many roads: Peter Thiel, Fauci, SB-519 possession limits, the social contract, and why lying is sometimes necessary.
Notable Quotes
“The question is, if you are in that position of power: What’s your intention for touching or doing any sort of bodywork? Do you feel that it would be beneficial, or is the person actually asking for it?” -Kyle “[A friend asked me:] Is it possible to have a psychedelic session without sexual energy coming up? And I think his point was no, you can’t, and it’s kind of just something that you have to deal with. And are you mature enough to be able to have that restraint in sessions? A lot of people aren’t. I’ve certainly felt plenty of that. Breathwork, psychedelic sessions, festivals, concerts, the works. It’s everywhere. As soon as people are amplified, sexuality’s amplified and it can throw a big wrench in things.” -Joe
“What does the FDA tell us we should eat? What does science in 2021 tell us we should eat? What are doctors telling their patients [about] how to eat? Is it based on industry-manipulated science from 20, 30, 40 years ago? Or is it based on 2021 data? When doctors are suggesting a Mediterranean diet, that’s based on data. When they’re suggesting FDA-approved food pyramid stuff, that’s just an industry scam, and that’s pretty well documented. These are problems. When your profession has been manipulated more than once by industry, there’s going to be a reason why people don’t want to believe you.” -Joe “What is the agenda here with some of these companies? Do they just want to come in and make billions of dollars and they don’t give two shits about us? It’s all about the money? Or, are some of these companies actually really wanting to help and it just takes a massive amount of capital to do research and to produce these molecules and medicines to get out to the public and to create the systems that we need to properly support people moving forward?” -Kyle
Sacred psychedelic plant medicines are increasingly entering the Western mainstream, but is it cultural appropriation?
From the medicinal and ceremonial use of mescaline-containing plants by the Indigenous peoples of Mexico thousands of years ago, to the brewing of ayahuasca by several Indigenous groups in the Amazon today, entheogens have been a part of the cultural heritage of these communities in ways that Western society is just starting to understand.
Because there are significant differences in the ways these plants have been used historically and the way Western society is integrating them, let’s take a brief look at both approaches.
Indigenous Uses of Sacred Plant Medicines and Traditions
Various Indigenous cultures have used medicinal plants with psychoactive properties for hundreds of years including the Mazatec and Huichol of Mexico, Native North Americans, tribes in Africa, and Indigenous groups in the Amazon. The uses of these plants vary from culture to culture, but have a few commonalities when it comes to their healing purposes. For most, there is a general belief in their sacredness and spiritual properties.
“Plants, in general, have been used for ceremony, food, and utilitarian purposes. Sacred plant medicines were always used in ceremonies and never used for recreational purposes. Plants were placed on this earth to heal humanity as I understand it,” Belinda Eriacho, Native American Healer, tells Psychedelics Today. “In my own experiences, these sacred plant medicines have helped me to heal intergenerational trauma, to find peace with deceased loved ones, and to look at my own life and improve many areas of [it].”
When it comes to ayahuasca, Indigenous peoples from Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador have used the brew in their sacred rituals for many years. It served and continues to serve as a basis for the establishment of different spiritual traditions by these peoples. They hold the vine in high regard and believe it can facilitate the perception of the complexity of the natural world and human creation.
Similarly, the consumption of peyote in sacred rituals allowed the Huicholes and the Tarahumaras of Mexico to come into contact with divine beings or ancestors and to cure various diseases. To this day, peyote has also been adopted by several Native American peoples. They see peyote as a gift from the creator, and a direct communication channel with the “Great Spirit”.
These cultures have preserved rituals and sacred medicines but have also gone through extreme hardships in order to do so. Many Indigenous spiritual practices in Mexico were severely persecuted and banned during the Spanish Inquisition, and hundreds of thousands of natives were brutally murdered. Many other Indigenous communities in the Americas faced the same barbarities during colonization, having their codices destroyed and much of their ceremonial knowledge lost.
Western Uses of Plant Medicines
In the Western world, the use of psychedelic plant medicine can also be traced for thousands of years. A few examples are The Eleusinian Mysteries, the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece that involved ceremonies with psychoactive plants. Furthermore, Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Sámi people of Northern Europe used Amanita Muscaria mushrooms in their sacred traditions.
Many medicinal plants have found their way into numerous products that the pharmaceutical industry sells today to treat a variety of diseases and health conditions, from aspirin derived from willow tree bark, to the current growing interest in entheogens for therapy and the possibility to revolutionize global mental health.
Scientists have been carrying out research for decades on psychedelic plants for their chemical properties and pharmaceutical potential. In this model of Western medicine, science seeks to understand these substances simply as chemical compounds detached from their ethnobotanical origin.
Adapting the uses of sacred psychedelic plants to Western medicine brings the advantage of making them accessible to people who can benefit tremendously from their properties on a global scale. In recent years, research into psychedelics has demonstrated their potential to address disorders that have proved difficult to treat including depression, anxiety, chemical dependency, and post-traumatic stress disorders.
But in reality, there is a suspicion that dominating the market is more important than addressing the mental health crisis. For instance, we are currently witnessing a debate on whether it’s ethical for companies such as COMPASS Pathways to try and monopolize the psychedelic industry with their patent strategy.
Additionally, in the past few years, the New Age spirituality movement has merged with positive psychology and the wellness industry, bringing many to seek healing, transcendental experiences, and self-improvement through entheogens. For many, these plants are the catalyst of positive life changes and are also revered with respect. However, there is concern that some are engaging in ceremonies so often that “spiritual bypassing” is now a recurring theme in psychedelic community discussions.
“I find it interesting how often I hear stories of people doing ceremony [using sacred plant medicines] every weekend. In many indigenous cultures, you were blessed to have one ceremony in your lifetime,” says Eriacho. “I would suggest that if individuals are finding that they need to use these plant medicines every weekend then (1) they are not taking the time to fully integrate into the experiences shown to them, and (2) these plant medicine(s) are not working for them.”
This high demand and constant search are not without negative consequences. Issues related to cultural appropriation, sustainability, and the commercialization of spirituality are often ignored by Westerners while engaging in such frequent ceremonies and spiritual tourism when they should be taken into greater consideration.
What Is Cultural Appropriation?
To understand the meaning of “cultural appropriation”, we need to understand the meaning of “appropriation” and ”culture” on an individual basis. We can define culture as the set of practices, symbols, and values that a specific group shares. For example, tattoos are an important symbol for many Indigenous cultures, as they are an essential part of the historical constitution of the groups to which they belong.
On the other hand, appropriation is the act of taking for oneself a certain element without the owner’s consent. So cultural appropriation would be the action of adopting elements of a culture to which you don’t belong without consent. An important detail to remember is this becomes problematic when it involves a power relationship. For example, it’s cultural appropriation when a culture which has historically been suppressed and marginalized has its elements stolen and its meanings erased by another culture that has dominated it.
Cultural appropriation contributes to the maintenance of structural racism in our society and the continuity of different stereotypes about cultures. But we must not forget that individuals appropriating a culture are just symptoms of a much larger problem. A capitalist system that aims for profit and uses extractivism (the exploitation of natural resources on a massive scale generating significant economic profits for a powerful few) to transform a community’s culture into a product but does not value the people whose culture it belongs to, is the real problem that needs addressing.
In the context of medicinal psychedelic plants and fungi, cultural appropriation may manifest itself in different ways. An example was the bioprospecting (the practice of searching for botanical miracle cures) of psilocybin mushrooms out of their Oaxacan context at the end of the 1950s by R. Gordon Wasson. And more recently, cases of “neo shamans” offering ceremonies they label “authentic” without years of experience and a real understanding of the cultures to which these ceremonies belong, are also examples of cultural appropriation.
The Answer? Awareness, Balance and Respect
There is a growing tendency to commodify these substances without giving back to the communities who have held this knowledge for centuries at their own risk. For example, who is really benefiting from expensive retreats in the Amazon jungle? Additionally, the development of new treatments with synthetic derivatives of these substances will reach the market through pharmaceutical patents without properly recognizing traditional knowledge.
For Indigenous people throughout the world, the commercialization of their spirituality is just one of many daily challenges embedded in larger societal struggles. Western engagement with Indigenous spiritual traditions often contributes to a false romanticization of these communities’ situations; it can even feel like an erasure of the injustices that they have experienced in the past, and continue to experience to this day. Indigenous people have to fight daily for the preservation of their lands, their languages, and their cultures. In fact, many continue to be murdered for standing up for their rights. As psychedelic enthusiasts, we have the responsibility to bring awareness to these dynamics.
“While psychedelic plant medicines still have most of their potential still to be taped into for the benefit of society, contemporary psychedelic studies are at risk of replicating harmful colonial behavior with the territories and communities from which the plants originate,” writes anthropologist, Paloma David, in her forthcoming publication, “Decolonizing Psychedelic Studies: The Case of Ayahuasca”. “A decolonial approach is essential to the current renaissance as failing to recognize indigenous perspectives as equally valuable to the discussion in the appropriate use of these substances only contributes to deepening the colonial wound in which these plants are interwoven.”
Will psychedelics be reduced to high-class wellness, healthcare, or self-optimization products that are only accessible for those who can afford the steep price tag while the people that carried this traditional knowledge are excluded from the market? As we are about to enter the era of psychedelic capitalism, it’s important for us to remember that balance can be achieved if we acknowledge that respect is crucial for any relationship.
We need to look at what we are doing when it comes to sacred plant medicine, how we are doing it, and what impact our actions have on other communities around the world. There needs to be an effort to educate ourselves in order to comprehend Indigenous paradigms, and the effect of their loss of languages, land, culture, and knowledge. As we begin to better understand spiritual identity and sacred reciprocity, we can start making an effort to no longer let Indigenous peoples and their cultures be seen as resources to be harvested.
“Through my lens as a Native American woman, when we are ill or when we seek balance in our lives through ceremony, we often look to our plant relatives for healing,” says Eriacho “There is a ritual or practice of utilizing these sacred beings. Before the plant is harvested, we are mindful about how much will be needed, and then explain to the plant why it is needed and for whom. This is done out of respect for the plant in exchange for its life. We offer tobacco, cornmeal as an act of appreciation. This is referred to as sacred reciprocity. We need to be respectful and reverent of these sacred plant medicines.”
So how can we protect and develop traditional ceremonies in a way that is useful and respectful of Indigenous communities? And how can we prevent the so-called psychedelic renaissance from exclusively benefiting non-Indigenous Western entrepreneurs?
When I speak to Paloma David about how we can move forward in a respectful fashion, she says, “Firstly, by being culturally humble in actively listening to Indigenous voices who are authorities on the use of psychedelic plant medicines and actively including them in the conversation on the appropriate use of these substances.”
“By being aware of our own cultural biases. By understanding that people’s making-sense of an ayahuasca experience is highly dependent on their cultural background, religious beliefs (or the lack thereof), and personal psychology.” David continues, “And secondly, by avoiding the harmful reproduction of colonial dynamics of appropriation, epistemicide and exploitation in which the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous knowledges are interwoven.”
Reflecting on these ethical dilemmas can offer us models for understanding and solving this continuing harmful and extractive economy. Another solution might be pointing out paths for fair and reciprocal reparation agreements with Indigenous communities.
More importantly, considering these issues make us question the colonial and racialized Western mentality that contributes to the continued delegitimization of Indigenous communities and their knowledge so we all can at least start asking ourselves: What are the true costs of our healing?
About the Author
Jessika Lagarde is a Brazilian storyteller, Earth and climate activist, and Women On Psychedelics co-Founder. Women On Psychedelics is an educational platform that advocates for the end of the stigmatization around women’s mental health and substance use, and the normalization of the use of psychedelics for its therapeutic potential and healing capacities. Jessika’s environmental work and psychedelic path have made her more aware not only of the crisis of our planet but also of how human disconnection is a direct cause of it. All of her work is informed in taking action in a way that serves the Earth and our human collective, in hopes of mobilizing inner healing towards outer action.
In this episode, Joe interviews philosopher, author, and assistant professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco: Matthew D. Segall, Ph.D.
Segall discusses the relationship between consciousness and neuroscience: how science is helpful, but ultimately amounts to just one of many different tools towards describing consciousness (not truly understanding it), and how science, philosophy, and religion need to focus on their specialties but also work together towards better defining the human experience. And he talks about the importance of philosophy in trying to make sense of non-ordinary states of consciousness.
As this is a very back-and-forth, philosophically-based conversation, they talk about a lot more: William James, David Ray Griffin’s concept of “hardcore common sense presuppositions,” Richard Dawkins, scientism, positivism, how we’re slowly thinning the line between technology and humanity, Timothy Leary and whether or not anyone really “dropped out,” German idealism, how capitalism co-opts everything, John Cobb, Alfred North Whitehead, Universal Basic Income, the death denial in capitalist life, and how to use the relationship between the internet and capitalism to improve society.
Notable Quotes
“The thing about capitalism is that it lives inside each of us at the level of our desires and our drives because we’ve been shaped by it. So we can’t pretend like it’s this big, bad monster out there that other people believe in. The problem with capitalism is that it’s not just a worldview you decide to believe in or not; it is the very structure, again, of your desires and your sense of identity. It’s inside of you.”
“They say cannabis causes problems with motivation. Well yea, once you see through the value structure of our society, you lose motivation to participate because it’s no longer appetizing to you to engage in the rat race.”
“Fifty years later, after Leary was saying ‘Turn on, tune in, and drop out’, a lot of people thought that they followed his instructions, but again, capitalism co-opted the whole hippie movement, and by the 90s, they were selling Che Guevera t-shirts at the shopping mall and Apple was using the Beatles to sell computers.”
“The way that liberals tend to think about these questions [is that] they get really mad at Facebook for being biased in what ads they allow and not censoring certain things and selling ads to Russians and stuff. …A publicly traded corporation has one purpose: to maximize shareholder profits. And that’s the business model for Facebook, and so they’ll take money from anyone who wants to sell ads. They’re a private company. They’re not a public utility that has anywhere in its corporate charter as part of its mission: ‘improving civil society’ or ‘helping America maintain its democracy.’ Why would we expect a private corporation to do that? There’s no incentive in capitalism for that. And yet we get mad and blame Mark Zuckerberg. Why aren’t we blaming capitalism? That’s where the source code for this problem is.”
“Psychedelics aren’t necessarily going to wake us up, but I think that’s why we need philosophy. These substances and these experiences need to be contained within a meaningful story and a meaningful theory of reality so that we can make sense of what we’re experiencing and integrate it, and not only come out of those experiences with a profound sense of what’s wrong with our society, but with at least a good idea for what we’d like instead.”
Matthew D. Segall, PhD, is assistant professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he teaches courses primarily on German Idealism and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. He is the author of Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (2021) and has published journal articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics including panpsychist metaphysics, media theory, the philosophy of biology, the evolution of religion, and psychedelics. He blogs regularly at footnotes2plato.com. His current research focuses on the panpsychist turn in contemporary philosophy of mind and its implications for the scientific study of the origins of life and consciousness.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, it’s a crew of two again, but this week, it’s the “Jersey Boys”: Kyle and David.
They first have an in-depth conversation about depth psychology (yes, I meant to do that), discussing James Hillman, the idea of soul existing in everything, the different ways one can connect more with their mind, the difference between dark and golden shadows, and how psychiatry is thankfully moving more towards an emotional-based, transdisciplinary model. And they ask some great questions: How could science explain synchronicity? How does one interact with an archetype? How do you measure the soul? When you hear a song and are instantly taken back to a memory and feeling (and even a smell) from the past: How on earth do you measure that?
They then discuss the DEA and its reach: What should the DEA’s power and focus be and how does it relate to both the Right to Try Act, seen through attorney Kathryn L. Tucker and two patients requesting end-of-life psilocybin, and in the DEA’s denial of Soul Quest’s religious freedom exemption application? In an era when classic, mainstream religion is slowly being replaced by more freeform spirituality, what authority does the DEA have to decide what is religious or not, and why do they still use their antiquated exemption policy?
And they also discuss more progress in law, particularly in the Northeast: Massachusetts lawmakers discussing a bill to create a psychedelic legalization task force (that will also look at pardons for past convictions), and Pennsylvania working on legislation to authorize the clinical study of psilocybin, with a focus on something which massive corporations and the DEA pay very little attention: cost-benefit optimization.
Notable Quotes
“[It’s] become too analytical and too cognitive. We’re trying to always make sense of the image or the archetype vs. what does it feel like to feel that image? What does it feel like to embody that archetype?” -Kyle
“I love that you’re using the word ‘love’ as an important emotional energy to give to those dark parts of our shadow, hopefully to transform it into a more golden shade of our shadow. Because we’ve become so starved of love inside and we have, I think, just so much blame and stuckness from our past.” -David
“It’s great that we’re bringing attention, because it does kind of act as a catalyst. I think we’ve spoken about Right to Try, we’ve spoken about religious liberty, we’re speaking here about state-level and DEA and FDA- each of these [are] different pathways of changing the law and of giving accessibility. There’s going to be a range of options when it actually does settle down, and it’s great that there’s just more and more of this happening. …We’re seeing this really overwhelming, powerful message that this has to happen soon and that it will happen soon.” -David
Our regular legal contributor explains why the DEA denied the ayahuasca church Soul Quest’s religious freedom exemption application, and how the DEA may be overstepping its role.
To explain what happened between the DEA and Soul Quest, we first need to step back and start from the very beginning. Our story begins with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a sub-agency of the US Department of Justice, itself an agency of the Executive Branch. The DEA serves as legal gatekeeper of scheduled substances under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, including ayahuasca which contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a Schedule 1 substance. Although Schedule 1 substances are generally forbidden, their manufacture and use are permitted for licensed scientific research and as sacrament in sincere religious practice. In fact, there are United States Supreme Court cases that have recognized the First Amendment protected use of psychedelic substances, such as ayahuasca and peyote, in religious practices.
Against this backdrop, the DEA asserts jurisdiction over access and importation of Schedule 1 substances. For religious users, the DEA requires all religiously inclined importers, manufacturers, and users of Schedule 1 substances to first seek DEA exemption (meaning: acknowledgment and permission) before being allowed to import or to access such drugs. The DEA even published an exemption application and requires all parties seeking exemption to provide a raft of data, substantial disclosures, interviews, among other requirements, signed and sworn under oath, attesting to the possession and use of Schedule 1 substances.
The Soul Quest Exemption Application
In an effort to comply with the DEA Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth, Inc. submitted a request for religious exemption to use ayahuasca as a sacrament in 2017. It wanted to assure its congregants and officiants would be protected from further and future investigation and interdiction by the DEA, which posed a continuing threat of intervention and prevention of Soul Quest’s ayahuasca importation.
Under attorney letterhead, Soul Quest’s request sought exemption from application of the Controlled Substances Act in its totality—in other words, Soul Quest was seeking the ability to import, possess, manufacture and administer ayahuasca, all on premise of religious freedom:
“…request for a religious-based exemption by Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth, Inc., d/b/a, Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth Retreat & Wellness Center (“Soul Quest”) to the provisions of the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. § 801, et seq., specifically as it pertains to the ritual use by Soul Quest of ayahuasca for its sacramental activities. Soul Quest asserts its eligibility for such an exemption, pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 0 Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao Do Vegetal v. Gonzalez, 546 U.S. 418 (2006) (“Gonzalez”), and the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb, et seq., (“RFRA”).”
In support of its First Amendment and Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) rights, Soul Quest provided a variety of organization records and information, including bylaws, articles of faith, dietary provisions, mission statement, safety and security protocols, among other requirements. Several church members also sat for extensive interviews with DEA agents.
The DEA’s Denial of Soul Quest
Disappointingly, albeit not surprisingly, the DEA took the better part of four years to come to a decision: application denied.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
It is important to make a clear distinction here that the First Amendment does not grant religious freedom. Rather, it acknowledges its preexistence. The US Constitution presupposes religious freedom existed before nationhood and that the innate right would be forever protected from government intrusion through the guarantee provided for in the First Amendment. In this sense, the First Amendment is a brake on governmental regulatory power. But this does not mean the government cannot regulate. It can. But, when those regulations intersect religious belief or practice, the borders of Constitutional right can sometimes be ambiguous and require a court ruling. That is where the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act comes into play. It assures that the burden is always on the government to prove that its religion-impacting regulation serves a compelling governmental interest and is being enforced by the least restrictive means. To this end, the DEA’s denial letter actually does a fine job of summarizing the RFRA standard. But for reasons explained a little further below, the DEA is misinterpreting its position in the RFRA analysis flow:
“According to RFRA, the “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the Government can demonstrate “that application of the burden to the person (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1; AG Memorandum at 3. To establish a prima facie case for an exemption from the CSA under RFRA, a claimant must demonstrate that application of the CSA’s prohibitions with respect to a specific controlled substance would (1) substantially burden, (2) religious exercise (as opposed to a philosophy or way of life), (3) based on a belief that is sincerely held by the claimant. 0 Centro, 546 U.S. at 428. Once the claimant has established these threshold requirements, the burden shifts to the government to demonstrate that the challenged prohibition furthers a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means. This “compelling interest test” must be satisfied through application of the CSA to the particular claimant who alleges that a sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened. Id. at 430-31.”
The DEA Installed its RFRA Filter Backwards
Soul Quest is in litigation with the DEA over the exemption denial and is challenging the DEA’s determinations, seeking to enjoin the government agency’s continuing interdictions of its religious practices. Whatever facts the DEA disbelieved or questioned will ultimately be put to a judge (if the case survives to an evidentiary hearing).
Not only does Soul Quest get to challenge the DEA’s application of the facts, but Soul Quest also gets to challenge how the DEA applies the law. In this regard, any psychedelic religious group would be right in thinking to attack the process. That is, just because the DEA says it gets to decide what a religion is, does not necessarily mean the DEA actually has that authority. Likewise, just because the DEA says its policy of wholesale refusal to grant importation exemption is the “least restrictive means” does not mean it is.
In other words, a psychedelic religion seeking to challenge the DEA’s assumptions should not simply let the DEA dictate or frame the issues. Why? Because the DEA has it wrong. Let’s walk through the analysis.
Imagine you just asked (not applied – just asked) for exemption. The DEA, under its current policies, would presuppose it is not dealing with a religion or a religious group. [Why?] The DEA would deny the exemption. [Why?] The DEA would request you fill out its forms. [Why?] Provide a raft of data. [Why?] Sit for interviews. [Why?] The DEA requests this on the premise that it is going to determine, amongst other things, if your group is a religion. [Why?] And the DEA will also determine if your practice is sincere. [Why?]
Consider this: The DEA investigates and makes its own determination on the validity of religion and the sincerity of its practice. If the DEA determines, as it did in Soul Quest’s instance, that your group is not a religion, or it determines your practice is insincere, it will deny you the exemption. But, from where does DEA, a police agency, derive this power? In what statute or appellate decision is the DEA’s espoused belief that it has the right to investigate and to certify religion in the United States found? Doesn’t the First Amendment demand that the DEA presume the religion is valid and its practitioners sincere? Wouldn’t anything less be an affront to the guaranteed protection of fundamental freedoms accorded by the First Amendment?
If imagination helps context, consider if the issue were Catholics having to prove both Catholicism and the sincerity of its practice to a police officer, as a precondition to import or to consume Eucharist wafers. This would be abhorrent to the First Amendment, would it not? Next, imagine that the same police officer approved Catholicism, but still denied the Eucharist because he found your practice of Catholicism insincere (your transgression: not being at Mass last Sunday). A police agency preventing access to Eucharist because of the officer’s arbitrary assessment would even more offend the First Amendment, would it not? Yet, this is present DEA policy. What’s worse, the DEA does this with no objective standards.
Readers must understand, the DEA absolutely has a role to play in the nation’s drug regulatory scheme. It likewise does properly involve itself in scheduled substance importation and tracking. In this context, contact between the DEA and religious groups engaged in the importation of psychedelic sacrament is neither unexpected nor unwelcomed. For example, pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners are well acquainted with the paperwork and practices that come with the importation and storage of scheduled substances. But those are, compared to assessing religion, very mechanical and objective functions for the agency. Religion is far too ephemeral and Constitutionally protected for a police agency to engage without clear parameters and metrics. And that is the point, even assuming the DEA were authorized to assess religion, it would still need objective metrics, of which it presently has none. In the absence of objective standards, its decisions on religion would be (and are) subjective and applied unequally.
Even if somehow the practice of DEA religious assessment were deemed First Amendment compliant, the DEA would still then have to contend with the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution, two places where subjectivity combined with government intrusion have not fared well. If the DEA does not have published objective standards, then every investigation it conducts into religion is by definition subjective. In every one of those cases, the decisions will be made (and presently are being made) by field agents with no training in religious practices or theology—cops arbitrarily approving and disapproving religions.
The Solution on the Religion Question
This may seem odd, but the DEA being mired in the religion question is a little not its fault. The DEA was created by President Nixon to assist in enforcement of the new Controlled Substances Act, but it was never given instruction or authority over religion. Making matters more complicated, although it sets many of its own policies, the DEA answers to the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ), and neither have ever put forth a cogent and logical policy on religious exemption. The favorable ayahuasca cases, especially the 2006 case, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006), caught the DEA off guard, but it never put in the time to work through the problem.
There is a single solution that solves both the problem of helping the DEA to avoid having to act as religious police and helping to arrive at the true least restrictive means to effectuate the DEA’s legitimate governmental interest of preventing diversion of controlled substances outside of the comprehensive regulatory scheme established by Congress. And, no, total prohibition as the DEA advocates is not the solution. Rather, the DEA should abandon its entire exemption policy.
Instead, the DEA should reduce its religious assessments to no more than requiring an attestation of religious intention and sincerity of belief, signed under oath and under penalty of perjury (the DEA could still mandate inspection of storage facilities and other non-religious aspects). The attestation would include details like: name, address, phone number, and other neutral data, much like what pharmaceutical companies or medical professionals provide.
Under this practice, the DEA’s need to track and verify would remain satisfied. Upon exchange of the attestation, the DEA should release the sacrament to the applicant. If the DEA has doubts, it then can refer cases to the US Department of Justice for its exercise of proper discretion, including possible investigation. If things are found inaccurate from the attestation, USDOJ would remain free to charge the parties involved (plus charge a bonus felony for the false attestation). Such an arrangement would keep the DEA out of religion, while still enabling the agency to function. Plus, attestation is a far less restrictive means than the DEA’s current policy of wholesale refusal.
A simple attestation policy (coupled with the DEA’s normal investigatory functions) is what RFRA requires—a burden on the government, not on the religion. Such a practice follows the proper flow of a RFRA analysis: It presupposes religious practice, places the burden on the government to prove otherwise, protects the individual religious right even during the investigation, and only resolves in favor of the government if the government proves its case as RFRA requires.
Will Soul Quest or any other psychedelic religious group argue these points to a court engaged in reviewing DEA policy? We will have to wait to see. Since there are a few psychedelic religion cases pending in various US courts at the moment, perhaps the time is coming.
In this episode, Joe interviews freelance writer Jasmine Virdi, who, in addition to writing for Chacruna and Lucid News, has been writing for us for the last year and a half.
She tells the story of her path toward becoming a psychedelic-focused writer: An early interest in mysticism to a high-dose solo psilocybin experience, to volunteering with David Luke at a retreat in Wales, to eventually interning at the Institute of Ecotechnics, which led her to Synergetic Press. They talk about peyote conservation and the IPCI, 5-MeO-DMT and the protection of toads, how ayahuasca churches and facilitators have dealt with Covid, and the concept of plant medicines protecting people from Covid and other diseases.
They also talk about neurodivergence and how psychedelics could help autistic individuals, the environmental impact of having kids, panpsychism, Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, how language has changed us, the concept of “slow is smooth,” perennialism, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, and more.
Notable Quotes
“Culture moves so fast nowadays. …We need to move at the pace of nature in order to align ourselves with its values.”
“A general trend among facilitators is that they had noticed [that] throughout Covid, they actually felt the demand for ayahuasca ceremonies increasing as opposed to decreasing. …I think it kind of speaks to the fact that the world is in dire need of healing, and also, maybe people are connected with a sense of what they really value and want to move towards when they’re confronted with their own mortality. And building community is now more important than ever, and I think a lot of people find community in plant medicine circles.” “I don’t think that psychedelics are the only answer or even the answer, but for me, I feel so passionate about them because they have been tools in turning me onto what I feel are greater parts of this reality.”
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer in the psychedelic space. Since 2018, she has been working for the independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany, and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine has written for Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Plant Medicines, Lucid News, Cosmic Sister, Psychable, and Microdosing Guru. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transpersonal Psychology at the Alef Trust with the future aim of working as a psychedelic practitioner. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, culturally sensitive, ethically-integral, and meaningful way.
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In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, the crew of five from last week has been whittled to two, with Joe and the new guy (David) getting into a discussion about cynicism, mysticism, and well-being.
They first look at Senate Bill 519 again, after a listener wrote in to correct them about their understanding of social-sharing and to suggest that they were too critical in last week’s episode. And they wonder: Have we, as a subculture, become so cynical that we can’t see any progress as good enough? Has the perfect too often become the enemy of the good?
They then discuss an article stressing the need to acknowledge and attempt to study the mystical (weird) part of psychedelics that can’t be measured by changes in neuroscience, with David telling us the story of his path to Psychedelics Today involving a near-death experience with a space heater, witnessing an exorcism, and a mushroom-inspired “experience of madness.”
And they talk about a lot more: A study that measured improvements in well-being and the difficulty in defining such an open concept (the word of the day is “eudaimonia”), the star-studded panel Joe moderated this week, Kabbalah, permaculture, and the idea of thinking outside of financial terms with different forms of capital.
Notable Quotes
“We have a choice. Do I stand my ground and do I insist on getting everything that I deserve, on insisting on the change that is right, on the change that is needed that we all know is what we deserve? Or do we make these political deals and compromises and concessions and sacrifices, again, just because it’s a step in the right direction?” -David
“How do we have faith in all these various institutions that have done so much really gross stuff, and continue to participate in this democracy that doesn’t feel that way sometimes? And that’s the cynicism that I feel regularly, but then I go, “Okay, I can feel cynical, but the only way to make good change is to be involved.’” -Joe
“If capitalism can be used (and its meeting point with psychedelics) to create a model that enables mass scaling, and safe, responsible use, and accessibility to psychedelics, because of the mass scale of mental illness and ontological crisis and desperation; well, okay, then maybe that’s a pill worth taking. Because boy, do we need something right now that’s not just a Xanax or a Prozac or a 45-minute talk session. We need more than that on an individual and societal level. So I’d be willing to kind of dance with the devil of hyper-capitalism if it actually enables that kind of merging of minds to happen.” -David
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
-C.G. Jung
This is the first article in a series called Psychedelics in Depth, in which we will explore the many ways that depth and Jungian psychology intersect with the many multicolored permutations of the psychedelic experience.
Our intention is to provide readers with a foundational understanding of the depth psychological tradition, define important terms like shadow or archetype, and explore how this way of interfacing with the psyche can inform psychedelic work for both facilitators and psychonauts alike.
There is a high likelihood we may encounter a mythical beast or two along the way as well. Thanks for being here. Onwards.
When you think about psychology, what images come to mind? A person laying down on a couch, talking about their mother? A man with a thick European accent, cryptically jotting down someone’s dreams? Ink blot tests? Cigars?
Believe it or not, all of these clichés come from the tradition of depth psychology. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who’s work we will examine later, were both depth psychologists. But before we get any further, let’s take the advice given to young Alice during her first bleary steps into Wonderland, and begin at the beginning.
What Is Depth Psychology?
Traditionally, depth psychology was any method of psychoanalytic work which focused on the unconscious. Today, the term “depth” is often used as a shorthand for the various permutations of thought influenced by Carl Jung, which can include everything from mythology, to archetypal astrology, to Internal Family Systems Therapy.
Despite Jung’s enduring association with the term, “depth psychology” was actually coined in the early 20th century by one of his colleagues, the Swiss psychoanalyst Eugen Bleuler, who also coined the term schizophrenia.
Depth psychology differs from other schools of psychology (behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, etc.) in that it takes the unconsciousas the primary driving force on our behaviors and emotions. Because it is itself unconscious, the unconscious cannot be known by our usual, logical, and rational ways of “knowing.”
Therefore, depth psychology employs the use of symbols, images, and metaphors to translate the language of the psyche, which historically was approached through dreams and patterns in mythology. Working with myth is one of the hallmarks of the “depth approach,” and clearly distinguishes this field of psychology from others.
Yet it is important to remember that in depth psychology, symbols and images are always used to describe something “as if,” and not as literal representations. This is one of the most important tenets of depth psychology: Images and symbols are used by the psyche to reference something deeper and likely unknown, yet something that our psyche yearns for us to discover. In true depth psychology, there is always space for the unknown.
The etymological roots of the word psychology can be understood as “the way into” or “the study of the soul.” Depth psychology emphasizes this ineffable notion of the soul, and continually places this unknowable facet of the human experience at its core. What this means in practical terms is a focus on the most important and vexing issues which have accompanied humanity since the dawn of time: birth, death, love, loss, mystery, purpose, growth, decay, and the meaning of it all. The very things which make us human.
Who Is Carl Jung?
Carl Gustav (C.G.) Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist who helped shape psychology into the discipline we know today. His method of understanding the psyche, which he termed analytical psychology, forms what is now popularly called “Jungian psychology.”
For many years, Jung was slated to become Sigmund Freud’s “crowned prince” and protege, but their paths diverged in 1912 over disagreements as to the reality of the ‘collective unconscious,’ which Frued summarily rejected. Jung’s insistence that there is an ancient, unknowable, species-wide repository of psychic information which informs the human experience flew in the face of Freud’s increasingly dogmatic theories, which focused on sex and pleasure as the driving forces behind all human behavior.
This break led Jung into a long period of introspection which he termed his “confrontation with the unconscious,” during which he delved deep into his own psyche and imagination. Eventually, this process resulted in his detailed map and terminology of the psyche, his practice of active imagination, as well as The Red Book, and the recently published, Black Books.
Jung employed a variety of terms to describe his understanding of the psyche and all of the mysterious dynamics he observed within his patients (especially those suffering from severe schizophrenia), and within himself. Concepts such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, the shadow, anima, synchronicity, individuation, and the Self, are all terms that Jung coined and wrote about extensively. They are also topics we discuss in our course that explores psychedelics and depth psychology, Imagination as Revelation: The Psychedelic Experience in the Light Jungian Psychology.
Yet again, it bears repeating that these terms are to be understood as mere symbols or points on a map, referring to places or dynamics within the psyche that our conscious mind struggles to grasp. Jung himself said, “Theories in psychology are the very devil. It is true that we need certain points of view for orienting… but they should always be regarded as mere auxiliary concepts that can be laid aside at any time.”
Depth Psychology and Popular Culture
While the mainstream psychological establishment has eschewed the work of Jung for many decades, his legacy informs our collective imagination and culture in profound ways, perhaps more than any other figure in the history of psychology.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell drew deeply from Jung’s work, and based many of his ideas of The Hero’s Journeyon Jung’s theories. George Lucas consulted with Campbell while creating Star Wars, arguably one of the most significant film series of all time. The poet Robert Bly mentions Jung throughout his book Iron John, which paved the way for the body of work that is now called “men’s work.” Jungian analyst and author Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her enduring text, Women Who Run With the Wolves, worked directly with Jungian concepts to address aspects of the feminine psyche.
Any reference to ‘archetypes’ or something being ‘archetypal’ plainly invokes Jung and his work on these illusive, yet omnipresent patterns of being. The shadow, or ‘shadow work,’ which has become something of a buzzword in psychedelics in recent years, conjures Jung as well. We have a whole course that examines Jung’s concepts of the shadow, the difference between the ‘Golden’ and ‘Dark’ shadow, and other related issues called, Psychedelics and the Shadow: Exploring the Shadow Side of Psychedelia.
Similarly, Jung also coined the term ‘synchronicity,’ which could be defined as a meaningful coincidence, and was a phenomenon that captivated him for decades. Lastly, any reference to ‘the collective,’ harkens to Jung’s notions of the ‘collective unconscious,’ which is a foundational aspect of his psychological model, and which we’ll address in our next article in this “Psychedelics in Depth” series.
Despite all of these enduring contributions, Jung still remains somewhat of a marginal figure. There are a multitude of reasons for this, a major one being that his theories escape empirical measurement, and eventually lead one outside the rational-materialist worldview we now call “science.” Mention Jung’s name in most mainstream psychology degree programs and the odds are you will be met with skepticism.
Subversion and marginality have arguably always been at the core of depth psychology. Dreams themselves exist at the margins of our consciousness, and can often direct our attention to marginal areas of our psyche which we would rather not see. Concepts such as the anima/animus, which imply that every male has inside him a female soul (and vice-versa), directly subverts our culture’s basic understanding of gender. Archetypes reveal to us that our personal life story is not a unique, singular event, but rather, connected to a greater chain of human experiences.
Lastly, depth psychology’s pervasive insistence on the reality of the soul can be seen as a revolutionary act within a culture that seeks to actively deny the very existence of such a thing. The consequences of this denial can be seen within every great historical, interpersonal, and environmental tragedy perpetrated upon people and the planet across time.
Therefore, the significance of depth psychology extends far beyond the confines of the therapists’ office or the university lecture hall, and stretches out into the old growth forests, indigenous communities, and inner cities across the world.
Depth psychology is not just a school of psychology, but a lens through which to intimately perceive and meaningfully engage with the wider world.
Depth Psychology and Psychedelics
Depth psychology offers an immensely useful framework for approaching psychedelic work, both as a facilitator and a psychonaut. Stanislav Grof, pioneer of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and transpersonal psychology and one of our biggest influences here at Psychedelics Today, described the role that psychedelics play as a psychic “abreactive,” meaning that they bring to the surface whatever unconscious material has the most emotional charge. Seen from this lens, psychedelics, which often work directly with unconscious material, could therefore be seen as part and parcel to the larger field of depth psychology.
Interpreting the variety of imagery and experiences that psychedelics can evoke can easily be aided by a grounding in basic depth psychology, especially understanding the interplay between image, archetypes, and complexes. Facing and integrating one’s shadow is a central aspect of both Jung’s work and using the psychedelic experience for personal growth and healing.
Many worthwhile books have been written on the interplay between psychedelics and depth psychology, including Grof’s body of work, Confrontation with the Unconscious, and much of the work by Ann Shulgin,Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner. Yet the interplay between depth psychology and psychedelics offers immense potential in the realms of research, therapeutic methodology, and integration—more so than I believe has been fully realized.
The history of psychedelic research is almost inseparable from the tradition of depth psychology. Stanislav Grof, mentioned above, as well as other early psychedelic researchers, approached their work from a depth psychological lens. Because of certain cultural shifts over the 20th century, current psychedelic research prioritizes quantitative and statistical analysis which can often overlook the highly personal and emotional aspects of the psychedelic experience.
Yet, depth psychology requires us to return to the real, troublesome, subjective experiences of the individual as its primary territory of work, and for this reason offers one of the most valuable lenses from which to view the psychedelic experience. Because, just like human beings, no two psychedelic journeys are alike, since they are in essence reflections of the multifaceted and endlessly mysterious inner world of the brave souls who dare to explore their own uncharted depths.
About the Author
Simon Yugler is a depth and psychedelic integration therapist based in Portland, OR with a masters (MA) in depth counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Weaving Jungian psychology, Internal Family Systems therapy, and mythology, Simon also draws on his diverse experiences learning from indigenous cultures around the world, including the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition. He has a background in experiential education, and has led immersive international journeys for young adults across 10 countries. He is passionate about initiation, men’s work, indigenous rights, decolonization, and helping his clients explore the liminal wilds of the soul. Find out more on his website and on Instagram , Twitter (@depth_medicine) or Facebook.
About the Illustrator
Martin Clarke is a British Designer and Illustrator from Nottingham, England. Specializing in branding, marketing and visual communication, Martin excels at creating bespoke brand identities and striking visual content across multiple platforms for web, social media, print and packaging. See more of his work here.
In this episode, Joe interviews Daniel Moler: author, artist, comic book creator, and sanctioned teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (a form of Peruvian shamanism).
Moler talks about the Psychonaut Presents comic series he writes and illustrates, which delves into his experiences with consciousness exploration, most notably in his first ayahuasca experience and the subsequent experiences he’s had through his shamanic training. And he talks about his pathway to shamanism, the attention shamanism places on the act of service and bringing wisdom from the experience back into the world, and the importance of finding your flow and aligning with its current.
He discusses San Pedro: how much he loves it, how he uses it in conjunction with Singado, and how it enhances his facilitation work. And he talks about Alan Moore, the Kamasqa Curanderismo Tradition, Terence McKenna, Aleister Crowley, Chaos Magick, Rick Strassman, how Christian and Catholic-based iconography became a part of Indigenous traditions, and how the worlds of science and traditional Indigenous culture could learn from each other for the betterment of all.
Notable Quotes
“There are Christian shamans. There are Islamic shamans. There’s shamans from various types of pagan traditions. So it doesn’t have to be locked into this framework of: ‘Oh, it’s only Indigenous tribal peoples that have a shamanic framework.’ Because shamanism is just about having that direct experience with the world of soul and then expressing that, bringing that out into the world in a way that helps benefit the planet. There’s a lot of controversy around the word, but I’ve, over the years, just learned to kind of shun that. It’s the word we have right now. It’s what we’re using.”
“When you have found your soul’s purpose, you have found a way to operate in the universe where the universe works along with you to help align your life in the direction that you would like it to lead.”
“A vital component of shamanism is that everything has a consciousness. Everything is alive, and especially these medicines. They’re not tools. Some people refer to these as shamanic tools. That would be like referring to my wife as a tool, or to you as a tool in this conversation. You’re a consciousness and I’m a consciousness and we’re two people participating together.” “Don’t just follow some kind of ritual paradigm, because it may not work. You’ve got to do what works for you, so find a method and a formula that works. And you know it’s going to work and that it’s going to be valid for you because every time you do it, it works. You have repeated, repeatable results.”
Daniel Moler is an author, artist, and astral entrepreneur. He is writer, artist, and creator of the hit comic seriesPsychonaut Presents, the author ofShamanic Qabalah: A Mystical Path to Uniting the Tree of Life & the Great Work from Llewellyn Worldwide, as well as the psychedelic urban fantasyRED Mass, and the Terence McKenna guidebookMachine Elves 101. He has also made contributions in Ross Heaven’s bookCactus of Mystery: The Shamanic Powers of the Peruvian San Pedro Cactus andLlewellyn’s 2020, 2021, and 2022 Magical Almanacs, among numerous other articles in journals and magazines around the world. In April 2019, he was noted asAuthor of the Month by best-selling author and researcher Graham Hancock. Daniel is a sanctioned teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, a form of Peruvian shamanism brought to the U.S. by respected curandero don Oscar Miro-Quesada. Visit Daniel online atdanielmolerweb.com.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe, Michelle, Kyle, and David are joined by pastNavigating Psychedelics student and Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University, Manesh Girn.
Everyone was excited but also extremely confused about last week’s story on psilocybin inducing “rapid and persistent” growth in the dendritic spines of mice, so we thought it made a lot of sense to bring a friend on the show who understands this stuff and can explain it to those of us who don’t regularly study neuroscience. What are dendritic spines? What does “learned helplessness” mean? How about elevated excitatory neurotransmission? What is a “head twitch response”? Ketanserin? Girn thankfully explains it all and stays with the team for this week’s news.
They first review Michael Pollan’s recent op-ed in the New York Times titled, “How Should We Do Drugs Now?”, which unfortunately focused on medical and Indigenous-use as the only reasonable paths forward, and gets everyone questioning why drug use for pleasure isn’t viewed as therapeutic, where our responsibility lies as members of the media when it comes to drug safety, and how harm reduction and safety measures can increase stigma around drug use. They also talk about Senate Bill 519’s progress and the wrong turn its committee recently took in removing social-sharing from the bill, the normalization of DMT use (and the idea of “needing an escape”), and how Michelle is trying to meet aliens.
Notable Quotes
“In humans, how I think about it, is that the neuroplasticity just gives your brain more resources to encode the insights and the experiences that you go through. So you have this radical experience where you might have insight into your patterns, into your traumas, etc., but then in order to last in a lasting way in your brain, you need some degree of neuroplasticity and it’s kind of giving you the push there. I think they both synergize with each other. I think if you have this boost in neuroplasticity, you can really exploit and leverage it with conscious intention.” -Manesh
“I think a lot of folks are creating their own rituals which do ground them, and they don’t have to be appropriations of Indigenous culture or appropriations of the medical model. I think, for most folks, they’re kind of somewhere in the middle. I know my rituals look nothing like either of those approaches. …I just feel like this conversation is often forgetting what real people in real time are doing.” -Michelle
“People go to festivals or concerts and use these substances or use them in situations where there’s more social bonding happening, and doing it for that more pleasure [purpose]; why is that wrong? I’m just even thinking in terms of therapy. It’s like, ‘Oh, if we’re not digging into your biographical history or trauma, then what are we doing here?’ Can we bring pleasure into our human experience at times without feeling so guilty or some sort of shame around it?” -Kyle “I think 1/7th of the world’s population in 20 to 40 years will be a permanent migrant class with no real home. We’ve got some work to do. Do we really want to keep locking people up for cocaine when we could be solving real problems here? …How dangerous is MDMA? It’s about as dangerous as riding a horse. Why do we care so much? LSD and psilocybin? Safest drugs ever, according to David Nutt. What are we doing?” -Joe
Manesh is a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University and has been lead or co-author on over a dozen scientific publications and book chapters on topics including psychedelics, meditation, mind-wandering, and the default-mode network. His PhD dissertation focuses on the default-mode network and he is also conducting research on the brain mechanisms underlying LSD, psilocybin, and DMT in collaboration with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and others from the Imperial College London Center for Psychedelic Research. In his free time, he also runs a YouTube channel, The Psychedelic Scientist, where he discusses the latest findings in psychedelic science in an easy to understand, but non-superficial form.
In this episode, Joe interviews psychologist and adjunct professor at Capella University, Dr. Sean Hinton.
Hinton talks about his early days at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sophia University) and his realization of how common numinous experiences are and how seldom people talked about them at the time. And he talks about how so many research studies just reinforce what we already know or want to further prove, existentialism and existential psychologist Rollo May, and Timothy Leary and his cultural, non-medicalized approach to research.
And he talks about a lot more in this very free-ranging conversation: Portugal and their model for legalization, James Fadiman, James Hillman, addiction, heroin, Norman Rockwell, LSD, John Quincy Adams, microbreweries, William James, gun control, monotheism, and more!
But his main focus is what we do next if we get these substances rescheduled: How do we view integration outside the medical model? How do we view these tools anthropologically and sociologically and keep them from being solely medicalized? And how do we handle regulation as the “price we pay for civilization” without becoming progress-blocking bureaucrats?
Notable Quotes
“Consider the field a table. Now consider your half of the table as your half of the table and then divide that into quarters, and then divide that again, and when you get down to something that’s too small to put your plate on; that’s what you want to do your research on. It’s always a very, very small area of what is already known but hasn’t been illuminated sufficiently.”
“That’s the question: What kind of world are we going to live in? It’s fun to talk about trip stories and it’s fun to talk about the latest and greatest synthetic drugs and neuroscience, but what’s it really mean to the lives of those people who would like to have a more expansive, happier, content, paradisal life, as opposed to struggling through tyranny?” “That’s where the thinking went. It’s typical American privatism at its best. ‘You can’t show me the usefulness of it, [so] why should we pursue it?’ And usefulness means it makes money. American pragmatism is just a branch of capitalism.” “When you start confusing the roadmap to what the reality is, they’re two different things. It’s great to think of myself as a bunch of neurons and stuff like that. Well, that’s a great roadmap, but I’m sorry, what I’m experiencing is something that needs understanding, as Hillman would say. So how do we integrate this understanding part of ourselves with a society that’s cohesive enough to allow for those understandings, or open and unafraid? All the good stuff comes from places that are open and unafraid.”
Sean Hinton is a psychologist counseling individuals in their personal and spiritual growth, an executive consultant to business leaders, and a lecturer and graduate school instructor in psychology.
He often works with professionals in organizations to grow into their leadership roles in ways that both satisfies them in spirit and produces positive results in their organizational and personal life. He works with women and men in transition, stage of life challenges, and existential crisis of loss, life purpose or changing relationships.
He earned his PhD at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and received an MBA in management from Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management, an MA in education, and a MACP in clinical psychology.
How do you draw the line between a healthy escape and a dissociative disorder? And could dissociative psychedelics like ketamine play a part?
We live in a deeply interconnected world. From our ecosystems to our societies, the Earth is made up of living things held in dynamic relationships. We as humans are deeply woven into this fabric. But sometimes, all this connection can be too much to hold. Whether from acute trauma, overstimulation, or constant societal stress, our bodies have built-in intelligence that allows us to dissociate or disconnect from our current experience when we’ve reached our saturation point.
On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of how we cope with and heal from traumatic experiences has been front of mind. I spoke with somatic practitioner, Claudia Cuentas, MA, MFT, and Psy.D., psychologist, ketamine specialist and founder of KRIYA (Ketamine Research Institute), Raquel Bennett, to discuss the psychology of dissociation, what happens when it becomes a disorder, the healing power of escapism, and where psychedelics like ketamine fit into the conversation.
It turns out, dissociation isn’t all bad.
A Term With Many Meanings: What Is Dissociation?
So, what exactly is dissociation?
Raquel Bennett, who has been studying therapeutic ketamine since 2002 and who teaches the Masterclass on Ketamine in our Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course, put it this way: “There are different kinds of dissociation or disconnection, including dissociation from your body or bodily sensations; dissociation from your thoughts or awareness; and dissociation from your biographical history, identity, or sense of self.”
Claudia Cuentas explained it another way. “Dissociation is a physiological self protective response, and it is activated when the body feels saturated or overwhelmed by an input or by too much information at once. That information can come from an internal or external stimulus. Dissociation is our bodies’ ability to remove its attention from the present and take a break, pause and/or, hopefully, recalibrate back into presence. Children do it all the time. That gazing and daydreaming is self-regulating. It is an amazing regulatory system we have.”
While they may look the same from the outside, many experts say that dissociation is different from absent mindedness. Many of us can relate to driving home and not remembering the drive, or checking out during a meeting because we are distracted by something going on in our personal lives. Dissociation is a common experience, and not necessarily a cause for concern. The question is: Is dissociation or the dissociation patterns you have developed to cope with internal/external stressors interrupting your ability to enjoy life?
On top of this, the pressures of modern life can almost be too much to bear at times. We are inundated with unlimited newsfeeds and chaotic information overload in a way that no generation has ever been. What are embodied creatures like us meant to do with the realities of systemic injustice, climate catastrophe, and economic collapse, on top of personal concerns like relationships, mortgages, and health issues?
In response to these pressures, we’ve normalized a culture of disconnection. Checking out of life may become a habitual way of coping with the strain of daily life: binge watching TV or scrolling on social media. Gaming out. Numbing with drugs or alcohol. Swiping on Tinder. These are activities that put us in passive roles and don’t require our engaged presence or participation.
Dissociative Disorders
Tuning out itself isn’t necessarily problematic. When it comes as a response to overstimulation, it serves a purpose and then the person can return to present awareness naturally when they feel ready. However, this disconnection can sometimes happen involuntarily or becomes a default way of moving through life. Often, chronic dissociation comes as a result of acute or ongoing trauma.
For people living with dissociative states, this disconnection from one’s body, mind, emotions or identity can be distressing and have a major impact on relationships and quality of life. They may experience depersonalization (feeling as though they don’t control their body, thoughts or emotions) or derealization (a disruption in one’s perception of reality, as though the world is unreal, hazy or flat).
Dissociation can show up in a lot of ways: tuning out during a difficult conversation, personality changes, forgetting major memories or stretches of time, difficulty staying present during sex, or feeling unaware of one’s own body. Sometimes these episodes begin in response to overstimulation or an event that triggers traumatic memory or association.
I asked Cuentas how these disorders happen, and how they might be addressed.
“At times, we may feel that life is not that safe or that the present is not that safe. This is especially true when there has not been an ability to heal, digest and process past trauma and understand why an experience was so frightening or difficult. People don’t want to feel present because if they do, they will be overwhelmed by sensations associated with pain, sadness, overwhelm. The body sends a signal to the brain through the nervous system, and the brain and/orr the body disconnect from the present reality. So the mind says, I am going to release attention from the whole system so that you are here… but not here. I am going to keep you safe.. This way, you don’t have to feel the pain you have gone through.”
“Dissociative diagnoses arise when we are using this way of coping as an unconscious default,” she adds. “Sometimes people struggle because they aren’t feeling like themselves. Maybe everything is numb. Or they feel like they are witnessing a facade of somebody else. Most of the time, dissociative diagnoses are connected to intense, deep, unaddressed trauma from very early on stages of life.”
This questionnaire is a useful tool for distinguishing between normal and problematic dissociative experiences.
Could Somatic Practices & Dissociative Drugs Like Ketamine Be The Path Back?
According to Cuentas, the way to alleviate dissociative disorders is to increase one’s tolerance over time for sensations that may be uncomfortable or overwhelming, essentially moving through the trauma at a pace that’s comfortable and tolerable to the individual.
“We have to get beyond this self-protection mechanism that kicks in automatically. So how do we decode the experience to relieve the body from the automatic response in order to enjoy the present? If you keep unconsciously self protecting to not feel the pain, then you’re missing everything– joy, love, intimacy, all your senses. You turn off your ability to sense comfortable or uncomfortable experiences, like enjoying a sky full of colors, feeling the softness of your skin, hearing a song and go, ‘wow, I like that’. It’s numbing, and the person may not, at times, even realize.”
Finding pleasurable ways to exist in one’s body is an essential part of processing, healing, and moving through trauma. Many trauma therapists work with a particular focus on the body, known as “somatic” practices. This is essential because, although the mind can check in and out through dissociation, the body carries the load of a lifetime of experiences. Cuentas’ work focuses on the use of embodied approaches, like art, dance, music, drama and storytelling as healing modalities for families and communities.
Psychedelic substances may offer another path to doing this work. Part of the theory around why psychedelics help with trauma is related to capacity building. By promoting states of openness, they create opportunities for people to re-engage with painful or traumatic experiences and form new relationships to these memories.
Psilocybin and MDMA have received the most press in recent years, but ketamine has held a steady role as one of the only legal psychedelics clinicians can currently offer. It’s common to hear people speak about ketamine as a dissociative. I asked Bennett her thoughts on this classification.
“When you take ketamine, you may be dissociated from your body; in other words, the signals from your sensory input organs may be temporarily muted,” she says. “However, when ketamine is utilized in a physically and psychologically safe setting, people tend to be keenly aware of or connected with their own thoughts and internal images.”
The dissociation felt with ketamine is more physiological than psychological. I asked Cuentas to expand upon this. She explained that, based on a somatic perspective, it seems like ketamine temporarily disconnects the body and the mind, whereas the coping mechanism of dissociation can often disconnect people from their own consciousness as well.
“Seems like Ketamine can turn the body off so the mind doesn’t have to negotiate how to to keep the body safe or what to do with the body’s intense signals of stress, which are common during or after traumatic experiences,” says Cuentas. “So for a period of time, it may not have to navigate the usual intensity and discomfort. If this happens, the mind is released from its usual concerns/stressors, and its attention can possibly concentrate on other sensations or realms of awareness.”
“As the body experiences numbness or dissociation, it is still tracking the experience, but not reacting. When a body is affected by an anesthetic like Ketamine for therapeutic uses, it will put the body in a highly suggestible state,” Cuentas adds. “From a somatic perspective, there is a window of time as a person is coming back to feeling their body again— that is the moment of doing a lot of processing. I believe this is possibly the most effective way to work with ketamine. Whatever happens in this window of reconnection between unconsciousness and consciousness or body awareness, will be recorded in the body. You would have to be intentional because whatever you introduce in that state can have a great impact on your psyche.”
Returning To Safety From Dissociative Disorders
Dissociation is the human body’s way of trying to achieve safety. As we are unlearning automatic responses that don’t serve us, the need for a sense of safety is still present. How do we develop a sense of safety within ourselves when we can’t guarantee it in our external environment? Therapists refer to resourcing—tools that help people develop a higher tolerance for discomfort. In this way, we can stay in the present moment longer without needing to dissociate.
Especially for people from marginalized communities, creating microcosms of safety, even temporary ones, can be essential practice for dealing with life. These pods of comfort can come from affinity spaces, keeping a close inner circle, getting immersed in something you love, and for some people, exploring altered states.
In pursuit of safety, a natural response to triggering scenarios is to remove oneself from further harm. However, safety can’t necessarily be achieved in a societal context which is inherently unsafe for many people in our communities. Some people may feel they always have to be shut down or running to escape harm. For these folks, there is an even greater need for networks of support and practical tools that grow the ability to stay present. It can be empowering and freeing to stay present through a practice of pleasure, feeling the body’s sensations, and finding what feels positive and safe in the here and now.
When Dissociation Can Be a Positive
For those of us not dealing with chronic dissociation, the question to ask is whether we are habitually checking out from the present moment and if so, what shifts in these habits might help us have a more fulfilling quality of life. Perhaps instead of relying on screens or substances to wind down, we could incorporate activities that invite pleasurable presence: music, dance, breath work, meditation, meals, or the company of a loved one. It helps to view this as something to practice, rather than something to be good or bad at.
On the other hand, escapism isn’t always a bad thing. There is agency in choosing when and how to turn off the outside world for a while. In order to absorb the benefits of this freedom, dissociating needs to be something that is consciously chosen, rather than an automatic stress based response.
In some ways, escapism is a combination of dissociation and resourcing. Tuning out on purpose, or even altering one’s perception, can offer a healthy way to find rest and recovery from the concerns of daily life. It can also help us to remember what it is like to feel good and build capacity for pleasure. Feeling good is an essential part of our healing.
Grammy nominated singer Jhené Aiko often writes songs about the use of cannabis and psychedelics as medicine. As a mixed race woman of color, she poetically contrasts the peaceful haze of altered states and the harsh realities of the world outside.
She says it well in her hit, “Tryna Smoke”:
Life’s no fairytale, I know all too well/ Gotta plant the seed sometimes /Then you let it grow
Inhale, exhale some more/ Heaven in Hell/ If you know, you know/ That sh*t is beautiful
You gotta just let it go/ Spark up a blunt and smoke
Similarly, in her song “Bed Peace”, featuring Childish Gambino, she sings:
Yeah, what I am trying to say is/ That love is ours to make so we should make it
Everything else can wait/ The time is ours to take so we should take it
We should stay right here/ We should lay right here’Cause everything is okay right here
Conclusion: Dissociation Is Complex
Dissociation is multifaceted. It can signal trauma, offer temporary respite from trauma, and potentially even a path to healing trauma.
Altered states of consciousness, whether from known dissociatives like ketamine, or other substances, give us an opportunity to choose when and how to leave our physical realms and return. They shift our awareness of our spirits, minds and bodies, and often create pleasurable sensations and new insights along the way.
Cuentas closes our conversation by reminding me that the intentions we bring to these experiences are important. “You are recording information in your subconscious/psyche. So what do you want to put there?” she asks.
We can’t necessarily make the world safer today. So there is power in creating microcosms of the world we are dreaming forward. In creating a practice of pleasure and joy, we’re able to fill our spirits like a well to draw upon during difficult experiences. Perhaps eventually, as these micro-moments of safety and resourcing find their way into our embodied realities, they will spread like mycelium and we will create a world that is less traumatizing to begin with.
This article was updated on July 19, 2021 to reflect changes by one of the sources.
Rebecca Martinez is a Xicana writer, parent and community organizer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform addressing the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement. Rebecca served as the Event & Volunteer Coordinator for the successful Measure 109 campaign, an unprecedented state initiative which creates a legal framework for psilocybin therapy in Oregon. She is also the author of Edge Play: Tales From a Quarter Life Crisis, a memoir about psychedelic healing after family trauma, spiritual abuse, and police violence. She serves on the Health Equity Subcommittee for Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board as well as the Board of Advisors for the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Joe, Michelle, and Kyle talk psilocybin, the DEA, patents, IP, and more, and are joined by newest Psychedelics Today team member, Psychotherapist and now Director of Operations and Strategic Growth, David Drapkin.
They first review a recent study in which mice showed a long-term elevation in neurotransmission and improved stress reactions after receiving psilocybin, and they talk about post-experience glow, the REBUS model, and the best timing to focus on integration after an experience.
Then things turn a bit sour, with a story on the DEA asking a court to throw out a case against them filed by two cancer patients claiming the Right to Try Act should allow them to use psilocybin, on the basis that their end-of-life care would lead to more black market activity. That, combined with a Vice article pointing out that companies can patent products or techniques based solely on theories (and this is already happening) and Sha’Carri Richardson being banned from competing in the Olympics due to testing positive for cannabis in a legal state sends the team down a familiar rabbit hole on the evils of the drug war, the annoyance of patents, the race for lawyers, and the many concerns around IP, capitalism, and even climate change.
But they end on a higher note, with a Johns Hopkins study asking for participants to share their experiences with psilocybin and SSRIs, discussions on Francis Bacon, the renaissance, and eye-gazing, and a beautiful photo essay highlighting the traditions and rites of passage of the Huichol people and their relationship with peyote.
Notable Quotes
“This is not surprising from the DEA. …It does feel like we have a really big shift in drug policy and the culture around drug use in the US, and so I think the DEA’s kind of putting its foot down to be like, ‘Not so fast, psychonauts.’” -Michelle
“We’re talking about people here that are terminally ill. So this is not recreational use, this is not decrim. This is people that are terminally ill, so this is palliative care. And having worked in hospitals, I’ve specialized in addiction as well, so I know about medications that are legal. They’re not on that Schedule I, and they caused 90,000 deaths in America last year, and they’re called opioids; they’re not called psilocybin. So the whole idea of this scheduling system really doesn’t make sense anymore when we think about it from just an objective, empirical sense.” -David
“Where’s the leadership? ‘Saint’ Joe Biden said recently, ‘The rules are the rules’ in regards to this case, and it’s disgusting. I just can’t really get over his resistance on cannabis policy and his unseeing of the race issues.” -Joe “One of my favorite questions around IP: How many lives have been saved by IP and how many lives have been lost by IP? Fascinating. I don’t have any answer, I haven’t really spent the time to really think that through, but just on the face of it, you know that there’s some stuff going on there, because people die all the time from not being able to afford meds, and the meds are only expensive due to IP.” -Joe
“At the age of 21, I was electrocuted and nearly died, and literally, the next day, I went on a spiritual adventure that hasn’t finished yet.” -David
Keeno Ahmed-Jones shares her experience trying to instill anti-racism values at a major psychedelics institution, and how difficult it proved to be.
As progressive and inclusive as the psychedelic renaissance purports itself to be, there are continuing issues around understanding, respecting, and making efforts to expand equity and inclusion in psychedelic spaces. Without an honest recognition of how systemic issues are manifesting in the burgeoning psychedelic industry, the psychedelic renaissance will inevitably fail to help our world heal from painful, ongoing social injustices.
In October of 2020, MAPS Canada became the subject of these issues when an Open Letter and Call to Action was published. The authors, Keeno Ahmed-Jones and Ava Daeipour, detailed their efforts to help MAPS Canada implement ethical, socially conscious and culturally sensitive policies and move towards equitable access to psychedelics. These efforts were subsequently obstructed by the organization.
In this interview, we hear from Keeno Ahmed-Jones about her experiences that led to the Open Letter and Call to Action. She shares details of her professional background in education advocacy and policy work, and how it helped inform her endeavors at MAPS Canada.
*Note to reader: This interview took place in March of 2021. In the weeks that followed, a second Open Letter was written addressing further issues with the MAPS Canada board. In the past three months, three members of MAPS Canada’s board have resigned.
Sean Lawlor: Can you describe how you came to work for MAPS Canada?
Keeno Ahmed-Jones: I moved to Canada in 2018, after being in New York for over 20 years. My professional background is in K-12 and adult education; I’ve worked in public service for a long time, including for major governmental organizations. My first exposure to systemic stratification in the context of educational opportunities was during my tenure at the New York City Department of Education, which, at the time, served 1.2 million school-aged students. I then served for several years advising the Board of Regents and leadership at the New York State Department of Education on programs and policies for adults and out-of-school youth. When I came to Vancouver, my birthplace, I knew of the research that MAPS was doing on MDMA, saw there was a chapter here, and was interested in seeing how I could contribute to their efforts as a volunteer.
Given my background, I started volunteering on the policy committee, but when I saw that they were well situated, I asked if there was a diversity committee. One thing that was very notable to me upon attending the first general volunteer meeting was the lack of people of color in attendance; out of the 40-plus people there, I was one of three in the room from a racialized background. And so, when I found out that there wasn’t an active diversity committee, I started one, which I co-led with another woman, Ava Daeipour, who ended up helping me write the open letter and call to action sent to MAPS Canada. The letter brought into high relief a lot of the issues that I think are endemic not only for MAPS Canada as an organization, but really… you hear the term “psychedelic renaissance” bandied around, and I think that psychedelic renaissance really needs to raise the bar, based on my experiences at least.
SL: Specifically in terms of diversity?
KAJ: Diversity is one element. But beyond that, I think MAPS Canada really had the opportunity to become an exemplar of an organization and, unfortunately, instead of listening to people such as myself trying to inform and educate them on how to become a twenty-first century organization centered on anti-racist values, collective liberation, and the tenets of cultural humility, they really actively resisted that.
I understand their advocacy for psychedelics, but I think there is an essential question that MAPS Canada and other organizations in this space need to ask, which is beyond diversity. “Is the playing field equal?” Every organization, non-profit or not, loves to talk about “corporate social responsibility,” and publicly place those statements front and center, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the gaping inequalities that came to the fore in 2020. The pandemic illuminated a wide chasm that exists between the haves and the have-nots. And the murder of George Floyd compounded that reality into vivid detail for a lot of people that didn’t understand the traumas that people of color have had to endure—and I want to specifically forefront Black and Indigenous folks who have lived under the yoke of that oppression in North America.
But, beyond the logistical hurdles around regulatory frameworks and proselytizing about legalizing psychedelics—and I do understand the passion and advocacy for that—when it comes to eventual access to these novel MDMA and other psychedelic treatments, some key questions need to be answered. Who’s going to be first in line to receive these treatments? Who’s going to be administering them? Who’s going to be doing the integration work? I’ll venture to guess that the clinic up the street from my old office in New York City charging $4000 for a course of ketamine sessions is not within reach for the vast majority of people.
SL: For folks who are less familiar with the situation, would you be willing to share more about what happened at MAPS Canada, and your experience in the wake of the open letter?
KAJ: I came to my volunteer role from a background where my work was mediated via a policy lens, with a lot of value placed on collaborative and community-based approaches. Gaining diverse perspectives and working within a framework that ensured equity and inclusion was critical because in my work, decisions had the power to materially impact very marginalized people who were already struggling and in need of fierce advocates. And one of the things I came to value through those experiences was being on the ground with people knee-deep in those efforts, including people living those stories of struggle. I find that kind of work not just a calling, but a privilege.
At MAPS Canada, I did not see those conversations happening, frankly—internally or externally. There seemed to be no interest nor engagement. So, one of the things that I started to advocate for early on was introducing a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) framework, and talking about collective liberation—which were both in various stages of implementation at MAPS in the US, so I thought that both would be relatively easy to adopt. But I was basically told: hold the phone; we are not about collective liberation, and MAPS Canada is not a “save the whales” organization. It was incredible to hear someone actually say that to my face.
After living in New York City, I think I had a bit of a mythologized vision of what life would be like in Canada, to be in a community that I thought had a better, more compassionate understanding of racism and colonialism. And I quickly found that was very much not the case. Rather, it’s been more problematic, because a lot of people are under the delusion that Canada is a post-racial society. Of course, that myth is quickly debunked if you look around, whether that’s at the overrepresentation of Blacks in the prison population, the deplorable treatment of First Nations in the healthcare system, racial inequities in school suspensions, police surveillance, wage inequities, I could go on.
So, while MAPS Canada released quasi-apologetic statements after the open letter came out about having limited staff, and claims about suffering from the affliction of being white with blind spots, and so on [Psychedelics Today tried to find the links to these statements but could not]… a huge part of what occurred, and what is happening across the psychedelic domain, comes down to worldview. It’s a values decision. And, as far as boardrooms of nonprofits and for profits, white voices, most of them male, are what is valued.
And so, instead of true coalition building, stepping down from that pedestal to engage in critical dialogue around equity, access, and reciprocity, there’s a Gollum effect taking place, a sort of metastasizing hunger for the psychedelic gold ring, if you will. There are the pandemic Instagram photos of these same folks in Costa Rica scoping out places for retreat centers, or multinational corporations looking for real estate in the downtown eastside of Vancouver to open for-profit clinics.
SL: Thank you for sharing all that. Once you put out the open letter, was there any change or acknowledgement? I know there was a lot of exposure around it, but do you feel that it was heard?
KAJ: Well, materially, has there been any change? Not to my knowledge. I know that a lot of declarations have been made, not only from MAPS Canada, but other organizations in this space that are adjacent to MAPS Canada. I feel like when an organization goes through a bit of a public relations debacle, like MAPS Canada did, the propensity is to do damage control. And when you have an all-white board, for example, attempts are made to diversify that board. But just because you now have a brown or black face on your board, that doesn’t really mean anything. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
I think there needs to be a radical reimagining of what this “psychedelic renaissance” looks like. Many of these organizations have constructed these top-down, colonial projects with extractive ideologies, have conflicts of interest and undisclosed public/private partnerships, and lack accountability and transparency. Those are major concerns that need to be addressed first and foremost, prior to thinking about whether your organization is diverse enough.
SL: So, the open letter was published in October 2020; what has your focus been? Are you still working in this psychedelic renaissance?
KAJ: I am, and thank you for asking that question. A lot of people have asked me that. I think one of the most brilliant things about the open letter was the support it received from all around the world—including Indigenous activists in Canada, the US, and the Global South. I’ve been in conversation with some of them, including in Canada, who shared their interactions with people in leadership at MAPS before and had less than stellar experiences, and so just did not want to engage.
I do have a project that’s in motion, which I hope to share soon, interwoven with the themes of psychedelics, social justice, mental health, and drug policy. And I am working with grassroots activists, practitioners, and other bright lights in the space envisioning sustainable models of self-determination and new ethical frameworks.
SL: I look forward to this project when the time comes to announce it. Last thing I want to ask: As you can probably tell, I am a white person working in the psychedelic field, and I want to keep getting more involved. Looking at the reality that there is a disproportionate amount of white people in this work, what would you suggest white folks in this movement do in order to help change these issues?
KAJ: I love that question and think it’s a good one. Taking the step to educate myself has always been a core tenet of my approach and what I recommend to others. There are so many resources out there on anti-racism. Read books about the colonization and history of the Americas authored by Black and Indigenous authors. Examine issues around white fragility. I think those are solid building blocks.
Being able to sit in that container of self-examination is really important—apart from the psychedelic journeys—because I think a lot of people go to that as a shortcut. But entheogens are not an antidote for racism. MDMA is not some sort of cosmic equalizer.
I think we need to think more holistically about understanding privilege, being in community, and doing a lot of listening. “Why is this space not more diverse?” I think that’s a huge question in these spaces. Why are the people attending these community meetings not representative of this city I live in? Is there something unwelcoming about this space?
I think it has to be a slow, gradual approach. It’s not going to happen overnight. There needs to be trust-building, community-building, and a lot of listening. That really takes time, intention, and effort, and I think it begins with an in-depth examination of privilege. These are deep assumptions and beliefs that people have held onto that have to be challenged.
Psychedelics Today reached out to MAPS Canada for a comment on how the organization has been moving forward since the Open Letters were published and the work (if any) that it is doing to be a more inclusive institution. Their Board Chair, Eesmyal Santos-Brault, provided us with this statement:
MAPS Canada has made significant changes in the past six months to its leadership, board of directors, governance, accountability reporting, and operational structure, and this work is ongoing. As part of this, we are undertaking the work of creating new codes of conduct, ethics, and practice for all current and future board members, staff, and volunteers. Our current diversity committee, which consists of eight volunteer members (all of whom represent a wide spectrum in terms of age, and self-defined gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, racial identification, indigeneity, spiritual beliefs, ability, and more) are leading MAPS Canada’s work to articulate and embed our commitment to equity, justice, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation within the structures of our organization and all that we do, beginning with a new Terms of Reference drafted by the committee in November, 2020. This work is ongoing, and we look forward to sharing our progress in these areas with all stakeholders and the public in the coming weeks and months.
This piece was updated on July 28, 2021. In the original article it said that three members of the MAPS Canada Board had resigned in the past two months, it has been changed to three months.
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
In this episode, Joe interviews former Navy SEAL and BUD/S instructor turned actor and star of two of his own TV shows (“Manhunt” on Discovery and “Predators Up Close” on Animal Planet), Joel Lambert.
Lambert talks about his 10 years as a Navy SEAL and the toll it took on his brain, from the microtraumas from repeated gunfire and other weaponry causing his memory, mood, and cognition to deteriorate, to the difficulty of adjusting back to normal civilian life after a decade of living at a speed and intensity normal people don’t understand- a transition for which we, as a society, don’t provide enough time and space. And with detailed description and humor, he tells the story of what saved his brain and brought him back to the person he once was: a trip to Mexico and amazing experiences with ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT.
He also talks about his more recent psychedelic experiences and how he no longer feels he needs psychedelics, how his meditation has become one of the biggest parts of his life, his “Manhunt” show, the future and scalability of psychedelic-assisted treatment, and his appreciation for Dr. Martin Polanco, Amber and Marcus of VETS, and the donor who made it possible for his life to completely change.
Notable Quotes
“When you look at warrior cultures throughout history, in almost every society that has a warrior tradition, there is some sort of ritual or acknowledgement of these warriors coming back from whatever it is they do and the medicine man or the shaman or the religious persona or function in the tribe would do something to isolate [them]. …Even the acknowledgement of a ritual purification; whether it is something specific and material and effective or not- just that acknowledgement is huge. And we don’t do that.” “We connect back to the myth, we connect back to the ritual. We connect back to the power of the collective unconscious in whatever way that it is we can bring that forward. And there’s a reason that it’s there and there’s a reason why we flounder when we are not connected to it.” “It started off with this buzzing. This nightmare buzzing started happening all around me. And then the visions. Boom. I had never seen, Joe, anything with my physical eyes with the clarity and distinction and reality that these visions were playing in my mind. And it’s a nightmare. It is a literal nightmare. ….It was an alien machine hell of fractals and a consciousness that was like nothing I could conceive of before experiencing this in this alien machine hell.”
“What’s crazy is I think I’m actually moving past the psychedelics now. It’s been amazing, it’s been incredible, and I’m a huge psychedelic proponent and fan and I want to bring this to people as much as possible, but what’s amazing is that with the meditation and with the practice and with, I think, the integration that the group has provided for me and my own integration and my own practices, it’s gotten to where my consciousness and the springboard that psychedelics provided has taken me to a place where I feel like I don’t need them.”
Originally from the Pacific Northwest and raised in a little logging town on the Columbia River, Joel Lambert grew up performing on stage and in commercials before selling all he had and running off to join the armed forces, where he served as a Navy SEAL for ten years, earning distinction and experiencing combat in places like Kosovo and Afghanistan. Returning home decorated and serving as a lead Instructor at BUD/S, the screening and selection school for men aspiring to join the elite Navy SEALs, he was drawn back into the world of film and television.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Joe, Michelle, and Kyle talk about the importance of critiquing established systems, give several legalization updates, and discuss inclusivity in therapy and research.
They first review an email from a listener who took issue with some of the points in Matt Ball’s episode and much of Joe’s continued open discussion of his illegal drug use. This leads to a discussion on ethics (professional vs. virtue-based and why there’s even a difference), how psychedelics are challenging perceptions, how psychology is used as a weapon, privilege, the need for more frameworks, the concept of licensure equating to knowledge, the need to be open about drug use, and more. And Joe has learned to not read email right before going to bed.
They then discuss updates on legalization: Mexico decriminalizing cannabis, Scott Weiner’s Senate Bill 519 making more progress in California, the Oregon psilocybin board being right on track for their legalization timeline, and Connecticut becoming the 18th state to legalize cannabis (with records expunged and, among other things, the ability to have 1.5 ounces in public and another 5 at home!). They also discuss the Canadian government funding Toronto-based Braxia Scientific in a ketamine trial for bipolar depression, and an article talking about the need to include more queer and non-binary people in clinical trials (and encourage people who aren’t straight and white to enter into therapeutic fields for the comfort of people like them).
Notable Quotes
“Helping decrease stigma through storytelling, I believe, is crucial. And I think that’s a big portion of why we’re here doing this show. How many of my drug experiences have been legal? I don’t know, I don’t think very many. I’m not going to go ahead and pretend that I went to the Amazon. I’m not going to lie to you. I just think it’s important to show that hey, these laws are unjust, I’m justified in breaking these laws, and I’m going to continue to do it.” -Joe
“I think maybe folks who think they identify as hetero; when they go into psychedelic experiences, they might realize that they’re suppressing some attraction to the same gender, [or] maybe they don’t identify as the gender they were born in. Stuff like that happens. And do we have the training and the sensitivity to help folks deal with that? I think the answer is: Not yet.” -Michelle
“There’s a lot of people who the medical system is not appropriate for, unfortunately. And is it their fault? Not necessarily. It could be racial trauma, it could be a lot of other factors going on. If you understand the history of medicine and a lot of the abuses in psychiatry, you will begin to understand why many folks have reticence of using the system.” -Joe
“Coming back to this topic that we’ve talked about over and over again about a mad society or sick society; ok, we’ve had these really powerful experiences so we go back and try to fit it into this mold that doesn’t seem to be working, or do we take this and try to do something else with it? Why do we always have to integrate back into society to some degree? If society is sick, why do I want to go back to that sick environment?” -Kyle
“I saw John Mayer wearing a peyote t-shirt on his Instagram the other day. That can’t be a good sign.” -Joe
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In this episode, released on Stan Grof’s 90th birthday, Joe interviews Kristina Soriano & Jonas Di Gregorio of the Psychedelic Literacy Fund, a donor-advised fund focused on educating the world about psychedelic therapies by financing the translation of classic books into different languages. Their first big project has been to publish new translations of Grof’s classic, The Way of the Psychonaut.
Kristina and Jonas first told us about their project back in December, and they’re back to update us on their fundraising progress: new translations, future projects, a new volunteer, and a generous grant through HalfmyDAF. They talk about experiences with ayahuasca and virtual reality, audiobooks and the joy of reading, how the translation process works, and the birth perinatal matrices.
And they talk a lot about Stan Grof, with Joe discussing how much his work has meant to him and the formation of Psychedelics Today, which was created largely to promote Grof’s work and the power of Holotropic Breathwork. If you want to donate to the furthering of Grof’s knowledge in honor of his birthday, please do so at Psychedelicliteracy.org.
Notable Quotes
“It’s so fortunate that we chose The Way of the Psychonaut as our first book because Stan is turning 90 years old this year and it’s a wonderful way to celebrate his dedication to this field of psychedelic psychotherapy. He’s devoted 60 years of his life to this, to pioneering this way, and it’s really an homage to his fierce courage and curiosity in bringing this message forward. And the receptivity that we’ve had from our project just really shows how much people have been affected and positively influenced by his work.” -Kristina
“When we speak about books about psychedelics, especially in countries where there is a different understanding of what they are, etc., [a] publisher can be very much reluctant and hesitant in translating them. And so that’s why, especially now, where clinical trials are showing these incredible results in the United States and a few more countries, it makes sense for philanthropy to think strategically [about] how these books can catalyze clinical trials and research in other countries.” -Jonas
“Stan is so positive. It’s so beautiful how he accepts this is the 9th decade of his life and [he’s taking] all of the pieces and putting them all in a row, so that way, the passing is smooth. And it’s such a beautiful acceptance of this reality. But also, we want to assure the people of this generation that it’s being passed on to a generation that respects and honors the pioneering efforts that they’ve done, and we’ll make good on that promise so that we will learn from the past and bring it forward in a way that’s holistic and healing for everyone. That’s my hope.” -Kristina
Husband-and-wife team, Jonas Di Gregorio and Kristina Soriano, established the Psychedelic Literacy Fund in May of 2020 as a donor-advised fund managed by RSF Social Finance in San Francisco. The vision of this fund is to educate the public about psychedelic therapies by financing the translation of books into different languages.
Kristina Soriano holds a Masters’s Degree in Healthcare Administration from Trinity University. A classically trained pianist and multi-instrumentalist, she is the Executive Director for the Women’s Visionary Congress.
Jonas Di Gregorio comes from an Italian family of publishers, Il Libraio Delle Stelle. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from La Sapienza University of Rome.
Defining transpersonal psychology, exploring its history, and examining how it relates to psychedelic experiences.
Transpersonal psychology, the branch of psychology that concerns itself with the study of spiritual experience and expanded states of consciousness, has often been excluded from traditional psychology programs. However, as we traverse the reaches of the psychedelic renaissance and interest in the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness continues to grow, understanding transpersonal psychology is of growing importance.
What Is Transpersonal Psychology?
Sometimes transpersonal psychology is referred to as “spiritual psychology” or “the psychology of spirituality” in that it is the branch of psychology that concerns itself with the domain of human experience that is not limited to ordinary, waking consciousness, transcending our typically defined ego-boundaries. As a discipline, transpersonal psychology honors the existence and latent wisdom contained within non-ordinary experiences, concerning itself with unravelling the implications of their meaning for the individual, but also for the greater whole. It attempts to combine age-old insights from ancient wisdom traditions with modern Western psychology, trying to encapsulate the full spectrum of the human psyche.
Prior to the inception of transpersonal psychology, the idea that psychologists should study spirituality was unheard of. Compared with traditional psychological approaches, transpersonal psychology takes a non-pathologizing approach to spiritual experience and non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Reflecting on the origins of the discipline, psychedelic researcher and author, Dr. James Fadiman, offers, “Transpersonal psychology, in its simplest definition, is concerned with understanding the full scope of consciousness, primarily within the human species, but not limited to that which can be described easily by Western science, religious or mystical traditions, nor by Indigenous categorizations.”
“Unlike the rest of psychology, it has not attempted to use the trappings of scientific method to make it more acceptable,” Fadiman adds. “As a result, it has often been identified pejoratively as part of the “new age” counterculture, since it freely investigated states of consciousness and approaches to personal growth and development that were not being looked at by the other psychologies.”
Although Fadiman is generally more well-known for his pioneering work in microdosing, he was one of the prominent figures in shaping the early transpersonal movement. Together with psychologist Robert Frager, Fadiman co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in 1975, now known as Sofia University.
The Birth of a Spiritual Psychology
Transpersonal psychology was formally launched in 1971 by psychologists Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich. It emerged as a “Fourth Force” within psychology, with the other three forces being cognitive behaviorism, psychoanalytic/Freudian psychology, and humanistic psychology.
In the 1950s, American psychology was dominated by the schools of cognitive behaviorism and Freudian psychology, however, many felt that these approaches to understanding the human psyche were limited and this growing dissatisfaction led to the birth of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology was closely linked to the transpersonal movement in that it was also founded by Maslow and many of the same individuals.
No longer a psychology of psychopathology, humanistic psychology concerned itself with the study of healthy individuals, focusing on human growth and potential. One of Maslow’s main qualms with behaviorism was the limitation of applying animal models to human behavior as this approach would only serve to illuminate the functions that we share with given animals. As such, he felt that behaviorism did not serve to enhance our understanding of the higher functions of our consciousness such as love, freedom, art, and beyond. Additionally, Maslow felt Freudian psychoanalysis was lacking due to its tendency to reduce the psyche to instinctual drives and draw on models of psychopathology.
Humanistic psychology attempted to take a holistic approach to human existence, concerning itself with self-actualization and the growth of love, fulfillment, and autonomy in individuals. Despite the popularity of the discipline, and the new “Human Potential Movement” that spawned around it, Maslow and others felt that there were some critical aspects lacking in humanistic psychology. Namely, the acknowledgement of the role of spirituality in people’s lives.
In 1967, a working group including the likes of Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Miles Vich, and Sonya Margulies met in Menlo Park, California with the aim of developing a new psychology that encapsulated the full spectrum of human experience, including non-ordinary states of consciousness. In this discussion, Stanislav Grof suggested the new discipline or Fourth Force should be called “transpersonal psychology.” Thereafter, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology was launched in 1969, and the Association of Transpersonal Psychology was founded in 1972.
Despite the formal beginnings of transpersonal psychology in the middle of the twentieth century, the movement has its conceptual roots in the early work of William James and Carl Jung, psychologists who were mutually interested in the spiritual reaches of the human psyche. Touching upon the relevance of Jung’s contributions to the field in his book Beyond the Brain, Dr. Stanislav Grof, one of the founding fathers of transpersonal psychology and pioneer in the field of psychedelic research, described Jung as, “The first representative of the transpersonal orientation in psychology.”
William James, father of American psychology, is also perceived to be one of the founders of modern transpersonal thought, making the first recorded use of the term “trans-personal” in a 1905 lecture. However, James’ use of the term was more narrow than the way it is used today. Not only did James’ philosophy contribute to the development of transpersonal psychology, his early experimentations with psychoactive substances, in particular nitrous oxide, have also added substantially to the psychology of mystical experiences and the scientific study of consciousness.
Reflecting on his experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience, James wrote, “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” It is these very forms of “entirely different” consciousness that transpersonal psychology concerns itself with.
Understanding the Nature of Transpersonal Experience
The term transpersonal literally means beyond (trans) the personal, and as such, transpersonal experiences are those which serve to evaporate and transcend our ordinary, waking consciousness. Although transpersonal experiences are sometimes induced spontaneously, they can also be brought on by contact with nature, engaging in contemplative practices like meditation, sex, music, and even by difficult psychological experiences. They can take place in a variety of forms, whether it be a spontaneously induced mystical state, out-of-body or near-death experience, a unitative state elicited by psychedelics, or even an alien encounter experience.
Transpersonal experiences are inherently transformative in that they usually serve to broaden our self-conception, often providing us with a broader cosmological perspective. Take for example, the experience of ego death, or ego-dissolution as it is referred to in the scientific literature, a type of transpersonal experience that can be triggered by the use of psychedelics. In the ego death experience, the ordinary sense of self fades into an experience of unity with ultimate reality or “cosmic consciousness.”
Such experiences are both fearful and enlightening, but are thought to be one of the reasons why the psychedelic experience is so transformative for so many people. Viewed through the transpersonal lens, ego death tends to be understood as a beneficial, healing process in which an individual is able to let go of old ego structures that are no longer of service, making space for new, more integral ways of being.
Transpersonal experience is not limited to the world as we know it to exist in everyday reality. In a transpersonal experience, one might find themselves projected out of their body, viewing remote events in vivid detail or having encounters with entities from other dimensions. Describing the nature of such states in their book Spiritual Emergency, Stanislav Grof and the late Christina Grof, suggest that they include elements that western culture does not accept as objectively real, such as deities, demons, mythological figures, entities, and spirit guides. As such, they write, “In the transpersonal state, we do not differentiate between the world of “consensus reality”, or the conventional everyday world, and the mythological realm of archetypal forms.”
Such experiences facilitate a sense of harmony and meaning, connection and unity, and self-transcendence which are associated with positive effects such as heightened feelings of love and compassion. However, that is not to say that transpersonal states always have positive consequences, as they can also be incredibly destabilizing and have the ability to cause psychological distress, often referred to as a “spiritual emergenc(y)” in the transpersonal literature.
Why the Need for Transpersonal Psychology?
Science, as it stands today, is limited in its purview. Mainstream science and psychology is largely dominated by materialist approaches to consciousness and mental health. Within the materialist paradigm, matter is considered primary to consciousness, which is believed to be an accidental by-product of complex arrangements of matter. According to Fadiman, “The problem for mainstream psychology has been the unmeasurable core of transpersonal’s interest, namely, human consciousness.”
Fadiman suggests that mainstream psychology has become more and more “scientistic.” That is, it has become dogmatic in its belief that science and the materialist reductionist values that underlie it are the only way of objectively understanding reality. “Psychology is more concerned with statistical significance than personal utility, and its subject matter now includes a remarkable amount of research with animals, where their consciousness can be most easily ignored,” he shares.
Fadiman reflects that transpersonal psychology’s interest in the nature of consciousness and states of consciousness that extend beyond personal identity makes it “at its very best, the ugly stepsister that one leaves at home when going out to join material sciences parties.” Sharing an example of this, Fadiman pointed to the American Psychological Association’s refusal to grant accreditation to a transpersonal graduate school.
“This was not because of the quality of its dissertations which were rated quite highly or for the span and variety of its courses nor because of the financial status of the institution,” Fadiman continues. Rather, “It was turned down solely on the basis of its fundamental subject matter.” In essence, it boils down to the question of materialism, as many transpersonal psychologists believe in some form or another that consciousness cannot be explained by processes of the brain alone.
Further, Grof describes the dominant scientific perspective as “ethnocentric” in that “it has been formulated and promoted by Western materialistic scientists, who consider their own perspective to be superior to that of any other human group at any time of history.” However, he suggests that transpersonal psychology, on the other hand, has made significant advances in remedying the ethnocentric biases of mainstream science through its cultural sensitivity towards the spiritual traditions of ancient and native cultures, the acknowledgement of the ontological reality of transpersonal experiences, and their value.
The Relevance of Transpersonal Psychology in the Psychedelic Renaissance
The resurgence of interest in the medical, psychological, and transformational benefits of psychedelics has naturally generated increased awareness of transpersonal states and their value for the health of the human psyche. When it comes to the study of spirituality and non-ordinary states of consciousness, transpersonal psychology has long paved the way, validating the veracity and psychological benefits of such states. As such, it offers itself as an important reservoir of knowledge when trying to understand the healing potentials of psychedelics within therapeutic contexts, but also when trying to understand their broader socio-cultural implications.
In spite of not being widely recognized, transpersonal psychology has long led the scientific endeavor to understand the totality of the human psyche through its embrace of non-ordinary states of consciousness that have hitherto been dismissed as “psychotic” or merely “hallucinations” by mainstream science. Fadiman explains that transpersonal psychology continues to take seriously and without judgment the results reported by individuals working with psychedelics. “For example, almost all indigenous cultures who have used psychedelics for hundreds perhaps thousands of years report that as one’s consciousness expands beyond the perimeters of the identity, that there are other beings, other realms of existence which are met, often across cultures with identical descriptions,” says Fadiman.
The conceptual frameworks of the dominant model are inadequate when it comes to understanding non-ordinary experiences, including those elicited by psychedelics. As such, Fadiman suggests that, “As we continue to develop more accurate maps of inner space, it is likely that transpersonal psychology, with its emphasis on subjective as well as objective observation will continue to play a prominent role.”
This article was updated on July 19, 2021 to correct the years the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and Association of Transpersonal Psychology were founded.
About the Author
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer in the psychedelic space. Since 2018, she has been working for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany, and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine has written for Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Plant Medicines, Lucid News, Cosmic Sister, Psychable, and Microdosing Guru. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transpersonal Psychology at the Alef Trust with the future aim of working as a psychedelic practitioner. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, ethically-integral, and meaningful way.
In this episode, Joe interviews Australia-based psychiatric nurse practitioner andNavigating Psychedelics graduate, Matt.
He tells the story of his first experience with psychosis and his eventual diagnosis of schizophrenia, followed by the realization years later as to what he may have been trying to express through that break. He digs into different frameworks for considering what the mind is doing when it dissociates or when suicide feels like the right decision, and what we can learn from the stories of people going through such tribulations. Through hisJust Listening community, he is exploring the idea of facilitating environments where people can feel safe enough to not have to resort to these extreme states.
He also discusses his concepts of “dissociadelic” and “dissociachotic,” the Power Threat Meaning Framework, targeted individuals, the Hearing Voices movement, his Suicide Narrative approach, how schizophrenia has never been clearly defined, how the DSM isn’t based on science, how spiritual experiences and receiving messages are celebrated in psychedelic experience but considered a disorder in mental health, and how dissociation happens regularly in our daily lives.
Notable Quotes
“A lot of the story around suicide is how we have to get rid of people’s experience of considering ending their own life, and my interest is in about understanding the meaningful human narratives that manifest in the experience of feeling like we need to escape this life. And so that leads into this idea of mind manifesting realities, which is of course, so central to psychedelics.”
“When we say, ‘You have a chemical imbalance which is depression,’ that’s a bit like saying, as I’m talking to you, I have a chemical imbalance because I’m a little bit nervous, [and] I’ve got a lot of points to make so the energy in my body has gone up. Well there’s a change in chemicals, right? But I don’t need bloody medication for it, I need to be able to be in relationship with you about it.”
“That’s what I’m talking about: the courage to allow the other person to have another reality to mine, and [to] not, at some point, undermine it by saying we’re ‘accepting’ their reality. You’re not accepting their reality, their reality is their reality. I’m accepting my reality and they’re accepting theirs. I don’t need to accept somebody else’s reality, I need to stop trying to impress my reality on somebody else.”
“The problem with complex PTSD is the D at the end of PTSD. ‘It’s a disorder.’ Well, it’s not a disorder to respond to threats in the way you’re responding to them. That’s normal.”
Matt previously led the training of 250 staff in the Maastricht approach to hearing voices in the public mental health system in South Australia. He was also a co-convener of ReAwaken Australia and released a single series ReAwaken podcast through Humane Clinic.
Matt continues to pursue the reality of a mental health system that does not medicalize human distress. He is committed to understanding common human experiences as best being approached by seeking to provide justice to the story of any individual through deep and intentional listening and human connection.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Joe, Michelle, and Kyle switched things up a bit by broadcasting the recording of this episode onInstagram live, as well as dedicating much of the discussion to our oft-mentioned but not properly dissectedNavigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course.
The course is always mentioned briefly, but based on the number of questions we receive, (and with the latest cohort of the live edition beginning in a month on July 22nd), we felt it was time for Michelle to interview Joe and Kyle about the course: what it really entails, who it’s for, what a “Grofian, transpersonal framework” means, what people who have taken it have gone on to do, and what Joe and Kyle’s favorite parts of the course are. They talk about the course’s humble beginnings, they both try to define “process” with varying degrees of success, and Joe compares teaching the class to Yoda teaching Luke Skywalker the ways of the force after he crashed on Dagobah.
They then discuss two interesting news stories. First, they look at a new trial studying the use of nitrous oxide as a treatment for depression, which is exciting due to the clean and quick application of nitrous, as well as simply the hopeful option for a different treatment other than SSRIs or benzodiazepines. And along the lines of hopeful new treatments, they then review a press release from Cybin, a company working on a proprietary psilocybin-esque compound specifically to treat anxiety disorder indications. This gets everyone reflecting on their own process, their own work, and the need to critique psychiatry and medicine while also accepting they have their place, along with every other framework.
Notable Quotes
“[Stan Grof] went through, had all the training, was doing Freudian analysis and clinics and working at a hospital and he was not very impressed with the results coming from Freudian therapy. And all of a sudden, LSD came on the scene. …And [he] had this really crazy LSD experience. …Just a really massive experience: a light a million times brighter than the sun, all this fun, classical, mystical experience stuff. [He] went in a materialistic, mechanistic Freudian, [and] came out a devotee of Shiva. And what does that mean, that in 14 hours (or whatever- however long that was), that that kind of a change can happen?” -Joe
“Just thinking about psychedelics and education, psychedelics are pretty weird. And to teach it and think that it’s so streamlined and these are the things that we have to talk about in this way, and we’ve had it all figured out; I think if psychedelics taught me one thing, it’s [that] we know nothing. And I think this is where the curiosity comes back. Our teacher Lenny was talking to Stan [Grof] (I think it was back in the 80s, at Esalen), and Lenny was sharing a story with him, and Stan just looked at him and said, ‘Many strange things happen on LSD.’” -Kyle
“We can critique psychiatry and we’re not saying, ‘Defund psychiatry.’ We’re not saying, ‘Get rid of it.’ A critique can lead to growth. That’s why you take workshops as an art student. Critiques lead to learning and they can lead to change in a positive way. That’s all we’re asking for: just thinking about things critically, and then perhaps we can find little things to upgrade a little, in a way, or just be a little better.” -Michelle
“Science is a series of provisional truths and we want to keep updating our knowledge map. And science is the best tool we have for understanding reality, but there are other ways of knowing. So that’s kind of where we live; in this weird, hybrid landscape of traditional ways of knowing, and then also the scientific method being the one that gets us the most certainty.” -Joe
A review of The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact (Synergetic Press, 2021), a collection of eight lectures given by the “godfather of ecstasy” Dr. Alexander Shulgin.
And so begins one of the best classes you’ll ever take…
“Most of you have already been exposed to drugs, and most of you will personally decide if you wish to become exposed again in the future. The goal of this course is to provide specific information concerning drugs, as to their actions, their risks, and their virtues. And that’s really what my role is, I’m a seeker of truth. I’m trying to find out what’s there. I am not an advocate for nor an advocate against drug use. I have my own personal philosophies that have no business in here. You’ll find that I am quite sympathetic with a lot of drugs that people say are evil and bad. But in truth, I want you to have enough information that you can decide for yourself whether this is something that’s your cup of tea, quite literally caffeine, or whether it is something you wish to stay out of.
“I’m going to have a theme for this whole course called “warts and all.” Namely, what is known about drugs, what is to be found out about them, what do they smell like, what do they taste like, what are the goods, what are the bads. Why is it so bad to use drugs? Why is it occasionally so good to use drugs?”
—Alexander Shulgin, The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact
What’s beautiful about this work—a volume of the first eight lectures from Alexander “Shasha” Shulgin’s popular course on drugs at San Francisco State University—is that for those of us who never knew Sasha, or only saw him briefly, it’s a window into a beautiful soul. Like Robert Sapolsky, he’s one of those extraordinary teachers of science who brings so many layers to the experience of how science actually works. Through his anecdotes and asides, he does away with science as a function of perfect observers, removed from their subjects with ideal impartiality and presents a messy system of egos, funding priorities, ‘novelty’ and blind groping towards the Truth.
Many of us know Dr. Alexander Shulgin through the landmark books he wrote with his wife Ann, PIKHAL and TIKHAL, which are a mix of autobiography, love story, and drug syntheses. Even more of us know him through his beloved compound MDMA, which he popularized and made famous. But this book, The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact, shows another side: a teacher of phenomenal worth.
I’ve been studying drugs for twenty years, but Sasha Shulgin’s lectures to his students still gave me new insights on almost every page. He has a way of making the complexities of pharmacodynamics accessible by turning the human body into a bathtub. He talks about how the water gets filtered, how it goes down the drain, and how that makes a difference in the drugs you take. The understanding he imparts of how drugs work is invaluable.
But what feels so special is the glimpses you get of the alchemical man himself. In these lectures, occurring in the Year of our Reagan 1987, he makes clear his opposition to the War on Drugs. The students taking his course might not have expected a year-by-year rundown of the increasing crackdowns since 1980, but that’s what they learned. And if you sit yourself in their seat as you read this book, imagine being a student in Reagan’s Amerika learning about the Drug War from a white-haired chemist who admits in the first lecture, out of the 250 known psychedelic compounds, to have tried about 150 of them.
But he doesn’t look like Hunter S. Thompson. He looks like a tall kindly man with his pretty wife in the front row taking notes. He approaches chemistry as a ‘sacred art’. He rails against ‘holding laws’ that are simply used to hold people that the police don’t like the look of. He drops jokes constantly and calls his scribbled diagrams of molecules ‘dirty pictures’. I like to imagine myself in this classroom and I wonder if I would have been sharp enough to figure out that this was one of the greatest underground chemists of all time.
There’s a clue near the end, while he’s talking about his own history in industrial research and playing one of his imagination games with his students:
“Take, for example, how you define new sweetening agents, agents that you put in coffee that make coffee taste sweet. How would you go about finding them? It’s your job. You’re hired and you are working for Monsanto. “Find a new sweetening agent. We want to knock Nutrasweet off the market.” How are you going to find it? You’re right now at the nitty gritty of research; your task is to find a new sweetening agent. Here are our leads. Here are five materials that do cause sweet tastes, but this is too toxic, this has a bitter aftertaste, this one takes fifteen minutes to come on, this one causes cancer, and that one causes teratogenesis. We can’t use them. But we need one because we’re losing the market. Saccharine is not going to be available much longer. How do you find one?
“Well, my philosophy, that people would cringe at, is to put a damp finger into it and taste it. [Laughter.] That to me is the heart of how you find a sweetening agent. Well, what if it’s going to cause cancer of the jaw? Okay, then you come down with cancer of the jaw, but you’ve found a sweetening agent. [Laughter.] So you have risk and you have reward.”
This was the same method he used to test MDMA when he first synthesized it a decade before these lectures. Unfortunately, only three months earlier, the feds had banned MDMA by putting it into Schedule 1. They also passed the Federal Analogues Act that would be used as a wide club against any “substantially similar” molecule (a phrase that makes him shake his head. “Is the taillight structure of a 1986 Pontiac “substantially similar” to the taillight structure of a 1984 Chevrolet?”). Despite these crackdowns, his wife in the front row would go on to lead an untold number of therapists into an alliance with MDMA and its chemical cousins like 2C-B. And their books PIHKALand TIHKAL would document a beautiful love story, fertilized by his psychoactives. He knew that the drugs that interested him couldn’t be found by testing them in animals. As an alchemist, he knew you had to stick your finger into it and taste it for yourself.
Shulgin’s First Taste
In his first lecture, he shares with the students,
“My first experience with morphine was with a wound I had during WWII and I was going into England. I was about three days out of England on a destroyer and was below decks and we were playing cards and killing the time until we got into England. I was on morphine pretty much all the time because this was one hell of a painful thing. And I was dealing with one hand, I learned to deal with one hand, and the guy in sick bay would come by and say, “Is your thumb still hurting you?” “Yeah, probably a little bit more than it had before. Whose deal?” You know, the next thing you’re dealing cards. The pain is still there. It’s a beautiful, powerful tool to treat pain because the pain is there, but it doesn’t bother you.”
As he doesn’t reveal in the first lecture, in 1960 Sasha first tried mescaline while a young chemist at Dow Pharmaceuticals. He said of the experience, “I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.’’
Chemicals can also catalyze profitability. The next year, he created Zectran, the first biodegradable pesticide. Dow could sell it by the ton. And as he said to his class—most likely with a wink and a Groucho Marx smile, “And industries love things they can sell by the ton.”
With his success, Dow was content to leave him alone in his lab, puttering around and doing just the kind of things he wanted. It was a chemist’s dream. And this dreamer dreamed up novel psychedelics.
As Hamilton Morris lovingly laid out, Sasha began with a simple modification to the mescaline molecule. He added one carbon to a side-chain and it became the psychedelic amphetamine that he called TMA. He continued experimenting and produced TMA-2 through TMA-6. The last one eventually went on to become a moderately popular psychedelic in the US and Japan.
1963 marked the beginning of the end for the cushy Dow years: Sasha synthesized DOM (his PIHKAL entry here). By 1966, with LSD illegal, this psychedelic amphetamine started appearing on the street under the name STP (Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace). It earns its name. Shulgin himself said on 4 mg, “It is a beautiful experience. Of all past joys, LSD, mescaline, cannabis, peyote, this ranks number one.”
But the effects of DOM can last much much longer than LSD. You might have been enjoying the merry-go-round, but eventually you want to get off and let the world stop spinning. At 5 mg, he wrote, “The experience continued unabated throughout the night with much tension and discomfort. I was unable to get any sleep. I hallucinated quite freely during the night, but could stop them at will. While I never felt threatened, I felt I knew what it was like to look across the brink to insanity.”
Unfortunately, just in time for the Summer of Love, some underground chemist dosed a batch at 20 mg of DOM per pill. On top of that high dosage, the full effects can take two hours to kick in and so it’s easy to imagine redosing because you don’t think it’s working. In Golden Gate Park at the huge and historic Human Be-In, thousands got way too high in trips that could last for three days. Within a year, the feds made DOM illegal and when Dow figured out the mind behind the molecule, they kindly showed Dr. Shulgin the door.
He went to his home laboratory in the hills outside Berkeley, California, and became a gentleman scientist in the vein of Ed Ricketts. But instead of the sea, Shulgin peered into the mind. He kept his Schedule 1 license by being useful to the DEA and funded himself with consultations and teaching. In plain sight of the authorities, he tinkered with hundreds of psychedelics—including the rediscovery of MDMA.
Alexander Shulgin’s Definitions
From this unique perspective, the students in Sasha’s class got to learn about two of the trickiest problems in pharmacology and sociology:
How do you define ‘drug’?
How do you define ‘drug abuse’?
He begins, “Philosophy aside, what is a drug? The FDA has given a marvelous, marvelous, long legal definition that goes on for four paragraphs”. He continues to gently mock this FDA definition until he shares a better explanation from Professor Samuel Irwin: “A drug is any chemical that modifies the function of living tissue, resulting in physiological or behavioral change.” But Shulgin takes it farther:
“I would make the definition looser yet, and considerably more general. Not just a chemical, but also plants, minerals, concepts, energy, just any old stuff. Not just changes in physiology or behavior, but also in attitude, concept, attention, belief, self-image, and even changes in faith and allegiance. “A drug is something that modifies the expected state of a living thing.” In this guise, almost everything outside of food, sleep, and sex can classify as a drug. And I even have some reservations about all three of those examples.”
Cue the laughter. In these transcripts, you often see [laughter], and you know the transcribers are probably underreporting it. It makes you want to listen to the original tapes. Those lucky kids, getting to learn about ingestion methods from one of the great alchemists of the century. Sasha teaches on how we metabolize these drugs, how they sequester to different tissues, how we form bad habits with them and how we form good habits with them.
“If you can drink modestly, if you can use tobacco modestly and have a choice, have freedom of choice, and choose to do it and you have a good relationship with it, and it applies to alcohol, it applies to tobacco, it applies to LSD, it applies to heroin—there is nothing intrinsically evil about any of those drugs. Drugs are not intrinsically evil. In fact, we are going to get into the question of what is drug abuse. The problems that are bothersome with the definition of the word “drug” are nothing compared with the ones that are to be faced with the word “abuse.””
He even had a collection of definitions of ‘drug abuse’. From his huge consumption of articles, essays and public talks, you can imagine the different versions collected in his files, like species of beetles pinned in a collector’s cabinet. He found they fell into “the four operative words: what, who, where and how.”
What a drug is…
a particularly lousy definition because drug abuse is linked directly to the shape of the molecule itself.
Who’s giving the drug…
following Szasz, if drugs from a doctor is drug use and if self-medication is drug abuse, then doctors stand between you and your drugs like priests did between you and God before the Reformation.
Where is the drug obtained…
according to Dr. Jerome Levine at NIMH, drugs from “illicit channels, and/or in medically unsupervised or socially unsanctioned settings.”
And finally, how are drugs used?
“I personally believe, most strongly, that in the improper use of drugs lies their abuse. Dr. Irwin has phrased it thusly: “[Drug abuse is] the taking of drugs under circumstances, and at dosages that significantly increase their hazard potential, whether or not used therapeutically, legally, or as prescribed by a physician.
…
“People use drugs, have always used drugs, and will forever use drugs, whether there are physicians or not…
“Any use of a drug that impairs physical or mental health, that interferes with one’s social functioning or productivity is drug abuse. And the corollary is also true. The use of a drug that does not impair physical or mental health or interfere with social functioning or productivity is not drug abuse. And the question of its illegality is completely beside the matter.”
And the Freedom Fighter in him isn’t slow to point out how these definitions are used to harm people in the real world via the War on Drugs. Plus, the sly wizard mentions the recent banning of MDMA as a textbook example of the misuse of drug abuse.
What a prof. He defines terms, rambles on to fascinating asides and uses brilliant metaphors. And of course, he made no secret of his dislike of midterms, finals and grades. He’s the kind of cool teacher who takes a Socratic poll on what kind of final to have and finally decides to make it an essay question where you have to disagree with him.
Buy The Book: The Nature of Drugs
All these lectures give the portrait of a courageous, beautiful soul. And with this book, the course is only getting started. There’s another volume still to be published where he will drill down into the various categories of drugs.
Anyone interested in psychoactives should get this book and support the further compiling of Dr. Shulgin’s work. If you’ve ever spent $30 on any of his chemical creations, helping out by buying the book seems only fair. And you get to own a lovely portrait of someone whom we are very lucky for having lived and having taught.
In this episode, Joe interviews Hadas Alterman, Serena Wu, and Adriana Kertzer: three lawyers who came together to form Plant Medicine Law Group, a law firm serving the cannabis and psychedelic space.
They discuss their individual paths towards psychedelics and each other, who they hope to serve and work with through the firm, adversarial relationships within the psychedelic ecosystem, and what they’re most excited about in the future, ranging from bringing psychedelic knowledge to traditional Chinese frameworks to working on a Measure 110-inspired decriminalization plan for New York.
They also talk about the problems with “manels” and “wanels” dominating the event circuit, Tina Fey, law accepting the concept of emotional harm, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the idea of using psychedelics for dispute resolution cases, and the issues with bringing new religious exercises and concepts to judges who came from traditions and viewpoints based only on the three major religions.
Notable Quotes
“For me, being Chinese American, I don’t see a lot of Asians in the psychedelic space, and it was hard for me to come forward and be public about coming out with this law firm as well as coming out with my own story about my experiences. But the thing is, I thought: If I’m not saying something and I’m waiting for someone else to say it, then I can wait a very long time. So instead of waiting, why don’t I become that person that I’m hoping to model after or look up to?” -Serena
“If we’re not all here exchanging value within the market, for goodness sake, what are we doing?” -Hadas
“I really hope to see, one day, for certain types of disputes, psychedelic-assisted dispute resolution. I can see this working really well with certain types of family law. I would be very interested to see this in corporate settings, although I think we’re a ways off. I just feel like this basic underlying concept of oneness is inherently at odds with the traditional Western legal system because when it’s you against someone else, that’s bifurcated- that’s two. So what would the law look like if we weren’t two; if we were really treating each other as one?” -Hadas
“I’ve been compiling a list of references to psychedelics in contemporary television shows, movies, music, and fashion, and I think that we’re really seeing a moment in which, on the negative side, you have a mental health care crisis and real proof that the current medical system is failing us and that SSRIs are not the only answer; and on the other hand, you’re seeing cultural production that is normalizing or creating curiosity around psychedelics, such that a book like Michael Pollan’s [is] not landing on an empty table of cultural production. There’s a lot that’s happening, even in music videos, that makes it so that a book like that creates a tipping point (but it’s not the only thing that creates a tipping point) that then creates a kind of momentum that, in my opinion, creates legal change.” -Adrianna
About Hadas Alterman, Adriana Kertzer, and Serena Wu
Hadas Alterman is an Israeli-American attorney, born in Jerusalem and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a J.D. from Berkeley Law and a B.A. in Community Studies/Agriculture & Social Justice from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Prior to founding Plant Medicine Law Group, she worked with a leading cannabis law firm in San Francisco. Hadas was the Policy Director of NYMHA, an organization that she co-founded that successfully lobbied for the introduction of a New York bill to decriminalize psilocybin by statute, and is a Board Member of the Psychedelic Bar Association. She also serves on the Equity Subcommittee of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board.
Serena Wu is a Chinese-American lawyer, born in Hainan and raised in Los Angeles. She has a J.D. from Harvard University Law School and a B.A. in Media Studies from University of California, Berkeley. Serena began her legal career at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York City as a litigation associate, and is deeply committed to increasing equitable access to alternative healing, including psychedelic plant medicines. She is the founder of @womeninpsychedelics, an Instagram account that showcases the contributions, voices, and experiences of women in the psychedelics space, and Asian Psychedelics Society (“APS”), a group dedicated to discussions about psychedelics and mental health in the AAPI community. Adriana Kertzer is a Brazilian-American attorney, born and raised in São Paulo. Adriana has a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, a B.A. from Brown University in Judaic Studies and International Relations, and an M.A. from Parsons The New School for Design. She began her legal career as a corporate associate on Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s Latin American capital markets team. She was Senior Advisor to the Senior Deputy Chairman at the National Endowment for the Arts under President Obama, is on the board of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, and is the author of the book Favelization: The Imaginary Brazil in Contemporary Film, Fashion and Design. She is passionate about Jewish psychedelic culture, leads the interfaith working group Faith+Psychedelics, and founded @jewwhotokes, an Instagram account that explores relationships with cannabis and psychedelics in the Jewish community.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Michelle, Kyle, and Joe review the most interesting articles and recent news in the world of psychedelia.
They first talk about Chacruna’s article highlighting not only the world’s first trip-sitter, but also the first woman to take LSD, Albert Hofman’s assistant, Susi Ramstein. They then look into the new Pill-iD app coming out in the UK, which will match user-submitted pictures of MDMA with pictures from their database, using machine learning to determine purity and strength. While this is good (especially in a post-quarantine environment of people very eager to chemically celebrate their ability to be together again), how much can we really know without any chemical analysis? And how much should we trust their database?
They then revisit their discussion on California’s Senate Bill 519 (turns out it does mean legalization after all, but if so, why is “decriminalization” used in the bill’s title?), excitedly discuss the first all-drug decriminalization bill being submitted to Congress (the Drug Policy Reform Act, or DPRA), talk about psilocybin being studied for anti-inflammatory effects and Robin-Carhart Harris’ recent interview with Court Wing, and finally, get into the very real and often not-talked-about importance of ancient and Indigenous language and the danger of losing it: Are we going to lose more knowledge from the loss of language than from the destruction of habitat?
Notable Quotes
“The argument here is not only the human cost, [but] the real financial cost of an overdose is extreme, relative to getting ahead of this. So cities and governments can save money by offering this. Less dead bodies to pick up with your EMTs, less situations of overdose to respond to. …If we can do harm reduction [and] say, ‘Hey, these are people too,’ we also save money, and we save lives, and we get those lives back into society in a hopefully meaningful way.” -Joe
“The bill is damning of the drug war, of criminalization, [and it] talks about how criminalization and the drug war have added more harm to consumption. And the fact that it passed the California Senate means that these politicians are starting to catch on to how brutal this has been. And in this post-BLM, post-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor era; hey, you guys have got to clean your act up, otherwise, you’re going to have riots on your hands.” -Joe
“If this bill does pass, I feel like that’s sending a message to the whole world that we can be rational again. This wasn’t rational, this wasn’t based on science, and a lot of people mistrust us now because of that. …What would we be showing young people if we did this? …Not that we need more respect for authority, but we could respect authority at all if they could show us that they could rule or govern us in a rational, science-based way.” -Michelle
“If we ever get to the point in human civilization where things start to collapse and we need to understand the environment [and the plants] a little bit more, we’re going to be very lost. Just going outside and looking around you, what plants do you know? What stories do you know about the plants around you? Do you know what’s edible? Do you know what’s medicinal? All these things that you call weeds are actually edible plants or have really great medicinal value. Do you know the story of the landscape in which you live in?” -Kyle
The two have an intimate conversation that spans from how Carhart-Harris’s work began, how his theories, like the REBUS model, took shape, and what other applications psilocybin may have for treating mental, spiritual, and physical health conditions.
The interview has an interesting twist because Wing participated in an NYU trial of psilocybin for major depressive disorder and experienced full remission from a recurrent battle with depression after his first dose of the magic mushroom compound. Wing shares a lot of his first hand experience with Robin Carhart-Harris on how the trial he participated in changed his mood state and mindset, and what the possible neurochemical changes felt like subjectively.
Court Wing: Is this, in any way, in the arc of what you expected to see when you started out this research?
Robin Carhart-Harris: Wow. Hmm… Maybe it is. Or… no it’s not. No. [laughs] I mean, after a few years, you start to realize the therapeutic potential, or I did.
Initially, it was like, psychedelics are fascinating tools… Powerful tools to revolutionize our understanding of the mind and the brain. That’s what drew me in. And then I was like, “Oh, and the therapeutic application is actually very compelling.” Once I caught onto that (and this was probably sort of midway through my PhD in the late noughties, you know, late 2000s). Then, I remember, Ben Sessa was trying to get a psilocybin for alcoholism study going at Bristol, where I was doing my Ph.D. We had meetings with seniority, who basically weren’t interested in our idea. And then I said, “Leave it ten years,” and we’ll be able to do this research. I think someone said once, “You overestimate what you can achieve in a year and underestimate what can be achieved in ten.”
That rings true. The changes in a decade have been colossal so it’s been beyond expectations, really.
CW: Personally, it’s hard not to feel a great deal of gratitude for the work that you’ve all done. As you know, I went through the NYU psilocybin study for major depressive disorder a year ago. And [now I’m in] total remission. I mean, just so unexpected. And I read the research, I saw the reports, I read the review paper of the neural mechanisms, which actually was the first thing that truly excited me because I had lost track of the prefrontal cortex atrophy and seeing words like neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, dendritic arborization; it’s like, that’s part and parcel of what I had been studying in things like chronic pain for the last ten plus years. But to go through it and to feel a physical absence of the depression; I don’t have a better term for it. Like a missing burden.
Anyways, what type of data were you seeing [early on] that made you want to pursue this on a study level? Because it’s one thing to hear about this stuff occurring anecdotally, but then to [say], “Boy, there’s enough traction there that I think we really have something”?
RCH: Yeah, yeah. I think if we rewind to the end of the 2000s or even earlier, mostly in terms of mental health data, it was abstract. It was the work done in the 50s and 60s that we looked at as a historical curiosity.
It wasn’t enough to put that and Indigenous use in [a] healing context. It wasn’t enough to put that together in my mind and think, “Oh, this is really compelling.” So a few things made the difference. And I think sometimes you need to (even though I’m a scientist, and I shouldn’t say this, in a way), you do sort of need to see things with your own eyes. And what made a big difference for me was doing our own brain imaging research.
Taking healthy volunteers, looking in their brains and seeing things that were suggestive of an antidepressant effect, and then listening to them say, “I feel lighter. I feel unburdened.” And then thinking, well, now this seems really tangible. And that makes sense in the context of Roland [Griffiths]’s work in healthy volunteers, and Charlie Grob’s work in end-of-life anxiety.
So then we started piecing things together for a UK Medical Research Council grant. And that got through. And the reviews were remarkably good. I don’t know, but I imagined some fellow researchers in this space were allowed to review our proposal and did us a favor, because the reviews across the board were top marks. And I think, then the UKMRC were in a difficult situation, because [they thought], “How do we reject this when everyone’s saying this is really top quality research that they’re proposing?” And actually, we proposed a double blind randomized control trial then in 2012 that we couldn’t complete until 2021 because of the difficulties of actually doing the research. We ended up doing that open label trial that was published.
But I would say, a turning point for me was the first patient in our TRD [Treatment Resistant Depression] trial. She just responded remarkably. She visibly became a different person from heavy, head down, minimal eye contact, tearing up when starting to open up, no smiles—gosh, no, just frowns. And then, after the treatment, the warmth and the color and the smiling and a beautiful smile came on her face. And it was just a wonderful, beautiful thing. It’s such a privilege to be able to do that for someone. And that was a massive turning point. It was like, “Oh, my goodness, this really works.”
CW: Yeah. It’s startling, trying to describe to people the one-day turnaround quality of this. And I think it’s actually very much undersold, because I told the researchers, Dr. Stephen Ross at NYU and my facilitators afterwards. You know, I went through the MADRS scores, which you are now more than familiar with [laughs], and at the end of the session, one of the facilitators [asked me], “So how do you feel?” And I’m like, “Oh, good.” And then I did a deeper scan, like reflexively, and I was like, “Good.” Like, I could tell it was gone. And I was like, “That fast? Honest to God, that fast?” And they’re like, “Well, we’ll know when you’re unblinded.” But in retrospect, if I had been given the chance to take the original MADRS evaluation again, my scores would have gone higher. Because now in the absence [of depressive symptoms], I can tell how much more severe they were. It’s a strange thing.
One thing that you’ve said a couple times here, and perhaps it’s a figure of speech, but I believe there’s a somatic quality to it. And since you brought up the fMRI studies, you mentioned people discussing feeling lighter, feeling unburdened, like there’s this description of the condition that has this feeling of extreme heaviness or being bogged down. So there’s some aspect that involves this interoceptive quality where there’s obviously slower reaction times and things like that, but what do you think is operating there? Because I remember, in the fMRI studies, you guys were a little bit surprised by seeing the type of changes in blood flow that were going on. I believe, [you] expected one thing and instead ended up with something else. Do you have any thoughts to that area?
RCH: Yeah, yeah. I’ve often thought (and experience has endorsed this view) that we often intuit mechanisms through our language, the way we’re describing the experience, and whether or not there’s some kind of priming effect or not. Maybe it is [priming], but also, I’m not sure it really matters, when ultimately you do the research and see that it’s endorsed. But the analogies that you’re used to hearing today (the popular ones, or the well-used ones) around heaviness and being bogged down; it’s all weight related. There’s heaviness, there’s weight. You know, you get bogged down. So there’s a gravitational pull to the depression, which means it pulls you in and you can’t get out very easily. And I think (I’ve got to intuit, because we don’t know yet, but) it’s something to do with synaptic weighting, and that certain circuitry gets weighted. If we really zoom in on a very low level, it’s probably the synaptic weighting certain connections belonging to certain circuitry associated with heavy introspection. [They] get heavily weighted in depression.
What happens? Well, that’s another fascinating question, and maybe a different question. But let’s just say that that’s the character. On a descriptive level, that’s the character of chronic depression and a depressive episode is that you get stuck. Literally, you get stuck in a certain sort of dynamic configuration because that heavy synaptic weighting is the reinforcement of that.
RCH: Yeah, it’s very relevant. In people’s people’s mind’s eyes, they can imagine a landscape. And in a depressive episode, you literally have a depression in that landscape. And if you imagine a ball being able to move in this landscape, and that being your mind at any given time, then in a depression, the ball is spending a disproportionate amount of time in the depression in that landscape. It falls in very easily, [and it’s] very difficult to get it out. And so what psychedelics are doing is just pushing up that depression and flattening the landscape.
CW: Right. I’ve heard the ski slope analogy. So either we have fresh powder that’s either filling up the depression, or we have some sort of artificial means like a snow plow that’s smoothing everything out. So if we were to just roughly characterize the nervous system as biasing towards efficiency, even if that depressor, that enemy energy minima is more efficient, it’s not necessarily more effective anymore in our daily lives. At some point, it was the 2A adaptation toward some high priority event, but now it’s become maladaptive… I listened to that lecture byAndrés Gómez Emilsson of QRI [Qualia Research Institute]. There’s this discussion of criticality with the mind and with a depression. It’s almost, to some degree, like an event horizon, almost. Right? The pull is so strong, it’s very hard to get out of there. So why is it, once that landscape is flattened, as these new neural connections in the functional connectivity are occurring, why does it resort into a better, healthier connection? I mean, if this quality of openness is being promoted, why are we defaulting back to something that’s more useful, something that’s healthier, something that’s more, I guess, effective, as well as efficient?
RCH: Yeah. I actually do think that the fresh covering of snow is a good analogy. So if you’re born into this world, and you haven’t been affected by life in any particular way, you have a very smooth, fresh ground of snow there. And I suppose, what’s happening with the psychedelic experience; I mean, this is very mechanistic, and is not putting much on the therapeutic component and so, that’s a little dangerous to put it all on, like, “The brain resets.”
CW: Sorry. Yeah, well, the intent makes a huge difference. That’s clear.
RCH: It does. And so, you could have the snow falling, and you can manipulate things in a way that potentially could even reinforce certain circuitry. But that doesn’t happen, because the contextual; the environment in which you have the psychedelic experience is nurturing in the way that it should be for a newborn coming into the world: You’re not trying to heavily indoctrinate them or drive them in any particular direction, other than to care for them and just say, “You are safe, and I will hold you as we move through life.”
But you know, things could go in a horrible direction there. Horrible kinds of things could happen that could start to reinforce a certain shape to the snow. And so anyway, I think it’s a mix. It’s a mix of the fresh falling of the snow [and] shaking the snow globe, [which] is the one [metaphor] that I came up with personally. But the fresh falling of the snow is like an old neuroplasticity analogy. And there is something called the plasticity paradox, which says that plasticity, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily healing, but if the plasticity comes and is utilized in a positive way (and so in the context of psychedelic therapy, it’s utilized and honest in a therapeutic way), then you have the magic sauce.
And so I like to say these days in as many interviews as I can [is] that psychedelic therapy is fundamentally a combination treatment. It’s not just shaking the snow globe. You could shake the snow globe in someone already psychologically unstable, and when the snow settles, it might not be a great picture. But you shake the snow globe in someone who’s ready for this to happen, and it happens in a perfectly nurturing, supportive environment, then the snow is going to settle. I think you can feel quite confident that the snow is going to settle in a healthier way.
CW: Do you think beyond just the psychiatric applications, which seem quite vast still—I mean, honestly, the smoking cessation and cocaine addiction early results… are just completely astonishing—but do you think there are lateral applications? Obviously, I’m quite invested in the changes that are possible, I think, for chronic pain of a potentially non-nociceptive type, but even for nociceptive chronic pain. I have to give credit here to Dr. Brendan Hussey. I saw his presentation on your REBUS model back in July with a MAPS Canada Journal Club, and he had an amazing slide deck. And, I, myself, personally, had a very deep revelation on March 6th, which was the day after I went through [psilocybin-assisted therapy] (March 5th [was] my dosing day) where it’s like, all of these things suddenly opened up where it’s like this can change this whole picture here. Once I saw Brendan’s work describing yours and I had a visual, [I realized] the REBUS model completely overlies the descriptions for the last decade and a half of what’s going on in chronic pain, in terms of how a pain neurosignature is formed. Have you thought about it at all? I think it’s like, beyond psychological.
RCH: Well, that’s fascinating. Maybe there’s some things there that I don’t know that I could learn. We are planning a chronic pain trial in fibromyalgia with psilocybin therapy.
It’ll start at the end of this year at Imperial. I’m moving to UCSF, but that trial will carry on with the money that I was lucky enough to bring in.
[It relates to] the REBUS model in the sense that the precision weighting is exactly what we’re talking about here. Assumptions are heavily weighted. Certain assumptions—you might call them pathological assumptions, you might even call them adaptive assumptions, defensive assumptions—deserve a bit of compassion, because the body of [the] mind is doing its best to try and stabilize things in a way. So in a sense, depressive episodes, eating disorders, image disorders, chronic pain, they’re often the body and the mind trying to do their best defensive strategies. But we’d rather not have them, you know? And then that takes some bravery, doesn’t it?
Perhaps this is most acute in something like anorexia, where the [adaptation] is so maladaptive, it’s killing people often. It’s ego-syntonic for the sufferer, meaning they don’t see themselves as suffering, like, “This is good, this is working.” And so, it’s adaptive, maladaptive, it depends how you look at it, but to most eyes, it’s maladaptive. But it takes bravery, because [people think], “Oh my goodness, you’re going to take away this thing that I need?” like in an addiction. Like, “I’m not ready to give this up, I need this!”
You know, and there’s sort of irony there: “I’ll die without it.” It’s like, “No, you’ll die with it.” But that’s the sort of pivot, isn’t it? And again, it brings us to the requirement. Sometimes, actually, a conscious decision needs to be made to let go, both in the experience itself, but also the decision to have the treatment in the first place.
CW: You spent the better part of a week, pre-publication [of the “Psilocybin vs. Escitalopram for Depression” trial], going through this long explanation of how someone should look at a study as both proposed and then executed, and then how the results are interpreted, and how a journal can also interpret those things. But you took it upon yourself, I think, slightly unusually, to kind of let people know: Really go to the tables, go to the appendices, that’s where you’re going to see the striking numbers. And there’s been many expert reviews saying, “Well, okay, they were wise to in fact not do an adjusted comparison, because then it doesn’t account for the random chance possibility that it’s just a statistical anomaly,” right?
At the same time, honestly, I met someone who also went through the same trial I went through up at Yale, [being treated for] 26 years of major depressive disorder and [then experiencing] full remission. We couldn’t stop going on about the MADRS [depression rating] scores. I understand the QIDS [depression symptomatology scale] one, and now there’s a little buyer’s remorse in there about like, “Ahh, why [did we choose] this one [for the psilocybin vs escitalopram study]? Why this one [QIDS]?”
RCH: [laughing] I know.
CW: And there’s been some criticism that in the prereq, if I’m saying it correctly, where there was kind of one expected outcome that was supposed to be measured, and they [New England Journal of Medicine] were saying there is one way that was registered with the US boards and another way with the UK boards, and that, in the paper itself, it didn’t actually discuss those things. But it doesn’t feel like you guys were pulling a dodge or anything like that. And I think even if people just look at the QIDS remission and response rates and the secondary outcomes; I mean, I am trying not to fanboy all over the place, but it’s so commensurate with what happened for me and what other people have described.
RCH: Yeah. It was a very interesting experience. We certainly didn’t in any way, or could be accused of pulling a dodge. I would say one way to look at how all of this has gone is that we played it so straight, and so the miss on the primary has to be reported because it was pre-registered ahead of the trial to be the primary.
Do we regret choosing the QIDS as the primary? Well, of course we do. And now we understand. Actually, and this could be sort of sour grapes, speaking to a bias in favor of psilocybin, but I do believe it’s not a great measure. And you just have to look at that forest plot that I’ve now pinned to my Twitter page, to see that it’s an anomaly. It looks like a false negative. And I think the right interpretation is that it’s likely to be a false negative and these two conditions do separate.
So we played it very straight. Was it bad luck? Well, if you believe that the ground truth is that psilocybin is the better treatment, and that hasn’t come through because of the miss on the primary, then yes, it’s bad luck. And so part of the effort in trying to get ahead of the messaging was just that; to try and keep people closer to the results themselves, and to say, “Look at the results in some detail.” And that’s quite unusual, I think, for researchers to do.
CW: Yes!
RCH: They’re often more wanting people to hear their narrative. And I was sort of, in a sense, saying, “Look beyond the narrative (because it wasn’t our narrative, it was the editor of the journal), and look at the results. And you decide.” I felt that we were made to spin the results in a way that misled the reader, that didn’t accurately represent the results. And that bothered me. So I felt I had to communicate to people early on, and I couldn’t say it at that stage, because I couldn’t reveal the results.
So all I was saying to people was trying to explain the nature of the stats, and then say, you know, if there’s anything you do here, just look at the results in detail, and go to that supplementary appendix. The way we were treated in terms of not being allowed to include that forest plot, what’s the agenda there? Hiding results? It’s very questionable. And I’ve stopped short of getting conspiratorial about it, but it’s almost like, “Well, let’s move that out of the way, and, you know, lift this one up, it’s missed on the primary.” And there was so much more to see.
It was an unusual experience. And it felt like the power of [the] deep establishment wanting to frame things a particular way, like, “Nothing to see here. Carry on, everything’s as usual everybody. SSRIs are for everybody.” I don’t know.
CW: It certainly wasn’t your first rodeo. It’s not as if you were fresh to letting results out or doing deep, intimate work with a well-received theoretical basis, right? And yet, they’re almost acting like, “Well, these young fellows, what a nice idea they have,” or something like that.
RCH: Yeah, [it’s] one of the issues with doing psychedelic research. [It’s] almost by saying, “I’m a psychedelic researcher,” [that] you’re seen as somehow a lesser scientist.
And the deep establishment has that position on things. I actually think there’s some published work on this where people have looked at the opinion of scientific peers on those who declare whether they’ve had a personal psychedelic experience or not, and it does transpire that peers view people disclosing their personal uses as suggesting that they’re a weaker scientist in some way. And that’s kind of frustrating, but it is what it is.
But there are some very high standards that we’re being assessed by here, standards that haven’t always been in place. As SSRIs have developed and got through, there’s been a lot of scandal and bad practice in terms of the data on SSRIs. So playing it very straight as we did, and, in a sense, underselling the results, I’m kind of okay with, because I know in time, the truth will [come] out. And the whole area has been getting so excited and expectations are so high that a little bit of moderation at this stage with this particular trial is probably a good thing. So I sort of accept it somewhat reluctantly, in terms of the way the paper was framed. But it got into the New England Journal of Medicine.
CW: Yes it did.
RCH: And that was really important.
CW: And even if it was a moderate, conservative, staid description of the results, the results were like: It [psilocybin] was just as good as our standard of care [SSRIs] right now. And the appendix; that’s why I wrote the Op-Ed for Psychedelics Today, just to say, look, he’s been telling us, and anyone who’s gone through this, that went into full remission, can say this is not even remotely close to the same thing. I almost wonder if the quality of remission that we’re discussing between the SSRI and psilocybin, if, internally, it’s two different types of remission? Because I’ve been on the other stuff, and this is not that. It isn’t.
RCH: The one result that’s most impressive is probably the remission rates. What we’re seeing with the escitalopram (and this probably reflects a more general rule) is improvement in symptom severity, but not reliably into remission. I think that’s it. If remission is ultimately what you want with a treatment, which of course it is—to be free of the disorder—then you’re much more likely to achieve that (twice as likely to achieve that) on the most conservative measure on the trial with the psilocybin.
CW: I think [on] day two of the study, there [were] approximately (depending on which score you used), something like 25 to 30 plus people [who] had stopped being depressed on day two. I truly envied the fact that you guys were running a two-dose study, because it did seem like, from my perspective, even though things had gotten remarkably better [for me], that a second dose would have made a big difference.
RCH: What time point, Court, do you think a second dose would have made [the] most sense?
CW: I think you guys have got it right on the money. Honestly.
I think three weeks. It’s like you have that first week where you’re just kind of in this freefall, like, “My God, is it really this simple?” And then starting to incorporate it in the following week, you know, kind of like, “Is this stable?” Probably doing a lot of reality checking. And then [you’re] just waiting for that ghost of the previous condition to kind of re-emerge. And then by week three, you’re now actually starting to incorporate all this and it’s like, “I have more questions.” I keep regretting the time I didn’t spend under the eyeshades. [laughs]
Honestly, you know, at a certain point, there [were] things [I was] so compelled to talk about, you know? I wasn’t psychedelically naive. 25 plus years earlier, someone had led me on a set-and-setting transpersonal session with [a] high-dose [of] LSD, and that had been remarkable, honestly, for years. But this was… the psychological material that emerged, it’s like, I had no idea [that] the things that came up were going to, and so a second session, like, by week three, it’s like I had formed enough around what had occurred in the first session. It could have been five weeks and that would have been fine.
But I think if you’re talking about things in the course of treatment, like say, spatial summation vs. temporal summation, I think to kind of maintain that intensity level for that neuroplasticity to really gel, usually you need novelty and intensity. And I think Andrés Gómez Emilsson could probably argue this quality of valence. I think three weeks seems just about right. I don’t know. I’m thinking of Ros Watts, and she’s like a bodhisattva on the planet, I swear. Every time I hear her voice, it’s so calming and reassuring. But I think in the three week period, beyond that, you start to get almost lonely for your therapist and the session, if that makes sense. So, you know, it’s just like, “Ah, good. I finally got to go back to that thing again.”
It’s an extraordinary time [considering] what’s just happened with the MDMA and PTSD studies. And I think that’s about their spread there, too. They have three sessions. And I think (don’t quote me on this) it’s something like three weeks apart.
RCH: Right, okay. Maybe we intuited things the same way.
CW: Yeah.
RCH: It’s a promising time.
CW: Yeah, it is. I’m sorry, we’ve come to time and I don’t want to chew up any more of yours. You’ve been very generous. And just once again [nervously laughs]… See, I used to be very reactive. When I’d say things like this, it was impossible not to get choked up and I’m kind of struggling to be a good representative here, but honestly, it’s [holding back tears]… quite a life.
RCH: Yeah, I hear you Court.
CW: I took mine [psilocybin-assisted therapy] 10 days before the lockdown in New York City. I can’t imagine… I’ve been inside with my boys for a year. I can’t imagine what would have happened if it had been the placebo…
Anything in closing? And also I should [mention], Kyle and Joe, and now Michelle, at Psychedelics Today, were extraordinarily welcoming. They’ve created such an incredible community with so much information there, and really a very broad spectrum. This brings in a very large tent of people. But any final thoughts to offer or anything that’s emerged from the studies in terms of like, lateral effects that have surprised you or anything like that? I’m fascinated to see what else is going to be changed by this quality of openness being enhanced. Because that really, that’s so many things besides just like, no longer being locked in iterative rumination. It’s a whole spectrum of life possibilities and cultural assumptions.
RCH: Yeah. There’s a lot of other measures in the paper, the secondary measures. The REBUS model has a focus more on the relaxing of the top-down, but when you talk to people, often the pertinent statement is, “The things that came up.” I think that’s an important space to get a better handle on in the future. What is that? You know, what is that mechanistically, “The things that come up”? I’d love to understand that better. I mean, I’m mechanistically minded, so I tend to go there.
But it’s been wonderful to chat to you and I very much am moved by what you told me. And I’m so pleased that you’ve had the experience that you’ve had, and it’s helped you as it has. It’s wonderful to hear that. It makes it all worthwhile, what we’re all doing.
This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.
About the Author
Court Wing has been a professional in the performance and rehab space for the last 30 years. Coming from a performing and martial arts background, Court served as a live-in apprentice to the US Chief Instructor for Ki-Aikido for five years, going on to win the gold medal for the International Competitors Division in Japan in 2000 and achieving the rank of 3rd degree black belt. In 2004, Court became the co-founder of New York’s largest and oldest crossfit gym, and has been featured in the New York Times, Sunday Routine, Men’s Fitness, and USA Today. He is also a certified Z-Health Master Trainer, using the latest interventions in applied neuro-physiology for remarkable improvements in pain, performance, and rehabilitation. You can find out more on his website: https://courtwing.com .
In this episode, Kyle interviews licensed professional counselor specializing in somatics and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, regular contributor toNavigating Psychedelics, and vinyl DJ (who DJed our 5th-anniversary party), Pierre Bouchard.
Bouchard digs into the art of somatics and the importance of adding it as another tool to the data set of one’s healing practice, and discusses how many people don’t yet understand how to interpret (or even define) these sensations, how learning to tune in to bodily sensations can often reveal what needs to be worked on before other therapeutic modalities can, and how physical touch and working with the body create an ethical dilemma. And he breaks down the polyvagal theory and how different types of trauma affect the nervous system and its go-to “fight, flight, or freeze” actions.
They also talk about the top-down and bottom-up approach, Holotropic Breathwork and Stan Grof, dissociation and ketamine, what they’d like to see in the future of therapy, and more. This is a conversation between two counselors, so if you’re behind on therapeutic modalities and concepts, this episode is for you.
Notable Quotes
“When we’re talking about learning to tune into body sensations, we’re really helping somebody develop a new language, a new way of understanding themselves. …It’s not that things weren’t happening and now they are, it’s that they’re learning how to tune into it.”
“Before our conscious mind catches something, often, our body catches it. And we might have a belief about ourselves that then, when we actually tune into body sensations, we find out there’s actually something different going on here. To me, that’s the deep beauty of this; is that you can be intellectually cut off from an experience or belief or just something about yourself, but the body doesn’t lie. The body has no stake in negotiating. The body’s just interested in the truth.”
“There’s a way in which so much of our wounding is about what did or didn’t happen and getting a chance to have some reparative experience around that. Finding out that you’re God and that everyone else is God; it might help that journey, but it’s not going to heal that knot in your nervous system.” “We’re learning to be more interested in our own experience. I think this is something that psychedelics are so fantastic at. We start to have a much greater range of who we are and what’s possible. I can be screaming and raging, I can be crying, I can be in ecstatic bliss. …The psychedelic life, in this way, is about continuing to learn to be a more rich meal.”
Pierre Bouchard is a Licensed Professional Counselor with a private practice in Boulder and Denver, CO. He specializes in blending somatics, embodiment, attachment theory, and trauma therapy with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. A graduate of Naropa University (in Contemplative Psychotherapy), he has trained in several somatic psychotherapy modalities, most recently the Hakomi Method under Melissa Grace, and currently, in Ido Portal’s movement system at Boulder Movement Collective. He has maintained a meditation practice for 19 years, is working on opening a ketamine clinic, and in his spare time, works as a vinyl DJ.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Joe, Kyle, and Michelle analyze the most interesting stories of the week, this time a bit differently (and maybe a first for PT), with Kyle and Michelle recording together in the same room.
They first revisit last week’s Senate Bill 519 news from the angle of how the media keeps misrepresenting the clear distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘decriminalized,’ spawned from a PR email Michelle received and two different articles with opposing language between their titles and the articles themselves. Is this disconnect coming from confusion about what decriminalization actually means, or is it purposefully done for more attention-grabbing headlines, which serves to only put more people in danger? Or are these media sources in bed with the feds and doing it exactly for that reason? (Always nice to get a visit from Joe’s Paranoid Update.)
They then discuss the absurdity of cannabis still being federally illegal and sending people to prison while Washington State and Arizona use federal funds to buy joints for people getting the Covid vaccination, which leads to a discussion of Covid, vaccinations, trusting the government, and the possible threat of a new bird flu.
And lastly, they look at what happened to a man who took an estimated 40,000 ecstasy pills over the course of 9 years, and why a huge focus of harm reduction should be on moderation and how overuse can negatively impact your life, the importance of honestly reflecting on your relationship with drugs, how you’re growing (or not) from huge insights, and how realistic or fulfilling your intentions are to begin with.
Notable Quotes
“Let’s just move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule IV or de-schedule it, because we’re already at this point where the government is buying people joints to get vaccinated, yet it’s still federally a Schedule I substance. It kind of blows my mind. What is happening?” -Michelle
“When science gets politicized, things get ugly, and this isn’t the first time science has been politicized. So let’s be on Team Human. Be on Team Psychedelic, Harm Reduction, Legalize and Regulate (if you want to jump on my boat), but let’s just get on the right path here towards a future that’s better for all of us. That should be apolitical. And yes, there’s plenty to complain about, but let’s survive first.” -Joe
“We need to talk about moderation when we talk about harm reduction. I think that when we just talk about psychedelics for medical use and we ignore all the folks that are using them outside of a clinician’s office, we just ignore all the circumstances that they need to be educated on, like [that they] can harm people. I think, for me anyway, part of harm reduction for psychedelics is really teaching folks that yea, they’re safe, but if you use them sparingly. It doesn’t matter what it is- MDMA, acid, mushrooms- I think that even when you start using them once a week (in fuller doses), shit can get a little complicated.” -Michelle
“Sometimes I think what we want is unrealistic, like: ‘I want to be totally healed, I want to be a totally different person, and I’m just going to keep going in until I find it.’ You’re never going to find that because that’s just not how it works.” -Michelle
“Is there guilt and shame around taking breaks if you’re really embedded in these psychedelic communities? I know I felt that at one point. Somebody was like, ‘Wait, you haven’t done that in a while?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’ve been really focused on a lot of integration and family relationship-type stuff, and it feels like a psychedelic experience to begin with and I need to kind of focus on that right now.’ And it was like, ‘Oh, then you’re not doing the work.’ And it’s like, ‘Actually, I feel like I am doing the work. This is the work I don’t want to be doing, but I’m trying to show up for it.’ It’s like, do you always need to keep peeling the onion layer back?” -Kyle
The psychedelic space has an abuse problem, but how do we resolve it? Community accountability and transformative justice can help.
In the past few years, the global psychedelic community has weathered countless ruptures as patterns of problematic behavior have come to light. While calls for accountability have been increasing, we have yet to establish frameworks and processes that support it. Such are the challenges of a decentralized, citizen-powered movement: It is as diverse and situational as the psychedelic experience itself, and accountability is not a one size fits all process. The ways we approach massive, powerful institutions often look very different from the ways we approach those in our immediate social groups.
We have seen sexual assault in underground healing environments and leaders aligning with sexual predators. We’ve witnessed the shameless commodification of ceremonial practices and silencing of voices championing equity and diversity. We can also be sure that more issues are just around the bend. They are bound to surface as the movement grows and we attempt to create practical systems for accountability that can keep up with this rapid expansion.
The mainstream paradigm of accountability is rooted in the legal system. It is centered around the concept of penalty—simply put, if someone breaks the law or a societal contract, they will be punished, often by being removed from community or being made to experience the same pain and suffering they have caused. Justice is seen as a contract between the individual and the state, and harm is defined by legal institutions. It can be static, rigid, and lacking nuance. Among the many issues with this punitive model is the simple fact that the needs and experiences of survivors and those impacted are often an afterthought. In addition, punishment does little to prevent further harm, rehabilitate the person responsible, or address the underlying conditions which contributed to the event.
If we don’t dedicate ourselves to a new vision of accountability while the psychedelic movement is still relatively small, the fallout and damage could be much greater. We are in a world where cancelling and punishing people is our main choice for dealing with harms. If we want to be a culture built on the cornerstones of healing and relationship, we will need to find ways to embody these values in our approach to accountability.
The Opportunity
It’s high time for us to circle up, from our smallest pods to our largest public forums, and form agreements on how we are going to show up as a movement to destigmatize and create safer access to psychedelics. What are our core values, and how do we bring them to life? How do we, as a global community, intend to prevent and respond to situations of harm and abuse? We need to define our agreements and put them into practice at home. Whatever we create together in the microcosm will determine what takes shape in the large scale later on.
In the past few years, I have been involved in many behind-the-scenes conversations where I have been earnestly warned about problematic individuals and organizations in the psychedelic scene. I have been given firsthand accounts of behaviors ranging from ethically questionable to outright violent and predatory.
Perhaps this secretive dynamic is a reflection of the social contract around psychedelics. While the space is splintered, we share a broad collective cause—one that is just beginning to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the government and general public—and thus, we have a call to protect one another. This is a community which generally understands the potential legal and reputational ramifications of outing anyone who is a part of the psychedelic underground for bad behavior. But are we more loyal to the movement for psychedelic access itself, or the people who have been harmed within it?
Over and over, when I hear these accounts, the same questions arise for me:
Have we brought these concerns to the person in question? Is mycelial, grapevine-style dialogue the best way to establish safety amongst ourselves? There must be a better way forward which could actually interrupt patterns of damage and promote reconciliation. I fear that our current non-confrontational approach allows problematic behavior to continue due to our own unwillingness to address it head on.
In addition, each person with this insider knowledge must now carry the burden of sorting out what to do with it. Should I warn everyone I know? Should I approach the person directly? How do we get to the truth of a situation, and at what point (if any) should these truths be made public? Who gets to decide? When should someone be muted, removed from a position of leadership, or barred from participating in community? How do we set terms for their reentry?
These are difficult questions that we need to explore together and within ourselves. Though it is more laborious and does nothing to satisfy our own sense of self-righteousness, there are ways to address problems without calling someone out, cancelling them, or permanently destroying their reputation. The challenge is that each situation is different, so developing a formulaic approach for an entire movement is impossible.
It’s no secret that psychedelics are going mainstream. We have an opportunity to set the tone and shape the culture of this movement by how we conduct ourselves amongst one another, how we cultivate community and how we organize our institutions and advocacy efforts. By modeling clear, compassionate, and dialogue-based systems for accountability, we can prevent the invasive seedlings of harm from growing into weeds which choke out the entire garden of psychedelic healing.
Accountability First Steps
Recently, North Star, a new psychedelic nonprofit, launched the first widespread code of ethics for psychedelic practitioners and organizations, based on input from 100 stakeholders in the field. The seven principles in the North Star pledge are:
Start within
Study the traditions
Build trust
Consider the gravity
Focus on process
Create equality & justice
Pay it forward
These values can serve as guiding lights and a first step toward a culture of accountability. The problem with voluntary creeds like this one is that they are mostly symbolic in nature. Without a clear way to vet those who are self-associating with the pledge, there is no way to know whether someone’s public commitment is deeply rooted or performative. We don’t actually know what an individual or an organization is made of until they have been involved for a while and have been given space to act, connect, contribute, and most likely, be under a little pressure.
Ultimately, the nature of accountability is relational. The act of uncovering messy truths and the challenging processes of responsibility often happens at kitchen tables and park benches, not board rooms and convention stages.
Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The psychedelic community may be new to the justice discussion, but leaders from other disciplines such as Emergent Strategy, mutual aid networks, and prison diversion programs have spent many years engaging with the messy, daily practice of addressing and repairing harm. We would be wise to learn from these leaders. If we do, the psychedelic field will be better off for it.
What Is Accountability?
The basis of accountability is simple: When damage has been done, there is a healing process that needs to take place. At its most basic, accountability is a cycle of harm, recognition, and repair.
But before we can talk about holding one another accountable, it’s essential that we each develop the practice of holding ourselves accountable. It’s hard, lifelong work to take responsibility for our actions and their impacts; it requires us to labor through our own barriers to receiving critique. Only once we get past our own denial, fragility, and excuses can we reach a place of acknowledgment and growth. While reconciliation isn’t always guaranteed, self-responsibility can open the door to remaining in community after harm has been caused. This long-term work rarely happens in isolation—it happens in our homes, partnerships, friendships, professional collaborations, and within the larger movements we champion.
Accountability takes many different forms.
Self-accountability, which is about as sexy as steamed kale, begins with identifying our values. It asks each of us to recognize that we live in an interconnected world in which our actions have immediate and indirect impacts. Once we have clarified our value system, we must then cultivate the practice of tracking whether or not our behavior is aligned with these values. But we all have blind spots; this is why we need community.
Interpersonal accountability can be enticing. On one hand, there’s some primal part of us that feeds off of scandalous news when someone in the community goes rogue. There is an impulse to see folks who are doing damage taken down; perhaps witnessing these takedowns makes us feel superior. Maybe punishment creates an illusion of safety, or at least, demonstrates that the community has boundaries and agreements we can all lean on. The responsibility here is to ensure that before we expend energy confronting others about their behavior, we check ourselves. We need to ask: “Am I the best person, and is this the best time, to call this person in? Is there inner work that I am responsible for at this moment? And importantly, am I ready to participate in a process without doing further damage?”
Then there’s institutional accountability—the fantasy we can’t seem to get enough of. Mainstream media publishes pieces vilifying Compass Pathways and ATAI Sciences, and we eat it up and express our outrage on comment threads and podcasts. Perhaps this is because it is easy to see large corporations as faceless, evil monsters to rail against. But again, we have to go deeper—who is leading these organizations? What worldviews and assumptions are they operating under? What wounds might be beneath the problematic behaviors we love to hate? And importantly, what are the ugly parts within ourselves that are so uncomfortably reflected in their behaviors?
Within a movement like the psychedelic resurgence, accountability becomes a long term process of choosing to stay in relationship. We set out to do this while understanding that as flawed humans, we will certainly hurt one another and we need clear agreements, safety parameters, and systems for repair. While it isn’t always safe or possible to keep people in community who have done harm, it is a pursuit which can create more opportunity for long-term healing than the scorched-earth mentality of punishment and eradication.
The Transformative Justice Approach
When reimagining the idea of safety within community, there are two terms that are often used interchangeably: restorative and transformative justice. While they are related, they have key differences.
The United Nations Working Group on Restorative Justice (RJ) defines it this way: “A process whereby parties with a stake in a particular offense resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future. In essence, we seek to repair the harms caused by crime and violence.” The process seeks to restore the conditions that were present before a harm took place. RJ efforts often work in tandem with local judicial systems. Check out these firsthand accounts of the accountability process from Restorative Justice Victoria.
Transformative Justice (TJ) goes even deeper. It seeks to address the context in which harms occurred and, through a community-centered approach, catalyze long-term shifts in the very fabric of society. This can serve to not only prevent harm, but to create conditions that lead to healing and thriving, as well.
For years, transformative justice efforts have been a part of the movement toward building healthier, more intact communities and reducing the reliance on policing as our only means of creating safety. It is a holistic approach which focuses first on resourcing the victims/survivors of harm, who are often erased within the punitive justice system. Rehabilitating the person responsible is a secondary consideration, in the spirit of prevention. In addition, it holds an eye toward the source and root cause of the harm, rather than treating individual situations as isolated incidents. This enables us to make systematic shifts which can ultimately ripple outward and help reshape the culture of our communities as a whole.
Transformative justice understands that the harms we inflict upon one another are the downstream effects of larger dysfunctions within our society. They may stem from a culture shaped by scarcity, disconnection, domination, and generational trauma. In order to truly prevent harms from repeating, we have to transform the underlying issues and the belief structures that uphold them.
Interrogating our community standards and assumptions, strengthening interdependence, and addressing the root causes of harm are at the heart of transformative justice.
Benefits of the Transformative Justice Approach
Enables intervention before small harms and patterns escalate into major problems
Centers the needs and experiences of survivors or those impacted
It enables all involved to increase their capacity for clear communication, generative conflict, and ownership of responsibility
It creates opportunity for the person who has done harm to reflect on and understand the impact of their actions
It requires an actionable plan for repair
It cultivates greater safety, resilience and trust within the community
Limitations of Transformative Justice
Accountability processes sometimes happen months or years after an incident has occurred
Defining repair is much harder when death or major damage has occured
Results are slower and more systemic (we have to be invested in the long view)
Confrontation can be extremely uncomfortable
Those who are confronted cannot be coerced into accountability processes
Making amends doesn’t often have a clear timeline or resolution
Community involvement over time is required
Potential Misuse of Transformative Justice
People who aren’t committed to their inner work may harness the language or tools of accountability in an attempt to control situations or deflect culpability
People may repeat serious harms over time and rely on the optics of transformative justice to save face when held accountable
Those invested in upholding existing power structures may discourage efforts toward transformative justice, as it is rooted in systemic change
What If We Are All Responsible?
There is a tempting, self-righteous satisfaction in punishing or cancelling people we view as problematic. Part of why punitive systems exist within our society is because they allow us to rely on a convenient binary. When we frame complex situations in right/wrong, good/bad, or involved/not involved, we get a free pass to look the other way. Effectively, we absolve ourselves of the nuanced and laborious process of conflict transformation.
Community based approaches to healing can have major benefits, but they require work. If the goal of accountability is to interrupt cycles of harm and create long term vitality in our communities, we must also work to create healthier systems at the root level. This reimagining takes all of us. In an interview with the Barnard Center for Research On Women, Esteban Kelly, co-founder of AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance), put it this way:
“[Transformative justice] distributes the culpability a bit. Which isn’t to say it is even, but everyone holds some amount. What environment enabled the silencing to go on, such that this pattern was able to continue until a crisis? What allowed things to escalate? What were the subtle hints around male supremacy, sexism, white supremacy, or different forms of class power that gave people hidden messages that this was acceptable or that we’re not going to intervene?”
Steps of Accountability in Transformative Justice
Transformative justice acknowledges that there are no quick fixes to complex problems. Calling someone in is a first step, but there is no way of knowing how they will respond. Given the complex dynamics which can often lead to damaging behavior, it is possible that someone will refuse to participate in peacemaking efforts. If they are willing, however, a loose framework can look this way:
Identifying the harm: A problematic behavior or pattern is identified, either by the individual, someone affected, or the surrounding community.
Calling in: The person in question is called in. (Learn about the differences between calling in and calling out here.) If you are called in, it may take some time to wade through your initial reaction and emotional activation, but ultimately, see if you can receive the call to accountability as a loving act. You are being invited to change a behavior instead of being rejected because of it.
Taking responsibility: Feeling badly or saying sorry isn’t enough here. True accountability requires that we take responsibility for our actions and identify where we had freedom of choice when we may have felt we had no options.
Commitment to repair: The person responsible dedicates themself to repairing the harms that were caused.
Clarifying agreements and actionable steps: Ideally, those impacted will be involved in the decision making process around what repair should look like. The more specific you can be, the better. For example, if the person responsible is in leadership, do they need to be asked to step down from their platform for a set period of time? If someone has harmed another person in the community directly, do they need to help cover the cost of healing services?
Following up and ongoing relationship: This is where the rubber meets the road. Change takes time, and the process is not linear. To fulfill agreements and develop new habits, people need to be held in community while also keeping those who have been harmed safe.
The above model is not a hard and fast formula, but more of a roadmap through common situations. Sometimes, harm is so deep and shattering that basic steps toward repair may seem simplistic. For example, what if someone dies during an underground medicine retreat or a clinical trial? Worse, what if there are efforts to conceal or rewrite the narrative of what has happened? When facing situations where loss of life has occurred, the family of the deceased must be heard and empowered to define what efforts toward repair feel supportive on their own terms.
But, what if the person in question refuses to accept responsibility? What if the survivor or person impacted has no interest in being a part of an accountability process? Can Transformative Justice principles still serve when the process is less tidy?
I spoke with Esteban Kelly about his perspectives on creating a culture of accountability within movements. In addition to being a co-founder and worker-owner of AORTA Co-op, he also spent fifteen years as a volunteer member of Philly Stands Up!, a community-based transformative justice collective which worked directly with people who caused harm in sexual assault situations. Through PSU!, Kelly amplified the lessons of transformative justice to help local communities navigate scenarios of interpersonal harm and healing.
“If someone won’t be accountable, we are not going to do something coercive, contribute to call-out culture, or publicly shame them. We ask survivors, please don’t do a public take-down of this person; we’re not calling to cancel people. Instead, we might suggest that communities mute them or say they should not be platformed, but we ultimately want to draw people back into networks of trust. We want to direct resources and coaching to them so they are more capable of the change those around them know they need.”
Developing Muscle Memory in the Accountability Process
Accountability is a process, not an end point we arrive at. It requires acknowledging and taking responsibility for the harm that’s been caused, making amends however possible, and taking steps to change behavior so the harm does not continue. This requires that we develop skills in introspection, communication and sitting with discomfort. It requires us to ask, “What are the actions I can take to make things as right as possible, given that I can’t go back and undo what was done?”
Theoretically, these practices could transfer seamlessly into the psychedelic community. Is this a utopian vision, or is there hope for a lasting, truly just psychedelic movement that doesn’t self-destruct during its ascent? That depends on how committed we are to the process of change, first within ourselves and our immediate circles. Kelly offers up the long view:
“This rhythm of theory, action, and reflection has to be iterative and constantly evolving. What are we trying to do at a societal level if we can’t even figure it out in our own communities? These small exercises are maps and instructions for how we can reprogram things at a larger scale.
“Transformative justice doesn’t really make sense until you are involved in testing it out and applying it in the laboratory of your life. Testing it out in low-stake situations will help these concepts make sense. Then, when the going gets tough, you have muscle memory to handle more difficult scenarios.
“There’s a certain role that everyday facilitators and community organizers can play. Right now, that is where the gap is. So, how can we rise to the occasion ourselves to take these skills that seem professionalized and translate them into everyday skills? Transformative justice is not about running social services through non-profits and institutions. Those may be effective for other things, but there’s something else that can happen in a less codified way, in these intimate TJ settings, and that’s the change we’re trying to achieve.”
In other words, change begins at home. We’ve got to redefine justice on a personal level and learn to be accountable for ourselves and our immediate circles before we’re ready to make institutional change. Here are a few places to start:
Accountability: What Each Of Us Can Do Right Now
Invite mentors and elders into your life
Commit to a practice of brutally honest personal reflection
Get in touch with your body. Notice what comes up when you feel guilty, ashamed, threatened, accused, or misunderstood. Notice these emotions in minor situations and develop tools for managing them
Practice rupture and repair cycles in personal relationships
Learn how to apologize effectively
Develop capacity for uncomfortable conversations
Ask your peers for feedback
Create a culture of radical honesty & authenticity in your relationships
Practice following through on your commitments
Enlist a specific set of trusted “tough love” peers to be in close proximity and call you in when needed
How do we choose the right people to be our inner circle of accountability? Kelly lays out some considerations.
“It might not be your best friend. It might be your coworker, sibling, or neighbor. It’s more about the quality of the relationship than the quantity of people. Who do you share a depth of trust with? Where are the spaces in your life where you can receive direct feedback? The broken conditions of the world can feed into our ideas of victimization and defensiveness.
“When you’re activated, you may not be able to really hear critique. But who can, despite all of this, hang in there through the worst of the hurdles you put up; to have compassion for your human experience and essentially bear hug you into accountability? Who can say: ‘Yes, you can scream, cry, yell, etc. I’m able to hear your initial round of deflection and excuses. I may or may not validate them. But now that that’s off your chest, can you get to a place where you’re able to listen? It may be weeks or months later, but I’ll be here as a support person.’”
Healing For Our Descendants
The theory of transformation is one thing; the embodied, lived experience of it is something else entirely. As many of us can attest, the cosmic downloads we receive during a psychedelic experience may be profound, but the real magic happens as we integrate these insights into our lives. The same is true for accountability: Documentaries, books, and philosophy of change are solid starting points, but they carry with them a call to integrate this new knowledge meaningfully into our lives.
Integrity begins within ourselves, then expands into our relationships, our networks, and ultimately, as an extension, perhaps even the global community. Just as raindrops fill a stream, streams feed into rivers, and rivers become the ocean, it’s impossible to separate the individual from the collective.
How long might it take to really see a shift we envision? When will accountability, rather than punishment, be the norm?
“Realistically, we probably need another… fifty years of actively changing.” Esteban tells me. “Keep in mind, we don’t just suddenly ‘REACH SCALE’. Society changes through gradual, and sometimes speedy, transformation, but even that takes time to take root.”
Fifty years! In the psychedelic context, when we talk about the medicine of ancestral healing, we’re not just talking about healing backwards in time. We’re also healing for our descendants. We have the opportunity to pass along a heritage more healed and intact than what we’ve inherited. Healing our ancestral lines while we’re still living will likely take our whole lifetimes; this is a beautiful, fundamental expression of accountability. We are taking what we’ve been given, understanding its roots and working to transform it.
We not only need each other, we also need to trust and be trusted. We can acknowledge the windows of opportunity before us, but let’s commit to the long path and remind one another of the healing vision and our deep belonging when the noise gets too loud or our shadows come out to play.
Rebecca Martinez is a Xicana writer, parent and community organizer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform addressing the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement. Rebecca served as the Event & Volunteer Coordinator for the successful Measure 109 campaign, an unprecedented state initiative which creates a legal framework for psilocybin therapy in Oregon. She is also the author of Edge Play: Tales From a Quarter Life Crisis, a memoir about psychedelic healing after family trauma, spiritual abuse, and police violence. She serves on the Health Equity Subcommittee for Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board as well as the Board of Advisors for the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance.
While they start on the magic side of things with Aleister Crowley and early mescaline trip reports, they mostly discuss prohibition and new models for legalization, with Vayne giving us a nice window into how Britain has historically handled the drug war, culminating in the era of Spice bringing them to the point where essentially, anything that stimulates your nervous system has become illegal (when there is a clear intention to get high).
Vayne tells his Crowley-mirroring story about being banned from giving a presentation at the Oxford Psychedelic Society for admitting he has used drugs, poses an interesting way to consider drugs and their legality, and ponders how we can get our prohibition-obsessed authorities to not only empower people to make their own decisions, but to also accept that people do these things for fun (and that’s ok). And lastly, he talks about how psychedelics, set and setting, and practiced rituals and traditions all work together as technologies to enhance and inspire a magical experience.
Notable Quotes
“Once we use terms like ‘illegal drugs’ very frequently, it’s quite important, I think, to unpick some of that language. Drugs, in and of themselves- these chemical compounds, are not and can never be legal or illegal. What’s legal or illegal is whether or not you or I are allowed to possess those things, whether we can manufacture those things, whether we can supply or exchange those things to others. So it’s our behavior that’s about whether it’s licit or illicit, and the substances themselves are ‘controlled substances.’ So there are no illegal drugs. That betrays a misunderstanding of the way these substances are in culture.”
“We say to people: ‘You can smoke weed if you’re feeling really suicidal or if you’re feeling really very ill,’ and moving from that to a point where we can say, ‘Actually, you can smoke weed because you might like it’- that’s a radical thing for Protestant and post-Protestant cultures to go through because our relationship with joy, fun, the body, [and] material substance is deeply wounded.” “We do have to find a way to intelligently deal with the fact that we live on a planet with all of these substances, all of these medicines of various descriptions and people want to engage with those for all kinds of different reasons. We can’t simply say: ‘This is forbidden.’”
“They don’t need, necessarily, some dude in a crazy hat with feathers on it to tell them what to do, because they know that the mushrooms and the relationship between the mushrooms and their psyche and their evolutionary pathway- that’s where the power lies. …They don’t need to know what the traditional songs of their ancestors are, because this is the traditional song of them, in that moment. And it’s about feeding the flame of the tradition rather than worshipping the ashes of it. And we’re just surrounded by these broken forms and these tiny cultural clues, but with the help of other communities who’ve been less disconnected from this medicine, and also with our own guides and spirits and perhaps a good dose of good fortune, for us to recreate, re-find these things, and to make those fresh and new in every moment and every encounter- that’s the way we’ve got to go with this.”
Julian Vayne is widely recognized as one of Britain’s leading occultists. He is an independent scholar and author with over three decades of experience within esoteric culture: from Druidry to Chaos Magic, from indigenous Shamanism through to Freemasonry and Witchcraft. He is a senior member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, a co-organizer of the psychedelic conference, Breaking Convention, a Trustee of The Psychedelic Museum Project, a founding member of the post-prohibition think-tank, Transform, sits on the academic board of The Journal of Psychedelic Studies, and has been a visiting lecturer at several British universities. He is an advocate of post-prohibition culture and supporter of psychedelic prisoners through the Scales project. Julian facilitates psychedelic ceremony, as well as providing one-to-one psychedelic integration sessions and support. He is the author of Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony, and since 2011, he has been sharing his work through his blog, The Blog of Baphomet.
In this week’s Solidarity Friday episode, Joe, Michelle, and Kyle reconvene to talk about the biggest (and one of the weirdest) news stories.
They first discuss the California Senate passing Senate Bill 519, which, if enacted into law, would be the first state-wide decriminalization bill, removing criminal penalties for possession (and sharing) of psilocybin, ibogaine, LSD, and MDMA for adults. They talk about what the emerging market could look like, why harm reduction tips aren’t typically on cannabis packaging, and an interesting poll that showed that 35% of Americans now believe in the therapeutic potential of psilocybin (most surprisingly illustrated by a former sheriff in Florida publically stating his support).
They then discuss the recent news of the federal government ending a 50-year contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) that only allowed researchers to use cannabis from one approved facility (and the absurdity of this roadblock impeding research into such a commonly-used drug for so long), a New York Times opinion piece on the life-saving potential of ketamine and all the unmentioned variables that can affect its efficacy, and last but certainly not least: An article about cicadas being infected and zombified into decomposing, sex-crazed maniacs by a fungus that produces cathinone (which we know synthetically as “bath salts”), and even more interestingly, psilocybin. And if you’re thinking it, we feel it must be said that it’s likely not wise to attempt to trip off of discarded cicada butts.
Notable Quotes
“What’s the point of cicadas spreading a psilocybin-containing fungus all over the East coast right now? It feels a little intentional on nature’s part.” -Michelle “[There was a] $2.1 billion merger in Florida of two grows recently. How do we square these things? We can do capitalism, but we can’t do research.” -Joe “All these states legalizing for recreational/medical, and it’s like, as a country and people/society, don’t you want good data around products that you’re selling? And if the research isn’t there, how are we making good decisions? It just seems really counterintuitive that you’re just letting it run wild to some degree, but then also being like, ‘Well, we can’t study this because it’s a Schedule I and we still have to follow all of this.” Like, no wait, people are doing this. Don’t you want good data and [to] keep people safe?” -Kyle
“Are we short-changing humanity in the progress of science by only accepting randomized controlled trials as the gold standard of data? Are there things that are more cost-effective and quicker? Like, let’s test 20 drugs and skip placebos so we have data on 20 drugs, as opposed to like, how much more data do we need on placebo as part of RCTs? While RCTs are amazing, there’s a lot of drugs left to test.” -Joe
“These are articles being published, and so, how honest are we being about our own process, and what actually gets published? I could sit there and present you a really great story about my near-death experience and how it really changed my life and how it motivated me to do all this stuff and my psychedelic experience helped me to process my trauma and I went to school, and I could show you all the highlights, but how many of us are actually showing the trenches of our reality, and the descent into those valleys?” -Kyle
In this episode, Joe interviews co-founders of the charity, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS): Executive Director, Amber, and Chair of the board and former Navy SEAL, Marcus Capone.
They talk about Marcus’ transition back to normal life after 13 years in the service, and his “fizzling out,” depression, cognitive decline, and uneventful trips to brain clinics, followed by a life-changing experience with ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in a ceremony outside the US- something that, at the time, was very new and very scary but seen as a last resort. They talk about what he learned from his experience, the improvements they’ve seen in the people they’ve helped, why they call their grants “foundational healing grants,” and how the current psychedelic renaissance is missing a key element in the power of psychedelics: that maybe the issues we are working to try and heal (and their solutions) may be more physiological than we realize.
VETS has raised the money to provide grants to 300 veterans (and some spouses as well), and aims to do more, as they are currently working with the Stanford Brian Simulation Lab on a brain imaging study to investigate the potential physiological improvements from ibogaine.
Notable Quotes
“I was spending a lot of quiet time, just praying and thinking, and I remembered that one of our friends had gone outside of the US. And I didn’t even know what it was- I didn’t know anything about psychedelics, I didn’t know anything about ibogaine. I didn’t know anything other than someone we trusted was having a similar set of challenges and found relief through something crazy.” -Amber “I don’t think you can explain psychedelics, what it does. You’re opening your brain, really. You’re tapping into higher levels of consciousness that you just can’t explain to others unless you do it. And then the majority of people that do it [and] do it the correct way, they’re changed forever.” -Marcus
“It just creates this happiness that’s contagious, and it makes everyone else around them want to perform at that level as well. I know that I can say that for myself, and the shift in our family dynamic, and whether it’s our relationship with our kids, to our kids also setting goals and attaining them- that’s a real thing. There’s so much healing happening beyond just the veteran that we’re supporting.” -Amber “What we’ve come to realize, and what I personally feel, is that vulnerability is actually the greatest show of strength.” -Amber
“I feel like if we can really put our heads down and add to the body of research so that we can advocate for these therapies to be available inside the borders of the country that these veterans chose to defend, then we can not only help them in a more meaningful way, we can end the veteran suicide epidemic, and hopefully these therapies will be available to all Americans in due time, because they really are saving lives.” -Amber
When he was medically retired after 13 years and multiple combat deployments as a US Navy SEAL, Marcus Capone started experiencing an escalating myriad of challenges, including depression, isolation, cognitive impairment, excessive alcohol use, headaches, insomnia, and impulsivity. Marcus was diagnosed with PTSD, and later, TBI. When all hope seemed lost, his wife, Amber, learned of a new kind of treatment, and Marcus traveled outside of the US to receive treatment with Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT, to tremendous results.
This experience inspired them to co-found the non-profit, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) in 2019, which has since provided grants for hundreds of US Special Forces veterans to receive psychedelic-assisted therapy treatment, as well as preparation and integration coaching. VETS believes that psychedelic therapy can lay the foundation for further healing. This “foundational healing” enables continued progress across a range of therapeutic modalities, and is supported by a robust coaching program, providing a holistic treatment solution for veterans.
What is “moral injury” and how might psychedelics help?
Moral injury refers to the biopsychosocial-spiritual suffering stemming from participating, witnessing, or learning about events that transgress one’s deeply held moral beliefs (Litz et al., 2009; Shay, 2004). Moral injury is not a new construct, and the idea of a “soul wound” has long been evident in the writings of Homer and Plato. However, over the past 15 to 20 years, the term moral injury has resurged as a focus within the field of clinical psychology and psychiatry. At the same time, psychedelics are similarly experiencing a renaissance. Is this mere coincidence or an indication of a deeper underlying process at play? How might psychedelics hold promise for healing moral injury?
Moral injury is not a psychiatric diagnosis (Farnsworth et al., 2017; Jinkerson, 2016), but it can include feelings of guilt, shame, anger, disgust, and sadness, thoughts of personal regret and systemic failures, and avoidance and self-handicapping behaviors (Ang, 2017). Considered to be more “syndromal” than “normative” moral pain, moral injury is associated with significant impairment in relational, health, and occupational functioning as demonstrated by poorer trajectories in these areas (e.g., Maguen et al., 2020; Purcell et al., 2016).
Although the two often co-exist, moral injury is distinct from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While PTSD is largely rooted in and characterized by fear-based conceptualizations (i.e., focus on life threat, victimization) and symptoms, moral injury is rooted in perpetration, complicity, and betrayal and characterized by moral emotions (guilt, shame, spiritual conflict). Largely studied in the context of military experiences (see Griffin et al., 2019 for review), researchers have bifurcated morally injurious events into transgressions (by others and self) and betrayal (Bryan et al., 2016; Nash et al. 2013). However, morally injurious events are not limited to certain people or contexts, but rather range widely (e.g., killing in combat, deciding which COVID-19 patient gets a ventilator in resource-poor settings, witnessing police violence against people of color, being ordered to break rules of engagement, institutional betrayal in sexual assault cases) (e.g., Badenes-Ribera et al., 2020; Smith & Freyd, 2013; Litam & Balkin, 2021).
In my professional experience, those who experience moral injury stemming from transgression they themselves committed (either through action or inaction) can often carry deeply painful thoughts of “being a monster” and often engage in various forms of self-punishment and isolation in order to “protect others from themselves.” Most often, self-forgiveness feels like “letting oneself off the hook” for what was done, which is unacceptable. This deep sense of accountability, of course, reflects the actual inherent goodness and strong moral compass within the individual. Those who have experienced betrayal and transgression by others may find it especially difficult to trust people, carrying deep existential wounds about the goodness of humanity. However, most often, those struggling with moral injury have experienced all three of these types of wounds to various extents.
Moral injury is in essence a social wound, predicated on the morals and values constructed and shaped by communities and society (Scheder, Mahapatra, and Miller, 1987; DePrince, & Gleaves, 2007; Litam & Balkin, 2021). But how does one heal a social wound? Evidence based treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a related ailment, yield underwhelming efficacy especially in veterans, with up to 60% not experiencing meaningful improvement (Steenkamp, Litz, & Marmar, 2020). One reason for this may be that these approaches are not adequately addressing moral injuries within traumatic stress responses. Interestingly, the mental health field generally tries not to discuss morals, and yet it is clear that trauma and suffering are inextricable from morality. The false assumption of moral neutrality is deeply damaging and has allowed the mental health field to largely bypass the “moral” nature of trauma, war, and discrimination.
Relatively antithetical to current PTSD treatments, individuals struggling with moral injury need the moral violations acknowledged and held, rather than cognitively restructured away. Even in our approaches to healing, the Western mental health field places high value on the role of the individual as both the source of the problem and the solution, rather than the collective or society. In other words, it’s an individual’s “problem” and it’s on them to do the work to “heal themselves.” Much of current research is an exemplar of this through attempts to pinpoint just what’s wrong in the person’s biology, thinking, or feeling that leads them to be this way rather than searching for and acknowledging the larger truth that often trauma is a form of societal abandonment.
Thus, moral injury has been shied away from at least in part because it requires us to collectively acknowledge and take responsibility for the traumas that happen and their moral roots. Indeed, more often than not, those with transgression by self-related moral injury withhold these experiences from the therapist out of fear of moral judgment. People are often unsure if the person can confront and hold the truths of war and the dark side of humanity without restructuring it away. The same is often true for transgressions by others and betrayal related to racial trauma. However, to heal moral injury necessitates that we carry our share of the weight by confronting the social responsibility we have for each other. In other words, to move through moral injury, a society must actively incorporate and care for their individuals.
Indeed, a recent groundbreaking study in warriors from Turkana, a non-Western, small-scale society, showed the robust buffering effects of having explicitly moral-affirming cultural norms, social responsibility, and integration (Zefferman & Matthew, 2021). This is in line with recent efforts to incorporate community healing ceremonies into treatment for veterans. For example, Cenkner, Yeomans, Antal, and Scott (2020) found a ceremony in which veterans shared testimony on their moral injury with the general public significantly decreased depression, and improved self-compassion, spiritual struggles, personal growth, and psychological functioning. These findings provide preliminary evidence of the healing potential of communitas for moral injury, which is where psychedelics come in.
Psychedelics may create the opportunity for individuals to connect with the prosocial sense of communitas inherent in us all. Psychedelic compounds including empathogens (e.g., MDMA), classic psychedelics (e.g., psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca), and dissociatives (e.g., ketamine) may provide both the context and content needed to treat moral injury. Psychedelics have the ability to “reopen” critical windows to feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and sensations previously blocked by the ego’s well-intended presence (Brouwer & Carhart-Harris, 2020). Psychedelics induce interactive neural and neuromodular effects across whole brain systems (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019), which translate to a context in which rigid patterns of thinking, relating, and feeling are relaxed, allowing for more psychological flexibility (Davis, Barrett, & Griffiths, 2020).
Beyond providing the flexible ego-relaxed context, psychedelics may also “naturally” generate the content for treating moral injury and PTSD. Unlike evidence-based therapies, psychedelic-assisted therapies use non-directive approaches and although there is certainly preparation, there is no way to “enforce” what material is covered during dosing sessions. Despite this, evidence across numerous studies reveals psilocybin and other classic psychedelics consistently incline users toward confronting traumatic material and salient autobiographical memories, which relate self through past, present, and future (i.e., self-definition, expectations) (Camlin et al., 2018; Gasser et al., 2015; Malone et al., 2018; Watts et al., 2017). This is representative of the innate healing wisdom within each person. Much like how the body’s cells know what to do when a physical wound happens, the psyche on psychedelics appears to be naturally directed to the wound, toward confronting suppressed traumatic material, and limiting self-other concepts in need of healing.
There has been no empirical investigation to date into the use of empathogens (e.g., MDMA) or classic psychedelics as a treatment for moral injury. However, MDMA has been extensively studied as a treatment for PTSD, with very promising efficacy in reducing symptoms in combat veterans (Mithoefer et al., 2018). Announced this year, Drs. Amy Lehmer and Rachel Yehuda at the Bronx VA will be conducting a study using MDMA to treat moral injury in veterans (Lehmer & Yehuda, 2021). MDMA holds much promise for healing moral wounds in those who served, likely through its empathogenic qualities. Of particular relevance to military populations, MDMA may facilitate moral injury recovery through increases in self-other forgiveness and self-other compassion. It may help those suffering from moral injury disclose the experiences and get unblocked from beliefs about deserving to suffer and the unacceptability of forgiveness.
To elucidate this point, I spoke with John*, a Special Operation Forces post-9/11 veteran who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. John has also used psychedelics to treat his moral injury and PTSD.
John shared, “MDMA has allowed me to pull back from how I view the actions I took during war. I now see what I did as reactions to my environment based on the limited insights I had in a moment. The military created me, created my wolf mindset. I see now that I was just operating from how they made me. It’s given me the ability to see myself from a distanced perspective, and I can more accurately see cause and effect without judging myself. I used to view these experiences with just endless pits of guilt and shame, and now I see myself and what I did with much more compassion and forgiveness instead.”
Classic psychedelics may also provide unique benefit for moral injury through the opportunities of mystical experiences and ego-dissolution. Unlike MDMA (Holze et al., 2020), classic psychedelics can induce mystical and ego-dissolution experiences, which can include feelings of boundlessness, oneness with the larger world and reality, a sense of being eternal, and feelings of sacredness (Griffiths et al., 2008; James, Robershaw, Hoskisn, & Sessa, 2019). These experiences can foster a sense of personal meaning or purpose, often depleted in the wake of moral injury, and may offer an alternative felt sense to “feeling damaged or bad.”
The ego-relaxing effects of default mode network disruption may allow for the concept of self and others to be examined and redefined to integrate broader, more complex (e.g., “I’m a father, soldier, caretaker, friend”) versus singular organizations (e.g., “I’m a soldier”). Specific traumatic and morally injurious events can be “de-centered” or “de-weighted” from a person’s identity (Bernsten and Rubin, 2006); which could be considered akin to being able to do parts work (e.g., Jungian archetypes, Internal Family Systems). Relatedly, there is a strong body of evidence showing the effect of classic psychedelics on fostering prosocial affect and cognitions typically impoverished in moral injury such as self-other forgiveness, self-compassion, and connection (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016; MacLean et al., 2011; Pokorny et al., 2017; Preller et al., 2020; Wagner et al., 2017).
Classic psychedelic induced ego-dissolution and noetic experiences (e.g., oneness) may also aid in restructuring the “self” by highlighting our true connectedness with others, the natural world, and spirituality previously hidden by psychic pain. So often, those with moral injury report having lost their faith because what happened, or having their faith turn into solely a source of self-condemnation. Spirituality is often shied away from or at best, selectively present in the mental health field despite substantial ethical guidelines suggesting otherwise. The ubiquity of spirituality in psychedelic experiences will hopefully serve as a catalyst for the mental health field to fully incorporate this essential healing ingredient moving forward. Indeed, mystical and ego-dissolution experiences are consistently shown to be critical for positive treatment outcomes (e.g., Carhart-Harris et al., 2018; Griffiths et al., 2016; Haijen et al., 2018; Roseman, Nutt, & Carhart-Harris, 20118; Ross et al., 2016), suggesting the extent to which “I” can become “we” or “one/all” is important for alleviating psychiatric suffering. It also therefore stands to reason that both individual and group psychedelic-assisted therapies may be of particular benefit to moral injury. One could even imagine the therapeutic potential of complementing psychedelic assisted therapies with community liturgy approaches like those described above.
Although there has been no investigation on moral injury to date, there is some converging supportive evidence for classic psychedelics. In gay-identified long-term AIDS survivors who had lived through many potentially morally injurious events in the 1980s and 1990s, psilocybin-assisted group therapy significantly reduced demoralization, a form of existential suffering characterized by loss of meaning, hopelessness, and poor coping (Anderson et al., 2020). Half of the sample reported reductions in demoralization of 50% or greater by the end of treatment. In people with substance misuse, psilocybin and ibogaine increase acceptance of past behavior and self-other forgiveness and reduce guilt, respectively (Bogenschutz et al., 2018; Heink, Katsikas, & Lange-Altman, 2017). Similarly, psilocybin induces realizations of being a “good person” in people with treatment resistant depression (Watts et al., 2017). These findings hint at the potential of classic psychedelics to change relationships to past wrongdoings and heal existential wounds, but experimental evidence is needed.
When asked about possible differences across types of psychedelics, John shared:
“I’ve used psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca for the strict purpose of working on myself. These medicines have allowed me to perceive myself, my actions/behaviors as part of the collective whole of humanity. They’ve created a sense of being a super-organism of humanity! When I got back from war, I didn’t belong. I didn’t know this world, I had been in war for five years, all of my adult life to date. I knew I wasn’t really welcome… people didn’t know what to do with what I had been through so I didn’t talk about any of it. I did go to therapy and got cognitive therapy. It helped, but honestly, it barely scratched the surface. There was a level of being blocked that I just couldn’t break through and I just couldn’t get past the shame. But, as I’ve continued to work with psychedelics, I’ve been able to experience my ego dissolve, I felt integrated with all others, even stretching beyond humanity and merging with all forms of life and matter. The lasting guilt and shame from the harm that I caused people because of my actions and inactions has shifted to a more understanding and forgiving stance. War still pops into my mind within the first minutes of waking every morning, but consistent therapy and ritualistic medicine sessions with psychedelics has given me the ability to rise out of the grip that guilt and shame had on me. I no longer feel like I don’t deserve to have a good life. I can see my badness, but I can see my goodness, too. I still have the number of harms I’ve done in my head, but I am focused now on living a full life, doing enough good helping others that maybe one day will balance out that number.”
The rising trend of both psychedelics and moral injury suggest a communitas evolution. The symbiotic renaissance is evidence that society is increasingly tiring of the false perception of individuality. Acknowledging the ineffable truth of our interconnectedness and interdependence on each other for safety and wellbeing is the path to healing—for moral injury and for all of us.
In sum, I leave you with these questions: If moral injury is a social wound, is depression not also a social wound? Is addiction not a social wound? How might reworking the current psychiatric model to legitimize the moral fallout of trauma change the way we understand and treat psychic pain?
*John is a pseudonym as the veteran wishes to remain anonymous.
*Even though this article speaks to the benefits of those with moral injury using psychedelics, it is no way advocated that such individuals should seek to self-medicate. In sharing his story, John* would like to make it clear that he is not advocating for others to self-experiment as he did, rather, his aim is to spark interest in researchers to find more data on this in hopes of providing relief for others.
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About the Author
Dr. Amanda Khan is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in California and researcher at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She specializes treating trauma, PTSD, and anxiety and depression and offers depth work, evidence-based treatments, and post-psychedelic integration. She has worked as an independent contractor on MAPS MDMA-enhanced psychotherapy for PTSD clinical trials for the past four years. Dr. Khan is trained ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and will serve as psilocybin therapist on the phantom limb UCSD clinical trial in the Fall. She is also currently enrolled in the MAPS MDMA Therapy Training Program. Dr. Khan serves as Chair for the Moral Injury special interest group for the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS). She writes for Medium and Stress Points, and regularly gives talks and workshops on moral injury as well as working with gender and sexual orientation diverse people. In her spare time, she eats a questionable amount of tahini and enjoys hiking with her partner.
This week’s Solidarity Friday episode is a combination of an interview and the news, with Joe, Michelle, and Kyle being joined by author and holotropic breathwork facilitator, Renn Butler.
Butler talks about what has been referred to as the “gold standard of superstition,” the often misunderstood world of astrology, and more specifically, what he calls holotropic, or archetypal astrology: the way alignments between planets correspond to archetypes and experiences that emerge within psychedelic exploration and other non-ordinary states of consciousness. While not a perfect model, he uses these synchronicities to predict the best timing for exploration and the most probable outcomes, which will be featured in an upcoming monthly “Cosmic Weather Report” YouTube series (watch our page). He also discusses the concept of the inner healer, Stan Grof, how to be the best sitter, his upcoming online course on archetypal astrology, and The Beatles.
And with everyone back together again, some news is covered as well: California’s psychedelics decriminalization bill 519 heading to the Senate, the FDA allowing therapists being trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy to try MDMA, and in the “This Mainstream Website is Reporting This?!” Department, People Magazine reporting on Kristen Bell’s psilocybin use for depression.
Notable Quotes
“[Archetypal astrology] seems to be the only system that can successfully predict the content and timing of experiences in non-ordinary states- like a range of possibilities. We can’t predict exactly what is going to happen, but it’s very useful to have a map when we go on a journey.” “Stan had to laugh, that after years of unsuccessfully trying to find some kind of diagnostic technique (like the MMPI and the Rorschach test and the DSM categories), when they finally found a technique that could broadly predict the content of people’s experiences in sessions, it turned out to be something that was even further beyond the pale than psychedelics.”
“It’s all about human contact and trust. You just sit back quietly. If the journeyer needs something, then you respond. Otherwise, you stay out of the way.”
“[Bill Burr] just became a dad to his second child, so he’s really trying to work out some of his shit so he can be a good dad, and I thought that was also such a touching story and such a good example of healing these, I don’t know if you want to call it intergenerational trauma, but just healing family situations so you don’t repeat the same mistakes as your parents and you can be a better parent and you can see yourself a little bit more clearly. If this is how we’re going to be talking about mushrooms from now on, I’m here for it. It’s beautiful.” -Michelle
Following a B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Alberta, Butler lived at the Esalen Institute in California for 2 and a half years, where he became deeply immersed in the transpersonal psychology of Stanislav Grof and the emerging archetypal astrology of Richard Tarnas. He completed training as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator with Stan and Christina Grof in 1989, and has facilitated many workshops in Victoria, Canada. His research includes over three decades of archetypal-astrology consultations and Holotropic Breathwork workshops, and thirty-five years of Jungian-Grofian dreamwork. He has also worked in health care for three decades with physically, mentally, and emotionally challenged adults.
A former NAVY SEAL struggling with PTS and TBI is granted ibogaine and 5-MeO treatment in Mexico by an anonymous donation through VETS, and returns home with more than he could have ever imagined.
Whoever paid for me… thank you.
It was the most profound weekend of my life.
I didn’t expect too much. I guess I anticipated that this would be like most of the other “cutting edge” treatments for my traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress: pretty cool, it’d help a bit, I’d be grateful, but that’d be about it.
But here I am, two weekends from my treatment, struggling to find the words to accurately convey how transformative this was for me—how transformative it will be for any of us who are willing to let go, really. I keep typing things and then erasing them, thinking I must sound like a crazy person—some wild-eyed zealot who’s just too far-out to relate to. But then I think… this is the most far-out thing I have ever experienced in this life and whatever crazy talk I throw at you won’t be crazy enough to cover what went down.
In other words: I expected a firecracker and I got about six pounds of C4.
I guess I’ll just stop struggling for adjectives and “as ifs” and just tell you my story. Keep in mind please, as I do, that I can’t stand hippie, new age bullshit, and while I grew up in the church, I’m not particularly religious.
So yeah… joke’s on me.
We’re first introduced to the rest of the group via Signal secure text messaging. I’m stoked to see that a classmate of mine from BUD/S, whom I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, is going to be there, but the other guys I don’t know. Everyone seems a little held back, but that’s to be expected considering the circumstances.
We meet in San Diego on Friday afternoon for lunch, which is to be our last meal for the day, as we need to be in a fasted state for the ibogaine treatment that night. Little did I know that it would be pretty much the last thing I’d eat until lunch on Sunday.
After an uneventful drive of several hours, we arrive at the treatment house in Mexico and everything kicks into gear as a smoothly-functioning operation. The facilitators arrange the spaces, the doctor and his medical staff take urine samples, do EKGs on all of us, start IVs, and lay out some pretty impressive medical support gear for what I imagined to be a fairly low-risk event.
**Quick aside here: when I signed up for this, I thought it would be beneficial, sure, but as I started doing the preparatory work that I was sent by the organization, weirdly, things started coming up. Family issues. Relationships. Parts of me and things I’d seen and done that I’d buried out of shame or disgust. They said, “The medicine would start working before you take it,” and it really did. So by this point, I was open to something a lot more than what it appeared to be on the surface. So back to our story….
Evening approaches, and we gather around the fireplace. There’s an air of solemnity, but I can tell not all of us are bought in. Or maybe just none of us are at 100% yet. Most of us are pretty closed off, if still willing. It’s just kind of a SEAL thing, I guess.
We write down what we want to leave behind, and we take turns burning our paper in the fire. It’s quiet except for the crackle from the flames, and then the doc passes out our ibogaine doses (measured for our bodyweight) in little wooden bowls. It feels like a sacrament.
Solemnly, we take our medicine, and one by one, the facilitators lead us upstairs to be saged and smudged as a cleansing before moving to our mattresses. Curiously, the cleansing has a gravitas and weight to it that crumbles and dismisses all the shallow and thin echoes of spirituality in yoga studios and SoulCycles across Los Angeles. I receive it with humility.
Settling in on our mattresses, it’s dark. Only flickering candles and the fading light from the sun just below the ocean’s horizon remain to illuminate the room. The medical staff move quietly through, attaching heart monitor leads and O2 clips on our fingers and chests. Once they complete their tasks, I pull my eyeshade down over my eyes and lay back to wait.
Hyper-attentive to my mind and body, several times over the next half-hour, I think, “Is this it?… No… not yet…”
And then it comes.
Uber-detailed and realized visions flood my mind’s eye. They’re nightmares in 4K. I’ve never seen anything with the detail and clarity through my physical eyes that I’m experiencing now. I am completely in a dream yet 100% in my body. Unknowable machines possessed with alien intelligence build and fold out of the space like fractals from some dark pit. Strange visions that make no sense. A nightmare buzzing, like the sky is being chainsawed apart, howls with a clearly defined shape (shape?!) above my head. There’s a loud talking, without cadence or expression, just behind my left ear. It never ceases or pauses and I understand not a word. I open my eyes under the eyeshade and immediately I’m in fields of stars. I close them and I’m back in an alien, machine hell. They told us that if it gets to be too much, raise your eyeshade and you can come out of the visions, but I keep my eyeshade on. I want all of what the medicine has for me.
I begin to dry-heave. I feel hands around me, holding me in a sitting position. The retching is violent and back-to-back, four, five, eight times. Soon I’m laying down again, fighting the urge to vomit. The visions add strange, expressionless, soulless people standing and sitting around me. Again, they’re alien; there is nothing human about them. It must be hours that I try to make sense, assign meaning, figure out the visions, until, worn out, I give up. Just let them come, I think, and I let go.
Innumerable hours pass, or is it minutes? I try to move my arm and my leg, and while I can, nothing’s coordinated. It’s as if I’m operating a crane, and while I can pull one lever at a time, I can’t make the arm do anything resembling a smooth or efficient motion. I really need to piss but can’t conceive of trying to stand right now.
At some point during the night, six, seven, eight hours later, the “visionary stage” ceases, my mind quiets, and the literal nightmare I’ve been in ends. I’m in a trance-like state now, apparently what they refer to as the “contemplative stage.”
Bullshit.
All I’m contemplating is how tumbled and empty I feel. I still need to piss but can’t move. Unfocused, I feel like I’ve had a hard reset and I’m in the BIOS of the motherboard. Everything is in two-toned, 8-bit graphics. I pull off the O2 monitor and scrape off the eyeshade. I close my eyes but don’t sleep. At some point, I notice the sun rise.
Several hours later, I look around the room. All of us are glued to our mattresses in various interpretations of a full-body rictus. No movement.
Sometime later in the afternoon, around three or four I’d guess, I get up and make my way to the restroom and then downstairs. I manage to grab a banana off the counter (which takes a couple tries) and slide down to the floor and eat it. Judging from the expressions on the faces of the staff, I must look like shit… and it appears that they’ve seen this before, or maybe even experienced this themselves.
One of the facilitators comes to me, brings me to the couch, and does some “energy work” on me. I’m too worn out to resist the hippie bullshit… and surprisingly, it helps. A lot. Even though they had no meaning to me, I manage to write down my visions (not that I’ll ever forget them), then make it back upstairs to my mattress.
Several hours later, we attempt dinner. I don’t know how much the other guys manage to get down, but I think I get about two spoonfuls. There’s very little movement and lots of agonized expressions around the table.
Back to bed we go in silence, and in the dark of Saturday night or perhaps the wee hours of Sunday morning, my trance fades and I fall asleep.
When I wake on Sunday morning, I feel like a fever broke in the night. You know the feeling: You’re worn out, exhausted, but you know it’s over. The sickness is gone, leaving only relief.
Still weak, but ravenous, I make it downstairs and as my greedy hands begin to shove food towards my mouth, the facilitator kindly tells me that I still need to be in a fasted state for the 5-MeO-DMT, which we’ll be doing in a few hours.
MORE psychedelics?! I honestly don’t feel up for it. I don’t really want any more than what I’ve just experienced, but I’m in this for the whole enchilada (food metaphors? Fuck, I’m hungry) and I’m committed to following the whole program. I can tell I’m not the only one with hesitation though.
As the rest of the guys make their way downstairs, we gather again around the fireplace and the staff talks us through what’s going to happen next. One of the other guys expresses his doubts about the 5-MeO-DMT, and the facilitator reassures us that this is nothing like the ibogaine. It’s complementary, she says, a nice bookend to what we just experienced. “Hope they’re not matching bookends,” I think.
As she finishes with the brief, the two SEALs there helping out (who had gone through this before) offer a few words: “It’s like a deep dive in the ocean. You’re down 150 feet and it’s beautiful and quiet, and the water pressure is intense, and you’re at peace… but then you look over, and there’s a deep, dark abyss. If you have it in you, go down there. That’s where the jewels are.”
I think we all make up our minds at this point to go all the way, no matter what it feels like.
The staff gives us the order we are to go in and I’m number three of five. They tell us to go wait our turn by the pool, and mention it’s helpful to write what we’re feeling, so I grab my journal and head out to find a private spot by one of the fire pits around the pool. I begin to write, awkwardly, my muscles still not in agreement with my head yet, and I manage to stain the top of a clean page with: “I don’t I.” Frustrated that my hand, brain, and intentions all seem to be separate entities, I try again. This time, slowly, I write:
Ibogaine was a nightmare in 4K that I couldn’t stop or wake up from. I could make no sense of it then or now. I think I had expectations for the medicine as much as I tried not to. I have no expectations of 5-MeO. None whatsoever. It will be what it will be.
I start to put the pen down… but pause… and write:
I feel… different
It’s true. Something’s subtly very different. I write again:
I feel… present
Shocked into an introspective silence, I look inward and feel a clean openness in my soul, like all the accumulated and stored entanglements of my life have been quietly discarded, and I now only recognize they had ever been there by their absence.
Kind of stunned, I sit there with myself and savor the feeling. I haven’t felt this… free since I was probably about twelve. And as I rest in this quiet, subtle peace, awestruck… I hear our first 5-MeO guy scream from the house 50 meters away.
Shit.
As my turn arrives, I’m led into the house by one of the SEALs helping out. Up the stairs, I’m smudged and saged again, and led into the room. It’s kind of sacred. Candles. Music. The doctor and facilitators have really set the space and I can feel it. Speaking in hushed tones, they sit me up on the single mattress covered in a spotless white sheet, and almost in whispers, describe what’s about to happen. The doctor shows me the vaporizer, inscribed with a medical caduceus, and the three doses of toad venom I’m about to encounter. “The profound from the humble,” I think, and then I’m inhaling the “handshake dose,” just to familiarize me with the process. Easy enough, and with no effects to speak of, I pull my eyeshade over my eyes and we move on to the first real dose. I inhale again as the doctor instructs me, holding for a count of ten, then exhale and fall backwards as instructed.
Only just as I begin exhaling, the world explodes. Gorgeous fractals in vivid primary colors, more detailed and distinct than anything my eyes have ever viewed fills… my field of vision? No… my field of consciousness. I can barely feel that I have a body. Bliss suffuses all of me (what is “me”?) and all I feel is love. I remember what the SEAL downstairs said—that if you can handle it, go deeper. Since I’m able to have these thoughts, I figure there must be room left, so I clumsily signal for another dose. Halfway in my body, I’m pulled to a sitting position and again feel the vaporizer against my lips. Drawing deeply and holding, I hear the doctor count down from five. Far away, he whispers, “Exhale…”
…and I die.
No, really. I die. And here is where words begin to fail.
I feel my body atomize and it’s GONE. I’m in a blackness that is teeming, but warm. Infinite. It’s gentle, but I sense that the gentleness, while truly the essence of this Consciousness, is not all of it, and the power… there is no word that can convey the awesome power of this place. It is infinite possibility. And I? I am a speck, a tiny ripple, a wavelet upon an Ocean so vast and deep, how could I have ever thought; how could I have forgotten that I am no less separate from this great Consciousness than a wave is seperate from the Ocean? How can a ripple be apart from the sea? I am no longer “me,” but still completely “I.” And I remember whatI am.
I feel a scream coming from deep, and it happens—from somewhere I scream, and I hear it as an observer. But here’s the weird(est) thing. Time has no meaning here, and as I hear this scream, I know that this scream is not just from “now.” It’s from five years ago, and 20, and from when I was two, and from when my parents divorced, and from Afghanistan, and from yesterday. The linear time we live in has condensed to a singularity and this scream is from my now, my past, and probably my future.
I don’t know time, space, or have any ties to what I used to know. There is only existence returned from whence I came, and then, at some point in time or space…
…I walk through the Gates of Heaven.
(If you’re still with me, believe me, I know how this sounds.)
Hands around me, bright light more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, and the purest love, acceptance, grace, and right-ness permeates my existence. The greatest feeling I have ever experienced or could possibly imagine is dwarfed by this feeling. I pull my eyeshade off, and with pure wonder and without the slightest insincerity, think, “Are we dead? Are all of you angels?” I lay there on the mattress, alternately weeping with the sorrow of what we’ve lost and laughing with the realization of what we are, and I whisper, “I am born.”
I will never be the same. I wish I could convey more of this experience to you but words are useless. Ibogaine reached deep inside of me and wrapped up all my trauma and sorrow. It wrapped it up in a dark, wet, moldy, wool blanket and when I screamed, it all came out. I walk around every day in awe, feeling this, seeing with new eyes. I didn’t learn anything, I just remembered.
My brain works now too. It’s the strangest thing. Words flow. Thoughts sizzle. Synapses fire and I can discuss, read, think, and elucidate in ways I haven’t been able to in at least 15 years. I feel smart again. All the TBI had made things slow and fuzzy, but these medicines lit up all the lobes, cortices, stems, and folds of my brain and shocked them back into activity (not a scientific analysis, of course). It was starter fluid for my grey matter.
My relationships are healing. My dad and I are reconciling. He’s so happy. So am I.
I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on regarding this therapy and the history and use of psychedelics (I prefer the newer term, “entheogens” these days—it means to “create the divine within”).
These are not drugs. This is powerful, powerful medicine and it has the potential to do enormous good. These are sacraments that require much of you and will bring you what you need and are prepared for.
It is not the molecule, but the door that it opens.
To my benefactor: thank you. I’m going to do my part to take this newfound remembering and make the world better, and bring it to as many people as I can. And the most unexpected, beautiful realization? The Brotherhood that we fight with, for, and next to—the ones who scar us and scar with us are also the ones healing us. What an amazing thing!!!!
I never thought I’d be signing off like this, but….
In this episode, Michelle and Kyle interview head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, Founding Director of the new Neuroscape Psychedelics Division at UCSF, and psychedelic research legend, Robin Carhart-Harris.
He discusses what inspired his milestone entropic brain/REBUS model research and how psychedelics drop the assuredness we’ve established through our “prediction machine” brains, contemplates how science hasn’t really answered the question of why we fall ill, and dives into plasticity, trauma, germ theory, and the sensitivity of orchids vs. dandelions. He also talks about HPPD, the need to concretize abstract experiences, DMT, how being somewhat of a psychedelic celebrity has affected him, and his thoughts on Compass Pathways and the recent “land grab” and patenting stories that have been making the rounds recently.
Carhart-Harris and his team are currently researching anorexia, psychedelic sub-states (like looping), group ayahuasca use, nature connectedness, and conflict resolution (with MAPS).
Notable Quotes
“New [drugs] will come out but they’re not really different than the previous ones, and typically, with the exception of ketamine coming on the scene, they’re drugs that you take every day, and they decrease symptom severity but they don’t do that much more, really. And they don’t do that much more than placebo as well. So drugs aren’t very good and clinicians recognize that and patients recognize that, and I think it’s come about because of our failure to answer that question: Why do we fall ill?”
“If the brain is fundamentally a model of its environment, then you can’t understand the brain without understanding the environment and the context that it exists in. So I think any human neuroscientist needs to be, in equal measure, a psychologist.”
“I think it would be useful for people to understand that plasticity, in and of itself, isn’t an intrinsically healing force.”
“[In] the domain of spiritual practice [or] meditation, then maybe a wise teacher might say something along the lines of, ‘Let it be uncertain. You don’t need to hurry an explanation here. Sit with the uncertainty, explore it.’ I think maybe that would be good advice in the psychedelic space because sometimes, there can be an eagerness to explain that can create explanations that are really tenuous, rather than just to say, “Fascinating, mysterious.” You don’t have to concretize it. The classic one, maybe is the DMT experience, where it’s so far out, you’re just thinking, ‘What the hell was that? How does that happen? Where do I start?’ It’s so compelling that the natural thing to think is: ‘I did leave. I went somewhere else. It’s another place.’”
Robin Carhart-Harris is the head of the Psychedelic Research Centre at Imperial College London, focusing on functional brain imaging studies with psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, and DMT. He has over 100 published papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the groundbreaking “Entropic Brain” paper, which explored images of people’s brains while under the influence of psychedelics. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychopharmacology from the University of Bristol, and is the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCSF. In July, he is coming to San Francisco to head up UCSF’s new Neuroscape Psychedelics Division.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, the news is once again skipped, with Michelle and Kyle instead speaking with Elan Hagens and Rebecca Martinez, co-founders of Portland, Oregon-based Fruiting Bodies Collective: an advocacy group, podcast, and multimedia platform with a focus on uplifting marginalized communities and shrinking the gap between industry insiders and the rest of us. Martinez is a regular contributor to the Psychedelics Today blog and was the Event and Volunteer Coordinator for Oregon’s groundbreaking Measure 109 campaign, and both serve on its Health Equity subcommittee.
They talk about their paths to creating their group and why education, access, and proper representation for everyone in the community is so important toward their next project: creating a facilitator training program that works for everyone, and is infused with justice and equity throughout.
They break down what exactly Measure 109 means to the people of Oregon, the misconceptions about decriminalization and confusion about how to access psilocybin therapy, the idea of creating different therapeutic paths for people based on their different circumstances, what risk really means to so many of us (and especially to people of color), and the problem American society has with trusting a Doctorate over thousands of years of Indigenous wisdom.
Notable Quotes
“When we’re doing this kind of work, we need to come back and realize that this stuff came from soil; it’s not just a pill. It can be a pill, and everybody can have medicine in their own way, but we need to acknowledge all these variables within it, and especially, especially Indigenous healing and Indigenous medicine- giving reverence to that and acknowledging that every chance it comes up in your mind, talk about it. Don’t be like, ‘Oh, we’ve talked about it too much.’ Every time it comes in your mind, let’s talk about it more.” -Elan “There is a privilege in being able to go to school and having a Doctorate. There is a privilege in having a parent who can support you in elementary school and have enough money to get you into college. But that does not mean that there are people who have not had all these degrees and stuff [who] do not have the same type of knowledge. So especially with psychedelic medicine, I’m always going to come back to the Indigenous wisdom- there are no Doctorates in there. There’s no titles in there.” -Elan
“We want to come out with the first batch of leaders and trainers to say, ‘Hey, here are some other options’ straight out of the gate so that the tone that has been set is one of equity and access. And it creates healthy peer pressure so that folks are like, ‘Wait, do you have a BIPOC scholarship fund? Do you have an Indigenous reciprocity fund? If not, why not? You all are talking about scale, which means you’re talking about big numbers, and we see these little groups that are putting x% of their profits, so why aren’t you guys?’” -Rebecca “We have this really sick thing here which is like this tree that is rotting from the roots and we’re clipping at the leaves and trying to make it better, but what we really need to do is compost it and grow something else here. But what is that vision? I think even if you look globally, we have so few examples of what a safe supply market would look like, and that’s so far down the road of so many conversations, culturally, that need to be had, and so many assumptions and ideas and stigmas that need to be peeled back layer by layer, that to say something to an average American voter like, ‘Imagine if we had a place where people who do use drugs could get a safe supply and know that they’re not going to overdose,’ you’re speaking a different language at that point.” -Rebecca
Elan Hagens and Rebecca Martinez are the co-founders of Fruiting Bodies Collective, a mission-based podcast, advocacy group, and multimedia platform in Portland, Oregon, serving the growing psychedelic healing community. They exist to bridge the gap between industry insiders and the eager-to-learn general public, with a focus on uplifting marginalized communities toward liberation for all. Their current project is the creation of a collectively owned, justice-centered psychedelic peer support training program for Oregon’s legal psilocybin facilitators.
Join Joe Moore and Tim Cools to discuss Psychedelic Experience. We’ll be taking questions from the audience to discuss how the website has been up and running since 2017, their recruitment and safety protocols and much more.
This special webinar will take place May 27, 2021 at 10:00AM MST
Tim is a conscious entrepreneur and psychedelic coach. After experiencing the profound transformational power of Ayahuasca in 2015, he realized his purpose is to advocate safe and responsible use of psychedelic plants and medicines: this is how Psychedelic Experience was born! He has over two decades of professional experience developing industrial-grade software in various industries, including smart homes, energy, payroll and logistics. In 2018, Tim re-trained himself as a psychedelic integration coach and guide, hosting legal psychedelic sessions and retreats in the Netherlands. Tim’s interests are software architecture, psychedelics and plant medicine, non-dualism, mindfulness, and helping people to reduce their suffering and improve their well-being.
Defining sacred reciprocity, exploring the historical use of psychedelics, and establishing ways to give back to the communities who have lost the most holding this ancient wisdom.
Nature exists in a dynamic balance of interconnected relationships and exchanges. When more is taken than returned, the results are depletion, imbalance and system collapse. Many of us in the Global North have the advantage of enjoying psychedelics simply by purchasing them or receiving them as a gift. We are no longer in direct relationship with their roots or required to know where they came from, who grew them, or how they were sourced and produced. We do not bear the historic or contemporary burdens carried by those for whom entheogens are integral to their way of life.
The psychedelic movement is surging, in part because many of us have had the privilege of direct, life-altering experiences with these substances. These medicines, whether grown or synthesized, give generously, often in the form of healing, wonder, reconnection, play and illumination. But they don’t exist in a vacuum. Thankfully, they also offer the capacity for openness—and this unlocks a door to a more nuanced and responsible conversation about where our medicines come from and the impacts of our participation in what has become, for better or worse, a global market.
Just as being good stewards on this Earth requires us to know the stories behind our food, clothing, fuel and devices, we also have a calling to ask deeper questions about psychedelics. What don’t we know about the places, cultures, ecologies, peoples, and complex histories associated with the healing modalities we venerate? In asking these questions, we can uncover practical and meaningful ways to contribute to a culture of reciprocity, sustainability and integrity, toward the benefit of all. Then we can begin to see how this reciprocity lays the groundwork for collective healing.
Sacred reciprocity offers an opportunity to help restore balance to a presently imbalanced system of extraction amidst the global expansion of psychedelics.
What Is Sacred Reciprocity?
Sacred reciprocity is the heartfelt exchange, gratitude, and acknowledgment for everyone and everything that sustains us. In psychedelics, it is a call for those who consume plant medicines to give back meaningfully to the communities and lineages who have preserved these medicines for generations. Indigenous communities bear the impact of the expansion, along with, in many cases, oppression from local governments.
The concept of sacred reciprocity comes from the Quechua word, ayni. Quechua is the Indigenous language of the ancestral peoples of the Andes, specifically Peru. Ayni is a principle of receptivity and gratitude, marked by a lifestyle of giving back in an inhale-exhale type relationship with the natural world.
Even those who consume only lab-based substances can participate in sacred reciprocity through a number of practices detailed here.
The History of Indigenous Psychedelic Use
Here’s a quick and dirty history lesson.
So, where and from whom do our medicines come? What is their traditional use? The following list is by no means exhaustive, and it’s important to remember that many entheogens are found throughout multiple continents and their practices vary between lineages. Additionally, much history has been lost and erased through the process of colonization. We recognize the unnamed groups and honor their heritage from which modern life has been severed.
Psilocybin
Psilocybin mushrooms have confirmed Indigenous roots in Central America, most notably the Mazatec people of Oaxaca, Mexico (recall the oft-told tale of Maria Sabina and R. Gordon Wasson), as well as the Mixtec, Nashua and Zapotec peoples.
It has been theorized that ancient Greeks used a combination of psychedelic mushrooms and ergot fungus in their ceremonial brews. Evidence of ceremonial mushroom use has also been found in Africa, with Algerian cave paintings dating back 9,000 years and psilocybe mushrooms found in Central Africa and South Sudan.
Modern Mazatec people have spoken of the “Hippie Invasion” of the ‘60s and the way the commodification of sacred mushrooms reshaped their communities. Learn more about Mazatec Perspectives on the Globalization of Psilocybin in this article from Chacruna Institute.
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, also called caapi, yajé, or yagé, is a ceremonial drink made from the stem and bark of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of Chacruna (Psychotria viridis) or other botanicals. It was first formulated by Indigenous South Americans of the Amazon basin, particularly modern day Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. In 2010, a 1,000- year old bundle of shamanic herbs with ayahuasca was found in a cave in Bolivia. Ceremonial use for the Shipibo-Conibo people does not always include chacruna leaves, which contain DMT.
While the Shipibo people are the most well-known tribe associated with ayahuasca medicine, close to 100 distinct Indigenous groups use ayahuasca. The global expansion of ayahuasca tourism (and the Western emphasis on visions and DMT) has led to overharvesting, deforestation, violence, non-Indigenous owned retreat centers and competition between shamans.
In addition, deforestation in the Amazon has reached record highs, which has a global impact on climate instability. Yet, a 2020 study found what many First Nations people have often said and may seem obvious: Collective Indigenous property ownership reduces deforestation and protects human rights, as well as cultural and biodiversity.
Peyote
Peyote is a sacred cactus native to what is now known as the American Southwest, Mexico and Peru. With a human-plant relationship dating back 10,000 years, this ceremonial cactus has been used in rites of passage and annual pilgrimages by Native American and Mexican Indigenous groups for millennia and is inseparable from cultural heritage for many tribes, including the Wixaritari, Raramuri, Yaqui and Cora peoples.
Peyote contains mescaline, a psychoactive substance also found in Huachuma (San Pedro cactus). For the last century, Indigenous groups have fought convoluted government policies, environmental degradation, private land ownership, poaching, mining, and urbanization.
The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative is a collaborative effort to preserve peyote and ensure the survival of this sacred practice for generations to come. Learn more here.
Huachuma
Known as the grandfather of entheogens, Huachuma (which came to be known as San Pedro after the Spanish Invasion) is a cactus native to Peru and Bolivia. Its use can be traced back 4,000 years. With roots in the Andes, this medicinal plant is associated with the Chavín culture, which laid the foundations for the Inca civilization. Stone temple slabs dating back to 1,300 B.C. show a figure holding a huachuma cactus.
Huachuma contains mescaline, and while it is legal in the United States to grow the cactus for ornamental purposes, consuming mescaline is illegal. Because it grows so much faster than peyote and is more widely available, conservation and Indigenous rights advocates recommend that those who feel called toward a relationship with mescaline choose huachuma rather than peyote. In this way we can preserve peyote in solidarity with the Native American communities for whom it is a sacrament.
Rapé
Tobacco is one of the oldest and most important shamanic medicines in the Americas. It is impossible to separate Indigenous history in the Americas from the ceremonial use of tobacco, known as Mapacho. Rapé (also called Hapé or Rapéh) is a form of sacred Amazonian snuff tobacco. It is made by combining dried tobacco leaves (Nicotiana Rustica) with sacred tree ash and other botanicals and grinding it into a dust-fine powder. Blends are distinct from tribe to tribe and the shamanic process of making rapé can take several weeks. It is known for its grounding and stimulating qualities.
Tobacco is not prohibited in most of the world the way other entheogens are. However, this open legal market has created other concerns. In recent years, an explosion in global interest in rapé has resulted in many white-owned “shamanic supply” businesses popping up online, selling rapé and other Amazonian medicines on web stores and Instagram. It is wise to dig deeper when companies claim they are in partnership with local tribes or have a “trusted source.” Keep in mind that “a portion of proceeds returned to the tribes” and “mutually beneficial relationship” are undefined and potentially exploitative claims and fair trade practices aren’t always readily enforced.
Kambo
Kambo, also known as toad medicine, is a controversial ritual. Historical use of kambo is very different than the modern practice. Hunters in the Matsés tribe of Peru would coat their blow darts with the frog poison, believing that this purified the animal they shot. They would then bring the animal back to their village to be sacrificed and eaten. Kambo is quite different than other Indigenous medicines; the modern practice, as Westerners know it, seems to be a new invention. The first human use of Kambo (for sharpening the skills of hunters) was documented in 1925 by French missionaries. It was popularized in the 1980’s, by investigative journalist Peter Gorman, and numerous patents were also filed at this time.
Sourcing kambo involves first extracting the peptide-rich poison from the body of the Giant Leaf Frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor). This is done by catching the animals and then stressing them so that they secrete their poison, either by stretching their limbs or holding them over a fire. A stick is then used to scrape the gluey secretion from their skin and save it for later use. This biological material is shipped around the world to practitioners who promote it as a detoxification and immunity-building medicine.
Kambo practitioners burn holes in the skin of their clients and then apply the frog secretions to the wounds. The purging and immune response which follows is believed to cleanse the user of ailments and negative energies.
The Giant Leaf Frog is currently threatened by climate change and habitat loss (though it is currently listed as “Least Concern”). Furthermore, patenting kambo is yet an example of bioprospecting, which is a common practice in the incredibly diverse rainforests of the world and has major impacts on the Indigenous communities from which these molecules are sourced.
Ibogaine
Ibogaine comes from the root bark of the iboga shrub, which is native to Gabon in central West Africa. It has been used for centuries by people of the Bwiti religion as a rite of passage and initiation. The preservation and expansion of the Bwiti tradition and iboga medicine has a complex history involving French occupation, displacement, intertribal violence, religious suppression and political marginalization.
Medicalization of ibogaine began in the late 1930s, with decades of intermittent but promising research into its potential to treat substance use disorders, particularly opiate addiction. Its legal status remains complicated and restricted in many countries.
Global enthusiasm about iboga’s healing potential has created problems not unlike those faced by Indigenous Americans with peyote, such as difficulty sourcing medicine for their traditional use and ongoing political struggle to protect their practices.
Wild iboga is currently endangered in Gabon due to poaching, climate change, illegal export to satisfy international demand, urbanization and habitat degradation. As an alternative, iboga can be grown sustainably in greenhouses and farms, and advocates also point to the option of using semi-synthetic ibogaine from the voacanga tree instead.
DMT
DMT has been called the spirit molecule. This powerful, naturally occurring entheogen is concentrated in modern ayahuasca brew, thanks to the presence of chacruna leaves. It is also produced endogenously by a variety of plants, fungi and animals, including toads, salamanders, rats, shrubs, seeds and amanita mushrooms. Some have theorized that the human body even produces DMT at birth and death, and it has been found in the urine of people experiencing schizophrenia and other psychoses. DMT is structurally similar to LSD.
Due to conservation concerns, many in the movement advocate for the use of synthetically derived DMT to avoid contributing to habitat loss and extinction as interest and demand for this medicine grows.
LSD
While tiny squares of paper blotted with synthesized LSD and printed with cartoon characters may seem the farthest thing from nature, it was first discovered by Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, working with ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.
Lab-Made Companions
Synthesized compounds such as LSD, MDMA, ketamine, 2C-B and others need not be excluded from the list of substances deserving of our gratitude. When we partake with intentionality, the journeys give generously back to us. Sacred reciprocity can be viewed as an essential element of psychedelic experience, regardless of the catalyzing substance.
Qualities of Sacred Reciprocity
Now that we have some context for the historical and contemporary issues surrounding entheogens and psychedelic medicines, let’s look at some guiding lights for giving back meaningfully.
Relational Reciprocity
Sacred reciprocity comes with the humble energy of the ask. To seek consent not only from the medicine itself, but also the elders and medicine keepers, is to set aside one’s own agenda in the interest of the larger good. Are we willing to take no for an answer? This is a nuanced question and cultural considerations are different with every entheogen and context. For example, partaking in ayahuasca may have different steps for accountability than partaking in home grown mushrooms. This is why moving at the speed of trust and cultivating lasting relationships is a responsible approach.
Proactive Sacred Reciprocity
Rather than an afterthought, sacred reciprocity can be woven into the entire psychedelic process, from decision making and intention through to integration and daily life. Think ahead and be intentional with how you want to give back. Involve your peers in this shared effort as well, and watch a culture of integrity bloom and flourish before your eyes.
Practical Reciprocity
When we talk about reciprocation, it’s important to focus on impact over intention. How does this action directly benefit the people, ecologies, and futures we seek to support? This is why we recommend backing organizations without intermediaries so that good intentions are not lost in translation.
Grateful Sacred Reciprocity
Every great medicine journey begins with gratitude. Whether in a deeply healing or rambunctiously festive environment, pausing for a few breaths or words of gratitude can have major impact on the ways we relate to the substances we consume, what we bring to the experience, and what we come away with. Thank the medicine, yes— but also thank the ancestors, wisdom keepers, protectors, ecologies, and chemists!
Humble Reciprocity
Readiness to listen and learn is a powerfully healing force. The forces of colonialism, which could have wiped out these medicines completely, are rooted in ideas of superiority and entitlement. Unwinding these attitudes is a process that comes full circle within the very medicine spaces that have been protected for generations.
Non-Transactional Reciprocity
The concept of ayni is one rooted in a living, dynamic relationship. If we fall into a guilt-driven, transactional mindset of repetitively taking and repaying, we begin to lose the heart of ayni. Reciprocity requires an exchange of value, to be sure—but it should be a meaningful contribution to which we bring our whole selves, rather than simply a bill that we pay.
Informed Sacred Reciprocity
Recognizing the true history of entheogenic medicine is a tough pill to swallow. We all benefit from the sacrifices of Indigenous groups who have preserved their heritage in the face of colonialism, genocide, religious persecution, criminalization and exploitation. Medicine work calls us to awareness. Awareness calls us to relationship. Relationship inspires action. This is a healthy cycle of responsibility that can have far reaching benefits for global healing, if we’re willing to engage with it.
Understanding also enables us to spread knowledge and context within our communities and gradually shift the culture at large.
Multi-faceted Reciprocity
Reciprocity considers the interconnected social, economic, ecological and spiritual factors at play within the global expansion of psychedelics. Offerings of gratitude seek to edify multiple facets of the movement—for example, financially resourcing native communities hit hard by COVID-19 and spreading awareness of entheogen conservation issues among your social circle are tangible ways to give back.
Committed to Sacred Reciprocity
To step into a reciprocal relationship with entheogens means stepping into the right relationship with the Indigenous communities where they originate. It is difficult to imagine an ethical way to consume psychedelics while ignoring the ongoing struggle of the very groups who have shared them with us.
Commit to supporting indigeous survival, thriving and self-determination. This includes the return of power, agency and resources to the original people of the land. The common psychonautic reprise that “we are all one” and desire to “stay out of politics” becomes difficult to justify while directly enjoying the traditions these people have made sacrifices to defend.
Complex global issues are at play here, so nuanced and open-ended relationships are the name of the game. We have to let go of short term solutions and quick fixes. This is a process of unlearning as much as learning—but the alternative is an old story in which we in the Global North unconsciously repeat the harms of the past in more subtle, but equally detrimental ways.
Ways To Give Back
Commit to learning and honoring the lineage and preservation of medicines you consume (studying and sharing this article is a solid start).
Financially support Indigenous-led organizations* The Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative, hosted by Chacruna Institute, offers a directory of community-determined projects which you can support directly. Check it out here.
Use medicines sparingly. These substances are powerful, limited and rapidly declining. Consider ways to spread out your journey work, and make the most of each experience through self-responsibility, preparation and integration.
Grow your own medicines and choose medicines that can be sustainably grown or produced.
Dig into your own Indigenous history. Get into relationship with your ancestry through family, food, research, community and focused journey work. Solidarity reaches deeper when it hits close to home.
Advocate for drug policy reform and work to understand systems of oppression in your community.
No money? Use what you have.
Volunteer time. Many organizations and projects could use help with web-based marketing, fundraising and awareness efforts.
Talk with loved ones about sacred reciprocity.
Cultivate practices that are good for the Earth and its ecosystems in your diet, travel, and consumption habits.
Do journey work specifically focused in prayer for Indigenous protection and thriving.
Commit to the path of interconnectedness. Embrace systems thinking over simplistic solutions.
*The Chacruna Institute makes an important point here: “It is vital that members of the psychedelic community help support Indigenous groups and the traditional ecological knowledge they practice. Many organizations and individuals have a genuine desire to help, but struggle to find ways of connecting directly with local communities. Sometimes, the only option is donating to massive non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Western countries. Many who care about the environment and its interdependency with Indigenous lives are aware that money given to large NGOs often fails to reach the people on the ground due to the large infrastructural costs needed to run these organizations. Yet, small grassroots groups doing the most impactful work often labor to connect with people wanting to offer direct support through donations. For this reason, Chacruna has created the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas.”
Conclusion
With so many converging forces in the psychedelic movement, it is refreshing—audacious almost—to envision a community-led path forward that isn’t shaped by “corporadelics” or pharmaceuticals. The culture of sacred reciprocity is a first step toward healing the traumas of the past and present. The potential of the psychedelic resurgence multiplies when we embrace the inherent value of our roots and the lives that sustain this medicine.
Sacred reciprocity is a worthy cause. It requires humility and dedication. There lies before us a chance to live out a new story—one that our descendants will no longer have to spiritually bypass in order to fully enjoy their trip.
Rebecca Martinez is a Xicana writer, parent and community organizer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform addressing the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement. Rebecca served as the Event & Volunteer Coordinator for the successful Measure 109 campaign, an unprecedented state initiative which creates a legal framework for psilocybin therapy in Oregon. She is also the author of Edge Play: Tales From a Quarter Life Crisis, a memoir about psychedelic healing after family trauma, spiritual abuse, and police violence. She serves on the Health Equity Subcommittee for Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board as well as the Board of Advisors for the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Mark Haberstroh: mushroom enthusiast, contributor to our Navigating Psychedelics course, and in Joe’s words, the “person who has worked at more psychedelic retreats than anyone I know.”
Haberstroh talks about his journey from a liter-of-vodka-a-day “drinking career” to rehab, to finding his calling and spiritual path through a combination of using psilocybin for the first time at a retreat center and later, someone at a festival asking him if he used mushrooms intentionally. He talks about what he’s learned from working at so many retreat centers, from issues he’s had with unwelcome surprises and miscommunication, to ways retreat centers can improve to become more people-focused with more attention paid to the very necessary (and all too often neglected) aftercare piece.
He also talks about the importance of researching retreat centers, how different retreats could be geared towards different intentions, the power of the Lakota Sun Dance, Stan Grof’s theory of perinatal matrices, how integral community is to the healing experience, and the complicated aspects surrounding our collective focus on safety.
Notable Quotes
“It’s unfortunate, but when people don’t know about these substances, they compare them to the substances they do know, and if I told them I was doing mushrooms, they equated it to heroin and alcohol and other drugs. These things are so different, and people are so set in their ways, not only would they not listen to me, but they wouldn’t even see me. I lost a hundred pounds, I became active and healthy and happy. …Nobody saw that. All they saw or heard was that I was using mushrooms, and to them, that was bad.” “People ask me about [microdosing] and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. Personally, I don’t get anything out of it.’ We don’t have any data, the placebo effect is really, really strong. But like, whatever. Same thing about spirituality: If you’re happier, healthier, and it’s working for you? Fuck yea.”
“These things have been around forever. We just kind of forgot about them or became afraid of them.”
“I grew up playing video games. And at one of these retreats, I was walking through the woods and was like, ‘Oh my god, I grew up having nature pre-packaged and sold to me for 60 bucks. An ‘adventure,’ and I’ve been ignoring actual adventure in my own life. I need to sell my PlayStation.’”
“It’s a chaotic time right now, but I think we’re also witnessing a real paradigm shift and it’s what we need societally. We need to think about, reevaluate, and revamp the education system, the prison system, [and] the medical model that likes to put band-aids on things rather than getting to the root cause of the issues.”
Mark Haberstroh is a self-educated entheogenic specialist and amateur mycologist, working with mushrooms of all varieties for the last 6 years. He has traveled the world, visiting and working for different psilocybin retreats, educating himself on the different models currently being offered in countries where this work is legal. Originally from Alabama, he now lives in Oregon and is attending the School of Consciousness Medicine.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Michelle, Kyle, and Joe welcome Benjamin Mudge to talk about psychedelics and bipolar disorder, and although there was an intention to also cover some news, the bipolar topic turned out to be quite interesting- so much so that there will need to be a part 2 of this episode in the future.
Mudge, a Ph.D. candidate and Director of the Bipolar Disorder CIC, talks about his own journey of living with bipolar disorder, and how it was ayahuasca that got him off pharmaceutical drugs and to a place of self-awareness and balance he never experienced before. He discusses the taboo against bipolar people and how keeping them out of research studies out of fear for their safety is actually more dangerous to them, and how ayahuasca on its own (and in the correct setting and proportion) could actually be a very safe solution. He talks about how ayahuasca has been a scapegoat, the many factors that come into play to determine its strength and efficacy, institutional ethics, mania triggers, the effects of antidepressants, and how bipolar people are “quantificationly challenged.”
Mudge is working to become an ayahuasca facilitator, collaborating with researchers to determine the best ayahuasca component ratio, pushing to get more bipolar people in more studies, and his biggest project: creating a safe protocol for bipolar people to engage in ayahuasca ceremonies so that they can experience the peace he has.
Notable Quotes
“I was prescribed the wrong antidepressant and became manic psychotic, got locked in a hospital, and went on a journey through the mainstream psychiatric system, tried 17 different prescription pharmaceutical drugs, …I left psychiatry, tried to figure out my own way, tried a bunch of herbs from herbalists and Chinese doctors- they didn’t work. And then 15 years ago, I discovered ayahuasca, and I’ve been off psychiatric pharmaceutical drugs ever since then.” “The contraindication status is not logical, and it’s functioning more like a cultural taboo in our community than it is an evidence-based medical fact. And by the contraindication and the exclusion of bipolar people from the clinical trials, from the ayahuasca retreat centers and so on and so on- that is an attempt to ‘do no harm,’ but doing nothing when you’ve got a suicidal population does not equal ‘no harm.’” “Excuse me, but can anyone actually give me a logical reason why one peer of one minority group who has superior understanding than the rest of the population about what this other bipolar person is going through, knows how to help them, and actually has some experimental treatment medicine- can anyone actually give me a logical, ethical reason why those bipolar people can’t get together and help each other out?” “There is a role for mainstream psychiatric pharmaceutical drugs. They can definitely play a role in stabilizing someone, [but] the question is, does that really have to go on for their whole life? Or once they’ve got their life together and done some therapy, can they have a lower dose or have them less often, or come off them, or use a psychedelic or whatever? That’s not something that the profit margin and that big pharma wants to consider at this point. But I think the humans deserve it.”
Benjamin Mudge has a background in music, art and political activism, and is now a PhD candidate in the Psychiatry Department at Flinders University, as well as Director of Bipolar Disorder CIC. He taught himself the science of bipolar disorder, while working at Neuroscience laboratories and GlaxoSmithKline, to be able to manage his own personal experience of manic depression. After psychiatrists prescribed him 17 different pharmaceuticals (all of which were problematic), he gave up on pharmaceutical psychiatry and decided to find his own solution to living with manic depression. He has been managing his bipolar disorder with ayahuasca for 14 years – without any need of pharmaceuticals – and was awarded a PhD scholarship to research whether his personal protocol could assist other bipolar people. His future vision is to make ayahuasca ceremonies available to bipolar people as an alternative treatment to pharmaceutical drugs.
Taking a deep look at what Measure 110 did and didn’t do in Oregon, and speaking with one of the measure’s Chief Petitioners, Anthony Johnson, on the future of drug policy reform.
“There’s never been a better time to be a drug policy reform activist,” says Anthony Johnson, a Chief Petitioner of Oregon’s Measure 110. Amid a sea of despairing headlines, it’s refreshing to hear a streak of optimism, especially from someone who has been working in public service for over twenty years.
Measure 110, also known as DATRA (the Drug Abuse Treatment and Recovery Act), received 58% of the Oregon vote in November. Similar to Portugal’s drug approach, the measure decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs. In addition, it allocated cannabis tax dollars and prison savings to pay for expanded drug treatment and other vital services. This progressive policy was passed alongside Measure 109, which created a legal statewide psilocybin therapy program.
Measure 110 was implemented statewide on February 1st, 2021. Addiction recovery centers and services must be available in each of the state’s 16 coordinated care organization regions by October, 2021.
What Measure 110 Does:
Removes criminal penalties for low-level possession of drugs. The amounts are as follows:
Under 1 gram of heroin
Under 1 gram, or fewer than 5 pills, of MDMA
Under 2 grams of methamphetamine
Under 2 grams of cocaine
Under 40 units of LSD
Under 12 grams of psilocybin
Under 40 units of methadone
Fewer than 40 pills of oxycodone
Allocates $100 million in state funding to expand behavioral health, addiction, recovery, housing, peer support and harm reduction services and interventions.
Establishes an Oversight and Accountability Council, made up of people who have direct lived experience with addiction, along with service delivery experts.
Reduces the criminal penalty for larger amounts of drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Replaces the misdemeanor charge for small possession (which held a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison and a $6,250 fine) with a fine of $100. This fine can be waived by completing a health screening within 45 day of receiving a citation.
Nearly eliminates racial disparities in drug arrests, according to an independent analysis.
The Measure Does Not:
Legalize or create a regulated supply of drugs.
Change the criminal code related to drug manufacture and sale.
Change the criminal code for other crimes which may be associated with drug use, such as theft and driving under the influence.
What About Other Drugs That Aren’t Listed?
I spoke with John Lucy, a Portland-based attorney focused on cannabis and business law, to clarify. He explained that Measure 110 covers all controlled substances, Schedule I through IV. The defined amounts in the bill language were provided for the more well-known drugs. So in short, Measure 110 really does make simple small possession a Class E violation for most drugs (with some A misdemeanors for larger quantities of the drugs listed that don’t meet commercial drug offense guidelines).
To be more specific, substances such as GHB (Schedule I and III), 2C-B (Schedule I) and Fentanyl (Schedule II) are now all class E violations, subject to the new $100 citation.
Why Measure 110 Matters for Racial Justice
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (OCJC) is an independent government body which is responsible for research, policy development and planning. In 2020, the Secretary of State released a Racial and Ethnic Impact Report, which explored the potential impacts of Measure 110. The findings make it easier to understand why Oregonians voted overwhelmingly in favor of this measure.
According to analysts, Measure 110 is slated to:
Prevent 8,000 arrests.
Reduce drug convictions of Black and Indigenous Oregonians by a whopping 94%.
Save between $12 million to $48.6 million from ending arrests, jailings, and convictions.
Also noteworthy are the more systemic solutions that could come from this measure. According to the OCJC’s report:
“This drop in convictions will result in fewer collateral consequences stemming from criminal justice system involvement, which include difficulties in finding employment, loss of access to student loans for education, difficulties in obtaining housing, restrictions on professional licensing, and others,” the report says, adding: “Other disparities can exist at different stages of the criminal justice process, including inequities in police stops, jail bookings, bail, pretrial detention, prosecutorial decisions, and others.”
Q & A with Anthony Johnson on Current and Future Drug Policy Reform
I spoke with Chief Petitioner of Measure 110, Anthony Johnson, about the treatment-not-jails approach and where he hopes the drug policy reform movement will go next.
Rebecca Martinez: It’s a little late, but congratulations on the passage of 110. What a huge accomplishment!
Anthony Johnson: It’s a step in the right direction. Oregon took a big sledgehammer to the failed drug war. But I would say there is still more work to be done around the criminal justice element, making sure that harm reduction, treatment, and recovery programs are fully funded. And there’s still more work to be done expunging past criminal offenses that people have suffered from.
RM: Do you foresee new organizations being formed under this measure, or will the funding go to expand existing ones?
AJ: Right off the bat, at least with the initial funds, it will go to groups like Central City Concern and Bridges to Change that set up sober housing living situations and want to expand their programs so they can help people find places to live, get job training and experience, and be able to move on with their lives. Programs like that can expand. There could be rural organizations that understand there are places in Oregon where people have to travel hours to receive drug treatment. Groups could get funding for mobile units and meet people where they are. And then we have organizations like Outside In, who may want to expand the ability to provide NarCan, or fentanyl-testing supplies so that lives can be saved.
So in the short term, it will be organizations that are already up and running, doing good work and have experience applying for these types of funding sources. Over time, I could see new organizations established based upon lessons learned and the needs of the community.
RM: When it comes to drug testing [as in checking for purity, not to be confused with urine drug testing], is this something we currently have in some form, and if not, is it legal and allowed under this new program?
AJ: Right now, organizations can get funding to expand programs to test drug supplies. There are organizations working today in Oregon that provide test strips so people can test their own drugs and make sure they are not fentanyl. I’m unaware that this conflicts with federal law if a group is just supplying testing equipment. It’s a little different than say, a safe consumption site where there is a violation of federal law happening on site. It’s more like, “Here’s your kit,” and you’re on your way.
When we talk about the interplay and all these issues of impact, I want to highlight one point, and I believe we did this effectively during the campaign. I hope this can reverberate all throughout Oregon: When people talk about drug policy changes, ultimately it is not about the drugs. It is about the people. Our loved ones. No matter where you live, who you are, you have family members using drugs, most likely illegal drugs, but definitely legal drugs, be it alcohol, tobacco, or prescription drugs.
Knowing the truth about these drugs, treating them without stigma so that when people who do have an issue, they’re willing to come forward and there are resources available to them. Ultimately, what do you want for yourself or a loved one? How do you want to be treated? Do you want them arrested, put in jail, fired, given a scarlet letter “F” labeling them a felon for the rest of their lives so they can’t get certain housing opportunities? Or do you want them treated with dignity and provided resources if they need help. Remember that the majority of drug users actually don’t need help and can lead productive lives.
When mainstream media stories are written, headlines are going to be as inflammatory as possible. The photo’s gotta be needles and lines, razor blades, if they can they throw some guns in the picture too, but that’s not a realistic representation of life in America. As we move forward, we want to be compassionate, empathetic, end the stigma, and treat people how we want to be treated.
RM: I have two immediate family members who have been incarcerated. Is there a pathway to ending sentences for people who are serving time for substances that are no longer illegal? Or, is it: “What’s done is done”?
AJ: Something could be done about it, for sure. And we were able to accomplish some of this work with cannabis. We could have something passed that provides a study saying, “Who is in prison for these substances that are now decriminalized?” Or, “The offense was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor and their prison time should be reduced and they should be let out.”
For whatever reason, there’s often some reluctance around that. I don’t quite understand it. The way I see it, when we legalize cannabis or drug possession, voters and society are recognizing that the state has made a mistake. Cannabis shouldn’t have been illegal in the first place. These small amounts of drugs should not be a felony or a misdemeanor. So, why are people in prison and why do people have criminal records when the state made the mistake?
It will take further legislative changes to accomplish this. We still have such a huge stigma around drugs. Cannabis has taken 25 years. It may be due to coronavirus and other concerns, but really there’s been no movement on further decriminalizing drug possession yet.
RM: What do you want to see moving forward?
AJ: What I want to see, what I’m working for and will continue advocating for, is automatically expunging old convictions. Automatically releasing people from prison. Following Measure 91 [Oregon’s Legal Marijuana initiative, on which Anthony was also Chief Petitioner], one of the most proud moments of my activist career was reading an article on OPB.org in which a man said he cried tears of joy because his cannabis delivery conviction could finally be expunged from his record, after following him for 30 years of his life.
Now, six years later, I am still proud of that, but I am struck that we didn’t go far enough. He was in a position to hire an attorney, pay the court fees, pay for the filing. [But] expunging your criminal record should not depend on your ability to hire an attorney. The law is the law. It should just be off everybody’s record. It should not be based on how much money you have or whether you know how to jump through legal hoops.
RM: Have you heard interest from people in other states who want to create models designed after 110? Given what you know now, what would be the dream model that you believe could be pushed through in more progressive states?
AJ: I have been in touch with people interested in enacting similar policies, and even city or countywide changes where statewide is not feasible. The cannabis movement did the same thing with local efforts. I definitely support anything that moves the issue forward. I became an activist over 20 years ago and I definitely see a key change in where we are and we are definitely going to move forward in other states. My dream model would be largely based in Oregon.
Now, the possession limits of what you decriminalize should be examined and should be realistic around peoples’ usage. One of the critiques I heard a lot from addiction doctors was that the possession limits we decriminalized in Measure 110 were, really, too low for a lot of users.
Even potentially, so long as someone is not selling, [general possession] could be decriminalized. Automatic expungements of past offenses and early prison release, and I think there should be funds allocated for treatment, harm reduction and recovery for those who need it.
This should be looked at as an extension of our healthcare needs. States should also be looking into studies into the medicinal benefits of various psychedelics, be it psilocybin mushrooms or MDMA. Slowly but surely, we are getting research moving forward at the federal level, but it is really up to the states to move these things forward.
In the future, something like 109 and 110 could be combined.
AJ: I support anything that moves the issue forward and educates people. My one caveat [about Decrim Nature and the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance] is I don’t want anybody to possess larger amounts of these drugs [in Oregon] than what Measure 110 allows, believing they are okay under state law because of a city resolution. A city cannot make something legal that the state has made illegal.
This is a problem with not having a city court, and this is something I look at when we are planning future drug policy reform measures. Cities that have their own city court, such as Columbia, Missouri where I went to undergrad and law school, can pass a measure and force the city prosecutor and police to keep that case within city courts and not send it to county or state [court], or refer it to the feds. So in these places, you can actually change the law [at the city level].
The city can’t make, say 28 grams of psilocybin mushrooms legal if the state says 12. It could be de facto legal, if the district attorney chose not to prosecute people, but DA’s change and it may not always be that way. [It’s then up to] local police discretion… it could be “lowest law enforcement priority,” but they could still arrest you.
RM: If it is on the discretion of the police, is it worth putting resources into these city-based resolutions? The last thing any of us wants is blood on our hands or anyone having a brush with the law because they thought they had legal protection when they didn’t.
It is imperative for all advocates to do what they can to be open. Lowest law enforcement priority measures are symbolic measures. If you are not actually changing the law, people can still be arrested and convicted. There could still be a lot of good out of that, but we need education that helps people realize this doesn’t actually change the criminal code. It’s up to advocates to make sure people know the truth of the matter. We don’t want to do harm. That said, if anything is moving the issue forward, I tend to support it. My focus is on changing the law, but I support anything that’s chipping away at the drug war. We should be honest about the pros and cons.
We want to let science, truth, and common sense guide us. We need to be truthful about what a lowest law enforcement priority measure does.
RM: What would you say to those who are pro-psychedelics who are new to the idea of broader drug policy reform?
This is something I’ve battled within cannabis legalization, which I’ve been involved in for over 20 years. Early on, and still to this day, there was cannabis exceptionalism. People had the attitude of, “Don’t arrest us [cannabis users]. Arrest these other people who use heroin, or meth, or these other drugs.” And now we’re seeing the same thing with psychedelics.
In the end, I believe people need to do their best to be empathetic to the situations people are born into, how they’re raised, the traumas they go through, and the drugs that are used. If you were born in a different city, state, whatever… you may have used different drugs than what you use today.
When I first told people in cannabis activism that I was working on 110, they were like, “You’re not going to decriminalize meth, right?”
Bottom line is: Arresting and convicting people, whatever the drug is… it’s counterproductive. Throwing someone in jail and taking away their education, housing and job opportunities is not good for them or society. We have to set aside our feelings about drugs because we believe some substances are better than others and that [certain] people should be treated better than others. We all have circumstances and hardships. No matter the drug of choice, arresting, criminalizing and stigmatizing them is a counterproductive policy.
We always need to come back to that. We need to appeal to people’s compassion and empathy. We cannot arrest and jail our way out of people using drugs.
RM: You make an important point. You’re touching on the question of: What does punishment do to us? Does it move us closer or further from the society we want to have?
We have to change the conversation. Imagine the headlines you’d see if other drugs caused the consequences we see with alcohol. Car accidents, death, abuse, other accidents, all these bad decisions people make… if that was another drug, just imagine the headlines, every day. People committing crimes, getting in wrecks with alcohol in our systems. But for better or worse, it is accepted in our society.
But if someone came to you and said they used alcohol and thought they needed help, that is [also] totally acceptable in society. And it should be. That’s where we want to get with all drugs. No matter the substance someone uses. If people seek help, they should get the help they need. Ultimately, we need to end the stigma. It’s difficult when even people within drug policy reform have their own stigmas around certain drugs. I’m a different advocate in 2021 than I was in 2000. Everyone has their own journey, but I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We got a strong majority of the vote [in Oregon]. Drug decriminalization got a higher percentage of the votes than Jeff Merkeley, who is a very popular senator! This is more popular than we think. We’ve got to thank Dr. Carl Hart, who is braver than most, for paving the way.
I believe in ten years, in this discussion around decriminalization, stigma and use, we’re going to be in a much better place than we are now. It’s not just electoral victories, it’s conversations we have publicly like this one, conversations with our friends and family, we can just chip away at it.
I’m actually very hopeful. Drug policy reform is two steps forward, one step back. But as scary and maddening and the world can be, I’ve never been more optimistic about what we can do. I’m proud that Oregon’s been playing our part and other states are following suit.
I believe in our lifetime we are going to end the drug war.
Rebecca Martinez is a Portland, Oregon-based writer, parent and community organizer. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform exploring the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement.
In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. Fernando Espi Forcen and Dr. Franklin King from Mass General Hospital’s new Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics.
They talk about how Jerry Rosenbaum, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, and Compass Pathways led to the creation of the Center, and they talk about their plans, including a study involving imaging, a study looking at ketamine use with and without psychotherapy, and their first: a study on rumination inspired by Rosenbaum’s work.
They discuss people’s “good or bad” binary opinions on drugs and the fear so many still have of psychedelics, the mystery of consciousness and how more studies can lead to a better understanding of it (and therefore better psychiatry), spiritual emergence vs. spiritual emergency, what could hurt our collective progress, and their vision of the future as a very multidisciplinary world with a lot of cross-collaboration between different fields of psychiatry and science- a future they’re already starting to see with some of the excitement coming from their neighbors at MIT.
Notable Quotes
“One of the major issues, I think, facing psychedelic research right now is that all the money is private money. …We don’t have any federal funding for psychedelic research at this point, which essentially means that people with deep pockets are able to dictate what studies get funded and that private companies get to decide what gets studied. …It’s definitely true that political bias and some of the scars of the 1960s and the Nixon laws and the Reagan era are continuing to suppress research.” -Franklin “If we’re going to hold psychedelics to this super high standard, I think we also need to hold all of our other treatments to a super high standard. So I do see within that, there’s kind of a bias where people are willing to look the other way about something like ECT or the criticism that SSRIs might not be super effective for mild to moderate depression. We look the other way for that, whereas psychedelics need to jump through so many hurdles to prove that they’re worth pursuing.” -Franklin “The amazing thing about consciousness is that we still don’t have a good model for the mind of consciousness. And as a psychiatrist, [that’s] tremendously intriguing.” -Fernando “Another piece of this is really preparing not just patients, but psychiatrists, physicians, the world, for how this works, because it’s really a completely different model of treatment than pretty much anything else. Whether you see a psychiatrist or you see another kind of physician, you’re going in and sort of asking for a treatment to be given to you as kind of a passive recipient. Psychedelics are not like that.” -Franklin “Nixon’s ghost is in my apartment, probably.” -Joe
About Dr. Fernando Espi Forcen and Dr. Franklin King
Fernando Espi Forcen, MD, PhD, works at the Department of Psychiatry of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, taking care of patients at the inpatient psychiatry unit and urgent care clinic. Before moving to Boston, he worked at Rush University in Chicago as a consult liaison psychiatrist with a particular focus on patients in need of liver and kidney transplants. He was born and raised in Spain and graduated from Medical School at the University of Murcia. He has more than 20 peer-reviewed publications in a variety of aspects of psychiatry, such as akathisia due to drugs, metabolic syndrome, inflammation, dissociative symptoms, history of psychiatry, and cinema. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychiatry and the author of the book, Monsters, Demons and Psychopaths: Psychiatry and Horror Film.
Franklin King IV, MD, is the director of training and education at the Mass General Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. His primary clinical and research interest is in the utilization of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat a variety of chronic psychiatric conditions, including depression and anxiety disorders, and in strategies to optimize these interventions for different patient populations. In addition, Dr. King teaches and supervises residents and fellows at Mass General, and practices clinically as a staff psychiatrist at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders as well as on the Acute Psychiatry Service in the Emergency Department.
On Thursday, May 13th, we’re celebrating 5 whole years of making Psychedelics Today and you are all invited to come celebrate with us!
We’re hosting a live, virtual birthday party on 5/13 starting at 7:30 pm EST on Twitch. We’ll start with a conversation between Joe, Kyle, and our newest edition, Michelle, on the origins of Psychedelics Today, how Joe & Kyle met, why they wanted to start a psychedelic podcast and media company, how they created their Navigating Psychedelics course, and so much more! We’ll also be opening it up to questions from the audience, so if you’ve been meaning to ask us something, Thursday evening is your chance!
Then after about an hour, we’ll be winding down (or ramping up) with a live vinyl DJ set from dr. bouchard. So mark your calendars and get ready to celebrate our birthday with us! It’s totally FREE and guaranteed to be a super chill evening full of psychedelic insight, music, and more!
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Michelle is back, Joe is in Phoenix, news is covered, and rants are made.
They first cover Maine’s recent proposal to legalize psilocybin therapy, and how interesting it is that a diagnosis wouldn’t be needed, but a “licensed psilocybin service facilitator” would: Is this a move towards liberation or far away from it? They then discuss the excellent results finally coming out of MAPS’ Phase 3 Trial for MDMA-Assisted Therapy, which leads to a huge sidebar about the efficacy of therapy, what a diagnosis can mean, how we define “sick” and “healthy,” and how we trust “evidence-based” studies and the DSM when maybe we shouldn’t so much.
They then talk about a CEO of a $2 billion startup getting fired for using LSD at work in a microdosing experiment, the FDA proposing a ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes and flavored cigars (which Michelle refers to as what a lot of us know them as, “blunt wraps”), and the list that sparked a lot of controversy in the community, Psychedelic Invest’s “100 Most Influential People in Psychedelics” list, which, despite Joe’s inclusion at #85 (Yay Joe! Sorry Kyle!), Michelle did not entirely agree with.
Notable Quotes
“I understand that maybe totally regulating and legalizing psilocybin for sale without the facilitator component is a little radical for the mainstream to handle, but …I do hope that this is a first step toward that. Maybe we can show how safe and gentle psilocybin can be, and that the facilitator aspect should be a choice among people and not a necessity.” -Michelle
“You don’t need a clinical diagnosis to know you have shit to work on.” -Joe “Talking about diagnosis and the medicalization of therapy, I think it’s this double-edged sword where some people really find relief in having a diagnosis, and go, ‘oh, it gives me some sort of language that this is what’s going on with me and I have a path forward to treat it,’ but that also limits people from wanting to seek out therapy.” -Kyle “The establishment wants us to think that they’re keeping us safe so that they can continue to justify their existence. That’s one of my reads. I understand how that’s pretty cynical, but it’s kind of the way it’s been: ‘Oh, you’re smoking cannabis? We’re going to put you in jail and take your kids away, because it’s what’s best.’ That sounds like a nightmare, first off. And then secondly, where’s your data? Where’s your data that prohibition has ever worked? Ever, ever, ever?” -Joe
There is a growing community of people with autism turning to psychedelics. But how are these substances helping them find relief from the symptoms of neurodivergence?
Current estimates suggest that about 2% of adults in the U.S. have autism. In addition to higher levels of social anxiety, depression, and ADHD, autistic individuals meet unique challenges as they seek effective therapeutic treatment methods available to them; psychedelic-assisted therapy is now seen as an attractive alternative for this often sidelined and marginalized population.
There are promising signs that indicate psychedelics could help autistic individuals manage social anxiety, recover from trauma, reduce depression and anxiety, as well as work through the unique hurdles on their path. However, it may be the case that for people with lower-functioning capabilities, psychedelics might not have nearly the same effects. Despite innumerable anecdotal reports from individuals who have benefited from psychedelics in a multitude of ways, there is still a significant lack of research regarding how psychedelics could be useful for those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses.
What Is Autism?
Before delving into how psychedelics can be helpful for people with autism, it is first important to understand what autism actually is. Defining it can be tricky because there is still no agreed upon mechanistic, neurological basis for the condition. Despite this, there is research to suggest that neurodivergent brains exhibit higher levels of functional connectivity, believed to contribute to the intense sensitivity to sensory input and sense of overwhelm that autistic individuals experience in certain environments.
Moving away from stereotyped definitions of ASD as a social impairment, many believe sensory processing issues to be at the core of autism. Typically, autistic individuals have hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity to sounds, touch, and lights, among other stimuli. As such, autism is characterized by unique, atypical ways of interacting with and processing information. Even so, everyone inherits their own unique neurocognitive version of autism, and although autistic individuals share basic neurological features as well as a common diagnosis, behaviors and traits can vary dramatically from person-to-person. It’s why you’ll commonly hear autism referred to as a “spectrum.”
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), defines autism in terms of deficits in social communication and interaction, and repetitive patterns of behavior and/or interests that are present (but not always noticed) in the early developmental period. However, such definitions of autism have led to false stereotypes. Looking at autism through this lens of pathology, scientists have long sought out a “cure.” However, pathologizing autism in this way is both harmful and damaging.
In the book, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, Steve Silberman reflects historically how the controversial roots in early psychology have led to widespread misunderstanding of what autism is, and how our societal failure to embrace neurodiversity has been inherently damaging. Further, Silberman speaks to the fact that embracing neurodiversity can benefit our existence in that neurodivergent individuals are often endowed with unique, specialized ways of seeing the world.
Within psychiatry, autism is classified as a “disorder,” however, in recent years this conception is being actively challenged by advocates of neurodiversity. When defining autism, Nick Walker, queer autistic scholar and Associate Professor of Somatic Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, makes a distinction between what he refers to as the “neurodiversity paradigm” and the “pathology paradigm.” Walker describes the neurodiversity paradigm as a perspective that “recognizes neurodiversity as a naturally-occurring form of human diversity.”
Comparatively, autistics are marginalized through the pathology paradigm, which rests on the assumption that there is only one “right” way to be and that if you stray from the dominant conception of normal there is something wrong with you. He adds, “In the context of a society designed around the sensory, cognitive, developmental, and social needs of non-autistic individuals, autistic individuals are almost always disabled to some degree.”
Although certain features of autism can be disabling, many of the challenges that autistics face aren’t necessarily related to their diagnosis, but rather, arise from the way in which society treats those who don’t fit the mold of “normal.” Many autistic individuals grow up feeling that their way of inhabiting the world is flawed because they do not conform to certain, socially-conditioned ways of being.
Difficulty meeting certain social expectations often ends in social rejection, stifling autistic individuals’ ability to interact with others. Accordingly, autism is often misrepresented as a social deficit by those who are ignorant of the fact that social difficulties in autistic populations are simply by-products of the heightened intensity of their sensory experience. Through the lens of neurodivergence, autism is a neurotype, and labelling it as a “disorder” reflects a value judgement more than anything else.
Looking Into the Research on Psychedelics and Autism
In the early 1960s, when LSD was beginning to be used experimentally in research and psychotherapy, a series of controversial studies were published around treating young children who were believed to have severe forms of autism and childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) with LSD. Due to misconceptions surrounding autism, it was previously thought to be closely related to juvenile schizophrenia.
The driving justification for experimenting with a powerful psychoactive substance on children was that all other treatment methods had previously failed. Scientists gave a total of 91 children, aged between six and ten, LSD at differing dosage levels and fluctuating frequencies of administration with different treatment schedules, finding that the most effective results were produced at doses of 100 micrograms given daily or weekly for extended periods of time. Undoubtedly, such a study would be unacceptable to an ethics committee today.
Positive outcomes were reported with the use of LSD, with researchers summarizing the most consistent effects as improved speech, increased emotional responsiveness, frequent laughter, positive mood, and a decrease of compulsive behavior. In one such example, researchers observed that the children “appeared flushed, bright eyed, and unusually interested in the environment.” Despite these promising results, positive outcomes were largely dismissed due to the fact that the study designs were greatly flawed, and were not as scientifically rigorous as those of today’s standards because they lacked experimental controls.
Since this early research, there have been very few studies that have looked into the clinical uses of psychedelics for autism. One of the first to do so was clinical psychologist and MDMA researcher Alicia Danforth’s 2013 doctoral dissertation, which explored how autistic adults experience the subjective effects of MDMA. Danforth looked at qualitative data collected via online surveys from 100 autistic individuals who had taken MDMA alongside a comparison group of 50 autistic individuals who were MDMA naïve.
MDMA is sometimes referred to as an “empathogen” or “entactogen” because it is a substance that has the ability to facilitate experiences of increased empathy, oneness, emotional connectivity, and emotional openness. In part, MDMA is able to do this because it encourages the release of oxytocin, sometimes referred to as “the love hormone,” which is associated with social connection and enhancing responses to positive emotions while decreasing the ability to perceive negative facial cues.
The group who had taken MDMA reported sustained benefits such as improvement in social anxiety and healing from trauma. Most notably after MDMA use, 91% of participants reported increased feelings of empathy and social connectedness, while 86% felt that communication came more easily with the effects lasting two years or longer for 15% of individuals.
Building on the positive trends identified in her dissertation, in 2016 Danforth published a paper detailing the rationale behind and protocol for a pilot study using MDMA-assisted therapy to treat social anxiety in autistic adults. In 2018, Danforth and her team conducted the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment with psychedelics and autistic adults.
Broadly speaking, social anxiety is characterized by a heightened fear of what others think about you, feeling an intensified fear of scrutiny alongside the avoidance of social interactions. Research has shown that social anxiety commonly co-occurs with autism, and part of Danforth’s rationale behind the study was to explore MDMA as a psychedelic treatment modality for individuals with an increased need.
One of the principal aims of the study was to explore the safety of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for reduction of social fear and avoidance for individuals with ASD, finding no evidence of harm to participants. Although the study was small in size, recruiting only 12 participants, results were promising. Participants took part in two full-day sessions in which they were either given MDMA or a placebo. The study used the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale to measure changes in social anxiety. Subjects who received MDMA showed a significantly greater reduction in social anxiety than the placebo group. Reductions in social anxiety symptoms were long-lasting, still holding true at a 6-month follow-up.
In her work, Danforth is careful to emphasize the fact that MDMA and other psychedelics do not “cure” autism, rather when used in a psychotherapeutic setting, they can help to alleviate social anxiety and manage other concomitant issues prevalent in autistic populations.
Reflecting on the study, Danforth shared that there were substantial recruitment delays. As anxiety and depression are both common in autistic adults, many participants were ruled out because they were using conventional psychiatric medications such as SSRIs. In addition, many of these adults were often unemployed and living in social isolation, less likely to have access to information about the study.
Beyond the scope of autism, there is a growing body of research that has sought to examine how psychedelics affect social behaviour more generally. A 2020 study done by a team of researchers from McGill University examined the effect of LSD on social behavior in mice, whilst measuring their brain activity.
Under the influence of low doses of LSD, the mice became notably more social and friendly towards unfamiliar mice. While it was already known that LSD activates serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, this study illuminated that LSD’s activation of the 2A receptors also triggered a cascade activation of the AMPA receptor and the protein complex mTORC1, working together to encourage social interaction. This is important because dysregulation of mTORC1 has been linked to autism and social anxiety disorders more generally.
Obviously, behavior and brain function in mice cannot directly be translated to that in humans, however, understanding the foundational mechanism of LSD’s prosocial behavioral effects opens up the door for future research. It also advances the understanding of how the substance could be useful to autistic populations, as well as those that suffer from general social anxiety.
An earlier study conducted in 2013 also showed that both psilocybin and ketamine altered the way that the brain responds to fearful faces. People under the influence of these two psychedelics were less able to identify negative expressions when presented with images of people with angry or upset expressions.
In the same vein, a 2010 study done with MDMA demonstrated that the substance reduced people’s accuracy in distinguishing negative facial cues. Not only does MDMA enhance emotional openness and connectivity, it also impairs the capacity to notice negative emotions in others’ facial expressions. Similarly, LSD has been shown to have an effect on emotional processing, enhancing feelings of trust, closeness to others, and emotional empathy, while weakening the ability to detect sad and fearful facial expressions.
In addition, psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA, all work to reduce the activity of the amygdala, a brain region that is associated with emotional processing and stress response. Brain imaging studies with autistic individuals have shown that the amygdala is differentially activated when presented with anxiety-inducing stimuli compared to the general population.
Psychedelics’ ability to enhance states of social connection and empathy joined with their simultaneous capacity to diminish the detection of negative facial expressions make them a promising therapeutic modality for those that suffer with social anxiety disorders, including autistic individuals.
Even though research into psychedelics and autism is still very limited, we can still draw much insight from psychedelic research into non-autistic individuals and the body of anecdotal evidence that is growing quickly as more and more neurodivergent people share their healing stories.
Beyond Social Anxiety: Navigating Autism with Psychedelics
For Aaron Orsini, author of Autism on Acid: How LSD Helped Me Understand, Navigate, Alter & Appreciate My Autistic Perceptions, and co-founder of the online community for neurodivergent individuals, Autistic Psychedelic, experimenting with LSD led him to understand and appreciate his autism, allowing him to “bridge the neurotypical divide.”
The altered state produced by psychedelics helped Orsini better understand how he was prioritizing sensory input, realizing that he had been stuck in a particular mode of seeing and experiencing the world, awakening a deep sense of interoceptiveness.
Interoception is the awareness of what is going on inside one’s own body at any given moment and the ability to take action based on one’s inner experience. For example, noticing dryness in the mouth might serve as an indication that we are thirsty, encouraging us to take action by drinking water. In general, autistic people tend to have lower interoceptive awareness when compared with average populations.
“If my body was a car, psychedelics allowed me to realize that my fuel light was low, that I needed food, rest, or felt a certain way,” Orsini says. “By being able to notice and interpret the cues coming in, I became able to navigate any situation.”
Speaking about his initial experience with psychedelics, Orsini shares, “ I felt connected to myself, nature, and other people—it was a relief from repetitive thinking, and from there it became the foundation upon which I could rebuild my relationship with myself, my physical and mental wellness, and lead a functional life.”
Orsini draws on the concepts of “monotropism” and what he calls “polytropism” to explain how psychedelics were able to modulate his consciousness. Monotropism, believed to be a key feature of autism, refers to a cognitive strategy in which one has a narrow set of interests and is only able to focus one’s attention on a limited number of inputs at a given time. On the one hand, monotropic thinking can lend itself to deep thinking and flow states, however, it is also limiting in that information which exists outside of the attention tunnel often gets filtered out, and it can be hard to disengage with a given task or activity when one is so fully absorbed in it.
Comparatively, polytropism designates the proclivity to process multiple inputs at once. Naturally, both types of cognitive processing have their pros and cons, however, when it comes to autistic individuals, polytropic processing is generally harder to access. In Orsini’s experience, LSD was able to occasion a state of polytropic awareness, which he committed himself to working with after his psychedelic experience.
By facilitating novel perceptions, psychedelics could also help those with autism learn to embrace their neurocognitive disposition and unique way of inhabiting the world. Many autistic people engage in a behavior referred to as “masking” in which they camouflage certain challenges by observing and mimicking neurotypical ways of acting in social situations. In some sense, masking is a survival strategy used to conceal behaviors that are felt to be socially unacceptable. Often, masking is the result of trauma, as individuals feel they need to hide their true selves in order to fit in.
“Autistic behaviors could be patterned off of early life traumas that are likely because of the sensitivity inherent to an autistic individual,” says Orsini. “I might not have been through war, but I was prone to a more intense sensory experience.”
Independent of neurotype, psychedelics allow for a reappraisal of our default modes of seeing, and a breaking free from the rigid patterns of perception that become habitual. In mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and OCD, an interconnected group of brain regions referred to as the default mode network (DMN) linked to introspective functions such as self-reflection and self-criticism, tend to be overactive.
Psychedelics have been shown to dampen the function of the DMN, allowing for a kind of “reset” in the brain in which it becomes easier to separate ourselves from ways of thinking and seeing the world that have become ingrained. If psychedelics are beneficial to the general population in this way, why can’t they also be valuable to people with autism for the same reason?
To date, there is no evidence to suggest that having an ASD diagnosis is a contraindication for psychedelic use. “In general, whether it is in a research or retreat setting, there is less certainty on how to navigate autism and so it is often sidelined,” says Orsini. “However, there is nothing obvious about autism that makes it a contraindication or makes it less safe to explore these toolsets.”
Unfortunately, more often than not, larger subsets of the population get attention first, and according to the World Health Organization, a whopping 264 million people worldwide suffer from depression. Comparatively, autistics make up a minority population that often gets overshadowed.
Expressing his hopes for future psychedelic research, Orsini shares, “What I’d like to see is keeping autistics in the conversation when it comes to their ongoing access, and keep them in the domain of people that are considered for early clinical trials.” Additionally, when psychedelic-assisted therapy becomes legalized throughout the US, just as it has in Oregon, Orsini hopes that medical or retreat centers don’t exclude autistic people.
A Future Therapeutic Modality for Autism: Psychedelic-Assisted Immersion Therapy
Based on his extensive self-experimentation with LSD, Orsini proposed a model therapeutic approach for navigating neurodivergence with psychedelics called: “LSD-assisted immersion therapy.” Immersion therapy is different from conventional psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in that it is formulated with the idea of facilitating social and interpersonal learning as opposed to a purely inwardly-directed experience. In this context, Orsini suggests that a moderate dose of the substance is preferable so as not to elicit a full blown mystical experience.
Moving beyond a therapist dyad, LSD-assisted immersion therapy, or more generally psychedelic-assisted immersion therapy, involves ingesting the substance in a group setting. “If I was to have this LSD, and simply reflect on my social challenges in isolation, I may come to an intellectual conclusion, but it is not the same as actually being involved with other people,” says Orsini.
“I envision a future setting in which individuals who are seeking to work on interpersonal issues and skills would be able to do so in the comfort of other individuals who are equally familiar with them,” says Orsini. “These issues have to do with one’s personal self inventory, but there is a natural therapeutic component to engaging with others in an enhanced state.”
Experiencing challenge around social interaction isn’t specific to autistic individuals, and psychedelic-assisted immersion therapy, or simply psychedelic group therapy, has the potential to help a wide range of people. Current clinical studies into the therapeutic potentials of psychedelics often overlook an important dimension of real-life psychedelic use, namely, the social dimension.
Although pushing for the legalization and acceptance of psychedelics through the lens of medicalization is somewhat of a necessity, there is an inherent problem-solving dynamic that emerges in which psychedelics are viewed exclusively as tools that are effective in treating given issues. However, looking at psychedelics through the lens of neurodiversity, they need not be used to target a given concomitant issues associated with autism, rather they can simply help people understand and embrace their differences. Healing happens when we can move beyond a narrow view of how society should be and encourage people to flourish as they are, instead of attempting to make everyone conform.
*Editor’s note: Though this article speaks to the benefits of adults with autism using psychedelics, Psychedelics Today does not that such individuals should seek to self-medicate. In sharing his story, Orsini makes it clear that he is not advocating for others to self-experiment as he did, rather, his aim is to spark interest in researchers to find more data on this in hopes of providing relief for others.
In this episode, Joe interviews Professor of American Religious History and Cultures at Emory University, podcaster, and author of Don’t Think About Death: A Memoir on Mortality, Gary Laderman.
He talks about challenging our notion of what “religious” means: how “religious” doesn’t have to be linked to traditional dogmatic structures and how conventional conceptualizations around religion can actually close people off from possibly deeply meaningful experiences. He talks about the “rise of the nones”- his term for the growing demographic of “spiritual but not religious” people who combine aspects of different religions to create their own, or don’t consider themselves to have a religion at all, and use the rituals, myths, lessons, and transcendence attached to experiences to create the same effects that our ancestors achieved from traditional religious structures.
They also discuss how psychedelics work in our lives outside of the mystical, Esalen, Lady Gaga, the culture built around medicine and the religious authority we see in doctors, how religion has affected our language and how we learn, and the various ways it seeps into our understanding of sex, our bodies, and death.
Notable Quotes
“[I’m] just really asking people to consider the possibility that religious life extends far beyond how we normally see it in the media or think about it. It’s more than going to the church or reading The Bible.”
“Back in the day, going to Grateful Dead concerts or maybe now, Phish, Burning Man- these are all obvious examples of tying some of this stuff together. You can’t avoid the religious connotations of these kinds of activities, just in how people describe them who go and attend and what they bring back from those commitments and experiences.” “You want to talk about what ultimately matters in our lives in how we bring order and meaning and stave off chaos and suffering? We should talk about pharmaceutical companies and prescription drugs.” “What’s interesting about studying the sacred is that nobody agrees upon it.”
Gary Laderman, Goodrich C. White Professor of American Religious History and Cultures, is the author of the new book, Don’t Think About Death: A Memoir on Mortality (Deeds Publishing, 2020), and hosts the podcast, Sacrilegious.
Laderman was also a founder of the online religion magazines, Religion Dispatches (created and initially directed with Sheila Davaney in the early 2000s), and started Sacred Matters on his own. He is continuing to research, write, and teach on the sacred in American life generally, and is currently working on a book project exploring religion and drugs, the focus of a new course first taught in 2017, “Sacred Drugs.”
Rick Doblin and Bia Labate debated Jeffery Lieberman and Keven Sabet on whether or not psychedelics should be legalized, and the results may surprise you.
Last week, we received an invite to attend an early screening of the newest debate in Intelligence Squared US’s online debate series: “Should Society Legalize Psychedelics?” Being immersed in the world of Psychedelics Today, it seems like we’re constantly involved in various similar conversations around legalization, decriminalization, benefits and dangers, and the less-discussed idea of drug exceptionalism. So while I was curious to see how a question like this would be handled by a more mainstream outlet, I also wondered if they’d get it right. When I saw who would be involved, I knew this would be worth watching.
Arguing for the motion to legalize psychedelics were Rick Doblin, Founder & Executive Director of MAPS, as you likely know if you’re on this site, and Bia Labate, anthropologist, drug policy expert, and executive director of Chacruna. Against the motion were Jeffrey Lieberman, former President of the American Psychiatric Association and Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry, and Keven Sabet, three-time White House drug policy advisor, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and author of Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know. What instantly caught my eye was psychedelic legend Rick Doblin going against a three-time White House drug policy advisor (i.e. “The Man”), and I wanted to see exactly how Doblin would choose to wipe the floor with him. But this was a debate, and debates don’t care solely about facts, which to me, is exactly what makes them so interesting.
After a brief and somewhat cringeworthy performance by “psychedelic comedian” Sarah Rose Siskind (which felt very odd to me—if we’re taking this seriously, why are we starting it out with bad jokes about drugs?), moderator John Donvan came on and asked us all to cast a vote before the debate started. We’d be casting another one after the debate, and the winner would be declared by calculating which side’s numbers increased more, or really, which side won over more of the undecided voters.
I personally feel that this is a very nuanced topic that probably can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, but decided to vote “yes” anyway.
The debate started and right away, I noticed a classic juxtaposition between Doblin and the Against Legalization team: Lieberman and Sabet wore black sportcoats and white collared shirts with crisp, stylized hair, while Doblin looked to be wearing a Hawaiian shirt, hair as out-of-control as always. Lieberman looked to be sitting in a professional office with hundreds of journals and important books proudly staged behind him, while Doblin looked like someone dug a chair out of the piles of papers in his office and placed him on it shortly after waking him up. The For Legalization team argued passionately, with a more freestyle tone drawing from personal stories, while the Against Legalization team spoke more slowly and seemed to have more prepared statements (Lieberman seemed to be reading off a script several times).
The opening round consisted of each participant getting a few minutes to make as many points as they wanted. Doblin started out by listing what he believed his opponents would agree with him on, and introduced the idea of “licensed legalization,” where the ability to use drugs legally would be handled the way a driver’s license allows you to drive a car (and would therefore be taken away with abuse or misuse). Labate focused on the prevalence of drug use throughout all of history, the racism and failure of the drug war, and how “the sky didn’t fall” when other countries have legalized drugs.
From the Against Legalization team, Lieberman made it clear that while he has plenty of experience with psychedelics and absolutely sees a benefit, they should be decriminalized only and studied for therapeutic use. He also called out MAPS’s mission statement, saying that their effort to develop cannabis into prescription medicines is a “ruse” to get around prohibition, and posited the idea that the gateways to creativity and spirituality people experience were maybe just the drugs fooling them. Sabet performed pretty strongly here, saying that the historical use Labate talked about couldn’t be further from what would happen if the US legalized psychedelics, which he imagines as stereotypically US as possible, with Super Bowl-level mass commercialization, major lobbyists promoting their agendas, and the rich getting richer off of an addiction-for-profit model. He also said that opioids and alcohol kill more people than all illegal drugs combined, partly because they’re legal and therefore used more.
Round two was more of an open discussion with Donvan moderating. Some good points were made by the For Legalization team: decriminalization means impure drugs; classic psychedelics are not addictive; there actually is a lot of ceremonial use already in the US; commercialization doesn’t mean a psychedelic boogeyman is going to create addictive psychedelics; and decriminalization is not freedom and still comes with fines.
Meanwhile, the Against Legalization team didn’t seem to grasp why decriminalization wasn’t enough, but made some great points about how legalization doesn’t always mean purer and better (look at tobacco and cigarettes), and if we haven’t gotten this stuff right in all this time, why would we suddenly get it right when it comes to the legalization of psychedelics? Much time was spent on the need for scientific proof over tons of anecdotal stories. The open discussion showed some heat, and also exposed some debater flaws, like Lieberman rambling to the point of me entirely missing his point and Labate not realizing when her time was up and talking over everyone several times.
Round three went back to each participant making closing statements for two minutes. Doblin spoke passionately about how much he and his wife have benefited from regular MDMA use, and said opponents shouldn’t let the fear of overcommercialization from “Big Psychedelic” spoil something so many could benefit from. Labate talked about how the US is the “land of freedoms” (which I laughed out loud at), and we’re going to look back on this time in shame, saying that a lot of what had been said against psychedelics was based on fear, a false narrative, and science’s attempt to control everything. Lieberman said that this would be a very dangerous social experiment, and then spent an odd amount of time talking about Prometheus and Frankenstein.
Sabet, on the other hand, really killed it here, spending a good chunk of his allotted time reading a quote from Robert Corry (one of the writers of Amendment 64 on Colorado’s 2012 statewide ballot that permitted recreational sales of cannabis), who fully regrets what he has done after seeing the massive commercialization of the industry. He ended by echoing his main point again: “It’s one thing to advocate for decriminalization, ending the war on drugs. It’s another thing to advocate for the commercialization and normalization,” saying that this would create an industry that cared only about profits, to the detriment of everyone’s health and safety.
The pre-recorded debate ended, and those of us who were able to attend the sneak preview were then sent to a live check-in with all the participants. Here, huge points that were missed in the debate were finally made. Doblin asked Sabet if he’s so against big corporations getting rich off drugs, does that mean he’s OK with cartels getting rich instead?
Labate pointed out that the time people were the most reckless with alcohol was during prohibition. Lieberman hurt himself by making it clear that he felt medical use and recreational use have to be completely separate, and the same drug couldn’t be used for both. Sabet made his same points again, but hurt my view of him a bit by making sure to have the cover of his book prominently displayed twice in his background (I’ve never been a fan of shameless plugs).
My favorite parts of the debate were in this live session. The first was when Founder and Chairman of Intelligence Squared US, Robert Rosenkranz, joined in and made Doblin’s point about money even stronger: If something is bought, that means someone is selling it, so why does the amount of profit and who it’s going to matter so much to Sabet? It can go to corporations and be regulated, or go to criminals and stay unregulated. Which is better?
Labate also shut down Lieberman in extraordinary fashion. Lieberman had already established himself as being extremely focused on science, studies, and needing proof for everything, but also had a really odd moment where he was certain he had more psychedelic experiences under his belt than Doblin. I cringed at this, thinking, “Really? You’re arguing for keeping psychedelics illegal and talking about their dangers while bragging about breaking the law to enjoy them?” So I was filled with joy when he said that he had had wonderful experiences on psychedelics, and Labate immediately hit him with: “But there’s no proof that your experience was wonderful. There’s no peer-reviewed study. How do you know it was wonderful?” Yeah, take that, pal.
There was a place to submit questions, but the live session was kept to a half hour, leaving most questions unanswered. I wanted to know if the Against Legalization team would be for legalization if it was presented in a “licensed legalization” manner—the way Doblin had explained in his first segment (which wasn’t discussed again because it was outside of the main argument). Wesley Thoricatha of Psychedelic Times asked another great question in the chat window: “If our society believes that the benefits of alcohol legalization outweigh the observable risks, how can there be any valid case against legalizing these non-addictive substances that clearly have more potential benefits and less overall risks?” Since the pros didn’t address these thoughts, I guess it’s now the job for all of us to keep asking these questions and having these conversations on our own time.
All said and done, I really enjoyed this debate and found the arguments really interesting. Sabet’s “why would we get it right this time?” overcommercialization argument really hit home with me, as I’m quickly becoming disgusted with the money-grabs, ridiculous patent-filing, and dangerous “magic pill” narrative that keeps proliferating this movement, while constantly being reminded of the ineffectiveness and rampant corruption in the government. But I wondered if he really meant that, or if he was just trying to win the debate by cashing in on the “rich people are evil” attitude he guessed many viewers would have. And while his vision of the future is ugly, was his point (or any others made by the Against Legalization team) any stronger than Doblin’s argument for taking money out of the hands of criminals in favor of safer drugs?
I loved Labate’s passion and realness and she made some great points, but her talking over people hurt her. Lieberman was very organized and prepared, but his rigidity and inability to make strong, understandable arguments hurt him. So this felt more like a debate between Doblin and Sabet, and after breaking it down more, it really felt like hope, compassion, and common sense were going up against pessimism and fear.
At the end of the debate, the results were tallied. My view was a little more nuanced and I was more open to discussion, but I still generally sided with the For Legalization team. This was not the case for others. Before the debate, 65% of viewers voted to legalize psychedelics, while 15% disagreed with the motion and 20% were undecided. After the debate, however, even though the For Legalization vote increased to 67%, the Against Legalization vote grew to 24%, giving them a 9% total increase over the For Legalization’s 2%. Therefore, in the preliminary vote, Against Legalization ended up winning the debate.
Intelligence Squared US then posted the video and encouraged people to watch, leaving voting open for a week for a separate “online audience” tally. I assumed that a larger audience would trend more towards legalization and I’d get my win here, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did the Against Legalization vote jump from 11% pre-debate to 30% post-debate, but the For Legalization vote dropped from 74% to 62% too, leaving me to wonder what arguments swayed people so much.
In the end, as I assumed it would, this debate just highlighted the importance of nuance and looking at huge, important topics like this from all angles. I’m not sure that “should society legalize psychedelics?” is a question we should even be asking (can it really be answered with a simple yes or no?), but the beauty of it is that these questions are even being asked and debated, especially by such big names on such a mainstream platform. And as a culture, we’re now making available both sides of the argument, to be heard by anyone who wants to listen. These conversations need to be had, bad arguments need to be called out, and strong points by the other side need to be looked at fairly. While the complete adult-use legalization of all psychedelics may never happen, this is the only way we’re ever going to get close.
About the Author
Mike Alexander works for Psychedelics Today. He writes the show notes for each podcast, handles most of the email, edits video and audio, helps with the blog, and annoys the rest of the team on Slack. He eats a lot of pizza, spends a lot of time in the woods, and spends most of his money on Phish tour.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, a power outage keeps Michelle from joining in, but Joe and Kyle pick up the slack, going old-school SF style for the week.
They talk about new drugs: Cybin investigating using their proprietary psychedelic compound “CYB003” for alcohol use disorder, and scientists using a technology called psychLight to identify when a compound activates the brain’s serotonin 2A receptor (in hopes of activating the biological benefits of psychedelics without their traditional hallucinogenic effects).
They also give a legalization update, with new cannabis and psychedelic reform bills in Texas and legalization bills in Louisiana, talk about non-profit Porta Sophia’s new Psychedelic Prior Art Library and the importance of establishing a public domain, and discuss Johns Hopkins’ new study on psilocybin for Alzheimer’s-related depression (and ways to possibly combat the effects of Alzheimer’s). They also cover climate change, Leonard Pickard, the tragedy of the commons, 2C-B, the importance of looking at fringe cases, and the intelligence of millennials.
Notable Quotes
“How could we shift to more cooperative actions vs. competition all the time?” -Kyle “Our map of reality is minimized inappropriately when we exclude these fringe cases. …What does it mean that somebody can present as psychic, or present as a spirit, or meet these spirits, or go to the [afterlife] and come back (in your case) and then get set on an interesting trajectory via psychedelics? This is not what doctors can deal with, but this is what those of us outside of medicine can deal with, as a philosophical endeavor.” -Joe
“Some of these new compounds- I guess it’s exciting, and you always say we need new drugs, but …why is there a race for new drugs when we’re not even using the ones to the full potential that are not even on the market right now? ..Just thinking about all the new companies coming online trying to find new drugs for patents and development, when it’s like, have we really explored the potential of the ones that have been around for a while?” -Kyle
Taking a deep look at the trial’s Supplementary Appendix, the response from the psychedelic science community, and the choice to measure the results using the QIDS depression rating scale.
On April 15, 2021 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study comparing the efficacy of psilocybin-assisted therapy to a popular SSRI antidepressant, escitalopram (sold under the brand names Lexapro, Cipralex, and others): titled: Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression. The landmark paper written by the team at Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, concluded that the “trial did not show a significant difference in antidepressant effects between psilocybin and escitalopram in a selected group of patients”, which caused a bit of an uproar in the psychedelic science community.
Reactions and questions came quickly on social media: Was the paper edited too heavily by the New England Journal of Medicine? Were appropriate rating scales used to judge the effectiveness of psilocybin? Are the “real” results hidden in the study’s appendix? As a participant in NYU’s study on psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depressive disorder in 2020 who received incredible benefits (my depression of five years went completely into remission and has remained there), I felt it was necessary to try and explain the latest results in more depth.
The study in question, under lead authors Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D, David Nutt, MD, Rosalind Watts, D.Clin.Psy and others, was a double-blind randomized trial with 59 participants for six weeks to compare the efficacy of psilocybin versus a leading antidepressant in treating depression. Each trial started with a psilocybin dose day; one group received a high dose of 25 mg, the other a negligible dose of 1 mg. Then, the high dose group proceeded to receive a daily placebo while the low dose group received 10 mg of escitalopram each day for the first three weeks. At three weeks, the psilocybin group received a second 25 mg dose of the magic mushroom compound and continued with the daily placebo. The SSRI group received a second placebo, 1 mg dose of psilocybin and also had their daily dose of escitalopram increased to 20 mg. Both groups received an equal amount of extensive psychotherapeutic support and counseling, totaling around 35 to 40 hours during the six week-trial using Watts’s ACE therapeutic model: Accept, Connect, Embody.
Prior to the start of the trial, both groups received multiple and extensive depression assessments, using four different depression rating scales; QIDS- SR-16, HAM-D-1A, BDI-17, and MADRS. Of the four depression inventories, QIDS-SR-16 is the newest, designed for convenience of use so patients can “self-rate” (that’s what the SR stands for), and crucially for this trial, it was the primary scale used to compare psilocybin and escitalopram’s efficacy in fighting depression. However, lead author Robin Carhart-Harris has now stated that should have been better considered because QIDS-SR-16 is the least established of the four scales used. There are several issues as to why it was not the best rating scale to use and its results should be viewed as less accurate, and we will explain those issues below, but first let’s review the trial results as published.
In the abstract, the NEJM concluded:
“On the basis of the change in depression scores on the QIDS-SR-16 at week 6, [the mean (±SE) changes in the scores from baseline to week 6 were −8.0±1.0 points in the psilocybin group and −6.0±1.0 in the escitalopram group, for a between-group difference of 2.0 points] this trial did not show a significant difference in antidepressant effects between psilocybin and escitalopram in a selected group of patients.”
This is an extremely conservative and staid summary for all the rating scales and secondary outcomes. Even so, in my opinion, this alone is phenomenal because they are stating that psilocybin, a psychedelic compound, is at least as effective as a leading SSRI for treating patients with major depressive disorder. But the real results are in the data contained within the appendices and tables, many published in the Supplementary Appendix rather than in the abstract or main study itself, so let’s examine them.
Analyzing the Supplementary Appendix
In clinical research, the two main items to track in depression scores are the “response” rates and the “remission (remitter)” rates. A response rate means there is an improvement in depression symptoms in at least 50% of patients. A remission rate means that a patient no longer has enough symptoms to qualify for a medical diagnosis of depression; for all intents and purposes, it’s effectively gone. So even when we look at the solely at QIDS scores for those two rates, the difference is striking:
“A QIDS-SR-16 response occurred in 70% of the patients in the psilocybin group and in 48% of those in the escitalopram group… QIDS-SR-16 remission occurred in 57% [psilocybin] and 28% [escitalopram]… Other secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over escitalopram, but the analyses were not corrected for multiple comparisons. The incidence of adverse events was similar in the trial groups.”
In both ratings for the QIDS scale we see psilocybin outperform escitalopram by nearly double with only two doses as opposed to six weeks of daily doses. But also notice the statement at the end about secondary outcomes favoring psilocybin and that adverse events were similar.
Honestly, these are significant understatements when you look at the secondary outcomes directly in the appendices and tables. Certainly, as a leading scientific journal it’s a far better position to conservatively report the outcome rather than promote the results, but consider the following: In the three other well-established depression inventories, HAM-D, BDI, and MADRS, the response rate for psilocybin at the 6-week mark was between 67.9 and 76.7% while for the SSRI it was only 20.7 to 41.4%. Even more striking are the remission rates, lying between 28.6 and 56.7% for psilocybin while the SSRI produced remission at 6 weeks in 6.9 to 20.7% of participants. (Check out the Supplementary Appendix, pg. 13 to see for yourself.)
As this is a two-dose study, there was a similar outperformance after the first psilocybin dose; in two scales (QIDS and BDI) 33.3 to 51.7% of participants no longer qualified as being depressed by the end of the first week. In my opinion, it can’t be overstated how miraculous these remission rates are; these are patients that have often been non-responsive to other treatments for depression, and have likely been through a gamut of approaches, including psychotherapy, exercise, other antidepressants, alternative therapies, and had yet to find relief, let alone remission after a single week.
When we look at secondary outcomes, there are even more revelations. In a score known as “wellbeing”, participants in the psilocybin group increased 15.8 points after six weeks while those in the SSRI group only improved 6.8 points. This not only shows a reduction in depression symptoms, but a marked improvement in patients’ happiness with their sense of self. This is similarly reflected in the “Flourishing Scale” which found the psilocybin group to improve 14.4 points while the SSRI group only improved by 8.9 points after six weeks.
Other similar secondary outcomes also demonstrated remarkable efficacy for psilocybin including reductions in suicidal ideation, trait anxiety, experiential avoidance, anhedonia (which has implications for chronic pain), emotional breakthrough inventory, psychotropic related sexual dysfunction, and others. A key line to take from the caption for Supplementary Table S1 that compares depression inventory rates across all six weeks is: “All contrasts favored psilocybin. None favored escitalopram.” These are well established depression inventories that are used as the standard of comparison in nearly every modern study testing efficacy against nearly any method or medication for relieving depression, but because they were not chosen as the primary scales, they were classified as secondary outcomes. But if all these scores had been corrected against each other, including the QIDS, psilocybin would have shown to be clearly superior.
So why was QIDS chosen as the primary evaluation instead of the much more frequently employed MADRS inventory? As someone who had to take the MADRS inventory repeatedly in order to qualify for NYU’s investigational study of psilocybin for major depressive disorder, I will tell you it is surprisingly precise and accurate, making it nearly impossible to hide the depths of your disease from yourself. As much as we may mask the symptoms of our disorder to others in order to function in our day to day lives, we may in fact find we mask the severity of our symptoms to an even greater degree to ourselves. According to Carhart-Harris, the choice to use QIDS was almost arbitrary and now considered ill-advised in hindsight. And other professionals on Twitter and elsewhere online are largely in agreement, arguing that QIDS was a scale not designed to measure depression so much as one designed for patient convenience and to measure response to classic SSRIs. For example, QIDS has no measure for wellbeing, emotional breakthrough, experiential avoidance or, dare we say, mystical experiences.
SSRIs modulate and downregulate distressing feelings, but do not generally resolve them, much like a daily salve that keeps negative emotions just under conscious awareness. Psilocybin not only goes to the heart of engaging the origin of troubling feelings, but due to its ability to induce neuroplasticity, it’s theorized that the psychedelic compound directly aids in a cortical reorganization of prior maladaptive circuits and strongly held associations that create the framework of a patient’s life experience and the events in it.
Evaluating the Choice to Use the QIDS Scale
Worth noting about the QIDS scale relative to the other inventories in the study is a concept in statistics known as a confidence interval or CI. When a study is performed, it’s obviously not done on the entire population but on a sample of the population. A confidence interval is a measure of how likely the mean average of the results in the study population would match the mean average of results in the general population. It’s also a measure of how likely those same results would occur if scientists were to repeat the test multiple times.
In a study like this one where two medications are being compared against each other for efficacy, their confidence intervals can be laid out on a table or graph known as a forest plot. When the CIs are displayed on a forest plot, they are shown as a range of most likely results (i.e. -2 to -15). This is key because that allows researchers to demonstrate their confidence that a given range of results would occur for 95% of the general population or in repeated studies. 95% is the agreed upon standard for proof of any statistical significance in patient response to medication for this type of study. However, if on a forest plot, your CI crosses zero (which is the midline between the two groups), there is a far greater likelihood that there is no difference in effect between the groups.
So recall now that Carhart-Harris said that choice of QIDS was arbitrary as the main depression scale for the study and that their team of researchers predicted no difference in effect size between the psilocybin and escitalopram when they submitted the pre-req application to run the study. For more than a week before the study was released, Carhart-Harris did a daily thread on Twitter describing effect size, how different measurements may in fact be measuring the same issue and could be condensed, that NEJM analysis of the results are extremely conservative, but most of all he “implored” readers to view the supplementary tables and appendices, and to particularly look at the confidence intervals for the main inventory and then the confidence intervals for the secondary outcomes.
Carhart-Harris made a very careful note that confidence intervals that do not cross zero are considered statistically significant and those that do cross zero are considered insignificant. He directed us to look at Figure S1 and Table S4 where you will see at the top that the only inventory that crosses zero is the QIDS scale, which strongly implies its result is a false negative in showing no difference in outcome between the SSRI and psilocybin, and we can be confident of that because of the redundancy of the other evaluations they also used. Every other inventory and measure shows psilocybin far out pacing escitalopram by nearly a two to one margin. You can take a look yourself by accessing the study’s Supplementary Appendix, and turning to Section S6. Supplemental Figure S4: Mean change for primary and secondary outcomes with confidence intervals (pg. 16).
Conclusion
Between the extraordinary results in the secondary outcomes, the fact that the QIDS scale was the only inventory to cross zero in the forest plot, and the strong likelihood that modern depression scales aren’t designed to capture the full range of positive personality change that underpin psilocybin’s cortical mechanisms, it’s hard to see how this is not an overwhelming win for psilocybin.
It would certainly be remiss for me to not once again state I was a participant in a very similar study myself who experienced full remission and know others who experienced the same. I would be equally remiss to not mention that for many who took the two doses, their depression returned after a few months—but not all of them. However, this is already the case with standard daily antidepressants. And with psilocybin, there are no sexual side effects, you can actually feel a full range of emotions, and the frequency of dosing is far less. But for people that have either found themselves unresponsive to standard SSRIs, or experience untenable daily side effects from antidepressant medication, psilocybin appears to offer an equal, if not superior, opportunity to recover their happiness and effectiveness in their daily lives.
About the Author
Court Wing has been a professional in the performance and rehab space for the last 30 years. Coming from a performing and martial arts background, Court served as a live-in apprentice to the US Chief Instructor for Ki-Aikido for five years, going on to win the gold medal for the International Competitors Division in Japan in 2000 and achieving the rank of 3rd degree black belt. In 2004, Court became the co-founder of New York’s largest and oldest crossfit gym, and has been featured in the New York Times, Sunday Routine, Men’s Fitness, and USA Today. He is also a certified Z-Health Master Trainer, using the latest interventions in applied neuro-physiology for remarkable improvements in pain, performance, and rehabilitation. You can find out more on his website: https://courtwing.com
A safe and sensitive way to speak with your children about psychedelics, explained.
We are living through rapidly shifting times. As parents in the psychedelic community, we are not only navigating our own medicine work, but realizing a responsibility to help our children make sense of the changing landscape as well. Whether they’re teens perusing Reddit boards and watching Netflix documentaries, or young children overhearing adult conversations about psychedelic medicine or drug policy, young people are constantly absorbing messages about these substances. Parents have an opportunity to help set the tone for ongoing dialogue and intentionally guide their children toward a less stigmatized understanding of psychedelics.
Many advocates feel passionately about reducing stigma around psychedelics as medicine and changing the way we approach substance use as a society. One way that we can interrupt harmful stereotypes and policies is by living our truths within our own families and intervening in the messaging the next generation receives about substance use. By helping young people develop a less sensationalized and more factual and nuanced perspective on psychedelics, we can empower them to make balanced and informed decisions as they grow up.
Because I worked on Measure 109 in Oregon and several cannabis farms beforehand, my son, who is now seven, is unusually adept in his understanding of plant medicine and psychedelics. His introduction to mushrooms came in the context of fighting for healing options in our community, and his understanding of cannabis involved running through fragrant fields on a biodiverse organic farm. We have spoken openly about these medicines his whole life. Because of this, they don’t carry the same frightening charge they had when I was a child, growing up in a strict, Pentecostal home where the mere mention of drugs, let alone curiosity about them, was forbidden.
For those who don’t have opportunities to teach through professional exposure like I did, here are a few tips for starting and navigating a conversation with your children about psychedelics.
Remember that basic communication values apply: Ask for consent before sharing; create opportunities to listen as much as you speak; and be okay with not reaching a tidy conclusion. These topics are far reaching and can be overwhelming. Ideally, they should be infused into larger family conversations and be revisited as they come up naturally over time.
How To Talk With Your Kids About Psychedelics:
Get Clear with Yourself First
Before you open up a conversation with your child, spend some time journaling and reflecting about your own beliefs and assumptions around psychedelics. What are your hard and fast rules about substance use, and how did they come to be? Is it possible that your experience doesn’t paint the whole picture? For example, your profound healing experience with ayahuasca does not mean everyone who uses it will experience the same benefits. Alternately, having a scary experience with LSD does not make LSD inherently dangerous. Do you believe that some substances are inherently harmful and others are inherently beneficial? Why is that? (For a deeper exploration of this subject, read Dr. Carl Hart’s book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups.)
What are your blind spots? See if you can identify your biases, own your unique experience, and not allow your individual narrative to color the entire landscape of your child’s views on drugs. Get clear on the heart of your message and know when to set aside your personal experience in exchange for larger truths.
Get on the Same Page with Your Co-parent
Every family is different. On one end of the spectrum there are parents who use psychedelics together and are prepared to have a family conversation about it. If you are in a co-parenting situation there are added considerations. Is it possible this topic could spark family tension or create a burden of secrecy or pressure to choose sides for your child?
In cases where custody is a consideration, take extra caution. Do you have a co-parent or other adults who may use the knowledge of your usage against you in court?
If at all possible, have a conversation with your co-parent about your relationship with psychedelics and see if you can get on the same page about how to approach this conversation with your children.
Show, Don’t Tell
If you believe psychedelics can be beneficial and part of a healthy, happy life and want to convey this to your child, make sure your lifestyle and substance use reflects this. As the saying goes, lessons are “caught, not taught.” What you model about psychedelics in daily life will speak volumes over the words you say.
Consider the Timing and Risks
The risks and benefits of disclosure are different in every family. If you are currently closeted about your psychedelic use, it might be more beneficial to come out publicly around the same time you open a family dialogue. If you are in a community or job where the implications of your drug use could be damaging to your reputation or employment, seriously consider possible outcomes before proceeding.
Asking your child to keep a secret from friends, parents, and teachers could be a great burden. Make sure you have thought through the potential impacts on your child and your expectations about how they will respond. They may not be able to keep your use a secret, so consider what could happen if they disclose this information to others.
Open an Ongoing Conversation, Not a One Time Talk
If this is the first time you are broaching the conversation, it may be tempting to overload your child with information to ensure they have all their questions answered. Remember that your support or personal use of psychedelics may come as a surprise and be a lot for them to digest.
Be prepared to have a brief conversation and leave space for questions. Let your child set the terms for how much to discuss. Before moving on to other topics, let your child know you will check in a few days to answer any questions they may have. Be sure to follow through on this.
Consider Age and Awareness Level
How this dialogue plays out will vary widely based on the age of your children. A conversation with small children is not needed. Instead, take a cue from parents using cannabis in the home: Make a habit of keeping substances and supplies securely out of reach and when needed, let children know these medicines are strictly for grown-ups.
If you open the dialogue with your child during grade school, this may be their first introduction to the topic. Ask them questions. Have they heard about psychedelics? What do they already know or believe about them?
Ask for their consent to share about your perspective and explain why you have chosen to have a conversation. Maybe you want to build trust and create a culture of honesty in your home. Perhaps you’re anticipating the messages they’ll get in school and want to offer an alternate perspective. Or maybe you want to be involved in their introduction to psychedelic experiences.
Most older children and teens will be capable of having a more nuanced conversation. Ask them to share what they know and how they feel about drug use. Be prepared to talk about laws, cultural stereotypes, and household expectations.
Don’t Make It a Huge Deal
Kids these days will be exposed to plenty of anti-drug messaging which can feel quite serious and scary. If you approach the topic of psychedelics with too much gravity yourself, you may be sending conflicting messages. They will pick up on your tone, body language, and mood as much as what you say.
If you frame a coming-out conversation more like a confession, or if it is intense and emotionally charged, your child may come away confused about how you feel about your own substance use. By demonstrating that it is easy to have an open, stigma-free conversation about psychedelics, you will open the door to future conversations when they have questions or curiosity.
Explain Your Decision to Use Psychedelics
If your child wants to hear, explain when your relationship with psychedelics started. Talk about things you wish you would have known beforehand.
Discuss your personal path. How has your psychedelic use benefitted or changed you? Do you use them for mental health or in your spiritual development? What are the reasons you support the use of psychedelics?
Share about your personal practices for using them safely. Do you only use them when you’re not parenting? How do you create safe containers and make sure you can still be the best parent and person you can be? Explain what set and setting is, and how intentional use differs from party/recreational use that young people may be exposed to.
Discuss the Laws and Consequences
Times are changing. We are already seeing a wave of changing laws, first with cannabis nationwide, and now with psychedelics in select cities, and possession of all drugs in Oregon. The old reprise, “Don’t use drugs because they are illegal,” is no longer sufficient for talking with kids about drugs. This calls parents to think critically about how they present the issue.
Explain why the age limits on legal substances exist, and the importance of taking extra good care of one’s mind and body, especially during the developmental years.
Help your child understand why you are discreet about your use of psychedelics. Familiarize yourselves with the laws in your area. Discuss the consequences of possession and use of scheduled substances. You may choose to do some research together. It is okay to admit if you feel conflicted about breaking the law to use psychedelics. Most youth appreciate seeing humanity and vulnerability in their parents.
Watch a documentary or read a book together about the war on drugs. Talk about initiatives in your area and what you are doing to help create change. Ask your child to share their thoughts and prepare to be surprised by their clarity and insight.
Explore History and Indigenous Use
Put the use of psychedelics into a historical context. This is information young people won’t be exposed to in school. Emphasize that the ceremonial history of entheogens goes back thousands of years and is far more multifaceted than the American 1960’s psychedelia subculture. Explore stories about Maria Sabina and the Mazatec people of Oaxaca, Mexico, the Bwiti people’s relationship with Iboga in West Central Africa, and other histories of ceremonial psychedelic use around the world. What is your family’s heritage? See if you can find the pre-colonial traditional use of entheogens in your ancestral line.
Discuss the Research
Most children know someone who is affected by depression, addiction, or PTSD. In an age-appropriate way, explain that there are research institutions finding ways psychedelics can help people heal their minds and spirits and live happier, healthier lives.
Ask what your child thinks about these medicines being used in a medical context, and be willing to listen and answer questions they may have.
Explain the Experience
If alcohol is commonplace in your home, explain that, like drinking alcohol or using certain medications, taking psychedelics has temporary effects on the mind and body which make it unsafe to drive or work while under the influence.
Take time to clarify assumptions and common misconceptions. Discuss how the media’s portrayal of psychedelics differs from your firsthand experience. If your child wants to know what psychedelics feel like, be sure to highlight the emotional and spiritual sensations as much as the visual and sensory experiences associated with them. Try to find common ground when broaching this topic, for example, many children relate to the idea of a dream quest or journey, especially if they are interested in fantasy books or media.
Talk about the power of language. To you, are these substances drugs that you trip on, or are they medicines for healing experiences and journey work? Do you use them to unwind and relax, or as a ceremonial part of your spiritual practice? It’s important to get clear with yourself first, and then explain to your child using your preferred language.
Discuss your Expectations and House Rules
Explain why there are age restrictions on the use of legal mind-altering substances. Define what you see as an appropriate age for use, revisit the legal risks and ramifications of use, and set clear household expectations. Some parents want to be present for their child’s first psychedelic experience. Some want to source the supplies for them. Others want their child to feel safe calling them if they find themselves in situations that feel unsafe or out of control. Whatever expectations you set, be prepared to follow through on this commitment.
Remember that your child will choose to do what they wish, and that building trust and open lines of communication will lead to more safety than simply enforcing hard and fast rules.
As you wrap up the conversation, be sure to emphasize your openness to your child with phrases like: “If you ever have questions, I am here for you. There are no stupid questions and I will do my best to create a judgment-free space for you.”
Provide Alternative Resources
Depending on your relationship, your child may not feel fully comfortable opening up about their questions or experiences with you. If they want to learn more, offer books, films, organizations, or documentaries, and perhaps a trusted mentor you can refer them to.
Things to Avoid When Speaking with Your Children About Psychedelics
Overloading: Take cues from your child on whether they have heard enough or are engaged and want to hear more.
One Sided Conversation: Create space for your child’s comments, questions and concerns. If they don’t have much to say, assure them this is fine and don’t push it.
Binaries: Good-bad, us-them, right-wrong type of language can make children feel pressured to pick sides in a highly nuanced conversation.
Showing Your Stash: There’s no benefit in showing your child where your drugs are kept or how they are used during this conversation.
Stories About Bad Trips or Scary Experiences: Modern children will hear enough anti-drug messaging during their lives. Your child needs to feel that you, as their parent, are secure and safe in order to feel secure and safe.
Conclusion
Part of the beauty of psychedelics is they introduce us to a more complex and interconnected view of the world. Through the lens of expanded states of consciousness, the world seems at once simple and profoundly intricate. Children have an innate capacity to see the world this way. Beyond the binaries of modern life exists a space for nuance and relationship. See if you can meet your child there.
It takes courage and commitment to the process to talk with children about psychedelics. When we do so, we are breaking generational patterns of stigma, fear and secrecy. The conversation around psychedelics could open up doors into deeper trust and communication with your child. Perhaps, by changing the culture in our homes, we can begin to change the culture at large.
About the Author
Rebecca Martinez is a Portland, Oregon-based writer, parent and community organizer. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform exploring the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement.
In this episode, Joe interviews Nick Meyers and Tyler Chandler, the makers of the documentary that has made a lot of waves over the last year (and been praised on this podcast): “Dosed.”
They first visited the podcast last year, a few months after the film’s release, and are back to talk about the response it’s received and their progress on “Dosed 2: Psilocybin and the Art Of Living,” which will follow the journey of one of the patients granted legal palliative psilocybin therapy by TheraPsil last year. And although it’s not mentioned, they’re actually planning a “Dosed” trilogy.
They talk about their early psychedelic experiences, the accusations that some of Adrianne’s scenes in the film are fake, the risk profile of iboga and how age can be a factor in its efficacy, the strength and passion of the iboga community, the complications of methadone in our opioid crisis, “The Pharmacist” docuseries, pill mills, the absurdity of the drug war, and the argument for treating someone for a year vs. a lifetime. They also talk about how many people have been inspired to change their lives after watching “Dosed.”
“The way we did it was, as I said earlier, maybe not exactly correct, but she still had the profoundly beneficial experience, and I think that’s because her intentions were there. She was ready to make a change in her life. And anybody that’s looking to get past depression, anxiety, and/or addiction, you need to have that shift and realize it’s time to make a change and move forward.” -Tyler
On criticisms of the film: “I find it actually a little frustrating, but I can just go back just a few years in time and if I had heard about a film like this, not knowing what I know now, I would probably be like, ‘Yeah, right. That sounds hokey or kind of like, bullshit.’” -Tyler
“A better judge of what it’s doing and the impact that it’s making is not a negative comment here or there; it’s the fact that we have emails in our inbox every single day from people that are expressing to us that the film changed their lives, [and] it set them on a different path, away from their struggles and towards potential solutions. It’s a very, very good feeling to be a part of something like that.” -Nick
“Mental health is a problem that is actually getting worse and worse over the last few decades even though the pharmaceutical industry is supposed to have all the answers. But ‘Why is it still getting worse and worse?’ is the question.” -Tyler
Nicholas Meyers is a Canadian producer, writer and cinematographer, known for the multi-award winning feature documentary, DOSED. He’s currently in production on DOSED 2.
Tyler Chandler is a Canadian documentary director, writer, and producer. His directorial debut is the award winning feature documentary, DOSED, about the therapeutic use of psychedelics like magic mushrooms and iboga to help people overcome mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction. Prior to DOSED Tyler produced two other features, winning three awards, and he’s currently in production on DOSED 2.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle, Joe, and Michelle are joined by Tim Cools of PsychedelicExperience.net, a not-for-profit website that aims to be both an open data source for researchers, as well as a Trip Advisor/Yelp-style review site for retreat centers and facilitators that will actually allow negative reviews (something that’s oddly rare in similar sites). While the site is live now, they are having are-launch event on Saturday, streaming the documentary, “Psychedelia,” followed by a live panel discussion with “Psychedelia” director Pat Murphy, Cools, and David Luke.
The team first discusses a recent Forbes article that reported Beckley Psytech teaming up with Fluence (a psychedelic education organization that trains mental health providers) for the first 5-MeO-DMT training program, and how it felt like a press release that was both pushing 5-MeO-DMT while also ignoring many of its more important aspects.
They then move on to The New England Journal of Medicine’s recent “Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression” study and the way it was reported, highlighted in a reaction blog by one of its authors: Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. This leads to a discussion on how these studies (whether intentionally or not) so often bury important information deep within these papers, including study-related deaths. And they review responses from Katherine MacLean and Rosalind Watts that perfectly illustrate the importance of community, the efficacy of in-depth therapy, and the shortsightedness (and danger) of treating psychedelics as miracle cures.
Notable Quotes
“Learn to be aware of what you’re thinking. Learn to be aware of what your emotions are, what is in your body. This is more important because this is your real life. The psychedelic or the mystical experience is life-changing and it’s good to have once in a while, but you’re living in this moment. You’re living right now, and so it’s more important for [you] to be aware of what you have now than to chase the other psychedelic experience, one after each other.” -Tim Cools “We should have this open science to try to prove these things, but maybe the clinical model isn’t really where we need to be proving that this works. Maybe in the community model, we’re going to see more effective results. And we won’t be able to have that until it’s legal and therefore safe for everyone to participate in.” -Michelle
“I’m not totally against these capitalist groups, I’m just kind of against their fuckery and manipulation and hiding data, kind of lying in a way- selling us things but having a lot of lies hidden in the closet.” -Joe
“I think that tripping is a skill …and that you should practice that skill- build those muscles, and then maybe it can happen for you. But we shouldn’t sell it as: ‘You take a psychedelic, you have a mystical experience, you’re never depressed again.’ That doesn’t sit right. That doesn’t usually happen.” -Michelle
Tim is a conscious entrepreneur and psychedelic coach. After experiencing the profound transformational power of Ayahuasca in 2015, he realized his purpose is to advocate safe and responsible use of psychedelic plants and medicines: this is how Psychedelic Experience was born! He has over two decades of professional experience developing industrial-grade software in various industries, including smart homes, energy, payroll and logistics. In 2018, Tim re-trained himself as a psychedelic integration coach and guide, hosting legal psychedelic sessions and retreats in the Netherlands. Tim’s interests are software architecture, psychedelics and plant medicine, non-dualism, mindfulness, and helping people to reduce their suffering and improve their well-being.
In this episode, Michelle and Joe interview Ralph Blumenthal, 45-year New York Times contributor and author of The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack (which inspired one of ourmore popular recent blogs, and you can win a copy of!).
They talk about John Mack: legendary Harvard professor who did breathwork with Stan Grof at Esalen and became interested in the mystery of alien abduction, which led him to write 2 bestselling books, appear on Oprah (who is probably an alien*), become a pioneer in the world of alien abductions, and die while immersed in afterlife studies, only to reportedly visit friends later on. Mack’s notoriety came from trusting the stories he was hearing, trying to help people make sense of it all, and taking a big interest in how these experiences seemed to transform so many of the abductees. Sounds a lot like powerful psychedelic experiences and integration work leading towards growth, doesn’t it?
So sit back, pause that X-Files episode, light one up on this high holiday, and get really deep into the world of aliens. Learn about the government’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the Ariel school incident, Avi Loeb’s Oumuamua theory, out-of-body experiences, shapeshifters, and more! Ponder how Blumenthal “accidentally” leaves questions unanswered about the government experimenting with DMT as a way of communicating with aliens. Contemplate why the government is suddenly so forthcoming with UFO data. Think about how today is 420 and this is episode 240…
The truth is out there, folks.
*This viewpoint is not that of Psychedelics Today, but merely of this high Show Notes writer.
Notable Quotes
On Mack doing breathwork with Stan Grof: “He was awakened to a different world, a spiritual world, a world of other realities than the one he was familiar with, and as I say in my book, he said, ‘Stan Grof opened up my psyche and the UFOs flew in.’”
“It’s no spoiler to say that my book does not provide the answer to the mystery of alien abduction, and I acknowledge that. I shed some light on it, perhaps, and what I like to say is that at least I’m comfortable saying that I know what it isn’t. It’s not mental illness, it’s not hoaxes (by and large), it’s not fabrication, it’s not the delusion of crowds. It’s something else. It’s something that is very real to a lot of people from different walks of life [and] different ages, and there really is no good explanation for what has happened to these people.”
“What do you say about the 2-year old children who tell these stories? You know, ‘Little man fly me up in the sky.’ ‘I go up in the sky.’ These 2-year-old kids: have they read UFO books? Are they influenced by UFO movies?”
“Skeptics have not taken the time to read the literature. They don’t know the cases. So all they can do is say, ‘Ah, that’s ridiculous.’ Of course it’s ridiculous! We all agree it’s ridiculous. We all agree it’s not possible. …We all agree that these stories that people are telling are not possible in our reality. They’re completely crazy. And yet, there’s no easy way to explain them away.”
Ralph Blumenthal was a reporter for The New York Times from 1964 to 2009, and has written seven books based on investigative crime reporting and cultural history. His latest book The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack was published by High Road Books of the University of New Mexico Press on March 15, 2021. It’s the first biography of Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard Psychiatrist John E. Mack (1929-2004) who risked an esteemed career to investigate stupefying accounts of human abductions by aliens. Vanity Fairexcerpted the work-in-progress in 2013.
Paradigm-shifting tools don’t fit into paradigmatically static ways of doing things
Psychedelics. Maybe you’ve heard. They’re having a bit of a moment right now. And for good reason. To name just a few examples, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is moving MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD through the FDA approval process. Decriminalization of psychedelics, including LSD (!), is taking place at a breakneck pace. Psilocybin-assisted therapy was even legalized in Oregon during the 2020 election. And, multi-million dollar research institutions are also popping up left and right.
However, there’s an elephant in the room. The looming presence of large, for-profit companies swallowing up patents left and right and ostensibly becoming the primary option for psychedelic therapies of the future is becoming too big to ignore.
It’s beginning to get called out, for a start. More articles are popping up rightfully critiquing this situation as an issue. About a month ago, famous entrepreneur Tim Ferriss kicked off a question on his blog asking if there are any viable alternatives to for-profit psychedelic companies. In reply, Christian Angermayer, one of the main investors behind Compass Pathways, a for-profit psilocybin-assisted therapy company responsible for a large chunk of the patent grab, basically said, “Nope”.
This is disheartening to many in the psychedelic field, to say the least. Most of us didn’t become advocates for psychedelics because they promised to make our healthcare system a bit more effective and a few people a lot more rich. We became advocates for psychedelics because they offered a promise of a better way of doing things; not just for healing, but for the world.
Traditional for-profit companies that are seemingly dominating the space are a betrayal of that promise, especially when no viable, scalable alternative seems to be in sight. Luckily, I think there is a true paradigm-busting healing model that’s not only a proper fit for psychedelics, but has been worked on for years right under our glitter-speckled toenails. We just haven’t yet given it a name. But first, let’s address the elephant in the room: equity.
The Equity Elephant in the Room
I’d like to call this elephant in the room the “Equity Elephant” for two reasons. One is that this elephant is largely a product of private equity entering into the psychedelic space a few years ago. Think venture capital and angel investors. Another reason for deeming it the Equity Elephant is that the response to large, for-profit companies dominating the psychedelic space has largely been one of increasing equity in terms of fairness—or in other words—increasing access. This makes sense considering that most of the companies in question are derived from our healthcare system, which is not exactly the Cadillac of compassion and accessibility.
Thus, the question around what to do about the Equity Elephant has largely been around increasing access. There’s a problem with this, however. Much like how the old paradigm for mental health failed because it treated symptoms rather than causes, increasing access to a system that is inaccessible by design isn’t really going to do all that much good.
We became advocates for psychedelics because they offered a promise of a better way of doing things; not just for healing, but for the world.
Another issue is that we’ve only so far been using one half of the meaning of the word “equity”. Another important use of the word is equity as ownership. So far, asking who owns the future of psychedelic healing has been relatively off the table when it should really be on the tips of our tongues.
First, let’s dive into what ownership means a little more. Ownership is not just about who gets to keep the profits from something. This is another relic from the old paradigm. It’s also about who has the power to direct something’s future. It’s about stewardship, rather than just status. Equity as a term, defined as meaningful power over directing something, needs to be put to use yesterday in the psychedelic space.
The absence of discussing equity as ownership is, in my opinion, why the Equity Elephant in the room is so disheartening. It exemplifies a radical feeling of disempowerment by us in the psychedelic scene who’ve experienced profound healing benefits from these substances. When faced with these behemoths of capitalism making such large strides in the psychedelic space, it’s no wonder we feel outmatched. These organizations don’t strike us as stewards to the future we’re trying to bring about.
But fear not. Now that we know equity is about access and ownership, or fusing them together to increase access to ownership, I think some very promising alternatives will begin to emerge.
Before we go into what those are though, let’s take a quick look at who, in my opinion, actuallyowns the psychedelic future and why they’re charting its path forward: community-based psychedelic organizations.
Community-Based Psychedelic Healing
Perhaps I’m a bit biased. I have been leading the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society since 2016. But to me, what’s been taking place at psychedelic societies across the globe over the past years is muchmore headline worthy than a new multi-million dollar psychedelic company popping up overnight.
Psychedelic societies are self-organized, mutually supporting organizations that together form a grassroots movement of thousands of healers, seekers, organizers, artists, psychedelically curious, and many, many more that have been healing each other with little input from traditional therapeutic institutions. They’ve been doing this for years in ways that regular for-profit companies can only dream of, in an effective, decentralized, evenly distributed and accessible manner.
Why isn’t this getting any headlines? Well for one, twenty people gathering in a park for an integration session with a net yield of $8 and some palo santo sticks isn’t exactly click bait. It’s also because it’s emblematic of a pattern that took me many a psychedelic trips to realize: The most transformative changes aren’t in the headline-grabbing epiphanies (I’M GOD?!!), but in the little, subtle things that we integrate and adopt into our lives patiently and gradually over time (I really need to start painting again and be nicer to people). And that’s exactly the kind of transformation that psychedelic societies have been holding space for.
Because of this, a bonafide healing modality on its own has emerged: community-based healing. Besides just anecdotes from the hundreds of people I’ve met who’ve gotten healing through our community and other psychedelic societies around the world, there’s good ol’ science to back this up as well.
Much like how the old paradigm for mental health failed because it treated symptoms rather than causes, increasing access to a system that is inaccessible by design isn’t really going to do all that much good.
Mike Margolies, founder of Psychedelic Seminars, even came up with a nifty acronym to describe this approach: PEACH (Psychedelic Education and Community Healing) that I highly recommend reading. But, why is community-based healing its own approach altogether?
As mentioned earlier, the old mental health paradigm was failing because it treated symptoms rather than causes. We know that isolation and loneliness exacerbate some of the conditions psychedelics treat so effectively, such as addiction and depression. Thus, delivering psychedelic healing in environments that lack an authentic social component seems to repeat the same mistake of the old paradigm, albeit with better tools.
Of course, clinical modalities for psychedelic therapy should always be available and made as accessible as possible—if that’s what’s needed by the person seeking healing. I don’t think community-based healing will or should replace therapy altogether. But it does seem to be a genuine fourth context that goes beyond the clinical, retreat, and recreational settings, and should probably be the first place to go when someone is seeking a transformative experience.
Psychedelic Mutualism
While we are on a streak of trying to get to the root of things, I’d like to briefly outline what I think is the core philosophical difference between the community-based approach to psychedelic healing and those of the clinical models.
The difference is that community-based approaches take interdependence not just as a fact of life, but as a necessaryaspectof well-being and growth, especially when it comes to healing. This is called “mutualism” in biology and is something that ecologists have long been saying is key in order to awake from our anthropocentrism.
Therefore, psychedelic mutualism is the philosophy that emphasizes community, interdependence, and proactive peer support as centralto growth and flourishing on both an individual and societal level.
The clinical and retreat models contrast with this approach. These modalities are derived from an older philosophy: We are all atomized individuals with consciences that need to be preserved and kept secure. Hence the model: Go to a clinic and get your healing, and then go back to your private life, work and all the other dysfunctions of modern living included.
Sure, these settings might have some community components to them, such as check-ins with retreat members for a few weeks after the journey. But this is not core to their operating philosophy.
Psychedelic mutualism, and the healing modality in which it’s most exemplified, community-based healing or “PEACH”, puts community at its core. The psychedelic experience shows us this in spades by revealing our interdependence not only intellectually but viscerally, in our minds, bodies and hearts.
So how do we scale these modalities to not only increase access, but also increase ownership over them? In other words, how do we democratize the ownership of psychedelic healing?
The Cooperative Model of Ownership
Most traditional organizations are either non-profit or for-profit, with a board, an executive team, managers, employees, and then the people they serve (usually, the customers). While input is sometimes welcomed by other stakeholders within and outside the organization, the decisions are ultimately made by a small handful of people.
Using our definition of ownership as meaningful power and say over something’s future, these organizations are centrally owned. There is an alternative to this model called worker or member owned “cooperatives”.Cooperatives, or co-ops, work differently than the organizations previously mentioned. A cooperative is democratically owned (decentralized) and controlled by its members. Its members can be its workers, its consumers, a combination of both, or any number of different combinations depending on the needs of the community that it serves. Each member gets to vote on the direction of different parts of the organization’s future.
Thus, the key difference between co-ops and regular for-profit companies is that they’re owned by the people that produce and use their services. Put in another way, the profits made by cooperative organizations are in service to the community, not vice versa.
Cooperatives are social and equitable (in both the access and ownership sense) by design, rather than community being a nice byproduct. In other words, mutualism is baked into how they operate. One of the best accounts of this model specifically in a psychedelic context is Bennet Zelner’s Pollinator Model. In his article, Zelner contrasts “pollinator” organizations—those that contribute to the wellness of its members, surrounding communities and society—with “extractive” organizations that accrue value for its shareholders but don’t distribute that value to those they serve or are adjacent to.
Most of the companies that the psychedelic community is rightfully up in arms about are the latter variety. The co-op model is just the answer we’ve been waiting for, I believe. It just has to be applied.
Owning Our Future with Psychedelic Co-ops
You can’t fit a paradigm-busting tool, like psychedelics, into a paradigmatically-static context, like our healthcare systems and traditional for-profit companies. You also can’t use an old philosophy to help shoehorn it in. The settings and operant philosophy needed for psychedelic healing to scale in an authentic way must be at least as transformative as the tools and modalities they are provisioning.
So far, however, no viable and scalable alternatives have been presented. This is where cooperatives and psychedelic mutualism enter into the picture. Yes, large for-profit companies will be in the space. But they are not the end all be all. One day, I hope for-profit companies in the space will be the alternative to the default model: psychedelic co-ops.
Psychedelic co-ops would treat psychedelics and healing as they are meant to be treated: as a publicly accessible service that’s for the benefit of all, in the communities they serve. We have all the building blocks we need to not only construct our psychedelic future, but to own it. So all we need to do now is build. Together.
About the Author
Colin Pugh is the executive director of the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society (BPS), a MAPS-sponsored organization whose mission is to make psychedelic healing a publicly accessible good through community, education, democratic ownership, and advocacy.
Many in the Black community are weary of psychedelic therapy because of stigma rooted in the racist War on Drugs. But how do we begin to change that?
Last year I wrote an article entitled “Why Don’t More Black People Use Psychedelics?” I cited several reasons as to why we haven’t seen psychedelics embraced by Black people at the same rate as other groups. One of those reasons was that drug use has been highly stigmatized, especially in Black communities.
Another topic that has been heavily stigmatized within Black culture is therapy. As a result, many Black people are hesitant to try a treatment that involves both drugs and therapy.
Numerous research studies have shown that psychedelics can aid in the treatment of trauma, depression and PTSD. According to Medical News Today, “Depression is about as prevalent in Black communities as in white ones, but there are significant differences. Black people face different social pressures that may increase their risk of depression.”
These risks include but are not limited to:
Racial trauma
Difficult life experiences as a result of racism
Barriers and lack of access to mental health resources
Socioeconomic inequalities are another stressor that can increase poor mental health. In 2019, Black people represented 13.2% of the total population in the United States, but 23.8% of the poverty population. According to the organization Mental Health America: “Black and African American people living below poverty are twice as likely to report serious psychological distress than those living above the poverty level.”
Equity in psychedelics has been a popular topic of discussion. For those of us that are committed to equity in this space, what can we do to help destigmatize drugs in the Black community?
1. Normalize Drug Use
Society has led us to believe that illegal drugs are harmful while prescriptive drugs are useful.
This is not true.
We can end this harmful narrative by normalizing the use of drugs, all drugs.
In his latest book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups, Dr. Carl Hart writes about his experience with recreational heroin use. He shares that he uses heroin to unwind at the end of his day, the same way many of us turn to a glass of wine. Dr. Hart is not addicted. Instead, he says that his use of heroin has increased his overall life satisfaction. In order for our society to start to normalize drug use, we need to hear more of these stories.
2. Normalize Therapy in the Black Community
In the Black community, mental illness is a taboo topic and often, we’re labeled as “crazy” if we seek mental health services. Instead, we’re told to find solace in the church or prayer. In order to start to normalize therapy, we need to educate ourselves and each other about mental health. Part of that education needs to involve open and honest conversation about mental health in schools, churches and in the Black community.
3. More BIPOC Representation in the Media
Psychedelics have been portrayed in the media as a drug for white guys. We rarely see the portrayal of a Black man taking a trip on acid or psilocybin. Documentaries such as Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia and Psychonautics have helped to destigmatize psychedelic drug use, but not in Black communities. While I’m glad that these shows exist, they need to include faces that look like ours.
4. More Black Representation in Healthcare
Only 4% of all therapists in this country are Black. Finding any therapist you connect with can be hard. Finding a Black therapist can prove to be even more of a challenge. And if you’re in search of a Black psychedelic therapist, that can be nearly impossible. Just as we need to see faces that reflect ours in the media, we need to see that representation in the healthcare industry as well.
Our current healthcare system includes racial and ethnic biases which can impact the quality of care Black people receive. As a result, this may deter a person from the community to seek care. We need more Black therapists, trip sitters and educators in this space. We can start by seeking out future therapists and introducing them to these medicines and the benefits they offer.
For those in the Black community who want to pursue the path of becoming a therapist or healthcare professional, there needs to be adequate funding offered to support our education as well as our future research studies.
Conclusion
We can begin to normalize the stigma of psychedelics in the Black community by sharing information, having open conversations and seeing diverse representationin this space. The Black community has the added pressure of overcoming the stigma of both drug use and therapy, but the more we talk about these medicines and this work, the more normalized they will become.
Black people are traumatized. We not only live with current daily racial trauma, but the generational trauma endured by our ancestors as well. Psychedelics offer us a path to healing that exists outside of Western medicine. If we can begin to undo the stigma and shame associated with drugs and therapy, then as a community, we can finally begin to heal.
About the Author
Robin Divine is a writer, psychedelic advocate and the creator of Black People Trip, an online community with a mission to raise awareness, promote education, teach harm reduction, and create safe spaces for Black women interested in psychedelic use. If you’d like to support Robin in her mission to bring Black People Trip to more women of color, check out her Patreon or find @DivineRobin on Venmo.
We know this past year has been extremely challenging and isolating. Humans are social creatures by nature, and quarantine and social distancing have been hard on all of our psyches and mental health. But as a community, we have to get real: if we really want what’s best for the collective whole of humanity, the truth is that it’s still not safe to meet up in big groups to do psychedelic work or ceremonies.
We’ve been talking about it a lot on the podcast, especially on Solidarity Fridays, so here is a reminder in print: COVID-19 is real, psychedelics and spirituality won’t make you exempt from catching and spreading it, and therefore, it’s still too dangerous to be doing group psychedelic work.
Often, when people justify disregarding masks or social distancing measures, their line of reasoning is that they’re not a senior citizen or immunocompromised, and so the current safety precautions don’t apply to them. But this is not a zero-sum, “die or survive” game, and it’s not just about you and your healing; it’s about the people around you–employees at your local grocery store, your bus or taxi driver, the nurses, doctors, and teachers in your community–people you don’t know and don’t think about, who still might be harmed by your actions.
And COVID-19 is not temporary. There are psychedelic community members with vagus nerve damage, permanent vocal cord damage from severe coughing, lung issues, and other serious long-term conditions. We know plenty of people in their 30s and 40s who survived COVID-19 and thought everything was fine, but their post-virus quality of life has since been severely lowered. We know folks who are still sick, struggling with chronic pain, brain fog, and low energy for over a year, who have therefore been unable to work and have become dependent on family members to support them as their recovery extends past the 13, 14, and 15-month marks.
Beyond our immediate community, a recent study published in The Lancet journal of psychiatry found that a significant portion of COVID-19 survivors were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within 6 months of contracting COVID, many for the first time. And remember- we’re still seeing COVID variants pop up, so while many feel we’re making our way out of this dark period, we may still have a long way to go.
And it sucks. We understand people are struggling right now. Kyle sees it every day in his therapy and coaching practice, and we all feel it. Being in isolation and lacking human connection is extremely hard, unnatural, and affecting us all. The need for healing and contact is immense and only getting bigger, and we absolutely empathize with you all. We understand that it goes against our individualistic cultural conditioning, but this is a social responsibility that is beyond individual healing or personal politics, and we have to think communally. When the community is sick, the individual is sick. And when the individual is sick, the community is sick.
When we’ve posted about this on social media, we’ve had folks bring up suicide statistics from 2020, using the high number as an argument for encouraging much-needed psychedelic healing work. Everyone on our team has lost someone to suicide and we know how difficult that is, and also how easy it is to think that perhaps an ayahuasca or mushroom ceremony could have saved our loved ones from their afflictions. So it feels insensitive to compare numbers of deaths against each other, but since that’s something that gets brought up a lot, look into it: while the 2020 stats aren’t final and don’t take overdoses into account, the numbers are actually very similar to 2019, with the number of deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 being drastically higher. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but the numbers speak for themselves. This is beyond our emotional ties to the issue; this is for the sake of the whole community of humanity.
The fact of the matter is, psychedelic group work involves a lot of touching, being close together for 6 to 12 hours, and being in close proximity to others’ bodily fluids while we cough, purge, or cry. Cups of water, pipes, snuff tools, and tobacco cigars are often shared. People hold hands, hug, and practice bodywork with each other. These are all optimal opportunities for viruses to spread. Plus, when you are under the influence of a psychedelic medicine, the realities of social distancing and spreading germs won’t exactly be in the forefront of your mind and can easily be cast aside as “silly human problems.” And while that belief may feel freeing, it won’t protect you from catching or spreading disease.
Are there safe options for participating in psychedelic healing work? At the moment, we think the safest option for those looking for mental health relief with psychedelics is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and infusions. Unlike underground group work or retreats abroad, ketamine clinics and practitioners are regulated by organizations like OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in the US, meaning they have to follow governmental guidelines for safe and sterile working environments. Also, ketamine infusions, injections, lozenges, and nasal sprays are not typically done in groups, and if they are, they also follow social distancing protocols, as outlined in our recent piece on the topic.
We understand that for many, treatment options like ketamine-assisted psychotherapy may not be accessible or appropriate, and some people will still participate in group work anyway. To those people, we encourage everyone to do everything as safely as possible by only engaging in small ceremonies that are following strict safety and social distancing protocols and have contact tracing in place. If the work can be done outside, do it there. And if you’re traveling, please quarantine in consideration of the communities you’re traveling between. But don’t forget- there are lots of virtual psychedelic community offerings to keep us all engaged too. And think about the other work you can do, from meditation, breathwork, and journaling, to creating art or just going for a walk in the woods. Not all healing comes from psychedelics and group work.
As more people get vaccinated and the world begins to reopen, we are all feeling the excitement to move towards the sense of normalcy we all miss so much. But this is a slow process, and we encourage everyone to continue to move slowly, stay cautious, and continue engaging in safe practices and social distancing measures until we get there.
We know that this is not what a lot of the psychedelic community wants to hear, but regardless of how unpopular putting this out might make us, we feel it’s a necessary reminder that we all have a shared responsibility to keep our communities safe.
Thanks for your support,
Joe, Kyle, & the rest of the Psychedelics Today team
Internal Family Systems therapy, or IFS, is an effective complement to psychedelic therapy and integration. But how does this therapeutic approach – best known for working with the many pieces of the psyche that comprise one’s personality, or “parts,” – work in conjunction with psychedelic medicines?
My own experiences with this modality enabled me to better understand how it works.
Navigating inner space is always a surprisingly visual journey for me. In one particular session, my eyes had been closed for a while. And this time, in a guided Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy session, the powerful visual component was exactly the same.
There are many paths from which one can enter the inner world, known as “trailheads” in this detailed method of psychotherapy. Just taking a few breaths within this dark, introspective place, I could feel something churning like magma in my stomach. I saw and felt hot, crackling flames of anger percolating within my abdomen; painful memories of betrayal filtered through my consciousness.
Using this bodily trailhead as an entry point and working through the “parts” that hallmark the IFS approach, my therapist began to gently ask about it, as if the anger was a sentient presence.
“What would your anger do if it didn’t have to keep doing this job?” I heard from what now seemed like a far-off place.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I like the anger. I know it’s here to protect me. We get along.”
It felt deeply familiar, like a well-worn sweatshirt that I couldn’t bring myself to let go of. It was safe. Or rather, it kept me safe. In the language of IFS, I had contacted a protective part of my psyche, which in this case, was a flaming cauldron of anger.
“Good. Let the anger know that you appreciate it. Really let it feel that… what does the anger have to say to you now?”
“That sometimes we lose people,” I sighed. “And that that’s OK.” These simple words gave way to a massive sense of release.
I felt the turbulent energy inside me suddenly transform into something which encompassed my entire awareness. The fiery magma of anger which coursed through my body a minute ago shifted into something that I can only describe as an emotionally expansive, all-inclusive moment of peace.
This space was familiar. I had felt it before, this wordless balance between bliss and sorrow which the thinking mind, or “ego”, seems to dissolve in.
Now, instead of feeling the flames inside me, I was inside the flame itself. I felt my entire body relax. My mind, a psychic battleground only moments before, was quiet.
I exhaled into a stillness which resonated throughout my cells. The immensity of all of life’s crushing beauty somatically flooded through my nervous system and inner vision. I felt my heart beat and my lungs expand as forgiveness flowed through my entire body. My mind relinquished control, letting the story behind this painful life chapter melt into the purifying, boundless flame I suddenly found myself engrossed in. I was deeply immersed in what IFS therapists call the energy of “the Self.”
The distant voice advised me to stay there as long as I could. And so I did, until time began to loosen its grip upon my consciousness.
As powerful as any psychedelic moment of healing, this visionary journey was facilitated by a therapist in my Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy training program. After being guided through this modality, my suspicions around its potential for use in psychedelic therapy and integration were confirmed beyond a doubt.
What Is Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy?
Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz in the late 1980’s, Internal Family Systems is a psychotherapy modality rapidly growing in popularity. As an outgrowth of his work studying family systems therapy and working with patients struggling with severe eating disorders, Schwartz noticed that his clients spoke about their inner conflict in terms of “parts” of themselves guiding their troubling behaviors and inner conflicts.
In what is ironically a radical act in many areas of the psychological establishment, Schwartz actually took his clients at their word.
Integrating his knowledge of family systems, as well as the work of Carl Jung and other psychotherapeutic pioneers, Schwartz created the IFS model which embraces the notion that our personalities are actually composed of a symphony of different parts, as well as a core, boundless source of energy that both Jung and Schwartz deemed “the Self.”
“There are times where you just can’t convince these protective parts to let us get to an exile and heal it. And a psychedelic session can expedite that pretty easily, it seems,” Schwartz told Psychedelics Today.
When asked about working with IFS and MDMA, Mithoefer said, “I have learned how well the spontaneous observations and experiences of our participants map onto IFS, including both parts and the Self… in my experience, people are hungry for this perspective. (Richard Schwartz) didn’t make it up – IFS taps into real phenomena.”
Schwartz says his experiences with psychedelics and the insights he gathered through substance work helped open his awareness to the “multiplicity of mind,” a core principle of IFS.
In the past, the field of psychology viewed subpersonalities with great skepticism, giving way to infamous diagnoses such as dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD). Yet IFS, a non-pathologizing form of psychotherapy, looks at the many subpersonalities, or parts, as natural facets of the psyche–aspects of ourselves which yearn to be known, understood, and healed.
As a depth psychotherapist, I was trained to suss out the unconscious and possibly archetypal aspects of a given dynamic or situation with my clients. Image and metaphor have long been the bread and butter of depth psychology, with myths and fairytales frequently providing the backdrop for some of this tradition’s most memorable texts. In other words, both depth psychology and IFS take to heart the notion that image and psyche are one and the same.
After slowly developing my own therapeutic style, which is influenced not only by human teachers, but psychedelic plant teachers as well, IFS felt like an immensely practical tool with which to weave this odd tapestry of animism, image, and archetypes.
After all, what is an archetype if not psychic energy crystallized into an image?
What are “Parts” in IFS?
For millennia, psychedelic medicines have been used by humans to invoke visions, as well as bring one into dialog with some larger presence: the Great Spirit, the spirits of teacher plants, animals, elements, or the ancestors. Especially with ayahuasca, DMT, and other tryptamine-containing substances, people report encountering beings or entities who often communicate detailed information that can be recalled after the effect itself has worn off.
Whether these entities are mere reflections, or personifications of psychic parts,is a valid, but different, discussion. The point is that when one goes deep enough into the mind, research and anecdotal evidence proves that it is not unusual to encounter presences that seem entirely other than one’s own self.
Instead of entities, beings, or spirits, IFS employs the language of partsto describe the psychic presences which collectively constitute one’s personality.
As a psychedelic integration therapist, IFS provided me with a systematized toolkit for working with people trying to make sense of the paradigm-bending moments that can often occur during a psychedelic journey.
For example: take the voice that suddenly tells you to quit your job; the sinking feeling in your stomach when you think about a memory from childhood; feelings of unworthiness that you’re doing it all wrong; or that suddenly you’re not safe, despite all evidence to the contrary. From the IFS perspective, these are most likely parts expressing themselves and asking for your attention. From a shamanic perspective, these messages might be coming from the spirit of the plant you just ingested, from the ancestors, or from something else entirely.
For psychedelic explorers who prefer not to think in terms of spiritsor entities, IFS can provide a useful method of conceptualizing and categorizing potentially confusing aspects of psychedelic experiences that might not fit within their worldview.
Defining “Self” in Internal Family Systems
Both IFS and psychedelics work by reconnecting one to an internal source of transpersonal energy, which Schwartz, taking a page from Carl Jung, calls “the Self.”
IFS has the potential to lead one into profoundly visionary and emotionally cathartic experiences. For me, IFS has been comparable to some of the most healing moments that I’ve experienced with psychedelic medicines.
IFS can provide both facilitators and participants a language by which to conceptualize and map an experience that would otherwise be, by its very nature, ineffable.
In describing the energy of the Self, Schwartz developed what he calls the “eight C’s”:
Compassion
Curiosity
Calm
Clarity
Courage
Connectedness
Confidence
Creativity
In IFS, it is the energy of the Self, not the therapist, that truly heals.
The good news here is that everyone, regardless of past trauma or experiences, has within them the boundless energy of Self. Thus, IFS believes that everyone has the capacity to heal.
The notion of the Selffirmly locates IFS therapy in the terrain of existential-humanistic, transpersonal, and depth psychology, all of which form the foundations of emerging and long-standing modalities of psychedelic psychotherapy (for examples, see Grof, 1975, Stolaroff, 1997, and Leary, Metzner & Alpert, 2007).
One could say that within the psychological establishment, the idea of the Selfis as radical a notion as LSD being used to heal. In many mental health agencies or governmental health services, both concepts would likely be given a sideways glance at best, mockery or early termination at worst.
In my own psychedelic experiences, I can recall moments of feeling immersed in many of the eight C’s.Formal research has yet to be conducted connecting the Jungian and IFS concept of the Selfwithin psychedelic experiences and its potential for healing, though the work of Stanislav Grof, as well as Griffith’s research mentioned above, comes close.
Perhaps the expansive, all-encompassing energy of the Self is what the famous Mazatec curandera, Maria Sabina was referring to when she said, “Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember, you are the medicine.”
How Psychedelic Integration Could Employ IFS
After a psychedelic experience, my clients often share what can seem like a deluge of information, imagery, and questions. In addition to archetypal imagery, transpersonal, and shamanic perspectives, IFS provides me a detailed map for understanding and deeping into the integration process with clients. Often, there are recognizable themes or patterns that can emerge during a psychedelic experience – for good or ill.
Here are some core concepts in IFS therapy that I have found useful while facilitating integration work: “Unburdening,” “Polarization,” and “Blending.”
“Unburdening” in IFS
If one could distill IFS therapy down to a single sentence, it could be that it consists of helping certain parts of ourselves let go of outdated or inherited ways of being that cause us to suffer.
IFS calls this process “unburdening,” as it understands that certain parts take on “burdens” early in life which, as we grow, might become less and less helpful or healthy.
This unburdening is achieved by establishing a connection to the Self, so that the part can realize it doesn’t have to do it all by itself, that it’s not alone, and that its past experiences don’t dictate the future. Usually, these moments are profoundly cathartic and emotional. It can also take an immense amount of work to get there, which is why psychedelics can potentially play a helpful role in this therapeutic process.
From an IFS perspective, unburdening is often what happens in a positive psychedelic experience, and can be some of the most memorable moments of the journey. For example, metaphorically giving your anger to the fire; letting your grief float away into the ocean; or planting your sadness into earth. Such images are common in both IFS therapy sessions and psychedelic journeys.
Through the lens of IFS, our stories about who we are or how the world is might be a burden carried by a part. For instance, seeing oneself as a savior, victim, martyr, or outcast is a story that might be severely limiting one’s idea of who they really are and their self worth. Tendencies towards workaholism or scarcity fears, chronic shame, feelings of not being enough and needing to prove oneself, are all burdens that certain parts might carry for decades. Many burdens were placed upon us during childhood by family members, and in that sense are not true reflections of who we really are.
On an even deeper level, some burdens are inherited through our blood lineage and ancestry, or experienced through what author and psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem calls HIPP (historical, intergenerational, persistent institutional, and personal) trauma. These heavy burdens may inform every aspect of someone’s life, and are heartbreakingly real, but are still not accurate reflections of who they truly are.
Trauma twists someone’s story about who they are. Healing helps rewrite it.
“Polarization” in Internal Family Systems
Dealing with “polarization” between parts is a common occurrence in IFS therapy sessions. Through an IFS lens, challenging psychedelic experiences can often occur because these same polarized parts are amplified during a journey. Looping or confusion – a frequent element of a bad trip – might be seen as an extreme polarization.
Polarization is like an inner battle. A difficult psychedelic experience might occur because of this inner tension: one part wants to surrender, another part is terrified to do so. One part says to take a second dose, another part cautions against it. One part wants to lay down under a blanket, another wants to stand up, stretch, and go outside. Such conundrums can be viewed through IFS as polarized parts playing a psychic tug-of-war.
This can get exhausting. And usually, there is a much deeper process going on beneath. The IFS therapist’s job is to tend to the parts that arise with compassion, to witness them, help them unburden, and reconnect them to the energy of the Self.
“Blending” in IFS
We all have certain parts that become strong aspects of our personality. Many people who live outwardly successful lives might be plagued by a “manager” part which acts as a strict taskmaster, inwardly limiting their creative expression and spontaneity. High levels of anxiety, especially social anxiety, can be viewed through IFS as a “critical manager” or “worrisome exile” part which gains control in uncertain situations. Or someone struggling with a strong addiction, for example, can often revert to what’s called a “firefighter”–a reactive part that rushes in to dramatically protect the system when triggered, even though it ultimately sabotages that person’s wellbeing.
Such experiences are referred to in IFS as “blending.”
Fear of letting go, or becoming stuck in certain thought patterns is a basic example of being “blended” in a psychedelic state. The psychic energy being taken up by the part in question is inhibiting one from connecting to the body, the deep nervous system, and the Self, which is how healing most easily occurs.
Extreme examples of negative outcomes from psychedelics can often be seen through this idea of blending.
How many of us have experienced someone – possibly ourselves – fresh out of a psychedelic state convinced they are either some kind of messiah with a sacred mission, or at fault for some global catastrophe, disaster, or cosmic mishap?
Taken to the extremes, this is the stuff that psychedelic-induced psychosis is made of.
And almost guaranteed, there is a much deeper reason why the part in question took over. Likely, it is to protect the psyche from facing something incredibly scary or traumatic.
From a Jungian lens, one could view these extreme examples of blending as a type of “archetypal possession,” resulting from some form of inflation. During an archetypal possession, according to Jung, an archetype takes “hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. The consequence is a puffed-up attitude, loss of free will, delusion and enthusiasm for good and evil alike.
Interestingly, psychedelics can both inflate or deflate the ego, filling someone up with grandiose visions of spreading the “good news,” or reducing one into a fragile shell of themselves.
This is the critical role of integration: to recalibrate the ego with the Self, to witness and guide the vulnerable parts that need care, and to ground potentially expansive visions into a genuine path of tangible healing.
Using IFS to Navigate Psychedelic Journeys
Beyond integration, IFS can offer an immensely valuable toolkit for navigating psychedelic space as well. Speaking from personal experience, IFS has helped me to create more psychic spaciousness within a journey. Much like mindfulness, remembering my IFS training has helped me practice observing, rather than getting “hooked” into particular thoughts and feelings that might emerge during a psychedelic experience.
The basic premise of IFS is that the psyche is inhabited, and that we can learn to dialog with these presences or parts. Remembering this simple fact, I’ve been able to remain in a space of gentle curiosity when, for instance, I might fall into a thought pattern that could potentially send me down a critical, anxious, or confused internal loop during a journey.
Cultivating the ability to remain connected to Self, or any of the eight C’swhich characterize this energy, helps me to remain grounded and present within psychedelic space. Much like mindfulness, the goal is to create psychic flexibility, spaciousness, and literacy, so that we might more deeply be able to do “the work” that psychedelics inevitably ask of us.
Every IFS therapy session, like every psychedelic experience, can be worlds apart. Speaking from experiences both as a therapist and client, I am continually blown away by what this therapeutic modality has revealed to me and those I’ve been lucky enough to work with.
Internal Family Systems is not only an effective psychotherapy modality with an extraordinary capacity to heal trauma, demonstrated in a pilot study in which 92% of participants no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, it is also a non-pathologizing, client-directed, and ultimately psycho-spiritual framework for guiding one on the potentially infinite road of inner work.
As every good navigator knows deep down, the map and territory will always remain two very different realms. Yet as far as a set of directions for charting the inner world, and for helping people integrate potentially life-altering psychedelic experiences, Internal Family Systems therapy presents a toolkit which can greatly benefit therapists and facilitators looking for a detailed, multifaceted, and truly psychedelic methodology for exploring the soul.
Nine women of color who are working hard to ensure their communities have access and representation in the psychedelic movement
As interest in psychedelic medicine explodes, it is trailed by conversation about representation and access. From leaders, authors and filmmakers, to researchers and clinical study participants, one simple fact is clear: The psychedelic community is disproportionately white. The recent global focus on racial inequity and social justice has called us all to reflect on our impact and seek out tangible ways to show up for communities of color. Now, this conversation has reached the psychedelic community and called leaders to task. Are we ready to explore why the movement is so homogenous, and to learn from leaders of color who can help us shift and evolve?
While psychedelic press coverage focuses on hand-wringing over the privileged corporate takeover, there is a more hopeful subculture emerging. Around the world there are visionary and collaborative leaders who aren’t waiting for an invitation from the vanguard of psychedelic elites. We spoke with nine women of color who are shaping psychedelic culture at the grassroots level and helping to create more inclusive spaces within the movement for global healing.
Buki Fadipe, Founder Adventures in Om
Buki Fadipe, founder of Adventures In Om, is a transformational guide, artist, and psychedelic practitioner in training based in London, England. Her work focuses on empowering individuals to take part in their own healing and consider all aspects of the self: emotional, physical, environmental, spiritual and psychological. “When we self-heal, we do so for our lineage, community, collective, Mother Earth and all living beings,” Fadipe says.
In the future of psychedelics, Fadipe hopes to see better representation and access.
“Accessibility is a big issue,” she says. “The way the industry is currently heading does not leave much room for focusing on marginalized groups. These medicines are being worked into a psychiatric framework, a system that is already incredibly dismissive of those from lower economic brackets who are often most in need.”
Fadipe’s goal is to positively disrupt the conversation, one which she says overemphasizes the clinical model and dependence on quick fixes, pharmaceutical medicines, and years of ineffective talk therapy.
“This is an emerging field,” she continues. “How can we map its scope without more diverse data coming from a realistic representation of society? I hope that the future will lead us to see more leadership from BIPOC and women who need representation across the industry, from clinical research and decriminalization to harm reduction, education and integration.”
Jenn So, Founder SO Searching Oneself
As a femme embodied person from a family of Viet-Khmer immigrant refugees, Jenn So, LCSW and founder of SO Searching Oneself in Washington, USA, is passionate about generational healing. So has worked as a professional social worker for the past 14 years, and her private practice specializes in racial trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and intimate partner violence. She first became intrigued about the healing potential of psychedelics after witnessing firsthand how psilocybin transformed her cousin’s life.
“Psychedelic-assisted therapy could help someone who has experienced trauma return to a specific moment in their memory and know they can be safely walked out of it,” So explains. She emphasizes the importance of trained professionals and safe environments.
“Western life is disconnected from the idea of things being passed down generation to generation. We don’t live with our elders. We don’t have opportunities to be closely involved with their lives and experiences the way traditional cultures do,” So says. She believes we are just beginning to appreciate the way trauma impacts the body and family lineage.
“These medicines are being worked into a psychiatric framework, a system that is already incredibly dismissive of those from lower economic brackets who are often most in need.”
–Buki Fadipe
Is the mental health community ready to take a serious look at the potential of psychedelic medicine? So isn’t sure.
“The stigma around psychedelics is largely because we don’t fully understand them,” she says. “We humans believe that what we know is all there is to know, so new information is met with skepticism and fear. The mental health community isn’t immune to these attitudes.”
So hopes to bridge the conversation and help mental health practitioners better understand psychedelic medicines.
Charlotte James, Co-Founder The Ancestor Project
When co-founders of The Ancestor Project (formerly The Sabina Project) Charlotte James and Dre Wright met, they connected over their shared experiences in white medicine spaces and the recognition of the need for BIPOC-centered healing environments. They launched The Ancestor Project (TAP) in 2019 with a focus on Baltimore-based events, then shifted online when the pandemic hit.
James outlines some tangible steps the psychedelic community can take to better support Black community members: “We invite White folx to buy our Psychedelic Anti-Racism workbook. To sit in their discomfort as they unravel privilege and find their role in the collective liberation movement.” James continues, “Also, recognize that racism causes trauma, [and so] treat Black and BIPOC folx with the same trauma-informed care you provide others.”
The mantle of leadership is heavy for a woman of color navigating her own healing path while working to further conversations about psychedelics as medicine. James emphasizes how important it is to slow down. “I really try to live my life in ceremony. I have a massive toolbox of practices and technologies that support me: sitting in ceremony, practicing Kemetic yoga with my partner, spending time in nature, dance, meditation, drinking lots of water, and building a healthy, shameless relationship with food. I would say though, when you’re walking in your purpose, the work is less draining–even when it is really intense.”
James shared about TAP’s recent name change, and the importance of modeling accountability:
“We have to walk the walk. We can’t be out here holding White folx accountable to their sh*t and not also reflecting on the ways that we have deeply internalized their ways of being to the point that the system becomes self-replicating. It’s okay to be vulnerable and admit when you have self-reflected and recognized a misstep. I’m grateful for the humans who support us as we do our own liberation work, and to the ancestors, spirit guides, and relatives who are the true geniuses and creators of this work.”
Elan Hagens, Co-Founder Fruiting Bodies Collective
Elan Hagens is the co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collectivein Oregon, USA, which was born out of a need for education, advocacy, and community within the state’s new psilocybin therapy program.
“Just inviting people of color into the scene or making options financially accessible isn’t enough,” Hagens explains. “We need to consider why communities of color aren’t as aware of or interested in psychedelics. We need to understand the history of the War on Drugs and what can happen if we invite people into vulnerable healing spaces and then they return to a world that can be dehumanizing.”
Hagens also explains the need to be mindful of the language we use. “When enthusiastic advocates talk about “magic mushrooms” and “tripping”, we can lose a lot of people due to stigma and cultural connotation. Instead, can we talk about these medicines with respect and in a new way that people from all walks of life can understand and relate to? Healing goes beyond one subculture. We all have hearts and souls and an innate ability to heal in the right conditions.”
“We have to walk the walk. We can’t be out here holding White folx accountable to their sh*t and not also reflecting on the ways that we have deeply internalized their ways of being to the point that the system becomes self-replicating. It’s okay to be vulnerable and admit when you have self-reflected and recognized a misstep.”
–Charlotte James
Ultimately, healing must go beyond the individual. The founders at Fruiting Bodies believe that individual healing and societal change are inseparable. Beyond helping shape Oregon’s program, their mission is to shift the narrative and destigmatize psychedelic medicine through relationship building and storytelling.
*Note: Elan Hagens is co-founders with Rebecca Martinez, who authored this article.
Robin Divine, Founder Black People Trip
Robin Divine is the founder of Black People Trip, an online community with a mission to raise awareness, destigmatize, teach harm reduction, and create safer spaces for Black women in psychedelics.
“There is such a stigma around drug use (as well as therapy) which makes the idea of psychedelic therapy taboo for many Black people,” Divine says. “We need to see the faces and hear the stories of people who look like us in order to begin to break down these outdated ways of thinking.”
Divine explains that Black communities are traumatized. She sees psychedelics as a way for people to take healing into their own hands, down a path to wellness that exists beyond Western medicine.
“I invite white community members to get involved. If you are truly committed to equity in psychedelics, then take action. If you have the resources, then donate money to organizations that are doing the work to create better access in Black communities. I’d also ask them to respect the idea that Black people need their own spaces to heal that don’t involve them. In short: take action, and honor our space.”
Jessika Lagarde & Tian Daphne, Co-Founders Women on Psychedelics
Jessika Lagarde and Tian Daphne are the co-founders of Women on Psychedelics (WOOP), which began organically during the COVID-19 lockdown while the two were volunteering for a mushroom-related initiative. “Having ourselves experienced the healing and transformative power of psychedelics, we saw a glaring need to not only normalize the talk around psychedelics, but to specifically work to end the stigmatization around women’s mental health and substance use,” Lagarde explains.
The promising research inspired them to become advocates. But as they dove deeper, they quickly noticed a lack of diversity in the psychedelic space. “Despite having disproportionately higher rates of trauma, people of color and women remain underrepresented in research amongst participants, as well as in underground psychedelic communities and the movement toward decriminalization and legalization,” Lagarde adds.
“Through Women on Psychedelics, we hope to connect women through social, creative, political, and educational content and activities. We truly believe that everyone should have the freedom and ability to access psychedelics for their own healing and growth.”
Mariah Makalapua, Founder the Medicine Collective
Mariah Makalapua is a Hawaiian and mixed Native North American artist and mother who is the founder of the Medicine Collective in Oregon, USA. Since 2017, the Medicine Collective has combined art and medicine for the purpose of healing people and the planet. Makalapua’s mission is to provide safe and respectful healing experiences rooted in indigenous traditions.
Makalapua believes respect for indigenous rights and wisdom is an expression of an individual’s healing process. “Trauma healing has to do with diving into your upbringing, your ancestry, and ultimately, decolonizing and clearing your own lineage and understanding where you come from. We all have ancestors. No matter who you are, there is a reality of what colonialism and patriarchy did to your family.”
“We need to consider why communities of color aren’t as aware of or interested in psychedelics. We need to understand the history of the War on Drugs and what can happen if we invite people into vulnerable healing spaces and then they return to a world that can be dehumanizing.”
–Elan Hagens
If people understand these things, she says, we will no longer need to argue about cultural appropriation because we will develop a heart level-understanding of it. “You wouldn’t attend an ayahuasca ceremony and then think a medicine leadership role is yours to take. You just wouldn’t be having that jump. It’s not a healed or whole approach.”
In regards to Oregon’s legal psilocybin therapy program, Makalapua advocates for wisdom, accountability and intentionality.
“Historically, indigenous communities did not exist in a vacuum in their healing. The medicine was part of the larger culture and there was a collective consciousness around it. They understood: This work is terrifying, necessary, and we must go to the right people. But this collectivism has been lost from modern culture. We need support in watering the seeds planted during ceremony. It is deep, inner, relational work: making changes, making boundaries. It requires friendship, community, and at least a few close people who can support and guide you through that change.”
“The mushrooms are going to be mushrooms no matter what we do,” Makalapua continues. “I want to protect their sacredness. It’s like protecting your grandmother. You know she’s strong and a badass, but you’re not going to let her go and do something dangerous. It’s the same with the mushrooms; we should respect them, love them, and help carry their groceries, so to speak.”
Hanifa Nayo Washington, Founder One Village Healing
Hanifa Nayo Washington is an award winning cultural artivist and sacred activist combining arts, healing, and activism for the last 20+ years. Based in Connecticut, USA, Washington is the founder and principal organizer of One Village Healing, cultivator of beloved community at the Fireside Project, director of community engagement for CEIO, and a founding member of several emerging psychedelic initiatives, including the Equity in Psychedelic Therapy Initiative.
In 2017 she released her third album, Mantras for the Revolution. In December 2018 Washington received a Phenomenal Women Arts Award from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven for her contributions and achievements in the arts. She is currently working on a storytelling project called Growing Wilder, which is expected in 2022.
Washington explains how her own healing experiences led her to the intersection of psychedelic medicines and social transformation:
“Going into ceremony and creating sacred spaces…helped me deconstruct the poisons of internalized systems of oppression. These allies, these plant medicines, have helped me to unhook these things from my body and mindset, and allow me to be in deeper relationship with myself and others in ways that are not poisoned,” she says.
What makes Washington’s leadership stand out is both her joy and her specificity. One vision many emerging leaders share within the psychedelic space is inclusion. Washington carries a torch into the unknown and helps to illuminate the “how” by shaping practical models with which to realize this shared vision. Equity and access are more than buzzwords at One Village Healing–they are the pillars that form the very structure and breath of the organization, which currently provides seven online wellness sessions for free to the community.
“Historically, indigenous communities did not exist in a vacuum in their healing. The medicine was part of the larger culture and there was a collective consciousness around it. They understood: This work is terrifying, necessary, and we must go to the right people.”
–Mariah Makalapua
The immense value of Fireside Project’s Psychedelic Peer Support Line is multiplied by their attention to “providing compassionate, accessible, and culturally responsive peer support, educating the public, and furthering psychedelic research, while embracing practices that increase equity, power sharing, and belonging within the psychedelic movement,” Washington says.
In order to create safer spaces and experiences for marginalized communities, Washington suggests a few practical steps:
Normalize and furthermore, require, inner work as a fundamental part of all psychedelic organizations, businesses, and institutions. “That means creating space and time within the work schedule for individual and collective learning, to practice and imagine ways of being that support healing from the trauma of oppressive systems.”
Within this process, trust and invest in affinity integration spaces.
Listen to, fund, and invest in individuals, businesses, projects, and initiatives led by people who have been impacted the most by systems of oppression.
“Without representation in leadership,” she says, “I’m pretty convinced that these aforementioned aspects will not happen.”
Conclusion
The common threads that come through these interviews help weave together a larger story. It’s a vision for global healing that doesn’t stop at getting over depression or healing family trauma. It’s a call to recognize our interconnectedness with one another and the Earth, and to commit to the work which enables psychedelic insights to transform us into more engaged, justice-focused citizens. Because of their intersectional identities, women of color offer the presence, leadership and perspective which are essential to the integrity of the psychedelics movement. We have endless opportunities to lift them up and learn from them as we grow and heal together in the years to come. Let’s begin today.
About the Author
Rebecca Martinez is a Portland, Oregon-based writer, parent and community organizer. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform exploring the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement.
The week I am writing this, author and psychedelic philanthropist Tim Ferriss poised a very direct question (via Twitter) to the public and various leaders in the psychedelic community, including Michael Pollan, Rick Doblin, and Robin Carhart-Harris.
Ferriss asked about how best to navigate the apparent “patent land grab” occurring behind the scenes within various private companies, many of which have received millions of dollars in investment capital and stock valuation.
This was in no doubt a response to the bizarre move by the British psychedelic startup Compass Pathways to patent, according to a recent VICE article, “the basic components of psychedelic therapy,” including the use of “soft furniture and holding hands.”
The internet being what it is, Christian Angermayer, a venture capitalist representing both Compass Pathways and a biotechnology company called ATAI Life Sciences, chimed in. Downplaying Ferriss’ philanthropy efforts and deeming his concerns as “wrong,” Angermayer defended the business strategies that Ferriss, along with many other leaders in the psychedelic community, called into question.
We are in the midst of a psychedelic gold rush. This comprehensive article from VICE addresses the nauseating pace at which psychedelic patents are springing up, including everything from psilocybin-infused cannabis to Phillip Morris e-cigarettes containing DMT and patents for psychedelic treatment of food allergies.
As if our world wasn’t getting strange enough.
If the $1 billion initial public offering (IPO) of Compass Pathways tells us anything, it is that we are well into witnessing the birth of an unwieldy and unpredictable psychedelic capitalism–a phrase which would likely compel the Huxleys, Hoffmans, and McKennas of the world to roll over in their infinite cosmic graves.
With multiple decriminalization measures passing this past year across the US, along with Measure 109 in Oregon that will allow the therapeutic use of psilocybin, the trip train is moving fast.
This news is worth celebrating. Personally, I am overjoyed, especially due to the fact that psychedelics played a central role in why I became a psychotherapist. Yet at this very moment, the future of psychedelic medicines is being bought and sold through high-level investment pitches delivered in sleek board rooms across San Francisco, London, and beyond.
Along with it is the potential for equitable and affordable access to psychedelic treatment for millions of people desperately seeking their healing effects–the very same people these companies claim to want to “help.” Forgive me for being skeptical.
Because here’s the thing we all must keep in mind as we trudge along into this wild new century:
Psychedelic Capitalism Doesn’t Exist.
There are psychedelic substances, experiences, music, art, and literature. There are psychedelic philosophies, ethics, worldviews, and sub-cultural communities. And there is psychedelic healing, treatment, and indigenous traditions. Psychedelics dissolve boundaries and reveal the soul, as the Greek definition of the word indicates (psyche– soul, delos – to reveal).
And then there is capitalism: an economic system controlled by private corporations based on infinite growth, resource extraction, consumption, and the bottom line of financial profit. Capitalism engulfs, confines, and extracts the soul from what it consumes.
Like “military intelligence” or the “music business,” the two words create a philosophical conundrum. We are currently witnessing how these paradoxical concepts will mesh in the here and now. The balance will undoubtedly be precarious.
In the heart-wrenching internet comic,We Will Call it Pala, artist Dave McGaughey tells the story about one woman’s vision to start a psychedelic healing clinic colliding with the hyper-optimized ethos of Silicon Valley and the cold-blooded demands of her venture capital investors.
As the story progresses along its all-too-likely trajectory, she faces the monstrosity she has unwittingly created. Grieving for her seemingly naive vision, the heroine laments, “There is no medicine strong enough to blow a corporation’s mind.”
This is because, despite their legal standing in our society, corporations are not conscious beings. By definition, a corporation will never have a mind-altering or heart-opening experience. And though the etymological roots of the word inevitably boils down to “body,” a corporation will never feel a thing.
Art may be one of the best arenas where we might be able to predict how the weird, alchemical vinegar of psychedelics will merge into the oil-laden waters of capitalism.
It is said that art can serve either as a hammer or a mirror for society. Even once a great work has been absorbed by the market–a Banksy or a John Cage or a Van Gogh–the impact of that work can still continue to resonate within the psyche and catalyze an imaginal or inner shift, no matter how many coffee mugs it’s been plastered onto.
Art is able to, at least partially, escape the trap of capitalism because it exists between two realms.
Art takes a form in our physical, time-bound reality, but also lives within the imagination, and is formless. Art can embody and transmit ideas, imparting rare messages that transcend the tangible and time-bound. Art changes culture. Art evokes emotion, even if we’ve seen the same image a thousand times. Art can shock, uplift, or crush us. Art is dangerous.
The Art of the Trick
Lewis Hyde, in his book Trickster Makes This World, argues that artists have evolved to become the mythological trickster figures within our modern culture, previously relegated to ritual and story.
Charting the work of figures as diverse as Marcel Duchamp, Bob Dylan and Frederick Douglass, Hyde explores the very nature of the words “art” and “artist,” tracing their etymological origins back to the Latin “artus,” which means joint, or juncture.
As Hyde playfully elaborates, the “artus-workers” of our modern era now play the role that Hermes, Raven, and Coyote played in their own cultural mythologies, as gods of the threshold, the trick, the lie, and the oft-misunderstood bearer of culture.
These were celebrated beings who, often unwittingly, upset the established and most likely stale cosmic order, and introduced a bit of divine chaos, thereby creating a new cosmic law, sacred technology, or a new world entirely.
Despite their humble or comedic natures, tricksters, like psychedelics, are not to be taken lightly.
Take the Greek myth of Hermes that Hyde uses as an example in his book. Hermes, through stealing and then slaughtering the golden cattle of his brother Apollo, performed the first sacrificial offering to himself and made himself a god. He clearly made a fool of his brother, who had a thing for fancy board rooms in the sky. The other Olympians thought it was hilarious and let Hermes stay.
Another example, Coyote, comes from Native American tradition, as told in the 1984 book, American Indian Myths and Legends. In thousands of tales told across many languages, Coyote creates the world, teaches hunting and tracking, or travels to the land of the dead, amongst other adventures. Up north, Raven brings fire to humans, invents the fish trap, and perfects the art of theft. He also travels between the earthly and heavenly realms, bringing messages across the divide.
Eshu and Legba, trickster gods from West Africa and the Carribean, are invoked before all other gods, for it is understood that every act of divine communication and exchange must pass through their hands. According to Hyde’s book, even though Eshu and Legba are not the most powerful beings in the Afro-Carribean pantheon, these lords of the crossroads are feared above all others because of their pivotal cosmic position. And you never know what you are going to get.
Even the Loki, dark trickster of the Norse pantheon, sets into motion events which would result in the destruction of the very gods themselves–Ragnarok. But what is often forgotten is that Ragnarok is not just about the fiery end of all things. It is also the beginning of the new world, all of which was put into motion because Loki couldn’t help but push a few buttons up in Asgard.
Come to think of it, trickster myths seem to have a lot in common with the role that psychedelics play within the psyche and the brain. Stay with me here.
Neurology and New Worlds
Neuroscientist and psychedelic researcher Robin Carhart-Harris’ landmark 2014 article, The Entropic Brain, highlighted the ways in which psilocybin decreases blood flow to an area of the brain called the default mode network (DMN), enabling novel connections to be made between neural pathways that are normally routed through this cognitive superhighway.
Psychedelics upset the applecart of our normal cognitive functioning, and by introducing a bit of pharmacologically mediated chaos, make room for new and different neural connections to take shape.
Of additional interest here is Carhart-Harris’ discussion of psychedelic states being “poised at a ‘critical’ point in a transition zone between order and disorder” in terms of consciousness. The place between two places, often called the liminal, plainly invokes the many trickster gods we have been speaking of, for all dwell on this same precipice, and can be found anywhere that roads, worlds, and perhaps even neural networks, collide.
Even the many studies showing the promise of psychedelics to treat addictions can be seen in the light of trickster myths (e.g. de L. Osório, et.al, 2015, and Hamill et.al, 2019). Whatever epiphany is granted during the psychedelic experience that might finally help someone kick a long-held, potentially lethal habit, marks a shift from one world to another, mythologically speaking.
True recovery marks an end and a beginning. Such an epiphany, especially in the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, is seen as a message from a higher power, which the Greeks and the Yoruba knew was always mediated by the trickster.
Lastly, let’s not forget the reason why psychedelics were made illegal in the first place. As Terance McKenna famously said, “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
Just like art, psychedelics have the potential to change culture, and can be dangerous to the established order of things. The 1960’s and 70’s proved that with a spectacular flair. It is not difficult to imagine why Nixon deemed Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America” at the onset of the drug war.
The simple fact that a naturally occurring plant or fungus could impart such soul-revealing visions may even be “the best kept secret in history,” according to Brian Muraresku in his revelatory book, The Immortality Key. Who needs priests to talk to god when you can do it yourself with the help of a plant? But that’s a story for another time.
Even if these awe-inspiring revelations are “occasioned” (to use the words of psychedelic researcher Roland Griffiths) through a psychopharmacological trick of serotonin agonists, if the above mythologies teach us anything, it is that sometimes a trick is exactly what’s needed for real transformation to occur.
Standing at the Crossroads
Psychotherapy, it has often been said, is both an art and a science. And now as psychedelics firmly make their way into the field, it may require those facilitating this work to embrace the deeper dimensions of what such a sentiment actually implies.
Perhaps the evolving art of the psychedelic therapist or facilitator will be to more deeply embrace the fact that these medicines are as unpredictable as the tricksters we’ve just met, and that their true implications for both individuals and culture lay far beyond simply feeling better and having a nicer day at the office.
To believe that psychedelics can be confined to the clinic, the lab, or the corporate body not only ignores the volatile history of these compounds in the 20th century, it ignores the fact that the very function of these substances is to dissolve boundaries and dismantle familiar, long-held structures on neurological, psychological, and cultural levels.
To bring this all to a close, and to end where we began in true trickster fashion, it seems that Hermes has one last ace up his sleeve. Not only was he the divine messenger, bringer of dreams, guide of souls, and lord of the crossroads, Hermes was also the god of the marketplace. Any time money is exchanged, Hermes is said to be there. The true “free market” is imbued with the spirit of Hermes, and involves much more than the simple exchange of currency and intellectual property rights sold to the highest bidder.
Emerging philosophies, religions from far off lands, rumors of wars, and village gossip were all exchanged in the markets of old. They were places of excitement, cross-pollination, unpredictability, and community–things I think we could all use a bit more of these days.
There’s one last thing. It was said that one could ask for Hermes’ help by leaving an offering at his shrine, located at the heart of the market, covering one’s ears, and walking away. The first thing you heard when you opened your ears was Hermes speaking to you. The fine print is that one had to be firmly outside the hustle and bustle of the market before listening for the winged messenger’s reply. I believe the modern term for uncovering one’s ears too soon is called an “echo chamber,” and we all know how helpful those can be.
What does this mean for our purposes here? I haven’t the slightest idea. Only that the god of the marketplace requires us to maintain a certain distance from his domain to be clearly heard. Just because Hermes rules the marketplace doesn’t mean he lives there.
So just like where we find ourselves today, peering over the precipice of this new psychedelic capitalism, there’s no map for where we must go before listening for Hermes’ synchronistic response. Go far enough out and we might encounter the language of owls, moonlight, and whoever else prowls those liminal wilds. Stay too close, and we risk repeating just more of the same.
And if we get lost, and find ourselves back at the crossroads where we first began, perhaps that is the message we were needing all along. Because ultimately, the joke’s on us.
About the Author
With a masters (MA) in depth counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Simon Yugler is a depth and psychedelic integration therapist based in Portland, OR. Weaving Jungian psychology, Internal Family Systems therapy, and mythology, Simon also draws on his diverse experiences learning from indigenous cultures around the world, including the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition. He has a background in experiential education, and has led immersive international journeys for young adults across 10 countries. He is passionate about initiation, men’s work, indigenous rights, decolonization, and helping his clients explore the liminal wilds of the soul. Find out more on his website and on Instagram , Twitter (@depth_medicine) or Facebook.
Could taking and integrating ketamine in groups make psychedelic therapy more accessible?
As psychedelic-assisted therapy continues marching into the mainstream, the issue of how absurdly expensive the treatment is continues to present countless difficulties. Of the strategies practitioners are taking to circumvent this problem, one of the most promising—and underreported—approaches is offering psychedelic-assisted group therapy.
Despite promising preliminary research using psilocybin in small groups to treat depression in cancer patients and MDMA-assisted therapy for couples where one partner has PTSD—and ignoring the fact that psilocybin-containing mushrooms are traditionally taken in group ceremonies in Mexico—ketamine is the only psychedelic medicine that’s already legally used in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Let’s take a look at the emerging world of group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, its benefits as well as drawbacks.
Group Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
Though traditionally used as an anesthetic, ketamine, an Essential Medicine of the World Health Organization, is now widely being prescribed off-label by qualified practitioners to treat a host of mental health diagnoses, including depression, addiction, PTSD, and chronic pain.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy—“KAP” for short—is a growing mental health treatment option for people who meet diagnostic criteria. In line with most psychedelic therapy protocols, KAP involves a sequence of medicine sessions, in which clients take the substance with the mental health professional present, and sober therapy sessions referred to as “preparation” and “integration.” Through KAP, many people are finding healing where prevailing mental health treatments have fallen short.
Also in line with most psychedelic therapy protocols, KAP is really freaking expensive.
Though ketamine’s effects are relatively short-acting compared to MDMA and psilocybin, therefore requiring fewer therapist hours to pay for, sessions still cost several hundred dollars. Ongoing treatment can quickly climb into the thousands.
Even ketamine “infusion centers,” which involve no therapy, tend to charge $400-$600 for each intravenous infusion—and they typically make it clear that lasting symptom relief only occurs after several rounds. At such centers, folks may receive infusions in group rooms, but oftentimes it’s more akin to the way you’d find yourself sitting on a sterile lab chair next to some stranger at a plasma donation center, while someone who doesn’t want to hear about your problems sticks a needle in your vein and leaves. While this might help some folks, costs remain abundant.
Group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is different. Though there is currently no published research on group KAP’s efficacy, ketamine’s legality via prescription allows therapists to smoothly translate the modality into groups. As group members can then split the price of the therapist’s time—the largest contributor to high costs of treatment—the overall cost decreases significantly.
Raquel Bennett, Psy.D., is a psychotherapist and researcher who specializes in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, who also teaches our masterclass on ketamine ethics as part of our Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course. She practices in Berkeley, CA, where she runs the KRIYA Ketamine Research Institute. Bennett has been studying the therapeutic properties of ketamine since 2002, when a personal encounter with the medicine sparked her awareness of its powerful antidepressant properties. That was over a decade before infusion centers started popping up, well before “ketamine-assisted psychotherapy” was a term.
“I was studying this long before it was cool,” Bennett tells Psychedelics Today with a laugh.
Motivated by a desire to lower cost and increase accessibility, Bennett began facilitating ketamine groups with her medical partners in 2016. The same motivation also prompted the Wholeness Center, a leading ketamine therapy clinic and psychedelic research site in Colorado, to offer ketamine therapy groups as well. Scott Shannon, M.D., who founded Wholeness in 2010, teamed with colleague Sandra Fortson, LCSW, to offer the clinic’s first ketamine therapy group last year.
“One of the most prominent reasons why I endorse and am exploring group therapy is that it solves one of the greatest drawbacks of the psychedelic model right now, which is that psychedelic therapy is a treatment of the affluent,” Shannon tells Psychedelics Today. “Instead of offering KAP for three or four hundred dollars a session, group therapy brings the cost down closer to a hundred dollars a session, which is a big difference.”
Fortson elaborates on how significant that difference can be: “Clients are looking at a savings of almost 50% for a 5-week KAP group curriculum—including medical clearance, intake, 3 experiential sessions and final integration session.”
At the time of writing, Shannon and Fortson have facilitated two groups, each spanning five sessions. They are currently planning for a third and foresee group KAP as an important option in the Wholeness Center’s future psychedelic therapy offerings.
What Group Ketamine Therapy Looks Like
Bennett breaks down the process of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy into four essential steps:
Patient selection
Patient preparation
The medicine session
Follow-up care
At the preliminary level of patient selection, legal concerns must be taken seriously. “In order to participate in a ketamine group, you still have to fully meet the criteria for a clinically necessary treatment,” Bennett explains. “It’s currently not legally defensible for a person to participate in a group just because they want a ketamine experience.”
Both Wholeness and KRIYA use a cohort model where the same participants come together at scheduled times, and their series of sessions begins and ends together. Throughout that process, the group engages in both ketamine and non-ketamine sessions together, the latter of which involves working through their challenges and implementing insights into their lives with the support of the therapist(s) and fellow group members.
Shannon and Fortson have limited their cohorts to four people due to COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing protocols. Going forward, Shannon envisions groups of eight participants, which would require two therapists present. At KRIYA, Bennett has found that five or six participants with two clinicians is an optimal ratio.
At the Wholeness Center, participants sit on bean bag chairs in socially-distanced corners of a large room. During the ketamine sessions, members are given eyeshades along with their measured doses. Specifically-curated music plays through speakers, and Shannon and Fortson remain present in the space, supporting as needed and facilitating conversation if appropriate—and if possible, for at higher doses of ketamine, folks often temporarily lose their capacity to form words with their abruptly-nonexistent mouths.
There are three primary routes of administration in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy:
Lozenges (held in the mouth)
Intravenous (IV) administration
Intramuscular (IM) injection
All three require an MD’s prescription, and the latter two require a nurse or doctor for administration. Dose ranges vary significantly in each route—though low-dose sessions are often orally administered, while high-dose sessions typically come through IV or IM.
Each route yields a unique experience in terms of onset, depth, length, and intensity. Different routes of administration and doses are associated with the treatment of different conditions—in individual KAP, for example, high-dose IM treatment is often regarded as uniquely effective for suicidality. At KRIYA, doses and routes of administration are determined based on individual and group assessments.
“As providers, we need to be clear about what effects we are going for, and then make our dose recommendations based on that,” says Bennett. “That varies depending on the needs of the group and what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Regardless of dose and route of administration, ketamine sessions at KRIYA follow a consistent protocol. “Our ketamine groups include an opening ritual, time for sharing, the ketamine administration, quiet rest, and a potluck meal, with more time for sharing,” Bennett explains.
The frequency of group sessions at KRIYA varies. “For some cohorts, the participants come once per month for four consecutive months. In other cohorts, the participants come once per quarter, four times in a year,” describes Bennett.
A capacity for fluidity and openness is called for on the part of the therapists, along with a willingness to learn from the groups and attune to the members’ needs.
“Sometimes, we ask people to share something that feels heavy on their heart, and that usually opens a conversation,” Bennett says. “Then, we move to something they feel grateful for—it’s very helpful to invite people to enter a positive mindset as the medicine is wearing off, because that then seems to linger. Other times, we are quiet and simply hold the space as people spontaneously work on what they need to work on.”
At the Wholeness Center, ketamine groups have thus far followed fixed, five-session structures. Shannon details the process:
“We start with a prep session, where we get to know each other and build rapport. The second session is a low-dose oral experience, which doesn’t put people in a full, dissociated state. It reduces their inhibitions, opens up their heart; what we find is that people actually bond very well during that session. They feel safe and secure. In the third session, which is a moderate-to-higher-dose oral session, they begin to have deeper, fuller psychedelic experiences. We really encourage people and give them the instruction that they can come in and out at will. If they want to come into more consensual reality, they can talk with us, connect with us, or their peers even—or they can go inside if they’re feeling pulled to explore.
“That third session begins to give them the taste of the more full-fledged psychedelic experience,” Shannon continues. “In the fourth session, they have a high-dose IM experience, where they’re going to fully dissociate and go into their personal inner space. People reenter the group space at various times as they’re ready and able, and come back and process it. Then, the fifth session is an integration session.”
Unlike the varied frequencies of KRIYA’s groups, the Wholeness Center’s groups meet once a week. Shannon is not attached to that model and expresses that future groups may follow different formats. Likewise, Bennett remains open to new possibilities. Even after all her years of ketamine research, she reflects, “We are always learning and trying things to find the most effective strategies.”
How to Establish a Safe Group Culture
For an effective group, a culture of safety and trust must be established. One way of doing that is to create “homogenous” groups, where all members share common struggles, such as depression or anxiety. The Wholeness Center, for instance, is in the process of creating a KAP group to treat PTSD experienced by COVID first responders, as well as a group for alcohol addictions.
At KRIYA, Bennett is not attached to homogeneity as a necessity, yet she recognizes that disregard for commonality among group members can be detrimental to the group’s safety, and therefore efficacy.
“It is possible to have somebody in the group who is on such a different page than the other folks that it really puts the group out of balance,” she explains. “We try not to do that.”
Bennett circumvents issues related to group imbalances by focusing on preliminary assessment. She describes the assessment process as an under-regarded component of psychedelic healing, the “magic for helping people to get better in the fastest and most cost-effective way.” If therapists take a first come, first serve approach to their groups, imbalances are bound to emerge, negatively impacting trust and safety.
“Not everyone is a good candidate for group treatment,” Bennett candidly states. “Ketamine is a fickle medicine. People need to feel physically and emotionally safe in order to have big and beautiful and expansive experiences. They need time to relax into the space and develop trust with us.”
For example, Bennett has found that people with complex trauma are better suited for individual work, noting that these folks “are often better served by having the individual attention of the therapist.”
Shannon underscores the necessity of a detailed intake process to ensure safety. When group safety and assessment are sufficiently prioritized, however, he has found that ketamine presents very little risk to individuals or groups in a therapeutic context.
“People are screened ahead of time for concerning medical or psychiatric issues,” Shannon says. “We haven’t seen any safety issues in our groups so far. I think that reflects our experience with KAP in general—that it’s a low-risk, quite safe medical process.”
For folks who have been properly screened and assessed, Shannon has found that the drop in individual attention from the therapist that groups entail does not negatively affect the healing process.
“I think we overrate the value of having an expert in the room, and we underrate the importance of connection and community in our current mental health paradigm,” he reflects. “My observation is that although the attention of the practitioner is more divided in a group, that is more than enhanced by the sense of community and safety and support that comes with it.”
Healing in Community
On top of assessment, non-ketamine preparation sessions help establish the safe and supportive group environment.
“People spend time getting to know each other in the preparation sessions before the medicine is introduced,” Bennett explains. “We’re not just throwing people in and shooting them up. That would be totally unethical.”
The cohort model contributes to participants’ sense of safety through rapport and consistency. When safety is established, Bennett has found that groups are not only consistently effective, but offer a host of benefits she did not anticipate.
“In individual treatment, people often felt very alone, that they were the only person on earth dealing with whatever problem they were living with,” she explains. “In the group, people quickly found that there were other people who had similar issues and challenges. That in itself is healing.”
Shannon and Fortson have observed the same trend. Fortson shares, “While it is difficult to explain, there is something about the sense of connection and support that is fostered in a group environment, specifically as it pertains to KAP, that seems to greatly expand the therapeutic benefit experienced by participants.”
Shannon notes this “enhanced response” is influenced by participants’ magnified expectation of hope, as well as something more primordial.
“With the pandemic, and really just in modern society, one of the major plagues we’re facing is a sense of disconnection, isolation, and removal from our social roots as herd animals,” he reflects. “A primary reason I like group therapy so much is that it really makes use of the power of community and group process.”
This unmeasurable component of community healing is emerging as a trend of group psychedelic therapy. The Forbes article linked in the introduction indicated that the cancer patients who receive psilocybin treatments together “frequently develop a sense of community and mutual support that can enhance their recovery and overall well-being.”
Implications of Ceremony in the West
An intriguing argument sometimes leveraged on behalf of group psychedelic therapy hinges on its potential correlation to group entheogenic healing ceremonies practiced by countless cultures for millennia. While it would be imprudent to propose a generalized, catch-all comparison between the two, given drastic differences in cultural context, traditional plant medicine healing ceremonies testify to both the safety and the power of group psychedelic journeying when held in an intentional and meaningful container. Base-level similarities between these processes—i.e. community healing through visionary journeys—suggest the possibility of a ceremonial, rite-of-passage element to group psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Now, I am not advocating for psychedelic therapists to buy rattles and drums and chant songs from other cultures they do not understand. That would be very bad. My suggestion—which I am not the first to make—is that outside the boundaries of important issues related to appropriation, there are archetypal processes of ceremonial rites of passage that have factored prominently into countless cultures through the ages, and their general lack of existence in Western society may have some connection to the rampant isolation, existential confusion, and struggles of purpose and maturity afflicting so many people in this hyper-individualized capitalist paradigm.
It strikes me as significant that countless Western people are traveling to distant countries to experience sacred plant medicine ceremonies of cultures about which they know nothing, seeking a kind of spiritual healing and renewed sense of meaning their lives lack. Could group psychedelic therapy play a role in patterning these forsaken archetypal ceremonial processes into Western culture?
What kinds of ceremonies could fit into and emerge out of a Western therapeutic context? Can such rituals respectfully incorporate wisdom shared by other traditions, while establishing a unique and authentic identity? How might ceremonial rites of passage, held in a safe therapeutic container, help heal the complex, multitudinous mental health struggles unique to our techno-capitalist world?
These questions are way too massive to attempt to answer here. The fact that group psychedelic therapy raises them, however, highlights an added layer of its potential significance.
Diversifying the Psychedelic Space
The decrease in cost has the obvious benefit of making the treatment accessible to more people. A hope is that such increased access will invite more diversity to the space of psychedelic healing, which remains strikingly un-diverse. In 2018, Dr. Monnica T. Williams and her co-authors demonstrated that between 1993 and 2017, 82.3% of participants in psychedelic therapy trials were white. While no research has been conducted on diversity in the practice of ketamine-assisted therapy, it is unlikely that results would be much different.
It would be erroneous, however, to suggest this lack of diversity is related exclusively to cost and implicit bias among practitioners. It’s also about safety. In my recent interview with MAPS-trained therapist Dr. Joseph McCowan, McCowan reflected, “People of color desire to do what is safe prior to contributing to research or science, or even healing themselves. Right now, psychedelic spaces, due to their illegality and the stigma they carry, are not safe.”
While offering more affordable treatments is a great start, white therapists must educate themselves on unique struggles and barriers related to mental health in communities of color, as well as the socio-political factors—i.e. the ramifications of the War on Drugs—that keep these barriers standing. Further, they must use that education to create more safety. Only then can the decreased cost offered by modalities such as group KAP really help diversify the landscape of psychedelic healing.
Training and Ethical Considerations for Group Ketamine Therapy
As the field currently stands, there are no regulated training requirements for clinicians to facilitate ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Theoretically, so long as an M.D. prescribes the medicine to the client, any therapist can offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Many are disturbed by this lack of regulation, and an increasing chorus of voices is calling for higher ethical standards for ketamine therapy practitioners to abide.
Bennett is a leading voice on the ethical front. She recently authored this article on ethical guidelines for ketamine clinicians that was published in the Journal of Psychedelic Psychiatry, which establishes the importance of assessment, medical safety, preparation, training, and maintaining professional conduct for providers.
As with other psychedelics, ketamine should not be taken lightly or offered carelessly. It is a powerful substance that can consistently facilitate healing experiences when offered with care; at the same time, it can have destructive consequences when handled carelessly. If facilitators are unprepared to work with deep and painful unconscious content that can unexpectedly erupt in clients under its influence, they are putting clients at risk of retraumatization that could leave them in a far worse state than before. At a broader level, reports of such egregious harms could do significant damage to the still-vulnerable field of psychedelic therapy in general.
Many practitioners advise therapists who intend to offer KAP to experience the medicine themselves. Both KRIYA and Wholeness have run groups for mental health professionals who meet specific criteria; Bennett shares that KRIYA’s professional participants “reported that their direct experiences with ketamine vastly increased their understanding of how to use this tool with their own clients.”
If therapists do not meet criteria to experience ketamine therapy themselves, a number of trainings in KAP now exist, many of which involve an experiential component. Shannon and Fortson, for instance, helped found the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute (PRATI), a nonprofit organization that currently offers several KAP trainings each year. Over the course of the three-day intensive, therapists are given the opportunity to experience both a low-dose and high-dose ketamine session while dyad partners practice skills in the facilitator role.
“For clinicians who want to do group work with ketamine, it is strongly recommended that they get specialized training,” Bennett emphasized. KRIYA has compiled a list of reputable trainings for those interested in learning more.
Group Ketamine-Assisted Therapy: Summarizing the Journey
In the new mental health frontier of psychedelic-assisted therapy, group psychedelic therapy represents an even newer frontier. With its potential to lower cost and invite the healing power of community into psychedelic therapy, group ketamine-assisted therapy calls for more attention in both research and ethically-minded practice. It will not be for everyone, and it is far from a panacea, but the modality holds tremendous promise to help people with a whole lot more than lowering their bill.
And even if a lowered bill proves to be the sole benefit, that’s still a huge accomplishment for the current landscape of psychedelic therapy.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
Science has demonstrated that psychedelic compounds “can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.” Scientific surveys indicate that a statistically significant number of people have a stronger belief in a higher power after taking psychedelics. Science is starting to “prove” these things that practitioners have known for thousands of years, and society is rapidly redefining its relationship to psychedelic sacraments and medicines.
As more and more people begin taking psychedelics, an ever-growing number of them will start asking spiritual and religious questions that arise out of their experience. Our goal in this class is to open some space for these conversations and to help educate people about the legal risks that such explorations may involve.
Our regular contributor on legal matters explains how the nascent psychedelic pharmaceutical industry and grassroots reformist movement could work together to achieve both their goals, read to the majesty of the classic American musical, Oklahoma!
Interested in learning more about the legal side of psychedelics? Then sign up here to receive info on our upcoming FREE series: Religious Use of Psychedelics in the United States.
In my last article, I introduced the idea of crafting the Uniform Plant and Fungi Medicine Act (UPFMA), which could be employed as a public initiative or adopted by state legislatures as a solution to the local piecemeal reforms and slow and improbable response from the federal government to make traditional entheogens lawful outside of religious use. I am happy to report that a team is assembling to undertake drafting UPFMA.
This, of course, begs a serious and important question: Who’s going to pay for that?Cue music…
“Oh, what a beautiful morning!” …. it would be to see the burgeoning psychedelic pharmaceutical industry back and support UPFMA. Why? Because, like the cowman and the farmer, the pharmaceutical industry and the grassroots movement can be friends. In fact, they need one another. No need to struggle with your feelings over cowboy Curly McLain and farmhand Jud Fry, Laurey. You can have both!
This is no mere minstrel show; this is serious stuff. Consider:
Farmers (Played Here by Grassroot Reformists) Need a Friend
UPFMA’s promise is to provide a uniform model body of law, akin to other uniform model laws (e.g., the Uniform Commercial Code) for state reformation and regulation of plant and fungi medicines. Amongst UPFMA’s goals are to promote further options in health care, responsible use, freedom of choice, elimination of the underground market, and personal and public safety, through state adoption of a uniform reformation law that will span the gulf between prohibition and total deregulation via a reasonable regulatory structure. The model we hope to write is intended to be adoptable either by state legislatures, or by public initiative campaigns in the more than a dozen states that allow citizen legislation.
Even with the volunteers who exist and those who will come, the production and campaign will cost the sort of sums that these sorts of campaigns cost. Let’s just put it out there on the square dance floor: “Purty little surreys” ain’t cheap. UPFMA needs benefactors, sponsors, patrons, supporters, shekels. So, peering over the fence and into the grazing lands, UPFMA’s supporters want to give a loud “Howdy, Neighbor!” to our cowmen friends in the pharmaceutical industry. We cannot help but to notice that supporting UPFMA would be hugely beneficial to your interests. It need not be, “All Er Nuthin.” Can we count on you to be neighborly?
Cowmen (Played Here by the Pharmaceutical Industry) and Grassroot Reformists Are Not Competitors for Territory
The psychedelic pharmaceutical industry will derive its revenues by exploiting patents and trademarks. But, aside from modified genetics, the pharmaceutical industry cannot patent or trademark natural medicine in its unrefined state. In contrast, UPFMA would seek only to democratize natural substances and would not be aimed at the same patent-driven and trademark-driven “market” as western industrialized pharmaceuticals seek to create. UPFMA poses no challenge to pharmaceutical patents or trademarks. Indeed, discussed further below, UPFMA might even be able to help facilitate product research. Like the cowmen and farmers from Oklahoma!, pharmaceutical industry and grassroots reformists may occupy overlapping interests, but they are not competitors and do not seek incompatible goals.
UPFMA Can Help Cowmen Catch Cattle Rustlers
As the existing pharmaceutical industry can tell the future psychedelic pharmaceutical industry, the individual home grower and/or user is no threat. Rather, it is the underground market, where pirate industrializers infringe intellectual property and undercut prices, that are your true “cattle rustlers.” Unfortunately for our cowmen…errr…pharmaceutical companies, the coming FDA approval of their products also brings an increase in public interest in psychedelics, and so too an increase in the illicit market. UPFMA is no friend of the unregulated market. Rather, one of UPFMA’s goals is to reduce illicit trade, and not just in (our metaphorical) Kansas City.
You Can’t Sell the Steak, But You Can Sell the Sizzle: Pharmaceutical Companies Benefit by Supporting UPFMA
Until FDA approval is given, the psychedelic pharmaceutical industry may not advertise their products or offer them for sale. Psilocybin and MDMA are at Phase 3’s door, and FDA approval looks promising, if not inevitable. But FDA approval is still years away, and pharmaceutical companies continue to burn capital waiting for the FDA’s start pistol to fire. This delay in marketing is a costly lost opportunity.
Meanwhile, UPFMA can do what no pharmaceutical company may – begin to educate the public and draw national popular interest in natural psychedelics. While pharmaceutical companies vie for rescheduling and for FDA approval, pharmaceutical companies who back UPFMA will receive years of permissible brand awareness and marketing research, in advance of being able to bring their products to market.
Support of UPFMA Does Not Risk the Ranch
Natural medicines and their patented counterparts do not typically compete. Instead, they compliment. Because of pricing constraints, a significant population will be unable to afford pharmaceutical industry products. It is significantly that demographic – those who cannot afford these patented medicines – that UPFMA addresses. UPFMA offers an alternative to exclusion. UPFMA does not pull market share away from the pharmaceutical industry. Rather, it addresses “customers” the industry never had or was going to have. In the wise words of Obi Wan-klahoma, “These are not the cows you’re looking for.”
There’s a Bright Golden Haze on the Meadow: Support of UPFMA Grows the Ranch and Buys More Cattle
Just like the nascent psychedelic pharmaceutical industry, UPFMA optimistically predicts the public will warm to psychedelics as an optional (if not preferred) tool to fight all sorts of mental illness. As UPFMA democratizes access, a residual effect will be the encouragement of further investment, thereby enabling pharmaceutical companies to more easily explore varieties of formulations, concentrations, extractions, etc., making their products more varied and more accessible to an ever-increasingly interested market. Again, UPFMA’s focus is on natural non-branded medicines, and has no ambition to occupy the patent market.
Support of UPFMA Allows Industry Cowmen to Better-Protect Fences
UPFMA intends to consider and to factor traditional use of entheogens, including cultural and environmental interests. UPFMA’s focus is legal access, not promotion of industrialization and scale, and UPFMA resists commoditization. UPFMA can help build fences, to allow the grassroots reformists to sustain themselves while leaving scale as the province of pharmaceutical companies. And don’t forget, pharmaceutical companies will, by virtue of their patents, retain exclusivity to further refine and to sell refined products.
UPFMA Helps When the Pharmaceutical Industry Brings Its Cattle to Market
By supporting UPFMA, the pharmaceutical industry invests in itself. UPFMA helps to popularize and to normalize psychedelics and can do it more quickly than the nascent industry presently may. Not only might that help to speed FDA approval for the industry’s products, but it might help to speed acceptance by health insurance companies. In turn, that speeds up and increases revenue that can be paid back to investors or poured back into research and product development.
UPFMA Gives Cowmen Opportunity to Show the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Human Side
At the end of Act I of Oklahoma!, an unscrupulous patent medicine peddler sells our heroine actual heroin – laudanum, to be precise – promising he had her best interests at heart, whilst taking her money. While no one expects the pharmaceutical industry simply to be just a girl who “cain’t say no,” industry support of UPFMA avoids a coming public relations whirlwind over the unavoidable disjunction of the pharmaceutical industry touting the benefits of its patent medicines, while pricing them outside the reach of many.
Support of UPFMA is consistent with ubiquitous sound public policy of fostering and promoting good mental health and responsible drug use. UPFMA can help give the public an alternative, while allowing the industry a platform to openly share the benefits of supporting humanitarian goals that pharmaceutical companies hold in common with the public. In other words, if the pharmaceutical industry touts its wares as good for everyone, support of UPFMA allows the industry to walk the walk.
UPFMA Can Create a Public Health Database
For public health study, UPFMA may consider inclusion of voluntary and anonymous data gathering provisions. This may include regulatory agency ability to present program users with voluntary questionnaires regarding their experiences and other relevant health data points. Support of UPFMA fosters gathering data and sharing it for study and research.
I submit that UPFMA and the pharmaceutical industry would be fine partners at the square dance. And, like in Oklahoma!, this would be OK. Besides, UPFMA needs a partner. How about it, cattlemen? Care to two-step?
Interested in learning more about the legal side of psychedelics? Then sign up here to receive more info on our upcoming FREE series: Religious Use of Psychedelics in the United States.
Could 18-MC, a synthetic derivative of Ibogaine, make treatment safer without the psychedelic trip?
With COVID-19 still spreading, mutating, and killing, it’s easy to forget the other health crises ravaging the country. One of the most concerning of these is drug overdose deaths, with opioids representing a large share of such casualties. From 1999 through 2018, nearly 450,000 people fatally overdosed on opioids in the US. While slight decreases in 2018 buoyed hopes that we were past the peak, even then, overdose deaths were four times greater than in 1999. In 2019, such optimism was dashed as the number of opioid overdose deaths climbed to 50,042, an increase of nearly 7 percent over the previous year. But, are there viable treatment options that are overlooked by the medical community and general public?
In the psychedelic community, many would argue yes, and highlight the potential of ibogaine, a psychedelic compound found in the West African shrub, Tabernanthe iboga. But ibogaine comes with more possible health risks than other psychedelic plants and substances that we’ll explore below, and of course, there remains a lingering bias in some parts of the medical establishment against psychedelics. And so, a non-psychoactive alternative, 18-Methoxycoronaridine (18-MC) was developed in the 1990s and is now advancing through the FDA’s drug development process at a steady clip, while research into ibogaine remains virtually frozen. However, the question remains: are the concerns about ibogaine’s risks valid enough to explain the differing fates of these chemical cousins, or are other factors at play?
What is Ibogaine?
Ibogaine is a plant-derived alkaloid with unique psychoactive properties distinct from those of classic psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin-producing mushrooms, or DMT. One of its effects is panoramic recall, often described by patients as watching a movie of their life playing in their head. Sometimes called a dissociative psychedelic, Geoff Noller, a medical anthropologist with a doctorate from the University of Otago’s Department of Psychological Medicine, prefers the term “oneiric” (pronounced ō-ˈnī-rik), which is defined as, “dream-inducing.”
This description of the ibogaine experience was seconded by Dr. Bruno Rasmussen, a physician and researcher based in Brazil who provides ibogaine therapy. “Ibogaine doesn’t make you hallucinate; Ibogaine makes you dream, but you are awake when you are dreaming,” Rasmussen said. “If you do an EKG during the effect of ibogaine, the lines will be like they are in a REM state, the rapid eye movements state, the dream state.”
How Does Ibogaine Work?
The unique, psychedelic qualities of ibogaine are not the only way it differs from more familiar hallucinogens. Psilocybin, LSD, and DMT all act in a more focused manner on the brain’s serotonin receptors. And while ibogaine does act on serotonin levels in the brain, it also acts on numerous other neural systems. Noller compares its relatively blunt mode of action to cannabis, which also acts on many different receptor sites, and contrasts it with more targeted designer medicines like Prozac.
While the exact neural systems ibogaine engages are not fully understood yet, studies show it can reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and help control cravings. This offers a window of opportunity for patients to make changes in their life that would otherwise be more difficult due to the pain, anhedonia, and other symptoms of withdrawal. Once they have weathered this storm, the reduction in cravings increases their likelihood of not relapsing.
Furthermore, studies have shown that ibogaine reduces the amount of drugs, like cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine, that animals self-administer, despite the fact that each of these drugs has their own distinct way of influencing neural chemistry. This ultimately suggests that ibogaine acts on multiple regions of the brain. Studying this broad function could lead to new insights into the physiological underpinnings of addiction, which makes the relative dearth of research on ibogaine all the more curious — until you consider its potential hazards.
Ibogaine Risks
The benefits of ibogaine must be weighed against its potential dangers. An article in the Journal of Forensic Science examined 19 deaths that occurred following ibogaine treatments given between 1990 and 2008. Post-mortem testing revealed that at least 11 of these patients had other drugs in their systems, such as benzodiazepines, cocaine, opiates, and methadone, all of which are known to be dangerous when mixed with ibogaine.
Prior to treatment, however, a dozen of the patients who died also had one or more comorbidities known to pose risks when using ibogaine, such as obesity, brain neoplasm, and a range of diseases affecting the liver, heart, and other organs.
Although ibogaine research in the US stalled in the late ‘90s, it continued abroad. Thomas Kingsley Brown, a California-based anthropologist, worked with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for a 2017 study in Mexico, where ibogaine treatment is not specifically outlawed. Thirty people with opioid dependence received ibogaine treatment and were evaluated over the following year. After one month, half of the research subjects stated they had not used opioids since their ibogaine session. Further follow-ups showed sustained anti-addictive effects.
“To address the first question of whether or not ibogaine can be used safely and effectively, my short answer is yes,” Brown said. “There are going to be risks with that, but you can also minimize the risk.”
In addition to screening patients for potentially dangerous comorbidities and identifying contraindications, such as the presence of drugs that could cause harmful interactions, Brown explained that genetic tests can determine how quickly people’s bodies break down ibogaine into noribogaine. This helps those administering the treatment determine whether it’s safe for a patient to move forward with ibogaine and how to calculate an optimal dosage.
Noller also worked with MAPS on an ibogaine study, though this one was based in New Zealand, where Medsafe (the country’s equivalent of the FDA) made such treatment legally available as a non-approved medication in 2010. According to Noller, this classification gives doctors the ability to write a prescription for a drug or treatment even if it hasn’t gone through a three-phase trial testing period.
He points out that ibogaine’s mortality rate is comparable to methadone. A 2008 paper in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported 11 ibogaine-related deaths from 1990 to 2006 out of the 3,414 people estimated to have taken it — a mortality rate of 0.32 percent. A 2007 paper in the Drug and Alcohol Review found 283 methadone-related deaths in Australia between the years of 2000-2003 out of an estimated 102,615 episodes of treatment, which yields a mortality of 0.27 percent.
But Rasmussen believes it can still be safer, attributing the majority of ibogaine-related deaths to preventable failures on the part of caregivers, such as not having qualified doctors present, forgoing the use of cardiac monitors, and passing on testing patients for drugs that could cause harmful interactions. His strongest piece of evidence for the ability to safely use ibogaine is that none of his roughly 2,000 patients have died due to or during treatment. In fact, he hasn’t even had a subject develop complications, like severe heart arrhythmia. In Brazil, doctors can legally prescribe ibogaine therapy in hospital settings, a model Rasmussen champions.
“I think that the trick here is to face it as a little surgery,” Rasmussen explained. “We make some pre-surgical examinations, lab tests, blood tests, and EKGs. We do it in a big hospital with the emergency team aware that there is an ibogaine patient in the hospital. For anything we could need, we are backed up, but we never needed the emergency team because we do the lab tests, so we can usually prevent the complications.”
18-MC: The Non-Psychedelic Alternative to Ibogaine
Concerns about ibogaine’s psychoactive effects and potential risks led to the development of 18-MC in the 1990s. Dr. Kenneth Alper, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at New York University School of Medicine, explained that 18-MC is a structural analog of ibogaine, meaning they share a common molecular base, in this case the ibogamine ring system. At the microscopic level, even small variations can lead to big changes.
The general consensus seems to be that 18-MC is not psychoactive or oneiric, though Alper speculated that it could potentially be hallucinogenic at higher doses. 18-MC also does not seem to carry the same cardiovascular risks. MindMed, a new Canadian pharmaceutical company focused on psychedelic and psychedelic-inspired medicines, obtained the patent for 18-MC in 2019 when it acquired the biopharma startup, Savant HWP, for an undisclosed sum. MindMed recently completed Phase I testing on 18-MC. The company declined to share information about their 18-MC trials or comment for this story.
18-MC Patent and the Halting of Ibogaine Research
Karen Szumlinski, a neuropharmacologist, neuroscientist, and professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, worked on animal studies for both ibogaine and 18-MC from the mid to late ‘90s—long before Savant HWP or MindMed existed. 18-MC was first developed in 1996 by a group of scientists, one of which served as Szumlinski’s research mentor. Based on her observations, Szumlinski believes 18-MC is not psychoactive. But the bias against psychoactive compounds combined with 18-MC’s minimal cardiovascular risks are likely the reasons why ibogaine research in the US halted when it did.
Another reason ibogaine studies in the US stopped is due to profitability. Ibogaine is a natural product not eligible for a patent, according to Brown. Patenting molecules is how companies make big profits. Somewhat confusingly though, Howard Lotsof, the person credited with discovering ibogaine’s anti-addictive properties, was able to patent the use of ibogaine and related molecules in doses ranging from 1 mg/kg to 60 mg/kg given orally or rectally for treating poly-drug dependency in 1990. The patent covered addiction to one or more of the following: alcohol, heroin, methadone, cocaine, caffeine, amphetamine, desoxyephedrine, and nicotine. However, it’s the patents held by companies like MindMed that cause Rasmussen to express concerns.
“Big pharma, they like molecules that they can register as their intellectual property and make more money on,” Rasmussen said. “So, I think that’s the reason that there’s a lot of money for 18-MC and there’s no money for ibogaine research.”
Is the Ibogaine Experience a Crucial Part of the Treatment?
Ibogaine’s effectiveness for treating substance abuse disorders and addiction is established in human trials and supported by numerous first-person testimonials. We were unable to find data showing the same for 18-MC, likely because the results of clinical research don’t exist on the molecule yet. But when such information is available, it may offer additional insights into whether the consciousness-altering properties of ibogaine are essential to its effectiveness for treating various SUDs.
Alper suspects the new data will be consistent with what is shown in the existing research. “In terms of ibogaine and its effects on self-administration and withdrawal, the animal model and human experience appear to align pretty well,” Alper said. “Effects on reduced drug self-administration following treatment with ibogaine or 18-MC are not likely to be based on the processing of the content of psychoactive experience.”
In other words, Alper doesn’t think that the reduced consumption of addictive substances by lab animals is caused by psychedelic epiphanies. Rather, he believes it’s the physiologic processes induced by ibogaine. He suspects the same is true for humans, though he also accepts that the psychedelic experience could be a useful aid for patients undergoing psychotherapy.
Other researchers were less optimistic about 18-MC’s relative prospects in human trials. “I think that at least in some cases—not the majority of them maybe, but in a significant number of situations—the psychedelic experience is a key to solving the problem,” Rasmussen explained. “It’s not that I think that 18-MC will not work, but I really don’t understand how it would work as well as ibogaine does without the psychedelic experience.”
Instead of viewing the question as a zero-sum game that promotes one treatment at the expense of the other, the true win-win scenario for patients would be that both medicines become safely available. After all, the need for more effective therapies is paramount. COVID-19 and the policies put in place to contain it have only exacerbated the risks posed by SUDs. The Lancet reports that as of July 2020, drug overdose deaths in the US increased by 13 percent, with rates in some states up by over 30 percent.
If the end goal is to reduce harm and save lives over the long haul—and not pump up stock prices in the short term—then it’s up to those within the psychedelic movement to continue their decades-long struggle to end the criminalization of these potentially life-saving medicines. Otherwise, the fate of these powerful and potentially transformative substances will be decided by supporters of the failed policies of criminalization and the corporatization of psychedelics.
About the Author
Jeff Kronenfeld is an independent journalist and fiction writer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. His articles have been published in Vice, Overture Global Magazine, and other outlets. His fiction has been published by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Four Chambers Press, and other presses.
Can psychedelics heal humanity’s global mental health crisis? If so, when will it be legal and accessible to all?
Mental health disorders affect over a billion people worldwide. Prior to the pandemic, the 2017 Global Burden of Disease study estimated that 264 million people in the world suffered from depression only.
Since the start of the pandemic, rates of depression have tripled in the US, while rates of substance abuse from alcohol to opioids have risen 30%.
Psychotherapists might say that the root of this crisis is widespread trauma, the outcome of an increasingly unequal capitalistic culture exacerbated by financial uncertainty, and social isolation caused by the pandemic.
Shamans might say that the cause of this disease is humanity’s separation from Nature and Spirit; that the events of 2020 signified a shamanic initiation of planetary proportions, a warning sign of a civilization recklessly out of balance, and an urgent call for humanity to wake up.
What if both are right?
The acute need for a new way to address humanity’s mental and spiritual crisis has pushed the promise of psychedelic medicines to the forefront, making 2020 a banner year for drug policy reform and psychedelic therapeutics.
In spite of the pandemic, demand for underground ceremonies remains stronger than ever, as people seek out community, spiritual meaning, and alternative healing, some fearing vaccines more than the virus.
Join me, my friend Lorna Liana (publisher of media platform EntheoNation), and 40+ experts in a series of bold, inquisitive conversations about the future of psychedelic medicine and the expansion of plant medicine shamanism.
This is not your boring academic conference filled with scientific presentations and cultural anthropology papers. We celebrate the work of psychedelic research, but now, it’s more important than ever to raise awareness of how the ordinary person can participate in the “Psychedelic Renaissance” and access the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics… Safely, responsibly, and with integrity.
Together we’ll explore:
Ancestral Plant Spirit Healing Traditions (Ayahuasca, Iboga, Peyote, San Pedro, Sacred Mushrooms) as well as Kambô, and Bufo
The Past, Present & Future of Psychedelic Medicine
The Art & Science of Microdosing Transformation
Psychedelics & Leadership Innovation
During this visionary 5-day event, you’ll hear from:
Kyle Buller, co-founder of Psychedelics Today, who shares his insights about the emerging field of psychedelic integration therapy and coaching and the shadow side of psychedelics.
Ninawa Pai da Mata, spiritual leader of the Huni Kuin community of Novo Futuro, on the indigenous cultural renaissance catalyzed by the globalization of ayahuasca and their tribe’s decision to collaborate with outsiders. Filmed in the Kaxinawá indigenous territory of Humaitá in Acre, Brazil, during the Eskawatã Kayawai Festival, this mini-documentary shares their culture, shamanic medicine traditions, challenges, and hopes for the future
Wade Davis, celebrated author, anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and filmmaker, who talks about the impact of the Psychedelic Renaissance on contemporary culture, as well as about the Drug War’s destruction of Colombia and what he considers to be the ultimate sacred medicine of South America (not ayahuasca)
Nat Kelley, activist & actress (Fantastic Fungi Foundation, The Fast & the Furious, Vampire Diaries) and Alan Scheurman (Santiparro), musician / shipibo trained facilitator, discuss the impact of COVID on the indigenous communities in the Amazon, and what it takes to create a global campaign of active reciprocity.
Bruce Parry, filmmaker and explorer, on the delicate nature of living with remote peoples, egalitarian tribal cultures, and his visionary experiences on iboga, ayahuasca, Bufo and ebene (yopo), revealing the surprising reaction that overcame him… that might have been a little TMI
Cecilio Soria Gonzales, Shipibo indigenous rights activist, on how the Comando Matico initiative is distributing plant medicine through indigenous communities to treat and prevent COVID (and the recipe for this remedy… dare you drink it?
Jeremy Narby, legendary anthropologist and author of the Cosmic Serpent, with advice on how Western ceremony facilitators from the Global North can stop engaging in spiritual extraction of indigenous cultural wisdom, and give back in a meaningful way
There is no charge to attend this event, no upfront ticket to purchase in order to gain access to this diverse wealth of information. All sessions are free to the public for 48 hours. So, grab your complimentary seat right here:
Decriminalization, legalization, and medicalized psychedelics are advancing rapidly. Discover the impacts these developments may have on humanity’s mental well-being and capacity to thrive, as well as the risks of bad actors, corporate profiteering, and the perpetuation of colonialism in psychedelic medicine.
You’ll also hear from Shelby Hartman, co-founder of DoubleBlind Magazine, Daniel Shankin of the Psilocybin Summit, Carmen Jackman of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Tricia Eastman & Joseph Peter Barsuglia of Psychedelic Journeys; Elizabeth Bast, Iboga Provider & Integration Coach ; Chor Boogie, visionary artist ; Kyle Buller, host of Psychedelics Today; Mareesa Stertz filmmaker and producer of the series The Healing Powers, and many more.
We are hosting a panel discussion about the film Light Years. We will be joined by the filmmakers to have some enlightening conversations about Light Years.
Register here for our Feb 12 event. It will start at 8p ET / 5p PT.
We had Colin Thompson on our podcast recently and you can check that out here.
Our web event is going to be the panel discussion only, so watch the film before coming since we’ll probably have some spoilers.
The story of John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist who wanted to believe—and ended up introducing the entire culture to the possibility of transpersonal experiences.
“At their core Carlos’s encounters have brought about a profound spiritual opening, bringing him in contact with a divine light or energy, what he calls “Home,” which is the source of his personal healing and transformational powers. In our sessions, when he comes close to this light he becomes overwhelmed with emotions of awe and a longing to merge with the energy/light/being. Space and time dissolve, and he experiences himself as pure energy and light or consciousness in an endlessness of eternity, ‘a pure soul experience . . . I go back to the source because I’m not just human. I need to go back to the source in order to continue.’ Carlos, like so many abductees, has developed an acute ecological consciousness. He is deeply concerned with the earth and its fate. The question of whether this is an unintended by-product of a process that he, no more than any of us, can fathom, or is an integral part of the alien phenomenon, cannot, of course, be answered. Carlos clearly believes that the aliens, however awkward, or even brutal, their methods, are trying to arrest our destructive behavior.”
-Dr. John E.
Mack, M.D.
Abductions: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994)
Until many lines in, to us in the psychedelic community, the passage above reads exactly like insights from a psychedelic-assisted therapy or integration session. But to my surprise in my recent alien abduction reading, this was work being processed with abductees – or “experiencers” as they preferred to be called – by pioneering psychiatrist, John E. Mack, in the 1990s. Mack wasn’t only the Head of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, but also the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (his 1977 biography of “Lawrence of Arabia” ), and a fearless anti-war activist as well.
“John had always been so well regarded,” his former research associate and girlfriend Dominique Callimanopulos tells Psychedelics Today. “He was such a wunderkind in circles, such a bright light and leader in his field, and well known for his clinical perceptiveness and precision.”
So how does a Harvard psychiatrist get into the fringe world of alien abductions? It probably won’t surprise our readers that the story has its roots at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. According to NY Times journalist Ralph Blumenthal’s upcoming biography on Mack, The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack (scheduled to come out in March 2021 on University of New Mexico Press), in 1987, Mack attended the “Frontiers of Health” conference at Esalen in which Stanislav Grof spoke about transpersonal psychology and hosted an unplanned Holotropic breathwork session for the group. It was Mack’s first time trying the consciousness-altering form of breathwork and he had a profound experience relating to the death of his mother when he was only nine months old, as well as his first truly transpersonal experience.
Mack continued his exploration and training with breathwork, and according to Blumenthal’s book, by 1989, he had become a “regular” participant in Grof’s breathwork modules. Elizabeth Gibson, co-founder of Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork and co-author (with Mack and Grof) of the 2003 article, “Reflections on Breathwork and Alien Encounter Experiences,” remembers Mack’s involvement in the Grof breathwork group. On a Zoom call, she recalls that Mack was a facilitator at the first Holotropic breathwork session she had ever participated in, one of the “big weekend workshops” Stan and Christina Grof used to host. “There must have been 130, 140 people there that weekend,” Gibson recalls, “and John Mack was on the team with them [to help facilitate] and he brought with him a lot of the psychiatric residents that were then in training with him at Cambridge hospital.” Similarly, Callimanopulos recalls that Mack was part of a Grof breathwork “pod” that would meet a few times a year in different parts of the world for two weeks at a time. “That was a very strong bonding experience for all the people in his pod,” she says.
It turns out that Grof not only introduced Mack to breathwork and transpersonal experiences, but to the alien abduction phenomenon as well. In March 1988, at a breathwork training module at Pocket Ranch in California, Grof gave Mack a chapter on alien abductions from his and Christina’s upcoming anthology, Spiritual Emergence: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis (1989). “I have no idea why Stan thought I would be particularly interested in that subject,” Mack wrote in 2003. “I read the chapter with much interest, although I kept asking myself, ‘But is it true?’ Were people really being contacted by humanoid beings or the like?” Later in the same article, Mack wrote, “Through Breathwork I became open to the fact that the universe might be full of entities, which we call spirits, gods, archetypes, angels, mythic beings or whatever. The humanoids encountered by abduction experiencers seem to be one such type of being.”
Soon after the March ‘88 breathwork module, Mack was introduced to New York artist and famous alien experiencer and researcher, Budd Hopkins, who then introduced him to a whole network of abductees through a support group Hopkins was running. Unlike other mental health care professionals these folks may have seen, Mack had a much more empathetic approach. Instead of disbelieving what these people claimed to have experienced because he couldn’t prove it was true, Mack just held space for these folks to process their abductions, much like one would do for any other type of non-ordinary state of consciousness, like a near-death, psychedelic, or mystical experience.
“I think that was one of the big gifts he brought to this community of people he was working with. He never questioned whether their stories were true. He just accepted that people were having these experiences and tried to support them and give them a safe place where they could express what they were going through without fear of being judged. And that was huge for people,” says Gibson.
Mack helped abductees tremendously through this approach to their trauma by helping them “integrate” this reality-shattering experience, and at the same time, he started to find some undeniable common threads among their stories, which he writes about extensively in his two books on the subject, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994) and Passport to the Cosmos(1999). For example, the alien beings typically communicate with people telepathically and transmit profound messages through their big, dark eyes. Aliens also seem to alter people’s consciousness during their abduction experiences and even their “vibrations,” which then permits the aliens to move humans through the air and even through solid objects like the walls of their homes. What was also reliably consistent from experiencer to experiencer was a traumatizing loss of control of their bodies, incredibly invasive medical procedures, and even forced sexual contact and impregnation, which was often communicated to experiencers as an essential part of an alien-human hybrid program, and the future of both of their species.
Now, I know this all sounds a little X-Files-y (and according to Blumenthal in The Believer, Chris Carter (the TV show’s creator) even called Mack to pick his brain when he was developing the iconic series), but for the actual experiencers, this was deeply traumatizing. Budd Hopkins, for example, found the abductions to be incredibly demoralizing and felt it was a deep violation of trust and power by the alien beings, and that’s how he framed his support group for abductees—as one of victims processing trauma.
However, when Mack worked with experiencers, he used his recent training as a Holotropic breathwork facilitator to “hold space” for folks to integrate the non-ordinary state and to help it reach some kind of conclusion, which often lead to spiritual transformation. “As our work deepens, especially as the reality of the alien intelligence is acknowledged and the abductees come to accept their lack of control of the process, the frightening and adversarial quality of the relation seems to give way to a more reciprocal one in which useful human-alien communication can take place and mutual benefit is derived,” writes Mack in Abduction. “For example, the abductees [who] felt bitterly resentful about having their sperm and eggs used by the aliens in the hybridization project, may come to feel that they are participating in a process that has value for the creation and evolution of life.”
What Mack understood is that folks were processing experiences that completely shattered their worldview, similar to having one’s idea of reality flipped on its head after a strong psychedelic experience. How were folks supposed to get back to their regular lives after communicating with aliens telepathically and being shown we’re not the only intelligent life in the universe? “The terror is not just the terror of being paralyzed, having your body taken and having things done to you, the terror is the terror of the expansion of consciousness,” Mack said at a seminar on “Affect” in June 1992. He goes on to explain that is it a type of “ontological shock” that attacks people’s sense of their material reality—as it has attacked his own. And in his opinion, that’s what really needed to be integrated, not only by the abductees themselves, but by society, because that’s what really shocks people—that there’s more out there than we perceive on a daily basis.
In fact, his theories on the existence of aliens greatly differed from many of his UFO-hunting counterparts. Through his work with abductees and transpersonal realms of consciousness, he came to believe that aliens exist, but not in this physical dimension that we humans know as reality. He started to theorize about other realms of existence, or spiritual dimensions, where entities and intelligence like the alien “Grays” could exist, possibly less embodied but more conscious than us. And perhaps, the alien abduction phenomenon exemplified the most damning occurrence in the “Western dualistic worldview” as he often called it—that there are intelligent beings who are, at will, able to travel between dimensions and enter our material reality from their spirit realm.
“In
short, I was dealing with a phenomenon that I felt could not be explained
psychiatrically, yet was simply not possible within the framework of the
Western scientific worldview,” Mack writes in Abduction. “My choices then were either to stretch and twist
psychology beyond reasonable limits, overlooking aspects of the phenomenon that
could not be explained psychologically… Or, I might open to the possibility
that our consensus framework of reality is too limited and that a phenomenon
such as this cannot be explained within its ontological parameters. In other
words, a new scientific paradigm might be necessary in order to understand what
was going on.”
While deep in this research, my next question was: how significant were Mack’s psychedelic experiences to this openness to the possible existence of aliens, in this reality or another? Because for me, as a person who’s not particularly spiritual or religious and also grew up with a Western idea of what’s “real,” it wasn’t until my psychedelic experiences began lifting the veil that I started opening up to the possibility of spirit realms, plant intelligence, and now, the existence of aliens in some dimension. Mack admits in Passport to the Cosmos that his own experiences of “a transcendent reality” influenced his evolution of thought, in addition to his decade of working with experiencers and all the data they supplied him with.
In The Believer, Blumenthal also reports that Mack was experimenting with some psychedelics with his Grof group and other close friends. He talks of MDMA, LSD, ayahuasca, and ketamine trips, in addition to Holotropic breathwork. Mack also had correspondences with psychedelic philosophers and researchers doing adjacent work, like Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman. There’s a 1992 video of McKenna interviewing Mack at the International Transpersonal Conference in Prague and multiple references to McKenna’s work and the conversations the two of them had in transcripts and correspondences of Mack’s, which the John E. Mack Institute provided for me while I was researching this piece.
When Mack started theorizing about the purpose of the alien’s visits in his writing—that perhaps they were sent by some greater creative intelligence or “Anima Mundi” to expand human consciousness and help us not only evolve (or co-evolve), but also help us understand we are all intricately connected and need to take better care of our most precious gift, the planet earth—it sounds a lot like the insights from a strong psychedelic experience, or a talk from Terence McKenna at the time. At another Affect Seminar in July 1992, Mack referenced a McKenna quote, “that even God has limits”, in which Mack took to mean, “There is a point when one species seems to have carried the experiment too far in certain directions, then there is a cosmic correction occurring of a sort. And many of the abductees actually experience that powerfully, that this phenomenon involves some kind of balancing that is going on.”
Mack continues this line of thought in other talks and later writings—that perhaps the Anima mundi thinks we’re getting too destructive and it sent the aliens here to help us correct our ways. While I was in a deep reading of these ideas 20 years later, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps in 2020, that same intelligence thought psilocybin mushrooms may be a more successful plan to help evolve the human mind to realize its vital connection to all things. It’s a very common psychedelic insight (especially on mushrooms or ayahuasca) to feel a deep, spiritual connection to everything and to return with a great sense of urgency to help save our ailing planet. Could these messages all be coming from the same “source”?
Or, was Mack inserting his own spiritual and environmental bias onto his clients? “My own impression, gained from what abductees have told me, is that consciousness expansion and personal transformation is a basic aspect of the abduction phenomenon,” Mack wrote in Abduction. “I have come to this conclusion from noting in case after case the extent to which the information communicated by alien beings to experiencers is fundamentally about the need for a change in human consciousness and our relationship to the earth and one another. Even the helplessness and loss or surrender of control which are, at least initially, forced upon the abductees by the aliens—one of the most traumatic aspects of the experiences—seem to be in some way “designed” to bring about a kind of ego death from which spiritual growth and the expansion of consciousness may follow. But my focus upon growth and transformation might reflect a bias of mine.”
Are the aliens trying to expand human consciousness so we
can live more harmoniously with the rest of the galaxy, save our own home
planet, and become more in touch with a spiritual dimension? Or was Mack
letting his own consciousness expansion leak into his work and influence it too
strongly? “We would fight about it sometimes,” Callimanopulos recalls. She explains that Mack
was accused of leading people to believe their experiences were spiritual in
nature, and she also believed it had become his bias. Coming from an
anthropological background, she “felt he should hold back more and be more
neutral. Let people struggle to define their experience more.”
Yet, Callimanopulos also says that she often felt Mack was being very appropriate, and she describes how powerfully real people’s emotions were when they began to recall and process their abduction experiences. “He started this work because people were hurting,” Callimanopulos says. She also drives home that Mack possessed an incredible intellect and was always drawn to life’s mysteries. “John always tried to address the big questions in life, like what’s life about? How does it all work? What are we doing here? What’s our identity?”
After Abduction came out, Mack supported his theories—that aliens exist, but perhaps not in this physical dimension, and they’re here to expand and transform human consciousness for a higher intelligence’s purpose—on all the mainstream outlets of the time, including Oprah and Charlie Rose. But after a few damning articles in Time Magazine and the New York Times that questioned Mack’s practices, Harvard began a long and trying inquiry into the standards of his work. For instance, part of how Mack worked with abductees to help them remember and process their experiences was a relaxing form of hypnosis. But could that just be opening the door for false memories or confusing nocturnal dreams with reality? Mack defended his practice and truly felt that a non-ordinary state of consciousness like an alien abduction needed a similarly altered state to help the integration process, but to others, its necessity was less clear. There were other discrepancies that Harvard looked into as well, like how he billed insurance and charged abductees, and whether they were formally clients or research subjects.
Mack survived the Harvard inquiry tenure intact, but the emotional toll it must have taken on him is only for us to wonder. “He was very used to being well regarded and well-liked. It came as a big shock to him that people—his close colleagues, turned against him,” Callimanopulos says. “I think it was also harsh for John because he was a very collaborative, empathic person who enjoyed relationships more than anything else in life and sought out that harmony— that comfort and adulation from colleagues. So I think it was really tough.”
However, he continued the work with abductees, releasing his second and more openly spiritual book on the phenomena, Passport to the Cosmos, in 1999. Then, he also began a professional interest in the survival of consciousness after death, until his own tragic passing in 2004. When Mack was in England for a conference, he was hit by a car after looking the wrong way while trying to cross the road in London. It was a shock to the abductee community and all who knew him. He was 74 years old.
I can’t help but wonder if Mack’s ideas would be more easily accepted today in a world that’s decriminalizing magic mushrooms, pumping out psychedelic doses of ketamine to depressed patients, and scientifically quantifying the significance of mystical experiences in psychedelics’ usefulness for treating mental health conditions. During a time when more people are taking mushrooms and ayahuasca than ever before and coming to very similar insights as Mack’s abductees, would we be more receptive to his ideas of aliens expanding human consciousness in order to enlighten and transform our species, so that we can save ourselves from ourselves?
In 1999, he wrote in Passports to the Cosmos: “We seem to be experiencing now in the United States, and more or less throughout Western culture, a kind of spiritual renaissance. It reflects a deep hunger for something missing in the lives of many people, a sense, however vague, that there are other realms from which they feel cut off, and a growing realization that many of the catastrophic events of this century now ending have derived from radical secularism and spiritual emptiness.” Perhaps Mack himself was part of the cosmic correction, opening the mainstream’s mind to a whole world of transpersonal possibilities. “He was a big catalyst for the whole conversation being in the mainstream,” says Callimanopulos. “Maybe if he lived longer, he might have gone on to do a little more mapping of those different dimensions.”
About the Author
Michelle Janikian is a journalist focused on drug policy, trends, and education. She’s the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, and her work has also been featured in Playboy, DoubleBlind Mag, High Times, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue. One of her core beliefs is that ending the prohibition of drugs can greatly benefit society, as long as we have harm reduction education to accompany it. Find out more on her website: www.michellejanikian.com or on Instagram @michelle.janikian.
Wittingly or not, pharmaceutical companies are clearing the path to the next populist revolution in traditional psychoactive plant and fungi medicines. Although still on the horizon, reregulation is fait accompli. As decriminalization and rescheduling of plant and fungi medicines advances, the inability to drive product costs suitably down will fuel the existing black market. Illicit users exist and more will join their ranks as pharmaceutical companies create a customer base. While new understanding of these ancient medicines disseminates, the public will learn that plant and fungi medicine is significantly less expensive to forage or cultivate at home than clinics or pharmacies could ever offer.
Pharmaceutical Companies Are Protecting Their Interest with Patents, and the FDA Will Impose Limits on End-Users
Pharmaceutical companies are doing necessary and helpful work, leading the way with regulators. But their reign will not last. It is inevitable that a populist preference to procure psychedelics per penny will prevail. Profiteers have a problem: price.
Consider the effect on price caused by:
Federal law’s support of patent “monopoly.”
Health insurance’s slow adoption of psychedelics.
Investor need to recoup investments in years of research and promotion.
Investor hunger for profits.
Novelty, as the world awakens with fascination to something old as something new.
To recoup the tens-to-hundreds of millions of dollars invested in securing FDA approval and related patents, and then the expense of thereafter marketing their wares for a profit, the corporate owners of these future FDA-approved psychedelics are not acting out of principled charity or for the goodwill of all humankind. They are going to make their money, either in the pricing of the medicine or in the coupling of it to clinical services. At least in the early years, as the owners of these patents and FDA approvals try best to figure out how to market their products, it seems the inevitable price per dose will be multi-hundred dollars. Even if the price gets down to tens of dollars, nature remains tough competition- nature’s price tag of “free” is a tough price to beat.
Pharmaceutical Companies Are Not the Problem— But They Are Its Origin
This not a rant against pharmaceutical companies, capitalism, or therapeutic services. It’s far from such, and each plays a necessary and vital role in this story. Without pharmaceutical company efforts, there would be no story. This is simply an observation that plant and fungi medicines are nothing more than unrefined nature, metaphorically and literally as cheap as dirt. With simplicity of that sort as competition, pharmaceutical companies are going to have a tough time keeping the genie in their “bottle of exclusivity.” This is not the circumstance where a retort of, “If you don’t like our prices, try to manufacture your own ibuprofen” ends the conversation. With psychoactive plants, if you do not like industrial prices, you can easily forage or home grow for pennies or free.
FDA Approval Means Islands of Privilege and a Festering Public Resentment
Here is the rub: future customers who may initially believe it acceptable to pay high prices for psilocybin or other natural therapeutic psychoactives will be the second group to bear resentment.
The people who cannot afford to partake are the first to be left out.
The western industrial medical model is unintentionally in the midst of creating a psychedelic privileged class. If you cannot afford FDA-approved medicine, you will be left out. And if you try to partake like the wealthy people who can pay Gwyneth Paltrow prices, you will be branded a criminal. The difference? Pay your “tithing” to a corporation, and you will be alright. Do not pay? Well, tough luck on you, felon.
Who dares tell those who can’t afford this ancient “new” medicine not to turn to alternative sources, after science and corporate America confirm these plants and fungi are effective and healthy? Who dares blame those who correctly observe that contemporary science confirmation and corporate blessings do not themselves literally turn something old into something new? The fact that a corporate board finally figured out how to squeeze a nickel, or a politician found courage through campaign donations is not going to wipe out thousands of years of well-documented natural medicines and their effects.
Shareholders telling the public not to access nature, while slapping nature’s bounty with big price tags, is not going to sit well. The public will not long tolerate pharmaceutical companies touting the “added value” their little tweaks, concentrates, or clever packaging and marketing may bring. The public will inevitably learn that science did not give us psychedelics. Rather, science, in the name of politics, merely confirmed what thousands of years of human history have already well documented. The use of certain psychoactive plants and fungi to treat anxiety and depression is no more a credit-worthy invention than Columbus accidentally running into North America, and like a continent, thousands of years of history were not waiting for a contemporary politician’s approval to justify its existence.
Resentment over artificial financial barriers will satiate itself in a black market and home cultivation. The more pharmaceutical companies raise awareness, insisting compounds like psilocybin treat depression and anxiety, the more the public will want affordable access. Profiteering pharmaceutical companies are making a case against their own long-term interests. As modern cannabis has taught us, much like every vegetable at the supermarket, product price is a race to the bottom, and the vendor with the lowest price wins. Mother Nature, with her pesky ability to self-generate, and with a price tag of “free,” poses eternal and tough competition.
State Legislatures Could Be the Solution (But Won’t)
As federally approved plant and fungi medicines make inroads, there will be market-driven increase in illicit use- illicit being “illegal,” only because our current laws deem it so. Knowing this, the logical thing would be for legislatures to act and get ahead of what will become a problem. Make no mistake, it is coming. But most legislatures are too frightened of change, and psychedelics, for too many, represent radical change.
The political familiar is not the noble lion. It is the chicken, and rather than face their fears (and in so doing, master them), legislatures opt to ignore and pretend it will all just go away. My home state of Arizona is such a place. Three times, the citizens of Arizona passed pro-marijuana laws by public initiative. This election, a successful citizen initiative made Arizona the 13th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Although invited multiple times to craft laws, Arizona’s legislature took no action, forcing the citizens to do so for themselves.
A Better Solution— Introducing the Public Initiative
No one expects self-initiated reform from the federal government or from agencies like the FDA and DEA. One need only look to cannabis’ experiences these many decades. But one-by-one, citizens of certain states and cities are changing their local laws through a direct democratic process known as public initiative.
Public initiatives are citizen-initiated and citizen-driven proposals for new state laws or state constitutional amendments (sorry, there is no such thing as a federal public initiative). If enough citizen signatures are collected to qualify an initiative to be on the ballot, the initiative is added to the ballot and citizens vote on whether to adopt the initiative as new state or city law. For example, in November 2020, a few plant and fungi medicine citizen initiatives went to ballot, including Oregon’s psilocybin initiative, Measure 109, Arizona’s recreational cannabis initiative, Smart & Safe Arizona, and District of Columbia’s Initiative 81. All were successful- a historic first in U.S. history.
Even though state initiatives do not change federal law, changes in state law take off some pressure, reduce individual criminal entanglements, and allow for experimentation of policy reform. Plus, public initiatives garner the attention of other states and the federal government, thereby advancing the dialogue of reform.
Citizens of states with no public initiative
laws are in a tougher place. They must resort to lobbying and campaigning for
office to make these changes. But maybe those of us in states with public
initiative laws can help at home. Plus, there is no reason a uniform model
plant and fungi medicine act could not similarly be adopted by state
legislatures. After all, the goal of a public initiative is to create laws upon
which a majority of citizens agree. Any well-worded initiative good enough for
a public vote could as easily be adopted inside a legislature.
Do Not Move a Mountain One Pebble at a Time
Although an initiative’s success at the ballot box is important, the progress it brings is slow, local, and piecemeal. There is a better way. Citizens can join forces and campaign with a uniform initiative that could be introduced simultaneously in multiple states and flip the country in one election.
As seen with cannabis, successful initiatives sometimes have a domino effect. There is every reason to believe that neighboring states will take notice. A well-regulated legal environment is apt to serve as the national model, and success invites imitation. Strong currents in law and politics favor uniform laws. They make commerce and predictability more reliable across jurisdictions. The unanimous adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code is emblematic.
Strength in Numbers
Imagine the buying power of shared campaign costs across ten or more states. Imagine the impact on national public awareness with campaigns running simultaneously in multiple states, educating the public about plant and fungi medicine reform. Imagine the favorability a well-crafted initiative will receive, if citizens across the country know they are not alone in considering change. A multi-state public initiative can attract and focus investment dollars from every national (and local) group with a stake in serious drug policy reform. In lieu of small and local, perhaps a national campaign will attract national dollars and national support from national drug policy, mental health, civil liberty, and similar reform organizations.
As results of the 2020 election suggest, there has never been a better time than now to push for impactful reform. A uniform initiative can succeed if it is thoughtful about cost and access, is patient-focused, is respectful of privacy, is driven by science, promotes responsible access and responsible use, and looks upon plant and fungi medicine as a health and spiritual issue instead of a criminal issue.
Remember there is no such thing as perfect law, and there is always someone ready to complain. Doomsayers can be placated with the inclusion of terms to address child safety, impaired driving, tax allocation, etc. A well-crafted uniform model plant and fungi medicine act can and should deal with the good and the bad upfront. A well-crafted uniform plant and fungi medicine initiative can curry favor amongst millions of citizens and be implemented in multiple states in a single election cycle. Swaths of the nation can tune in and turn on together, while implementing sound and measured policy that can start to erase the damage of the last 50 years of oppression and societal harms brought about by the Controlled Substances Act and the war on drugs.
If we do not face the issue of medicine guide abuse with as much courage as the psychonaut faces the edges of reality and their own healing process, we would be missing an important opportunity to do the necessary work at hand for us in this realm. When else would we confront the Shadow so greatly as this past year, when fascism, a global pandemic, and ecological demise were no longer on the horizon in post-apocalyptic visions, but were instead upon us? As we begin to heal and recover from the last four years and detox from the underlying structures of oppression at the core, we realize all that is at stake.
The longing to be more connected and the need to create order out of the chaos of conflicting narratives combined with the simultaneous upsurge in fear of the virus, hate crimes, and political unrest, has created a swirl of catalytic enzymes with everything needed to activate a new wave of high-demand groups. In everything from the alt-right to the psychedelic underground, we see manifestations of high-control group dynamics, including charismatic leaders, propaganda, brainwashing, and the gaslighting of anyone with an opposing voice. Adding in the complexity of non-ordinary states with the accompanying loss of sense of self and agency, dissolving boundaries, and susceptibility, we have found ourselves deep in the psychedelic Shadow.
The current zeitgeist calls for a level of inquiry, openness, and capacity to withstand critique, without fear of losing the whole endeavor. We have an opportunity to refine, make the work more potent, and have more integrity and efficacy. This is the charge we have received: to name the ways that misuse of power in the guide/journeyer relationship manifests in traumatic consequences, to take actions to prevent future abuse, and help people heal from past abuse.
This article will explore the types of high-control group dynamics that perpetuate and amplify psychedelic guide abuse, dispel myths, and offer a healing path forward on individual and collective levels.
Demystifying High-Control Group Dynamics
I wrote this piece to better understand and to share about the dynamics that set into motion a cascade of loss of agency, loss of identity, and the inability to speak up and out against problematic behavior. We can understand it on a micro-level within families, and a macro-level with what we, as a country, are coming out of from the last four years. All of us, especially the most vulnerable, have been affected by blatant narcissistic abuse.
High-control groups (HCGs) are defined by the areas that are being controlled and by diminishing the will of the individual, while the affected person actually is manipulated into believing what’s happening is in their best interest. Or, in some cases, the perceived value of the cause outweighs personal needs, and their intuition and ethical compass can become faulty.
Steve Hassan’s BITE Model (Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, and Emotional control) is an entry point to begin to see the underlying infrastructure of HCGs. When we combine Hassan’s BITE model with data from Yale’s 1962 Milgram Obedience to Authority Study, Palo Alto High School’s 1967 Wave Experiment, and Phillip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, we begin to see how these forms of control and manipulation have great potency to influence the thoughts, words, and deeds of others in group dynamics.
In his book, Practice And All Is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, And Healing In Yoga And Beyond (Embodied Wisdom, 2019), Matthew Remski explores self-care and recovery while unpacking these dynamics, and cautions us to have discernment. The book’s final section includes a workbook for “better practices and safer spaces.” Janja Lalich and Madeline Tobias’ book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Bay Tree, 1994), is a comprehensive reference on cultic mechanisms, paths to recovery, and therapeutic concerns. Its appendix, “Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups,” written by Lalich and Michael Langone, is a useful analytical tool to discover if the group you or a loved one is in displays such features.
Lalich wrote another book with Karla McLaren called Escaping Utopia (Routledge, 2017), in which they share “the stories of 65 people from 39 different cults in more than a dozen countries.” On her website (which features her very helpful “Systems of Influence” checklist, McLaren talks about a common occurrence that happens to people:
“When powerful systems of influence are active, people may lose their sense of self, their critical thinking, and their autonomy – and when they do, they can be converted into obedient followers. One of the strange side effects of this process is that converts may begin to believe that they have free will, and that they have intentionally chosen to de-self and obey. They become true believers and lose any real awareness of the influence methods that reshaped and resocialized them – and they come to believe that they willingly accepted this personal transformation to be one of the chosen few. This seems bizarre, but it’s a crucial feature of toxic systems of influence and persuasion. And it’s possibly the most difficult feature for someone who hasn’t experienced it to fully understand. “
People get hooked through a combination of insiders finding out what they want and believe and offering them just that. It is essentially sales, and the lieutenants/recruiters are the best salespeople on the team. They may say: “You need to offer this to your clients in order to really help them,” “You’re special, and I don’t know why you’re just now being invited,” “This is your destiny,” “You’re perfect for our program/cause/community, and together we can create a better world.”
Then, one is broken down to induce further vulnerability on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels, through methods including, but not limited to: overwork, lack of rest or nutrition, altered states, and cathartic and re-traumatizing processes. When one sees abuses or questionable behavior, they are gaslit or judged as being unwell in some fundamental way, and coerced and guilted into silence. Once a person has been broken down, they no longer have a will of their own- a new persona is rebuilt that matches the need of the group and serves as a proxy for the leader’s enactment of will.
A window into these dynamics- the allure and encroachment, followed by people awakening to what’s happening, leaving, and fighting back, can be seen in the HBO docuseries, “The Vow,” about the NXIVM sex cult. Be sure to watch it and consider the synchronicities you see between this group and other organizations, or even patterns in the rise of authoritarian governments on the planet, in various communities, or within family systems. It is vital to understand these patterns on both micro and macro levels to be able to tend to the underlying wounds that give rise to these structures and reactions, defenses, trauma enactments, and conscious or unconscious perpetuation of harm.
Psychedelic Guide Abuse and the Problem of Community Complicity
As the Shadow of Psychedelics makes itself more overtly known to us though lived experience and our holding space for those who have been harmed, it has become vital for me, as a clinician, to name and express these concerns- for the survivors, and as an advocate for the ethical employment of entheogenic therapies. Many topics arise from the depths, including appropriation, misuse of power, complicity through economic ties, and allyships with other communities as funnels.
The implication that psychedelics will be the panacea that will cure all the ills of our time on the planet may blind some to the problems at hand and the detoxification that needs to be done to make these practices safe again (which will ultimately be in service of furthering the movement overall). We notice, as well, the lack of proper training in how to honor and work with trauma as well as extraordinary states catalyzed by the medicine, such as Spiritual Emergence, and lack of oversight and accountability within communities (if they are underground).
Two examples of psychedelic guide abuse that everyone is already familiar with are the stories of Octavio Rettig and Gerry Sandoval, highlighted on 5-meo-dmt-malpractice.org, which displays the following open letter:
Join us in standing against psychedelic and entheogenic malpractice.
For many years there has been concern in psychedelic and entheogenic circles about what appears to be reckless, unethical, and potentially criminal behavior by Dr. Octavio Rettig and Dr. Gerry Sandoval in their capacity as facilitators of ‘Bufo’, the 5-MeO-DMT containing secretion of the Bufo alvarius toad.
Despite difficulties in gaining a clear picture of the overall situation, there is now overwhelming evidence that these concerns are well founded. For that reason we, coming from the psychedelic, entheogenic, and broader consciousness communities, have decided it is necessary to make this public statement.
A brief list of reported malpractices by Octavio include: dangerous sessions leading to hospitalizations and deaths; psychological and physical violence; non-consensual interventions and abuses of power; and neglect of people who have been damaged.
A brief list of reported malpractices by Gerry include rape; clandestine drugging; planting drugs on people with intent to endanger them; intentional overdosing; grossly unsafe serving practices; psychological manipulation; and financial fraud.
The collective consequences, apart from death, include physical injuries, psychological trauma, ongoing mental health issues, and shell-shocked and divided entheogenic communities.
For these reasons we, who come from the psychedelic, entheogenic, or simply the broader consciousness community, think it is time to take a stand. Now that these long running problems have come clearly to light, choosing to push them back into the shadows is no longer an option. Silence in the face of this knowledge risks making us complicit in any future abuses. It also risks completely distorting the role of this entheogen as it makes its way into the world.
We invite you to sign and take a stand with us.
Another example is in the March 3, 2020 Quartz article “Psychedelic therapy has a sexual abuse problem,” by Olivia Goldhill. In the article, Lily Kay Ross, who said she felt the need to leave her psychedelic work behind after speaking out about her rape by an ayahuasca shaman in the Amazon, shared, “I was told explicitly that I might single-handedly re-instigate the war on drugs and undo all of the advancements in the field of psychedelic research since the 1960s. There’s the idea that psychedelics are so important and so wonderful that the train has to keep going. We can’t slow down to get the rapists off the train.”
Ross will be speaking on a panel at the Psychedelics, Madness, and Awakening Conference in early 2021 with therapist and author of Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, Will Hall, among others. They will be sharing their concerns about the impact of psychedelic guide abuse. In Will Hall’s most recent Psychedelics Today appearance, he discussed the shadow side of psychedelics, and challenged us all to look into what our motivations are, and how they align to the movement’s ethics:
“What is the commitment? Is the commitment to get psychedelic drugs accessible at all costs? And we’re going to lie, cheat, and steal our way to get there? Or is the commitment to trust that truth is the way? And if we just stick with the truth, that is how we change society?”
Dispelling the Myths
1) These Groups will naturally self-correct.
False. HCGs are closed systems that self-perpetuate their beliefs and dynamics and create a feedback loop. Thus, they not only create homeostasis, or a balancing within that keeps things the same, but this homeostasis may also intensify as the closed system feeds back upon itself. In the groundbreaking book, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, authors Fritjof Capra & Pier Luigi Luisi have this to say with respect to feedback loops: “Feedback loops not only have self-balancing effects but may also be self-amplifying” (Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. 91).
Knowing this, we can see that by doing nothing, nothing will change. Many of us have thought that because the medicines are working in the ceremonies and sessions, they will help to automatically awaken and shift dynamics. For some, that is the case. For others, it deepens the trauma bonding them to the guide and HCG, and creates an even stronger disorganized attachment, which strengthens the reliance upon the guide and, by proxy, the medicine.
2) The abusive guides must not realize they are doing harm.
This is based on an assumption that folks who work with medicine are free from the traits that are self-serving, manipulative, or Shadow manifestations. Maybe these are unconscious dynamics/trauma re-enactments, or maybe they are sadistically harming. I will not participate in the othering, though, lest I fall prey to enantiodromia (a Jungian principle that states that over time, an extreme, one-sided tendency can unconsciously change into its polar opposite). But suffice it to say that not all guides and facilitators of the work prioritize the healing and service for the highest good of all beings in their journey toward wholeness.Their motivations might be financial or for power, feeding the ego that gives them that godlike rule over folks in non-ordinary, vulnerable states. How do we demand accountability and create the change that needs to be made in these situations? If it is unconscious, how can the gift of the medicines not intensify these defensive structures, but instead melt them away?
Can we lean into the wisdom of restorative and transformative justice to both understand the wounds that create those structures, and at the same time, keep those that are vulnerable safe from the abuse? Which part of this web of healing are you? Are you an advocate, ally, supporter, or educator? Know that each of us is needed to heal this together. And we must keep in mind and heart the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”
3) Others in the community, and outside of it, know and don’t care.
This myth stems from the idea that “nobody is doing anything about it.” We need to remember that the trauma which occurs while in non-ordinary states of consciousness is so profound and the recovery so delicate, we must not place the burden of transforming this issue on the backs of the survivors. We all must acknowledge the harm that is being done, and those who are complicit out of financial necessity need to do the right thing and disconnect their umbilical cord from the toxic womb. If the community complicity is bound to the group’s silence and secrecy, and has lost agency and capacity to speak out against abuses, then more support is needed. And more support is needed for those that do see, and when they are excised for going against the grain, they need to be witnessed, held, and cared for.
Because so many of the harmful communities are underground, there is no way to go to above-ground sources for accountability and ethical quality-control. So how can the wider community of psychedelic educators and healers enact the change that is needed? This is a question in process- in deep inquiry now, and I would love to see more discussion, panels, and think tanks, here and through other platforms and organizations.
A Way Forward: Ethics, Education, and Accountability
The amplification of the intensity of trauma within entheogenic extraordinary states makes the impact of guide abuse, gaslighting, and complicity much vaster, and the effects deeper and more difficult to recover from. I propose that there is a way forward, beginning by naming and honoring the reality of these experiences, offering a haven for the abused, and sharing new ethical standards, not only for the above-ground practitioners, but for the underground as well. This can be community-based, restorative and transformative justice, and peer-led; informed by open dialogue, harm reduction, and radical humanism.
Remember: Cognitive liberty is not only the freedom to, it is also the freedom from.
How does one resist these dynamics and methods of control and manipulation, maintain integrity in the sacred work we are undertaking, and therefore protect the safety and efficacy of psychedelic clients? First, do an inner inquiry into your relationship to power- others’ and your own. It is very likely that in entheogenic non-ordinary states of consciousness, that COEXes (layers of resonant trauma imprints) may re-create trauma enactments, whether you are the sitter or the journeyer. There may also be role-reversal, the unconscious’ way of balancing the scales. The Shadow activations thus may be on the continuum of repetition or counterpoint.
The guides must have adequate education on trauma, spiritual emergence, and emergency, be well-versed in transpersonal psychology, and have the capacity not only to validate the reality of subtle realms, but great respect and competence to work with all of its parts: entities, energies, possession states, archetypes, lifetimes, and dimensions. At a minimum, each guide must have a list of resources for trained trauma therapists, Spiritual Emergence Coaches and energy workers, shamanic practitioners, and psychopomps.
It is our ethical responsibility to maintain a clear and protected container for our clients. When a breach of ethics is witnessed, it is vital to intervene in some way to protect the vulnerable. Check your complicity. What keeps you silent? Is it livelihood? Access to medicines? The stream of potential clients? What is the cost of work if it is founded on harm, manipulation, abuse, and potential re-traumatization? Instead, bring curiosity, compassion, and humility to each session, and the courage to trust the Inner Healer of the client and the inner compass of the soul.
On a community level, we must replace these unwell systems of control with what Karla McLaren calls “healthy systems of influence.” She shares about the qualities of these healthy systems, which can help us orient when faced with HCGs or on behalf of others we care about. She says:
“Healthy systems of influence involve rules that make sense, clear checks and balances on power, responsive and respectful leadership, and goals that are livable and beneficial for everyone.
The system is democratic; all members have a say in how the rules and regulations are developed and implemented.
Members have the right to question, doubt, and challenge the system.
Checks and balances are in place so that the system remains flexible, responsive, and fair.
The system supports equality, and no person is above the rules.
The system incorporates fairness, justice, and leniency; no one is humiliated, abused, or shunned.
Members appreciate the sense of structure and discipline that the system provides.
The system provides a healthy sense of belonging and camaraderie.
The system helps members develop a unified group identity that does not erase their own identities.
The group encourages critical thinking and welcomes ideas from outside the system.
When a system of control is healthy, its structure supports and nurtures the people inside it. When a system is toxic, its structure crushes, demeans, and dehumanizes the people trapped within it.”
I would like to close this piece with a quote from Matthew Remski, who offers us hope and inspiration in the possibility of what he calls an “empowerment network:”
“The values expressed in an empowerment network directly opposed those in the abuse-enabling network, because the goal of victims and their allies is to deconstruct and re-distribute power, rather than to capture and hoard it. Where secrecy silenced harm, there will now be transparent speech. Where deception confounded critical thinking, there will now be evidence and research. Where power had crystallized vertically, there will now be a horizontal sharing of space and dignity… Harm is not inflicted in a vacuum, and healing is not accomplished alone“ (Remski, 2019, p. 242).
References
Capra, F., & Luisi, P. L. (2016). The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (Reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Hassan, S. (2015). Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. Freedom of Mind Press.
Lalich, J., & McLaren, K. (2017). Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over (1st ed.). Routledge.
Lalich, J., & Tobias, M. (2006). Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2nd ed.). Bay Tree Publishing.
Remski, M. (2019). Practice And All Is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, And Healing In Yoga And Beyond. Embodied Wisdom Publishing.
Zieman, B. (2017). Cracking the Cult Code for Therapists: What Every Cult Victim Wants Their Therapist to Know. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
About the Author
Michelle Anne Hobart, MA, SEC, AMFT is a teacher, writer, and Associate Marriage and Family Therapist at the Center for Mindful Psychotherapy. She trained as a Spiritual Emergence Coach with Emma Bragdon, works closely with the Gnosis Retreat Center project, and among other collaborations, co-facilitates Psychedelics Today’s Spiritual Emergence Course with Kyle Buller. She offers individual, couple, and group therapy, and leads community wellness workshops and retreats. Michelle graduated from the Integral Counseling Psychology program at CIIS in May 2018, she finished her second book, Holding Sacred Space in February 2020, and is in awe of the beautiful opportunities to support others that the universe provides her with through writing, being a therapist, and her other energy healing modalities. You can learn more at michelleannehobart.com.
In February 2020, Israel treated its first PTSD patients in Phase 3 trials with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. The trials are part of a research initiative conducted in partnership with the US-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), encompassing 15 sites in the US, Canada, and Israel, that is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2021, in anticipation of receiving full regulatory approval.
The first randomized controlled trial of MDMA, the results of which were published in 2010, achieved an incredible 83% success rate in alleviating symptoms of PTSD, sustained over the 3.5-year duration of the study. More recent studies have demonstrated such significantly higher therapeutic results with MDMA relative to FDA-approved drugs for PTSD that in 2017, the FDA granted it a breakthrough therapy designation (BTD).
In 2019, Bella Ben Gershon, director of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s Psychological Trauma Unit, reported a 68% success rate for clinical trial patients whose PTSD symptoms were resistant to more conventional forms of treatment.
Considering the role of post-traumatic stress in exacerbating and perpetuating conflict, one way the US could improve its prospects for achieving a sustainable set of interdependent diplomatic agreements addressing security concerns in the Middle East would be to lead a Middle East science diplomacy initiative including Israel, Iran, and the Arab states.
A highly promising area of research to focus regional cooperation on would be the application of psychedelic drugs to the treatment of post-traumatic stress, which, over time, could be applied to countering violent extremism, security sector reform, and conflict resolution.
Political opposition to a US invitation to Iran should be reconsidered in light of decades of scientific cooperation on a broad range of issues between the US and the Soviet Union from the Eisenhower to the Reagan administration. Israel and the UAE’s more recent decision to conclude a peace agreement and engage in scientific cooperation, followed by a similar agreement between Israel and Bahrain (despite outstanding policy differences between these countries concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issue) set the stage for regional science diplomacy. Despite persistent enmity between Israel and Iran, Israel’s direct offer to the Iranian public to assist in water supply management, though lacking in diplomatic tact, further strengthens the case.
Though its many applications have yet to enter into the mainstream of international relations, psychedelic research based in prestigious Western research institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, New York University, MAPS, Imperial College London, and Beckley Foundation has made great scientific strides since the missteps of the 1960s and subsequent decades of government suppression of research into these highly intriguing substances.
One can envision a future, as close as the next decade or two, in which they become instrumental- not only to the treatment of mental health disorders that established medications and therapeutic techniques have, in many cases (at best) unsatisfactorily managed, but also to resolve some of the most complex problems of international diplomacy. Solving these problems will depend on leaders reconciling with their own trauma and expanding their empathetic and creative problem-solving capacities, all of which psychedelics have the potential to facilitate, depending on the openness of those who are courageous enough to explore them.
This is not such a bold proposition considering the broader historical and current context. Intelligence agencies, including the CIA, researched LSD and other psychedelics beginning in the 1950s (if not earlier) for their potential efficacy in interrogation and covert operations. Illicit drugs such as Captagon are being distributed on the battlefields of Syria to bolster combatants’ endurance and fighting resolve.
The highly unstable state of the Middle East and the demonstrated shortcomings of world leaders to engage broadly in effective diplomacy raises the question of why drugs should not be studied in earnest with the aim of applying them to psychological issues related to peace-building and international cooperation. Considering the existential threats to human civilization from cyber and hypersonic nuclear weapons and the callous disregard of world leaders for the destabilization of our planet’s climate, this is arguably, more than ever, a moral imperative.
As MAPS’ Director of Policy and Advocacy, Natalie Lyla Ginsberg, notes, “For millennia, indigenous communities around the world have used ceremonies and traditions involving plant medicines in the service and protection of intergenerational peace, and some communities continue to use traditional medicine practices for active conflict resolution. For example, in Colombia, councils of indigenous communities are joining together to hold yagé (ayahuasca) ceremonies to bring together those fighting on opposing sides of the civil war.”
Anecdotes of deep personal shifts in perspective, healing, and transformation have been documented in American veterans who have explored treatment with ayahuasca for post-traumatic stress- a contributing factor to substance abuse, domestic violence, and suicide.
In addition to ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms, there is evidence that natural psychedelics such as ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT may be able to catalyze healing from post-traumatic stress and related symptoms, as documented in a study published in the scientific journal Chronic Stress in July, 2020.
In an October 2018 segment on treating veterans with the empathogen MDMA, The Economist reported that the VA alone spends approximately $400 million per year on PTSD and other mental health issues. An estimated 8 million Americans suffer from PTSD.
Approximately 900,000 Israelis- 10 percent of the population- also suffer from PTSD, according to Dr. Keren Tzarfaty, MAPS’ representative in Israel.
Among the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons of the conflicts of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, vast numbers are susceptible to developing PTSD and some are vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups, in part, as a result of their traumatic experiences.
Psychedelics do not offer magic cures to the complex problems ailing our world. They can be used for nefarious and noble purposes and everything in between. As with nuclear power or any technology, it ultimately depends on how one chooses to use them. With wisdom and good intention, they may help us to achieve even deeper diplomatic breakthroughs that have, for so long, eluded us, in great part because they have so challenged our political leaders’ empathic capacities.
Thomas Buonomo is an independent political consultant with expertise in Middle East affairs. Much of his research over the last decade and a half has focused on how trauma associated with violent conflict can inhibit conflict resolution and, in more recent years, on how psychedelics could help increase the probability of constructive diplomatic outcomes. His writing has been published by Middle East Policy, Atlantic Council, Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum, The Cipher Brief, Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE)’s The Fuse, Cairo Review of Global Affairs, The Daily Star, The National, RealClear Defense, Informed Comment, The Hill, CQ Roll Call, The Humanist, et al.
Working in psychotherapy with substances such as LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin in order to help heal depression, post-traumatic stress, or to overcome death anxiety has been the subject of many publications. Some authors, such as Stanislav Grof, have even gone so far as to establish new stages in human development. Just as Freud in his time conceived of psychopathology on the basis of trauma in the oral, anal, or genital stages, Grof postulates that certain behavioral disorders stem from suffering encountered in one of the four perinatal stages. In conjunction, both older (James Fadiman, Michael Mithoefer) and more recent authors (Benny Shannon, Eric Vermetten) have modeled psychotherapy settings that use work under psychedelic substance.
Our aim today is not to question these different approaches and their possible transferability to countries where the law prohibits such practices. Indeed, what are the implications regarding the relationship with therapists when working in a framework outside the law, which imposes secrecy towards the environment? What does this induce in therapy?
In France, the law prohibits the use of substances in psychotherapy. However, in our therapists’ offices, we receive people who have gone abroad to other continents to have psychedelic experiences (whether conducted according to traditional practices or not) or even to nearby countries where foreign shamans come to perform ceremonies. The people who come to consult in this context have either had a “bad trip” that still disturbs them, or are no longer able to reintegrate socially after a strong mystical experience, or, still further, want to understand and integrate what they have lived through.
This is “afterthought” process work that differs from what a therapeutic framework would have involved, with preparation prior to the experience, specific therapeutic support during the experience, and an integration (the phase where meaning is given, where the experience is symbolized) and assimilation (the phase when we are able to link this experience to all our past experiences and our history, enabling us to visit prior beliefs) of the elements that emerged during the experience. Indeed, the psychedelic experience induces a shock by opening up hitherto unknown spaces which the psyche does not know what to do with, or, if it does, it will literally cling to the visions that have arisen during the experience, even if this means being out of step with daily reality.
These people come knocking at our door because they know that in addition to our training as a psychologist and psychotherapist, we have been initiated into shamanic practices. As such, we are supposed to know all about this, or, at least, are willing to hear non-ordinary stories without limiting our diagnosis to psychopathology. Through this approach, we are asked to hear these accounts not as pure madness, but to take care of their experience as a salient moment in their lives, even if a painful one.
In doing so, the experiencers come to challenge our own reference grids and our anthropology. Applying a single theoretical reference frame as we usually do in therapy has the risk of greatly reducing our understanding of the experience, even if this frame of reference was based on the transpersonal current. From our point of view, Grof’s perinatal stages or the archetypes of Carl Jung or Gilbert Durand cannot, by themselves, sufficiently support the elaboration work required by our patients. We believe that elements emerging during a psychedelic experiment are polysemic. They must be looked at on several levels: symbolic, metaphorical, transcendental, processual, as well as on the ego and somatic levels. Each level can, in itself, feature several interpretations.
For example, if I see myself as a warrior killing the dragon to free the princess:
-This may symbolize a problem in my married life which is very difficult to solve (we talk about symbolism at this point, because in our culture, references to the warrior and the princess speak of couples, as seen in children’s tales).
-At the level of the ego, it may question my desire to be recognized by my wife, or manifest my need to be seen as a powerful man.
-At the transcendental level, I may be envisaging the influence of superior, and even very ancient archetypal forces impacting my life as a couple.
-On a metaphorical level, it could be interpreted as the work I have to do to channel masculine strength and liberate the feminine dimension of my being.
-On the somatic level, during this experience, I may have felt a lot of energy inside, which could point towards the fact that I have a lot of inner energy at my disposal to obtain what I desire.
-On a process level, if I follow through with my vision, it has me view my wife as a weak person in need of rescue. Maybe this reveals my thoughts on male/female relationships.
-And at the transgenerational level, it may evoke how one of my ancestors forced a marriage upon his family against their advice.
The symbolic and metaphorical levels can overlap, and it’s often a very fine line to distinguish between them, and not necessarily always useful to do so. However, it is essential for therapists to keep these different levels in mind so that interpretations can be broken down and not rushed through too quickly, for the sake of an immediate ‘aha’ moment that would obscure and eliminate all other possibilities.
At the same time, a single level of interpretation may contain several meanings. For example, at the symbolic level, seeing oneself locked in a dark cave from which no escape is possible can represent how my current life is functioning now, just as it can symbolize the overwhelming constraints which I am confronted with in my environment, or my inability to see my situation clearly, etc.
To shed light on our way of working, we offer below three very different clinical cases.
Marc is a 38-year-old man. He lives alone without any children. His mother died when he was 20, and he sees his father quite regularly. He has little contact with his brother, who lives far away. Marc has been to South America, where he tried mushrooms, peyote, and ayahuasca. During his experiences, he was given a highly spiritual task: to attain spiritual enlightenment and guide his fellow citizens on this path. He saw himself as having high spiritual potential and became convinced that this was his destiny. Unfortunately, his return home to France was not as smooth as expected. There were no followers to be found. His speeches were met with irony. He didn’t make a good Messiah. Disheartened and still convinced by the visions he experienced deep inside, he isolated himself and drifted into a state of depression.
When we meet him for the first time and ask him about the faith he has in his own visions, he answers that his mother had the gift of clairvoyance and that she spoke “The language,” implying the language used by Christ. So there was no doubt that he had to continue the work of his lineage, being himself, like his mother, a person different from others.
From a psychological viewpoint, we could make the hypothesis of narcissistic disorder, eased by an extraordinary ideal. This defense mechanism against narcissistic collapse, however, is undermined by the lack of disciples. The depressive movement is the reason for his consulting us, and not his psychedelic experiences, which he believes to have understood sufficiently well.
Initially, no attempt was made to deconstruct his defense mechanism. We looked at his mission and more precisely how he had come to this conclusion. Based on his visions where he had sensed divine power within and where he had seen himself conveying it to others, we came up with several other interpretations for each of the levels previously evoked.
For example, divine power was seen as a spark of life shared by every human being (transcendental level). It was no longer a superpower that he possessed and that made him into an exceptional being. Together, we worked on his representation of the visible and invisible worlds, and the beliefs attached to these representations; namely, whether every human being had a mission, who assigned it, and whether we all had some degree of freedom with regard to this mission.
We also looked to see if this mission could stand as a metaphor for the way his family functioned, in which one person was the leader of all. We explored his family lineages. Was this “gift” already present over several generations? He thought his maternal grandmother had it, but wasn’t sure. He could only confirm that this particular trait was not recognized by those around him. Rather, it caused exclusion. This was a form of transgenerational recurrence. He thus was able to see exclusion as something to be avoided and discontinued. We did not go any further on that level.
Next, we addressed the level of ego, in this case, the desire to be recognized, admired, loved, and to be able to guide others. Through this inquiry, he was able to let go of his feeling of being all-powerful. It reintroduced a notion of intersubjectivity that he was overriding. It was also a way of looking at his limits and of accepting his shortcomings, thus allowing acceptance of a sufficient level of frustration (in the psychoanalytical sense) to live in society.
We suggested to him to let his vision unfold to the maximum (on the imaginary level), push it to the limit, and see how that would be for him, and what he would learn from it. This is the process level. When we go to the very end of the rationale of “I have something divine that I must share with others,” it most often leads to a crazy, untenable position. In this situation, it could well lead to becoming a new Christ. Pushed to this extreme, he felt that it was not right.
During these experiences, he had felt full of energy. He told himself that it would be forever present in him and that he could rely on it for his new life projects. Working on the different interpretation levels allowed him to let go of the initial conclusion that had stuck him in an unbearable pattern. Working on his ego, he resumed humility, which, in turn, helped him find a job in nature that he easily adapted to.
Exploring the transcendental level through how he viewed the visible and invisible worlds set him back on a spiritual path that did not split him off from the people he knew. In this case, we can speak of a shock or intrusion that caused spiritual trauma. If psychedelics have been shown to open up a spiritual space that is helpful for the person, they can just as easily cause a form of trauma, because the experience cannot be integrated, thus locking the individual into an alienating dynamic.
This example shows us once again the regrettable absence of a containing setting when using psychedelics. Such experiments proposed in a different cultural context, with codes often unknown to us Westerners, do not allow the experimenters to integrate the contents of their experience.
The second situation refers to a person who underwent a bad experience using psychedelics with a sitter in a supposedly therapeutic context.
Simon had taken LSD. After marveling at the fantastic images and colorful music, he had found himself locked in a kind of hell with viscous, crooked, suffering beings. Some of them were obsessed with sex. Disgusted, Simon could see in these beings all the darkness of their souls. A voice sounded in his ears: “You’re just like them, just as bad… You’ll never get away with it… You’re doomed to stay here…”
In fact, until the end of his psychedelic experience, Simon would not leave this space. Very affected and upset by his experience, he shared it with his sitter, whose answer was: “The medicine knows what is good for you… Let this experience take you through.”
A state of depression ensued. Simon couldn’t bear to see this hideous evil forever lodged in the depths of his soul. He saw no way out of this condemnation. The darkness of the images he had seen on that trip had left a deep impression on him. He imagined he’d be stuck there even after his death. This state lasted more than three months without his sitter being able to help him any further. She was always evasive during their phone calls, probably overwhelmed by the situation herself.
It was at this point that Simon began work to heal his depression. We invited him to delve into the darkness he evoked and see how it was inscribed within. Through our elaborations, differentiation was made between his cowardice in everyday life, the fears that triggered aggression, the frustrations generating anger, and the possessive, predatory nature of his sex drive.
The darkness he witnessed during the journey was no longer a shapeless, slimy magma. In fact, each element of this hell could metaphorically represent an aspect of Simon’s personality. Viewed in this way, it provided a perspective to work with. By unfolding each element, we were able to extract him from the suffocating magma he couldn’t shake free from before.
This “bad trip” can be construed as an attack on the ego. The ego seeing itself in its darkest aspects with no hope of breaking out triggered the depressive episode. The attack on the ego also contributed to taking a good look at the reverse polarity: “Who do you think you are, to imagine you’d be free from negativity?” The process allowed Simon to identify his quest for an idealized self (being a good person in all respects), which cut him off from a whole part of his being.
His spiritual quest, as he practiced it, let him off from confronting his shadow areas. In fact, it really supported a cheap narcissism. However, it was actually through this soul-searching initiative that he finally was able to take into account the shadows perceived during his journey. He saw them as constitutive of all human beings, i.e. elements that everyone had to work on.
This transcendental perspective made him accept his shadow areas and brought him out of his self-condemnation that had frozen his being. Having to improve on these negative areas, as with any human being, brought movement back into his life. It also gave him more compassion for others and for their shortcomings.
At the process level, this experience was analyzed on two levels:
-The form of idealization that he held for his sitter was shattered. Through this idealization, Simon was looking for a knowledgeable figure who would pass on their knowledge to him. From the pupil being taught special knowledge, he became the grown man making the effort to search for himself. The fact that the sitter had failed to be of help forced him to give up his search for a master and to discover himself.
-The second level of the process consisted of pursuing his vision to the end, i.e. remaining locked up in this hell. Simon then asked himself who held such a power to condemn? Could God condemn a human being to such a degree?
Several hypotheses were offered to Simon on the basis of his spiritual beliefs:
-Christ (Simon had been raised as a Catholic) is a God of love and forgiveness. This is what He preaches. Simon could not see Him condemn in this way.
-Reincarnation makes us consider death a passage and not a prison.
-Returning to the original source is not what he had seen either.
Simon concluded that the only one who could condemn him to this hell was himself. He had to learn to forgive and have compassion for himself, which was quite different from a narcissistic drive.
At the same time, he had also associated the image of hell with what his father had endured during the war. This episode was never talked about in the family, and, as Simon saw it, everything about that war was censored in his family. Through his vision, it was as if that hushed-up part of family history was finally revealed. That’s how Simon interpreted it. Without talking about closer ties between father and son, Simon understood and accepted more of his father’s silence. It also opened up a whole new set of questions about his transgenerational legacies.
Working this way on the different levels enabled Simon to move out of his depressive state. This example shows that the medicine does not do the work on its own, contrary to what is sometimes claimed by some counselors. The qualification of the counselor/sitter is fundamental.
The third example tells us about a defaulting set and setting.
Elizabeth had been experimenting with a friend, Birgit. One day, Birgit suggested she should work with an LSD specialist she knew and admired highly. Elizabeth agreed, but some time before the experience, she got into an argument with Birgit.
On the day of her experience, Elizabeth was greeted very coldly by her friend, who quickly introduced her to the specialist before she left. After taking LSD, Elizabeth was shown into a small room, with a stained bed and deafening music. She remarked on the lack of cleanliness of the sheets, but at the insistence of the sitter, she moved in with resignation and disgust. After some time, Elizabeth got up and asked to move to a chair in another room. A power struggle immediately ensued. The sitter refused and, in a rage, Elizabeth physically grabbed her. Frightened, the sitter gave in. Shortly thereafter, Birgit reappeared. Elizabeth was beginning to come to her senses. Confused by the tense atmosphere, she decided to go home against Birgit’s advice.
This experience left Elizabeth in a deep state of unease and she severed contact with both her friend and the sitter. She thought things over without really understanding what had happened. Guilt took over.
A few months later, she signed up for a trip to swim with dolphins. Two striking events followed: a mother dolphin and her baby dolphin came to swim with her. Then, a hummingbird landed on her while she was lying on the sailboat in the open sea. These two events caused a shockwave. The discomfort disappeared and gave way to an old childhood memory of being in communion with animals. She had rediscovered the simple joy and wonder of her childhood nature.
Looking back with Elizabeth on what had happened, she saw these moments as signs of healing that her soul had granted her- an interpretation based on her spiritual approach strongly anchored in shamanism. This interpretation, based on a transcendental perspective, but also on a childhood experience, had reconciled her with life through connection to the animal world.
Yet there were further developments to the session. Her relationship with her friend Birgit changed. From a relationship of dependence, she went through a period of anger, sadness, and then detachment. She came to see how the emotional bond was tied in with a form of submission. This issue, playing out on the level of the ego, concerned all three persons involved. Each one was playing their part in the game (loyalty, displacement of the bond, and roles).
How the framework is set and how the setting (physical conditions) is organized will have a strong impact on the experience, since it conditions mindset and the inner security with which the experience is met: many psychic contents will be colored by those factors. It also underlines the importance of the sitters/caretakers overcoming personal issues in order to avoid feeding them back unconsciously into their work environment.
Thus the framework, which had become violent due to the climate of disagreement (above and beyond the mere dirtiness of the sheets and the intensity of the music), had, in turn, summoned Elizabeth’s physical violence. Realizing how everyone had participated in the unfolding of this session, Elizabeth was able to refrain from taking on all the guilt and to see what recurring patterns were at play in her relationships.
Curiously, Elizabeth had few memories of what she saw during her trip, other than her strong desire to admire the beauty of spring outside, from the vantage of a clean and quiet environment. It was as if the most important part of the experience revolved around what happened between these three people. In this situation, the process level stood out clearly. This episode also echoed on the metaphorical level for Elizabeth. It highlighted how the people who needed to take care of her had failed to do so, and how nature had made up for it.
The multiple levels summoned in the integration work (and their scope) require of the therapist a real freedom and skill in wielding the whole keyboard of interpretive planes, i.e. a vast opening to numerous therapeutic, symbolic, emotional, processual, transgenerational, and spiritual meanings, in the face of the infinite psychic contents unveiled in these experiences.
Through these three clinical vignettes, we propose a structured intervention framework quite different from what is applied in traditional therapies, and that we use when assisting clients with such painful experiences or “bad trips.” We insist on the polysemic nature of each vision and on the different levels to be explored:
-The symbolic level -The level of ego -The transcendental level -The somatic level -The process level -The transgenerational level
Of course, when exploring all these levels, some may not be relevant to the person’s experience. Yet we ought not be satisfied with the first insight singled out, which would lead to an overlooking of the other equally relevant possibilities. We have often noticed that by focusing on a first interpretation, one failed to question the ego level, thus avoiding an awkward challenge.
In fact, this type of work unfolds in time. Integration and assimilation cannot happen in the span of a few rare sessions following the stressful experience. Indeed, these bad experiences often confront our clients with hidden elements of their functioning, beliefs, or history, i.e. elements which they were not ready to face, hence the importance of in-depth support.
About the Authors
Denis Dubouchet: A clinical psychologist for 35 years, psychotherapist, and Gestalt therapist, he trained at Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and he has worked with shamans and participated in ceremonies in their countries. He is the author of Etats de Conscience Elargie, Psychothérapie et Chamanisme (Ed. Dervy, 2017). You can reach him at denis.dubouchet@gmail.com.
Rosine Fiévet: A Gestalt therapist and coach for over 20 years, Rosine first discovered shamanism in 1981 with the women of Okinawa. She now regularly travels to North and Latin America to explore the traditions of the First Nations people to support her practice in ancestral healing. She has completed a full course in shamanism with the Sacred Trust in England. You can reach her at rosine.fievet@orange.fr.
The 2020 U.S. election has brought several significant wins for proponents of drug policy. Presidential and pandemic madness aside, these wins deserve to be celebrated. Here are the most significant changes this election has ushered into law.
1. Psilocybin Mushrooms Have Been Legalized in Oregon
For the first time since they became a Schedule I drug in 1971, psilocybin mushrooms have attained legal status in a U.S. state. With nearly a 56% majority, Oregon’s Measure 109, referred to as the Psilocybin Services Act, has significantly altered the psychoactive fungi’s future in the state, and quite possibly the nation.
Psilocybin’s newfound legality in Oregon carries important caveats: mushrooms will be legal only within state-regulated “psilocybin service centers,” their use will require supervision by a state-licensed facilitator, a preparation session will be required, and participants must be over the age of 21. Thus, it would be more accurate to state that under the umbrella of the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), regulated psilocybin mental health services will now be legal in the state.
The OHA will establish the specific protocols- i.e. supervisor training requirements and dosing standards over the next two years. So long as universal implosion has not transpired by 2022, we will witness the formation of a legal service in the United States that committed psychonauts of the last many decades never could have anticipated.
So, Oregon will not suddenly become a haven for independent growers holding ecstatic dance bashes and selling their flushes to flannel-wearers far and wide. It will, however, set the standard for psilocybin-assisted mental health services in the United States. Given that the Schedule I label has long classified mushrooms as having “high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use,” a successful implementation of these treatment facilities could pave the way for large-scale changes in propaganda-informed prohibitions long embedded into federal law.
For the sake of a bad pun at the expense of one of two U.S. Presidents most responsible for these prohibitions, let’s celebrate Measure 109 as a loss for the Gipper, and a big win for the Tripper.
2. Measure 110 Decriminalizes Drug Possession in Oregon
Beyond the psychedelic-specific world, Oregon has made another huge move in ending the war on drugs with the passing of Measure 110. The measure, which passed with nearly a 59% majority, effectively decriminalizes non-commercial possession of small amounts of some of the most heavily penalized drugs in the country, including cocaine and heroin.
To clarify the significance, Oregon’s previous classification of non-commercial possession was a Class A Misdemeanor, which was punishable with up to a $6,250 fine and one year in prison. That has now changed to a Class E violation. Instead of potential imprisonment, folks possessing small amounts of these substances will have the option to pay a $100 fine or receive a “completed health assessment” at an addiction treatment facility. According to the measure, these treatment services will be paid for “in part by the state’s marijuana tax revenue and state prison savings.”
This is a huge win for those fighting the oppression of the war on drugs on several fronts. Not only are penalties far less life-destroying, but the state is actively shifting the ethos of criminality around substance use that has dominated the nation for decades into a model of rehabilitation and social service. Within this shift is the recognition that substance addiction is not reducible to moral failures of the will, but rather a mental health illness that often requires external intervention to heal.
Now, it’s key to remember the difference between “legalization” and “decriminalization.” Mushrooms, for instance, were famously decriminalized in Denver in 2019. This meant that they remained a Schedule I illegal substance, but the prosecution of their possession became the city’s lowest law enforcement priority. The potential ambiguities of this nuance were cast in sharp relief when Denver’s infamously boastful mushroom grower/distributor Kole Milner was raided by the DEA five months after the initiative’s passing. Milner was charged on one account of possession with intent to distribute, and last month, Milner pleaded guilty in hopes of reducing his sentence to six months in prison.
The goal in sharing this isn’t to freak you out or be a downer. It’s to remind you to be mindful and careful during this propitious phase of drug policy reform and evade the pitfalls of Icarus’ ill-fated hubristic flight.
A final implication of Measure 110 is that while psychedelics may be the substances of choice for readers of Psychedelics Today, it can be dangerous to over-glorify psychedelics at the expense of other drugs. Engaging in this “psychedelic exceptionalism” can unconsciously perpetuate and embed racially-motivated, propaganda-induced stigmas around “bad” drugs. As Dr. Carl Hart told Psychedelics Today, “It’s just wrong to vilify people for wanting to alter their consciousness and the particular drug that they use, especially when you’re doing the same thing with another drug.”
At its core, using any substance is choosing to alter consciousness. Measure 110 opens a big door on the long route toward making that choice an essential human right, while simultaneously recognizing and addressing the potential for harm that substance use invariably opens.
One of the most high-profile chapters of the Decriminalize Nature movement has been Washington D.C.’s Initiative 81. Yesterday, the initiative passed by a landslide, with 76% of voters casting a ballot in its favor.
The initiative effectively decriminalizes the “non-commercial cultivation, distribution, possession, and use of entheogenic plants and fungi” in the nation’s capital, a category defined as “species of plants and fungi that contain ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, mescaline, psilocybin, or psilocyn.”
Initiative 81’s passing makes D.C. the fourth U.S. city to decriminalize entheogens, and the fifth to decriminalize psilocybin. (Denver’s Ordinance 301 was limited to psilocybin mushrooms.) As with the decriminalization measures of Oakland, Santa Cruz, and Ann Arbor, the D.C. initiative renders the enforcement of laws against natural plant medicines among the lowest law enforcement priorities.
The decriminalization movement’s continuing spread through the U.S. has not come without controversy. The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (ICPI) and the National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC) have spoken critically of the decriminalization movement, citing histories of oppression and mistrust of these non-Indigenous measures that could further threaten peyote, their sacred and endangered medicine. In March of 2020, these organizations made a specific request that decrim movements remove the word “peyote” from their initiatives. While Initiative 81 mentioned “mescaline,” the psychoactive chemical of peyote, the phrasing appears to have respected this request.
4. Four States Legalize Cannabis for Adult Use
Cannabis is now legal for adult recreational use in four more states: Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota (South Dakota!). On top of legalization, Arizona’s passed measure will also allow for people previously convicted of particular cannabis-related crimes to clear their records. With these four added to the roster, cannabis is now legal for adult consumption in fifteen States.
South Dakota and Mississippi legalized cannabis for medical use as well, making South Dakota the first state to pass medical and recreational laws under two separate measures in the same election. These advances now bring the total number of states offering some form of medical access to thirty-five.
In their debriefing of these changes, the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) wrote, “By 2022, we could end U.S. federal marijuana prohibition.” The fight to end the war on drugs is far from over, but each new policy is a crucial step toward an optimistic conclusion.
Looking Forward
2020 has been quite a turbulent flight for many, if not an intergalactic rocket on constant verge of explosion. All predictions of where the world is headed appear to have collapsed into cosmic uncertainty. Nevertheless, amidst the turmoil these curated algorithms of frantic news churn and sell, significant changes in drug laws continue to take effect in unprecedented propulsion.
With these new laws in mind, as well as MDMA-assisted psychotherapy’s legal forecast set for 2023, the landscape of substance use and normalization is shaping up to look radically different by the mid-2020s. Plenty of folks are going to need some help rebounding from this seismic maelstrom we are collectively navigating. For those who often sink into despair lamenting the global situation, perhaps it’s helpful to remember that these new options are adorning the tables of expanding possibility.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in transpersonal counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes a great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
For decades, the subject of children and psychedelics has been one of great contention. The mere thought of exposing children to mind-altering substances elicits substantial controversy in public opinion, often considered a “no-go zone.” Anything that concerns children and how to best care for them precipitates strong reactions because parents aim to safeguard their well-being and protect them from harm’s way. Nonetheless, after a long period of suppression, we now find ourselves in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance. As access to these substances continues to expand through legalization, decriminalization, and medicalization efforts alike, our conversation redefining the use of these substances should seek to holistically address the groups that interact with them, including children.
Re-examining Cultural Paradigms
Viewing the subject through a Western lens, there is often the conception that child and adolescent brains are not fully developed, and that ingesting psychedelics could be damaging to brain development and identity formation. This view is widely held even among psychedelic enthusiasts, such as lay psychotherapist Ann Shulgin, who believes that “when you are under the age of, say, 16, you haven’t really lived that long. You haven’t had time to find out what the core of your self is.” Shulgin estimates that a well-prepared 15-16-year-old could cope with the experience, but recommends waiting a while “until you’ve lived a little bit” (Mind States, 2017).
Similarly, Armando Lozaiga, certified chemical dependency specialist and president of the Institute of Intercultural Medicine of Nierika A.C., suggests that adolescents from the age of 16 onwards are better psychologically equipped to deal with psychedelic experiences. At that age, “you have more of an emotional intelligence as well as abstract thinking functions,” he says. Lozaiga also contrasts Western and Indigenous perspectives, noting that “through a Western lens, in order to attain benefit, I feel that you have to have undergone certain hardships and have a medicinal need.”
In general, psychedelics are considered to be physiologically safe substances that do not lead to dependence or addiction. In fact, many classic psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, and ayahuasca are being researched for their anti-addictive properties. In theory, even if you were to ingest psychedelic substances on a regular basis, the human body is hardwired to develop a tolerance to them in a short timespan, diminishing both their psychoactive and physiological effects.
For many, the idea of pairing psychedelics with children (even in a medical venue) sounds absurd due to the cultural stigma attached. However, medicating young children diagnosed with ADHD with amphetamines like Adderall has become normalized within our societal paradigm. Why then, should it be such a leap for us to imagine that certain psychoactive substances could provide healing benefits to children?
In an interview conducted earlier this year, Mark Haden, the executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada discussed the topic, suggesting that psychedelic experiences are a health service, reframing the question by asking: “How do youths access health services?” Haden acknowledges that youth access in a medical context would also necessitate parental consent as well as being dependent on the individual child in question. He believes that there is no golden rule for an individual being ready for such experiences, firmly asserting that youth access “isn’t about age, it is about maturity.”
Limited studies have been conducted on psychedelics and children in a medical setting. However, researchers in the 1960s looked at LSD as a treatment for autistic children, concluding that the effects “were very promising and could even be considered excellent for the majority of children.” Despite this, the positive outcomes associated have often been dismissed due to the fact that the study designs employed were not as rigorous or effective when compared to today’s standards. A more recent double-blind study by Yale University is examining the effects of using ketamine as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression in adolescents.
Beyond this, Phase 3 clinical trials for MDMA as a treatment for PTSD are well underway, with MDMA moving ever closer to becoming an FDA-approved treatment. Once MDMA becomes legal, the FDA has signaled its willingness for MDMA to be used as a treatment for adolescents suffering from PTSD.
Regardless of whether or not children should have access to psychedelic substances, the fact remains that a large proportion of adolescents choose to experiment with psychoactive drugs before coming of age and graduating high school. According to the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 2 million U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 17 were current users of illicit drugs at the time.
As it stands today, when it comes to drugs, we tend toward a “zero tolerance” policy, strictly writing substances off because they are “bad” and have no perceived value. However, this attitude is itself dangerous as many young people world-over are drawn to experiment with psychedelic substances regardless, resulting in failed or misguided self-initiations that can be damaging and harmful. Our “‘zero tolerance’ style of drug education trivializes the factors underlying actual drug abuse and pathologizes normal adolescent experimentation” (Stuart, 2004).
As greater access to psychedelics awaits on the horizon, we are in dire need for a reform in drug education. The prevalent strategy of repeatedly reinforcing the message of simply avoiding drugs does not provide our youth with ways to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks associated with these substances.
Recognizing the need for a safe, non-judgemental space to talk about such delicate subjects, Rebecca Kronman, a licensed therapist specializing in psychedelic integration, founded Plant Parenthood, the only digital and in-person community dedicated to exploring how psychedelics impact modern parenting as well as de-stigmatizing the subject of children and psychedelics.
Reflecting on the origins of Plant Parenthood, Kronman shares that the idea for the project emerged through conversations with parent peers about psychedelics. “Many shared stories about their own use and how it changed them as a parent, and some shared about their use while their children were present (sometimes sleeping, sometimes not),” she says. “When these conversations can take place in a loving, open way, it makes space for more dialogue and inquiry, which is enormously helpful to reducing stigma.”
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
Taking a step beyond our cultural conceptions, there are numerous examples in which children are included in psychedelic medicine rituals, including non-substance participation in ceremony as well as use of psychedelic substances throughout all stages of the life cycle.
Kronman recently wrote on the topic, emphasizing the value of using Indigenous traditions to re-evaluate Western paradigms. “When we look towards Indigenous cultures, the paradigms that govern our thinking around children and psychedelics are reflected back to us,” she explains. “It allows us to see that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Within the Indigenous Huichol culture of Mexico, children are thought to begin ingesting peyote around the age of six, as they are able to verbally articulate their experience at that age (Stuart, 2004). Comparatively, within the Native American Church (NAC), younger children are less likely to consume peyote in ceremony, and are usually invited into the tipi as a rite of passage around the age of 12, when they hit puberty. Families in the Brazilian ayahuasca churches, Santo Daime and União do Vegetal, likewise allow children to participate in ceremonies and have also been known to give extremely small doses of ayahuasca to newborn babies as a symbolic initiation into their tradition.
Contrary to Western youth, Kronman (2020) highlighted the fact that “Indigenous children are not using psychedelics for escapism, experimentation, or in ways that are contrary to their society’s norms.” Instead, the ingestion of psychoactive plant sacraments is culturally ingrained into a way of life and the use of substances can be both culturally and spiritually reaffirming, reinforcing the values of the community. “If it is in ceremony, and Huichol children want to eat peyote, it is reinforced, as it is part of them fulfilling their spiritual identity,” says Lozaiga. “It is not a drug, it is a spiritual plant completely free of prejudice, and they know that it is not going to do them harm.”
Although both peyote and ayahuasca are Schedule I substances, Indigenous groups and ayahuasca communities are entitled access to their medicines through religious freedom laws. In the United States, Indigenous adolescents are free to participate in NAC road meetings (ceremonies) without facing legal hurdles due to their religious exemption, allowing them to use peyote as a ceremonial sacrament. Within the Brazilian ayahuasca churches, the consumption of ayahuasca by pregnant women and children is considered as an “exercise of parental rights” (Labate, 2011).
Childhood and adolescence are both periods characterized by significant brain development, and naturally, the use of substances that influence our brain functioning and development should be approached with caution. Hence, there is a paucity of research examining how psychedelics affect the developing brain.
Even so, there is no evidence that the long-term use of peyote causes brain damage and mental health issues. On the contrary, a 2015 study attempted to understand the long-term effects of peyote consumption in Native Americans, finding that there was no evidence of residual neurocognitive problems and that the subjects actually scored significantly higher on overall mental health measures compared to members of the same tribe who were of a different religion and did not use peyote. Similarly, another study analyzed the effects of ayahuasca on adolescents, comparing 40 Brazilian adolescents who consumed ayahuasca to a control group and finding no measurable difference in scores on neuropsychological and psychiatric tests.
In Indigenous peyote traditions, many women ingest peyote throughout different stages of their life cycle, including eating peyote prenatally, while nursing, and sometimes even during childbirth, as it is thought to help prevent miscarriage, allow for the healthy development of the fetus, increase breast milk production, and ease the experience of labor.
As it happens, the theme of pregnancy and peyote is intimately intertwined with the Huichol origin myth of the first pilgrimage to the sacred peyote desert, Wirikuta. In the myth, the Earth Goddess (Utüanaka) and the Mother of Peyote (Wiri’uwi) begin to menstruate before they enter the desert and encounter peyote, only to consume it and fall pregnant.
Stacy Schaefer, Professor Emerita of anthropology at California State University, has devoted much of her research career to the topic of pregnancy and peyote, illuminating how Huichol women use peyote throughout their life cycle as well as providing theories for how it may interact with the female reproductive system. Through her research, Schaefer has explored how consuming peyote throughout pregnancy may affect a baby’s cognitive development in the womb. With limited research on the processes of prenatal cognitive development, she speculates that peyote might stimulate the fetus’ neocortex and help with the connection of neurons in the brain.
Schaefer’s hypothesis is based on the idea that the more stimulation a baby gets, the better its nervous system will develop, including cognitive and reflex abilities. She compares this to an existing theory which posits that the reason newborn babies require so much sleep is because they do not get the necessary stimulation from the environment in their waking states. “Peyote is a stimulant, and I wonder what is going on as their brains are developing and these neural pathways are being created,” says Schaefer. “However, this is something that can’t be proven unless there is more research.”
In Schaefer’s field studies, some Huichol women suggest that eating peyote when you are pregnant can predispose young children toward becoming shamans. Schaefer attempts to make sense of this in relation to her theory. “We use very little of our brain capacity and perhaps the neural pathways that are being stimulated can create an even greater consciousness or awareness that wouldn’t normally exist,” she says. “Indigenous societies would not continue to do this if it was maladaptive. They would notice if something was wrong through trial and error,” she emphasizes. “They would see it is causing serious problems to their children and pregnancies, and they simply wouldn’t do it.”
“All I can say is that I can propose these ideas, but I don’t feel comfortable promoting children- especially young children consuming psychedelics, including peyote, in Western society, unless there is more medical and scientific research done,” says Schaefer.
Going beyond peyote traditions, it is also increasingly common within the Santo Daime and União do Vegetal ayahuasca churches for women to drink ayahuasca throughout their pregnancies and during the process of childbirth.
There is conflicting information revolving around the subject of pregnant women ingesting ayahuasca and peyote. Some advocate avoiding consuming ayahuasca and peyote during the first trimester in which the embryo undergoes critical development (Schaefer, 2018), while others suggest that it is perfectly safe to consume ayahuasca throughout the whole pregnancy (Labate, 2011).
Glauber Loures de Assis, sociologist and president of Céu da Divina Estrela, a Brazilian Santo Daime church, shared that his wife drank ayahuasca during the process of childbirth, finding it helpful and spiritually important. Beyond that, Loures de Assis shared, “The first thing I did when my son was born was to give him a drop of ayahuasca. In Santo Daime, it is in our tradition to serve ayahuasca to pregnant women and to children alike,” he says. “However, they often drink smaller quantities as a symbolic gesture.”
Non-Ingestive Ceremonial Participation
For pro-psychedelic parents looking to help lay the foundations of their children’s spiritual lives and expose them to the ceremonial aspect of psychedelic use (without them actively ingesting substances), Kronman (2020) suggests that introducing children to the ceremonial aspect of psychedelic use by itself can serve as a model for Western parents to teach their children important values about community, spirituality, and nature on an experiential level.
Lozaiga shared about his own experiences raising his children in this context: “In my experience, we sensitized our children to ceremonies, but we didn’t necessarily want to give substances to the kids until they were adolescents. For us, it was more about exposing them to the ritual; to the sacredness that revolves around the consumption of plants, rather than inducing visionary effects.”
“For many young adolescents, I think psychedelics can do more harm than good,” he says. “There is a general lack of guidance, and looking ahead, if we were to destigmatize these substances to the point where we could look at them objectively, I would like to see initiatory spaces in which young adults can come and be introduced to the sacred dimension of themselves in a guided way.”
Lozaiga additionally believes that incorporating youth in ceremonies and educating them about psychedelic medicines could serve as drug abuse prevention. “These plant medicines can help people be more inoculated, as once you have sat in ceremony, you begin to understand that it is no game.”
Re-examining Rites of Passage
It is clear that in our modern, industrialized culture, we are missing meaningful rites of passage that help our youth transition into adulthood. It has been thought that modern-day Western society allows for the delay of adult responsibilities, in that youth are educated for extended periods of time to meet the employment demands of today’s complex economy (Stuart, 2004). Many young people seek ways to claim the independence of adulthood, and experimenting with psychedelics is one of those ways.
Despite contention over what age adolescents should have access to psychedelic substances, many agree that under the right circumstances, with the proper guidance and a controlled set and setting, such experiences could potentially be beneficial in serving an initiatory function for young people. “I think it is treacherous in Western society to promote psychedelics with children from birth until puberty,” says Schaefer. “However, at puberty and adolescence, under the right circumstances, with a proper support system in place, it has the potential to be an incredible rite of passage.”
In many ways, Western, industrialized society has become bereft of meaningful rites of passage. However, our society is still permeated with rituals like the celebration of birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, graduations, and so on. Exploring how our rituals have become deprived of meaning and living spirit, beloved guru and countercultural figure, Ram Dass, suggested that the main problem with modern-day rites of passage is that they “no longer provide direct contact with the numinous” (Dass, 2004).
It is important to tread with care despite the existence of both anecdotal and empirical evidence, in that there are very few peer-reviewed scientific studies observing how psychedelics affect adolescents and how they affect children developmentally when mothers ingest prenatally or during nursing. However, we can learn from Indigenous communities and their age-old cultural integration of plant medicines throughout the life cycle, better preparing our own children to approach these substances with respect. By including children in the psychedelic dialogue, we pave the way to dissolving the taboo and stigma that are often a cause for harm among Western adolescents, as well as cultivating reverence for the sacredness of these substances.
In re-examining the principles that have dominated our perceptions in the West, and looking beyond the boundaries of our society’s current paradigm while integrating the wisdom of other cultures, we can develop a fuller and more nuanced understanding of these substances and what they can add to our lives.
Schaefer, S. B. (2018) Fertile Grounds? – Peyote and the Human Reproductive System. In McKenna. D. (Ed.) Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs (Vol. 1 & 2): 50 Years of Research. Synergetic Press.
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer and editor. Since 2018, she has been working for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany, and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine is also a writer for Psychedelics Today, Chacruna.net, Lucid News, and Cosmic Sister. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transpersonal Psychology at the Alef Trust with the future aim of working in psychedelic integration therapy. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, grounded and meaningful way.
Claudio Naranjo was a Chilean-born shaman of Moorish, Spanish, and Jewish descent. He was also a psychotherapist, medical doctor, author, educator, serious Buddhist practitioner, and pioneer in the areas of psychology, psychedelic therapies, and human development. His integrative approaches to a variety of fields elevated his work and created global reach and influence. He was always keen to point out that “spirituality should not be confused with religious beliefs or moral codes.” Towards the end of his life, he stressed the importance of emotional education, and the forgotten goal of educating for wisdom– and not just for knowledge to be harnessed for financial gain.
An early practitioner of Enneagram, he enriched it by integrating Gestalt therapy via Gurdjeff, meditation, music and art therapy, and other practices designed to provide deep, personal insights. But he admitted a vulgar commercialization of the Enneagram took place in North America. He explored the power of education to counter the patriarchal beliefs contributing to our deepening global crisis. “To change the world,” Claudio would say, “change education.” Naranjo’s approach to Buddhism was the same as the Buddha’s; he taught meditation with the offer to “ just try it,” and “see what it offers.”
His many years of teaching at Esalen Institute in the 1960s were both a pinnacle as well as a painful period in his life. One of his closest friends was Carlos Castaneda, who agreed with his concern that the “powerful gentleman Mr. Money” had increasingly taken control of the world, and belittled human beings to the point of dehumanization. Claudio soon became one of Fritz Perls’ three successors at Esalen, along with Jack Downing and Robert Hall. Claudio attended sensory awareness workshops with the legendary Charlotte Selver. Richard Evans Schultes arranged for Naranjo to make a special journey by canoe up the Amazon River to study ayahuasca with the South American Indians. He brought back samples of this drug and published the first scientific description of the effects of its active alkaloids.
Claudio also took part in the meetings of Leo Zeff’s pioneering psychedelic therapy group. He was an early enthusiast of using psychedelics (primarily ayahuasca, MDMA, and ibogaine) as medicines for a panoply of social and psychiatric conditions. Married four times, his last partner was Carolyn Merchant, a marriage and family therapist and a co-worker with Claudio on his book and teachings. In 1970, Claudio lost his only son in a terrible car accident on Big Sur’s Highway 1. He stated that the most significant realization of his life was that “nothing is more important in our time than our learning to be a little kinder.”
The Naranjo Institute presented the Seekers After Truth (SAT) program in 2012, with a new cohort opening annually. The program consists of four residential workshops, each lasting between six to nine days. The retreats represented a comprehensive exploration of psychological, spiritual, and expressive practices for understanding the human trajectory toward growth and fulfillment. From exploring who we have become and the precise ways we have each become stuck and continue to get stuck, the program went on to encourage processes of active healing and the expansion of one’s sense of possibilities. It was a “supplementary curriculum” of self-knowledge, relationship-repair, and spiritual culture.
In the course of its evolution as a program for personal and professional development of therapists and teachers since its rebirth in the late eighties, Naranjo called SAT a “psychotherapy laboratory,” in which people learned to help each other through the development of psychotherapeutic skills that do not require a background in the customary academic theoretical literature. He called this the “democratization of psychotherapy,” and education of future teachers, who may be able to assist their students in their personal growth.
Claudio’s recent and last talk was the highlight of the 2019 World Ayahuasca Conference in Girona, Spain. I will never forget his courage as one of his arms was violently swinging in the air due to his Parkinson’s. For all of his powerful influence on the development of human consciousness, in the bigger picture, Naranjo felt unsatisfied with his work, and disillusioned: “The economy has dominated politics, and practically everything else, asphyxiating life and its intrinsic values, the social order, and all our institutions.” A harbinger of things to come (such as defunding police) was his hope that the community take charge of many things (or perhaps of everything) that it once delegated to its governments, including communications, finance, and maintaining peace.
Claudio also found time to write or edit numerous books. He revised an early book on Gestalt therapy and published two new ones. He published three books on the Enneagram of Personality, as well as The End of Patriarchy. He also published a book on meditation, The Way of Silence and the Talking Cure, and Songs of Enlightenment.
Published in 2010 with a foreword by Jean Houston, was Healing Civilization: Bringing Personal Transformation into the Societal Realm through Education and the Integration of the Intra-Psychic Family. Naranjo explored what he saw as the root causes of the destruction of humanity: war, violence, oppression of women, child abuse, environmental endangerment, and patriarchy, which has taken root over millennia in our own conditioned minds. He touted the work of Tótila Albert, who asks us to see ourselves as three-brained with the “Inner Father” (corresponding to the head), the “Inner Mother” (corresponding to the heart), and the “Inner Child” (corresponding to the instincts). As people learn to integrate these three “brains,” Naranjo believed, they (the instincts) may bring about a functional- even divine, family within. For Naranjo, transforming education to be oriented toward personal and collective evolution could help heal civilization.
In his last book, The Revolution We Expected: Cultivating a New Politics of Consciousness (2020), Dr. Naranjo presents a call for individual and societal transformation in order to rebuild and humanize our institutions and realize a post-patriarchal global ecological community. “Even if the catastrophe of the sinking of the patriarchal vessel in which we have been sailing continues,” Naranjo writes, ”it is better for us to understand, by going through our crisis with faith, that the agonizing death rattles of our civilization are our greatest hope for regeneration.” He speaks of “apprentice shamans, who, without knowing it, are searching for their own development, and will sooner or later have the possibility of being of help in a world needing precisely those qualities they are developing.”
Dr. Naranjo observes that ‘realizing’ is the bravest thing of all- “to see that one was wrong and to change direction.” As Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker reminds us, “We humans have a very good eye for intellect but we do not yet have the right organ to understand consciousness.”
Claudio Naranjo passed away in July of 2019 at 86 years old.
The role of therapy in psychedelic therapy has been underexplored in mainstream articles that focus more on neuropharmacology and the psychedelic medicine experience. Without therapy, however, results from clinical trials would be no more significant than if the substance was studied in a recreational setting, and the fact that there is such a difference is central to the growing appeal.
As our companion article on psychedelic therapy explained, numerous therapeutic approaches used in psychedelic therapy converge on an inner-directed, relational approach. In psychedelic sessions themselves, therapists take more of a back-seat role, encouraging clients to focus inward and engage in an authentic process facilitated by their “inner healer” and refraining from interpretation. Still, complications can arise in psychedelic sessions, such as an upsurge of trauma, and if therapists lack the skills to respond, they risk leaving clients stuck and unresolved, potentially re-traumatized from improper care in a vulnerable state.
While therapeutic training is essential in case overwhelming content arises, the bulk of therapy work occurs during preparation and integration sessions. Across numerous clinical trials and clinics offering ketamine and cannabis-assisted psychotherapy, psychedelic therapists are using many therapeutic approaches to help their clients heal. Here are some of the most common.
Internal Family Systems
One of the most consistently referenced models used in psychedelic therapy is internal family systems (IFS). Developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, IFS views the psyche as an amalgamation of interrelated personalities, or “parts” that often conflict with one another. IFS brings clients’ attention toward three main parts of the psyche: Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. When these parts are in conflict, they prevent people from grounding in their core Self.
Exiles are related to psychological trauma, often from early childhood. They are the parts that have been cast away- buried beneath shame, fear, or pain that has not been expressed or accepted. In psychoanalytic terminology, they have been “repressed.” Managers keep the Exiles in control, relegating them to their shadowy domain so they do not disrupt overall function. Still, Exiles sometimes break through Managers’ control, at which point Firefighters take over, putting the system on high alert and inciting reactive behaviors to avoid encountering the Exiles. All of these parts create the “internal family,” and IFS helps clients center in the Self, which transcends all the parts, to create a loving inner container for intrapsychic balance and communication.
“The goal of IFS is to first acknowledge these protected and wounded parts within a person, and then to foster this reconnection with the higher Self,” explained Jason Sienknecht, who practices ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in Fort Collins, CO. “Ultimately, the Self is put into a position of a manager so the other parts can fall in line behind the Self’s guidance, instead of monopolizing a person’s consciousness. We want the Self to monopolize the person’s consciousness.”
Sienknecht is a MAPS-trained MDMA-assisted psychotherapist and a lead trainer for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute (PRATI). In his psychedelic therapy work, Sienknecht regularly uses IFS. “The reason I gravitate toward IFS is because ketamine aligns the client with their higher Self, or innerhealer, very naturally,” Sienknecht said. “The Self doesn’t need development- it’s the root of love and wisdom within each of us. Some people have lost sight of the Self through years of identifying with the protected or wounded parts of themselves.”
Sienknecht added that clients’ subpersonalities also naturally arise under the influence of ketamine, and IFS helps them make sense of the confusing content. As such, it is more a framework of integration than an intervention used in psychedelic sessions. “When you’re engaged in dialogue in a medicine session, you don’t want to give your client linear, logical reflections that their left brain can attach to,” Sienknecht said. “You want to encourage their non-linear state of consciousness to continue, rather than connecting them back to their thinking mind. I generally don’t bring my understanding of IFS into the dialogue of a medicine session.”
As a tool for psychedelic integration, IFS provides a powerful means to restructure one’s relationship to one’s inner reality for lasting healing to occur.
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy preceded internal family systems as a predominant modality focused on internal parts. Created and developed by Fritz and Laura Perls in the 1940s and 1950s, Gestalt therapy helps clients enhance their present moment awareness through acute sensitivity to internal responses to stimuli. “Gestalt is a way to identify inner polarities within a person, or inner parts, and encourage dialogue between those opposing parts or beliefs,” explained Sienknecht.
Those dialogues can take the form of the “empty chair technique,” in which clients converse with a part of themselves as if that part is sitting in the empty chair beside them. Clients are encouraged to feel and express the emotions that arise. Through the process, therapists help them expand their self-awareness and take more responsibility over their way of being in the world.
Sienknecht recently facilitated ketamine therapy for a man suffering from alcoholism. A part of this man wanted to stay in a comfort zone and keep emotional pain at bay, which he did through binge drinking, while another part wanted to free himself from that addiction. Sienknecht helped him become aware of the polarity between these opposing parts, and from that awareness, the client could move toward resolving the conflict.
Psychedelics can enhance clients’ awareness of the relationships and dichotomies between internal parts of themselves. Therapists have found that models based on accepting and balancing those parts can significantly enhance the healing potential from that newfound awareness.
Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy refers to body-focused psychotherapy. Somatic therapy is a relatively recent development without much research on its efficacy, yet it has still recently come to be regarded as one of the most effective approaches for healing trauma. Its foundational premise is that trauma is stored in the nervous system, and listening to the body’s messages is the ideal inlet to healing trauma’s lasting effects.
The two most prevalent somatic methods are sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing. Rafael Lancelotta, a psychedelic therapist and researcher practicing in Denver, CO, helped elucidate the differences. “Somatic experiencing is highly relational and has a ton of emphasis on resourcing,” he said. “Sensorimotor is more based on movement. It’s a little less relational; more let’s go into your body and see where these incomplete movements are. It’s more physical in nature.”
The somatic style used by Innate Path, a psychedelic therapy clinic where Lancelotta worked for two years, is called trauma dynamics. Trauma dynamics uses elements of both approaches but focuses more on challenging clients outside of their window of tolerance. Lancelotta explained that while challenging clients can be effective, sometimes it can be too challenging and push clients too far outside their comfort zone. “I’ve found it most helpful to use pieces of all of these to find something that can be more fluid from one person to the next,” he explained.
Since somatic therapy involves focusing on the body, it can be a helpful intervention in psychedelic sessions themselves. If therapists notice that clients appear stuck in their processing, they can invite the client to focus on their body and notice what arises. From there, new content can become conscious, allowing the client to move toward the point of stuckness and continue processing through it.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Many psychedelic therapists reject the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and claim it does not lend itself well to psychedelic work. Nevertheless, one of Johns Hopkins University’s most significant psilocybin studies to date uses a framework of CBT- a study using psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for smoking cessation.
Dr. Matthew Johnson is the study’s principal investigator. While he explained that the psilocybin sessions themselves (which typically involve the synthetic equivalent of a Terence McKenna “heroic dose”) proceed with a non-directive, supportive approach, the many weeks of preparation and integration are CBT-focused.
“In terms of the CBT, my thinking is that any number of empirically validated forms of therapy can be brought to bear here,” Johnson said. “If a tool tends to work for the disorder of focus, my bet is we can combine it with psychedelics and make it work. When you’re talking about smoking cessation, most of the programs and a lot of empirical support are based in CBT.”
CBT is among the most widely practiced therapies; used for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction. Therapists help clients identify distorted thought patterns and then replace these cognitive distortions with new, healthier thought patterns, which correspond to better emotional regulation and healthier behavioral patterns. CBT has no interest in psychoanalysis and the unconscious mind. It is an action-oriented, solution-focused approach, and Johnson has found it particularly effective during the “afterglow” of a psychedelic experience.
“We have a lot to figure out [about] what that afterglow is, but there’s probably some neuroplasticity lingering- this window of increased agency,” Johnson said. “If we then establish a new normal with boring, bread-and-butter techniques like CBT, it’s probably going to help.”
In the study’s ongoing second iteration, 59% of participants who received psilocybin were confirmed as abstinent from smoking in the one-year follow-up, as compared with 27% who received a nicotine patch. Such powerful results suggest that even modalities unconcerned with psychological depth can enhance psychedelics’ healing properties.
Mindfulness-Based Approaches
Mindfulness involves directing one’s open attention to present moment awareness. While this may seem like a given in therapy, many therapeutic approaches encourage interpretation and recounting of past experiences, both of which can impede awareness of the present. Mindfulness-based approaches to therapy, such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction, foster present-moment awareness as a path to healing.
Sienknecht has found that mindfulness-based approaches align well with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. “Ketamine quickly and effectively helps someone transition from the thinking self to the observing self,” he explained. “It just so happens that meditation does the exact same thing. Meditation mimics the activity of the higher Self, which some people refer to as the eternal witness. You’re not walking down the street, you’re aware of yourself walking down the street. It’s one step back from the ego. Mindfulness-based psychotherapy can help teach the skills needed to move more fully into this observing self.”
In order for people to move more fully into the witnessing Self, both inside and outside the psychedelic session, it is important they develop a daily mindfulness practice. “I find that people who practice daily throughout the course of a two-month ketamine treatment program are more able to move in the natural direction of the medicine as it moves you away from your thoughts and into an observing self,” Sienknecht explained.
A daily mindfulness practice does not have to be seated meditation. The practice can involve journaling, painting, exercising, or simply walking through the woods, as long as it is intentional time taken to practice awareness and receptivity to what arises within and without.
The Hakomi Method
The Hakomi Method is a mindfulness-based somatic approach that is often discussed alongside psychedelic therapy. Developed by Ron Kurtz in the 1970s, Hakomi focuses clients on their present-moment experience and understands that the body is the harbinger of messages from one’s inner workings. Hakomi clients are encouraged to focus on mental content that arises alongside embodied sensations, such as images and memories.
Hakomi therapists use “probes” to gather information on a client’s internal process. These probes often aim at clients’ core beliefs that structure their relationships to their self and their world. For instance, a hakomi therapist might encourage a client to close their eyes, focus on their breath, and notice what arises as they say, “You are lovable exactly as you are.” It does not matter whether a client experiences elation and lightness, or bitter, self-defeating thoughts and constriction of the stomach- what matters is that the client notices what happens, because the response contains all the information needed to then work with the core content.
Psychedelic sessions can cast new light on core stories while also showing clients that other stories are possible. Skilled Hakomi therapists help clients restructure and heal those stories’ ongoing impact on their present moment experience.
Experiential Therapy
Another present-focused approach is experiential therapy. Sara Reed spoke to the approach’s efficacy in her work with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy at the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut, as well as her work in MAPS’ Phase II trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. “What that therapy is about is really focusing on what’s happening in the here and now,” Reed explained. “Often clients come in flooded with a lot of different things, and experiential therapy can help clients slow down and be present with what’s happening in the here and now.”
Experiential therapy can take many forms; those forms are united in that therapists involve clients in real, present-focused processes to gain insight into their thoughts, feelings, and emotional responses. Examples include art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, adventure therapy, and psychodrama.
Michelle Hobart, a specialist in psychedelic integration, uses psychodrama with her clients. She described psychodrama as “an embodied enactment of certain scenes from life,” thereby allowing clients to engage creatively with their experience. “Creativity is a really important way of working with the material that arises,” Hobart explained. She often helps clients work with their psychedelic experiences as if they were dreams, focusing less on analytical processing than on “embodiment and active imagination.” This approach becomes especially important when psychedelic experiences cannot be rationalized or interpreted at all.
Transpersonal Psychology and Spiritual Emergence
While transpersonal (meaning “beyond the personal”) psychology is not a modality, it is a broad wave of western psychology that embraces the validity of non-ordinary states of consciousness and understands humans as inherently spiritual. Academic programs in transpersonal psychology, such as those offered at Naropa University and Sofia University, are among the most popular programs for students interested in working with psychedelics. Understanding the expansive frameworks through which it views people can help therapists support clients through their most challenging internal experiences.
An important topic within transpersonal psychology is “spiritual emergence.” Developed by Stan and Christina Grof, spiritual emergence refers to experiences in which individuals suddenly expand far beyond their established understandings of themselves into a broader perspective on the universe. When this process becomes too overwhelming, it can incite a “spiritual emergency,” which the western diagnostic model can misinterpret as psychosis.
“Spiritual emergency is when something comes up that’s so expansive that it’s not able to be metabolized or integrated,” explained Hobart, who specializes in spiritual emergence in her integration work with clients. “Sometimes that opening is very ecstatic and blissful, and sometimes it’s terrifying and devastating. If we don’t have a framework for how to work with and hold spiritual emergence and emergency, then when that process happens; whether it’s catalyzed by medicines or happens spontaneously as through kundalini awakening or near-death experience, people may think it’s a mental illness or psychosis. Then people get sent into hospitalization, thrown into the pathology paradigm and forcibly medicated, and it’s not understood as what is actually happening.”
In honoring clients’ overwhelming experiences, Hobart helps clients integrate those experiences and adjust into a society that does not understand or appreciate their profound transpersonal expansion. “I hold it in terms of awakening to spiritual gifts,” she explained.
Hobart also suggested that the potential for spiritual emergency in a psychedelic session heightens the need for therapists to be highly skilled and trauma-informed. “Some people who have been activated into these states have not been held properly in medicine spaces,” she said. “To be able to hold spiritual emergence and emergency, and for that matter, entheogenic work, people need to have attunement and the capacity to hold emotional and energetic space. And they need to be trauma-informed. That’s a huge piece.”
Conclusion
If anyone told you that being a psychedelic therapist is easy, that person lied to you. While specific regulations and training requirements are sometimes hazy and differ between medicines, psychedelic therapy calls for both responsibility and a diverse skill set for therapists to bring out optimal healing potential for their clients.
These therapeutic approaches and frameworks do not comprise a complete picture of the approaches currently being practiced in psychedelic therapy. As Johnson suggested, it is possible, if not likely, that psychedelics can enhance any therapeutic specialty. Regardless, a robust therapeutic tool kit will help any psychedelic therapist meet clients’ specific needs. There is always more to learn, and psychedelic work has never been about staying within an established pattern or comfort zone.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in transpersonal counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes a great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) is a small, spineless cactus endemic to North America, growing in the vast desert thorn scrub that runs from the southwestern United States into north-central Mexico. For centuries, the mescaline-containing cactus has been used by Indigenous groups in Northern America as a ceremonial medicine and a religious sacrament considered integral to their way of life. The rapidly growing psychedelic movement has generated a new wave of interest in plant medicines, including peyote, requiring us to tread with awareness for the impact this has on the Indigenous cultures and communities who have long stewarded these medicines.
At present, the peyote cactus is in the midst of a deep conservation crisis. Over the past few decades, wild peyote populations have been rapidly declining due to a convergence of factors including oil and gas development, illegal poaching, agricultural development, and unsustainable harvesting practices. Amongst Indigenous communities, there is a growing need to conserve this quickly disappearing natural resource that is a core element of the Native American Church (NAC), the largest pan-Indigenous religion in the United States.
Due to growing evidence of the decline of peyote and mounting concern about obtaining their sacred medicine, the NAC commissioned the Peyote Research Project (PRP) in 2013. The first phase of the project (PRP 1) concerned itself with documenting the decline of peyote as well as assessing threats to its natural habitat, while the second phase (PRP 2) focused on identifying conservation strategies, including “securing sovereign land” to protect the Peyote Gardens and building relationships with landowners to lease space for replanting and harvesting.
Sandor Iron Rope, former President of the Native American Church of North America, current president of the Native American Church of South Dakota, member of the Oglala Lakota Oyate (Oglala Sioux Tribe), and Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (IPCI) board member, reflects that “supply and demand have always been an issue, and when we started looking at it through the lens of the PRP, we found out many issues were in the forefront of the longevity of supply.”
The research activities of the PRP showed that peyote was under threat, both in regards to its populations and quality of the plant. As the need to conserve peyote became more pressing, the National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC) called for the establishment of the IPCI. “The coalition of the NCNAC were involved in PRP 2, and the collective decided that conservation itself needed to be addressed. Hence, IPCI was born in 2017,” says Iron Rope. “The Church is a religious, spiritual organization, however, peyote is a cactus that needs its own attention as far as its conservation status.” IPCI is not a religious organization, but a conservation center focused entirely on supporting the broader NAC community in North America. It is led by a Board of Directors controlled by NAC leaders from across the United States.
In late 2017, the NCNAC secured 605 acres of peyote habitat in southern Texas, often referred to as “the 605” on behalf of IPCI, with the help of the RiverStyx Foundation. Later that year, IPCI was formally established with the aim of empowering Indigenous communities across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to conserve and regenerate peyote for generations to come. IPCI operates as a non-profit, officially becoming a 501c(3) organization in 2018. In early 2019, IPCI held its first peyote harvest on the 605, educating children alongside their families on how to harvest in an ecologically and spiritually respectful way.
Unlike other conservation initiatives, IPCI is a cooperative Indigenous-led initiative, and is employing a range of biocultural strategies in order to conserve, as well as facilitate spiritual reconnection with peyote. Beyond purchasing land allotted for peyote conservation, they are also building alliances with local landowners, and developing a system of harvest and distribution that is in line with their values.
IPCI considers the rancher community in south Texas an important ally in its efforts, and its members have established an ongoing relationship with landowners from whom they lease land for biocultural harvesting and replanting. “Sharing our perspective as practitioners with the ranchers, we were encouraged to seek our own land and regain sovereignty over our medicine,” shared Iron Rope. “Most ranchers that we spoke to had a lot of issues concerning poaching, and lack of respect for their land making them fully supportive of our cause.”
How and When Did Peyote Become Endangered?
For decades, Indigenous cultural practices and peyote ceremonies were suppressed across the U.S., with peyote ceremonies being illegal in many states where peyotists practiced. It wasn’t until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed in 1978 (and further amended in 1994 to expressly include peyote) that the NAC was finally granted exemption on a religious basis, allowing federally recognized tribes to use peyote as a ceremonial sacrament. The possession, transportation, and use of peyote by persons who are not members of federally recognized tribes remain illegal under federal law.
The endangered status of peyote is by no means a new problem. According to Dawn Davis, a Shoshone Ph.D. candidate at the University of Idaho and an Indigenous researcher studying the peyote habitat, researchers and scholars have been talking about peyote’s endangerment since the 1960s, when so-called “hippies” became aware of its “psychedelic” properties.
In the heat of the 1960s countercultural revolution, peyote was brought to public attention, gaining worldwide popularity through the works of Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castaneda. Their writings generated a newly sparked interest in the psychoactive properties of the plant and resulted in an influx of eager psychedelic tourists traveling to Texas and Mexico to seek out the famed cactus in its natural habitat.
To some extent, this trend continues today as we find ourselves in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance, and interest in the therapeutic potentials of visionary plants continues to grow. Such “psychedelic tourism” has inevitably impacted the availability of peyote for Indigenous groups. In fact, it was the countercultural movement of the 1960s and the corresponding interest in psychoactive substances that resulted in the U.S. government enacting The Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified peyote as a Schedule I substance.
Due to improper harvesting techniques and overharvesting, peyote populations were left decimated, and it was declared an endangered species in Mexico as early as 1991. Currently, peyote is listed as “vulnerable” as populations in the wild continue to decline. “The International Union for the Conservation of Nature placed peyote on their red list as a vulnerable species in 2009 and the next level after re-evaluation of the population, it could move to endangered status,” says Davis. “It is also important to acknowledge that within the United States, in Texas, peyote is considered an endangered species at the local level.”
Other threats to peyote populations are largely a result of exploitative land management practices, including mining, oil and gas development, the construction of wind turbines, rancher root plowing, cattle grazing, and poaching. “Over the last ten years, wind turbine development within peyote gardens has had a huge impact on peyote populations, completely extirpating large populations of cacti from the natural range,” says Davis.
Another less obvious threat to peyote lies in the ongoing debate between Indigenous groups and the decriminalization community. Earlier this year, IPCI and NCNAC leaders produced an official statement in response to Decriminalize Nature Oakland’s resolution to decriminalize all plant medicines, including peyote. Although those working with Decriminalize Nature (DN) might have been well-intentioned, NCNAC leaders felt disappointed in Decrim’s failure to consult with Indigenous peoples, as well as their oversight of the cultural and religious history of peyote and the plant’s endangered status. The NCNAC’s statement requested that Decriminalization initiatives should not include peyote in their efforts to decriminalize all plant medicines, with the concern that it would provide citizens with a false sense of legality. Indigenous leaders fear that the decriminalization of peyote could unintentionally cause damage to populations by serving to “increase interest in non-native persons either going to Texas to purchase peyote or to buy it from a local dealer who has acquired it illegally and unsustainably in Texas.”
Very recently, Decriminalize Nature Santa Cruz issued a formal apology to the NAC for not consulting with them prior to proceeding with the resolution to decriminalize all entheogenic plants and fungi. DN Santa Cruz’s apology was accepted, and both the NCNAC and IPCI have stated that they “look forward to building a continued relationship based on unity, solidarity, and allyship.” DN Santa Cruz hopes other Decrim efforts will follow their lead, building a respectful relationship with Indigenous peyote practitioners.
A licensed distribution system was established in Texas as a regulatory companion to the federal exemption for Native religious use of peyote. This system employs licensed dealers, also known as peyoteros, to legally harvest and distribute peyote to NAC members, however, not all peyoteros necessarily consider Indigenous values of spiritual and ecological sustainability.
There have been issues with over-harvesting and improper harvesting by the current licensed dealers. When harvesting is done sustainably, the top of the root hardens and is able to produce more peyote pups in the future. Peyoteros (and black-market poachers) sometimes sever the root, causing the entire plant to die.
Iron Rope expressed IPCI’s intentions of being inclusive of and working with existing peyoteros, wanting to build relationships with them and start a dialogue about sustainable harvesting techniques. “The IPCI are a new family in the neighborhood,” he says. “We come as friends, as neighbors, as partners, and we don’t want to engage in any type of conflict.” However, IPCI also wants to take a step towards sovereignty, training Indigenous distributors so as not to rely solely on current suppliers.
“As Indigenous practitioners, it is important for us to reconnect in order to gain the full spiritual benefit of our medicine,” Iron Rope shared. “We are learning how to sustain our peyote for generations because a lot of our tribes have never harvested medicine and we have become lazy in a sense, relying on the non-practitioner distributors to send it to us in the mail.”
At the beginning of this year, there were four licensed peyoteros. According to Davis, the process of becoming a licensed peyotero is both time-consuming and costly, involving submitting an application to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Up until last year, peyoteros were licensed through the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). However, the law has changed and the DPS regulatory program was dissolved, making it only possible to acquire a license through the DEA.
“The stringent process of becoming a licensed peyotero involves annual application fees and thorough background investigation, but as far as harvesting protocols and regulations, there are now none,” adds Davis. “This has contributed to a lot of the issues that peyote is having in regard to propagation, because distributors aren’t necessarily harvesting ecologically. “If you look at pictures taken from peyote harvests, you can see that a shockingly high percentage of peyote are harvested unsustainably.”
Even if harvesting protocols and regulations were implemented through the DEA, Davis is doubtful that they would be effective, in that peyoteros operate in sparsely populated areas and such regulations would be hard to monitor. She also fears that increasing regulation would push distributors out of the business, making it more difficult for tribes who don’t have a connection to landowners in Texas to access their medicine.
“I feel that there is a more organic way of resolving this than relying on western law,” says Davis. “Rather, NAC practitioners could prevent these issues by educating fellow peyote practitioners about what a properly harvested peyote button looks like, encouraging them to buy sustainably harvested peyote.” Demanding properly and spiritually harvested peyote is the first step to bringing about lasting change.
How Can The Psychedelic Community Respect Indigenous Traditions?
As the psychedelic renaissance continues to unfold, it is increasingly important that we learn from the mistakes of the past, and make efforts to avoid another wave of colonial entitlement when it comes to peyote as a plant medicine.
Despite being given such reverence by Indigenous tribes and the NAC, peyote traditions have been extremely misunderstood by outsiders for centuries. From the persecution of peyote traditions beginning in the early 1600s by Spanish colonists in Mexico to the 19th and 20th-century legal suppression of peyote practices in the U.S., Indigenous people have had to undergo countless struggles to ensure the continued use of their sacred medicine.
Rather than feel entitled to peyote, the psychedelic community can serve as an ally to Indigenous communities by listening and choosing to support them in the ways that they wish to be supported. “It starts off with respect. Those that want to help can do something as simple as supporting Indigenous initiatives such as IPCI,” offered Iron Rope. “Indigenous people know what is best for them for the most part, and allowing them to take lead on certain matters is important.”
Beyond this, Davis expressed that one of her biggest concerns as a practitioner and a researcher is that non-Indigenous people should try to understand the history of peyote and what Indigenous people have endured in order to access and use their medicine. “Peyote went back underground until the passing of the AIRFA amendments in 1994, and now we have this movement pushing for peyote to be a sort of ‘free for all,’ and completely negating the historical struggle of Indigenous people’s use of peyote.”
Further, Davis also urges people to stay clear of harvesting wild peyote populations anywhere throughout its range, suggesting that one of the most important things that allies can do for peyote is to take the position that they will refuse to harvest wild populations while encouraging others to do the same. “Whether it be in Texas or Mexico, people who are truly respectful of this medicine- this plant, this way of life, will not harvest any wild populations because of peyote’s status as a vulnerable species with potential for future extinction.”
As we traverse the developments of this renaissance, it is crucial for our community to be aware of the impact we have, not only on mainstream culture, but also on Indigenous communities who have so frequently been left unheard. There are several steps that we can take to support peyote conservation, including sharing information about peyote conservation issues and educating oneself on the ethical considerations to be made when choosing to buy or use peyote outside of a bona fide NAC context, which must include awareness for the socio-historical baggage specific to this plant medicine.
About the Author
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Since 2018, she has been working as a writer, editor, and social media coordinator for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, grounded and meaningful way.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle have, in Joe’s words, “a wildly rambling show.” They cover topics in the news, including MAPS’ recent completion of their Capstone Campaign, a non-profit fundraising effort to fund the final research required to seek FDA approval of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (through which they raised $30 million from several high-profile names), MindMed’s new LSD-MDMA “candy flipping” phase 1 trial set to commence later this year, Representative Earl Blumenauer’s (D-OR) fundraising efforts for legal psilocybin and Oregon’s ballot initiative becoming a measure that people can vote on in November, and the Usona Institute resuming their previously COVID-halted psilocybin studies.
They then talk about a lot of different things: how to achieve psychedelic states without plants or drugs, Grof’s conclusions from 5000 sessions with clients, the dangers of Jim Jones-esque hero worship within communities, the seldom talked about global sacredness of tobacco, how big money coming into psychedelics both hurts and immensely helps the community, the Venus Project and the idea of restarting lives during the COVID life based on what really makes us happy, the impending doom of climate change and the changes we could all be making to help save ourselves, and the western tragedy of always working to become something and never just being. It’s largely a conversation about lineage, and making sure to give thanks and respect to the people and history that led to where we are today- not just in the psychedelic sphere, but in all things.
They also remind us that spots for September’s Navigating Psychedelics class are going fast, and there’s a new class available called Imagination as Revelation, developed by Kyle and Johanna Hilla-Maria Sopanen.
Notable Quotes
“My girlfriend, for some reason, had the Republican National Convention on TV last night, and Ivanka Trump was talking, and talked a lot about addiction and how big of a situation opioid addiction is, which is totally true, but like, with her saying that, to me, what that means is that there’s going to be an increase in funding to the DEA and the drug war, not an increase in funding for treatment. Because typically speaking, that party doesn’t necessarily want to fund treatment; they want to fund prevention, which they see as the drug war. They’ve not noticed yet that their drug war isn’t effective. I’d like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.” -Joe
“Let’s just cut the shit with the drug war. It’s racist, it’s horrible, it’s killing a lot of people still, there’s tons of political prisoners, still, in jail for cannabis, which in many states is being sold and people are making a killing on. It’s just insane to me that people are going to jail for not hurting anybody.” -Joe
“When we say the ‘psychedelic community,’ what is that? There’s so many different subsets and so many different people with different agendas. You have the folks who might classify themselves as being part of the psychedelic community that go to festivals and raves and they’re really submerged in that art scene, you have the psychedelic community of therapists and psychiatrists and people in the medical model wanting to do that thing, you have the Decrim Nature folks, you have the shamanic lineages. You have all these different little subcategories within a larger generalization of an interest, and everybody’s approaching it differently. People want to see different things happen. How can we come together? …How do we try to appreciate all different use cases and really respect where people are coming from and that we don’t need to fit it within these ‘this is the only way, this is the only model, and my way is better’ [paradigms]?” -Kyle
“Whenever I think about the archetype of America and the west, I usually think of the hero. Can we stop playing the hero role and could we start to look back at other archetypes and really appreciate other archetypes? Like, why does everybody have to go out and slay the dragon?” -Kyle
“Are you just getting really expansive and manic and you want that same yacht Usher has? Or do you want a garden and a small home and some sort of a community around you? Both have a certain kind of appeal, but what’s more sustainable? What helps you connect with your family more and the planet more? It’s probably the garden.” -Joe
Efforts to decriminalise psilocybin, more commonly known as magic mushrooms, are gathering momentum in the United States.
The cities of Denver, Oakland and Santa Cruz have already decriminalised the psychedelic drug. Washington DC is soon expected to vote on whether to follow suit. And the state of Oregon is set to hold a poll on full legalisation.
The push is in part led by medical researchers who are finding growing evidence that the substance can effectively treat mental health conditions such as depression and PTSD.
In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fast-tracked research on psilocybin as a treatment for PTSD, calling it a potential breakthrough therapy.
Young tech entrepreneurs are also leading a charge towards mainstream acceptance, claiming that microdosing (taking psilocybin daily in very small amounts) can boost productivity and leadership skills.
In this episode of The Stream we ask, what evidence is there to support these claims and could magic mushrooms one day become as common in bathroom cupboards as vitamins?
On this episode of The Stream, we speak with: Danielle Herrera Harm Reduction and Psychedelic Psychotherapist sageinst.org Ismail Ali, @sage_izzy Policy and Advocacy Counsel, @MAPS maps.org Michelle Janikian, @m00shian Journalist michellejanikian.com
Is Salvia divinorum more than just a crazy trip? And what would salvia therapy or spirituality even look like?
Like many teens in the mid-2000s, I took a bong rip of Salvia divinorum extract in a group of laughing friends, and didn’t feel the need to touch the plant again. The 5 to 10-minute trip completely took me out of my mind, body, and surroundings in what I’d still, to this day, categorize as one of the most intense psychedelic experiences of my life. In the dreamlike state, I was walking on clouds and then found myself stuck in a cave where I had to move boulders aside to escape. As the cave slowly faded away and I drifted back to reality, I found that I was on my hands and knees in the corner of my best friend’s room, moving scissors and other art supplies around. I looked back to see my wide-eyed friends still sitting on the bed, bong in hand, staring at me, simultaneously giggling and relieved to see that I had returned.
When Psychedelics Today co-founder, Joe Moore, asked me to look into salvia for my next article nearly 15 years later, I laughed out loud, recalling that cave and the thrashing, ripping-apart-of-the-body feeling that salvia can give in high doses, and said something along the lines of “that shit is crazy.” But through researching this piece and talking to experts, I’ve learned there’s so much more to Salvia divinorum than smoking that weird black extract that was easier to get than booze or weed when I was 17- that there are people both in indigenous communities in Mexico and psychedelic societies in San Francisco who are developing deep and healing relationships with this purple flowering plant that contains the strongest naturally occurring psychedelic on our planet.
Indigenous Salvia Ceremony and Practices
The oldest standing Salvia divinorum tradition is held by the same indigenous community that still practices magic mushroom ceremonies, the Mazatec of Oaxaca, Mexico. “For us Mazatecs, salvia is very sacred,” says Inti Garcia Flores, Mazatec professor and archivist. Over WhatsApp, he explains to me the Mazatec legend of the origin of Salvia divinorum, or “La Pastora” (Spanish for “the shepherdess”) as he refers to it during our conversation. Essentially, salvia was one of the first three plants in existence. Tobacco was the first plant, who is a male spirit and the father. Then came salvia, who is a female spirit and the mother. Lastly, the mushrooms were born, who are the children.
To prepare for such a powerful encounter, part of the Mazatec tradition is a 40-day cleansing period before the actual ceremony. When it’s time for the ceremonial encounter with La Pastora, prayers are said while leaves are picked from salvia plants that grow around the Sierra Mazateca mountain range. Notably, it’s the only region in the world where this psychedelic strain of sage grows, and it has likely been propagated by indigenous people of the land for hundreds of years and possibly longer.
Salvia is consumed in ceremonies which are held at night, in the home of a curandero (Spanish for “healer”), and in front of an altar that typically faces the west. Then, the leaves are either chewed and swallowed in pairs, or drunk in a kind of salvia mash tea, but the plant is never smoked. Mushrooms are also consumed in pairs in Mazatec ceremonies to represent the duality of life: the masculine and feminine energies- a necessary balance, which, as I understand it, is a core concept in their spirituality. Garcia tells me that approximately 40 leaves are eaten for a Pastora ritual, sometimes more. It really depends on the curandero and the purpose of the ceremony. “Every curandero has their own style,” explains Garcia.
And to my surprise, ceremonies last about four to five hours, approximately the same amount of time as the effects of mushrooms. Then, the ritual is to be followed by another 40-day cleansing period. As far as the purpose of these ceremonies, healing and divination are two of the main reasons for seeking out La Pastora, and it’s especially common to use salvia when mushrooms aren’t in season (mushrooms only grow in the rainy season in Mexico, which is generally May through September. Garcia tells me that salvia, on the other hand, grows year-round).
Personal Salvia Divinorum Rituals
Learning about the sacred power of La Pastora got me thinking about the bad rap salvia has gotten in the west as a crazy and unpleasant, short-acting psychedelic. By smoking it, especially in extracted form, are we disrespecting the delicate plant spirit, and therefore missing its healing potential? But not everyone outside of the Mazatec community are teens like my friends and I were, tricking each other into smoking salvia. In fact, there are some folks using Salvia divinorum in a ritualized manner for healing trauma and other psycho-spiritual matters, like spiritual emergence coach and marriage and family counselor, Michelle Anne Hobart.
For Hobart, who’s also the author of Holding Sacred Space, salvia came to her in a time of need. She was recovering from trauma when she was guided to salvia, and the plant had a message for her: “Let go of all other practices for a year and work with me alone.” So that’s exactly what Hobart did. She formed a relationship with salvia in its tincture form. “She was very specific with me that I was only to take it in sublingual tincture form and not smoke it,” Hobart tells me over the phone, referring to salvia with feminine pronouns, just as Garcia had done.
In fact, Hobart’s salvia ritual had some similarities to the Mazatec tradition. She practices a pre-ceremony cleansing period where she only eats vegan and refrains from smoking or drinking (a practice that has now become a lifestyle). She also consumes La Pastora in front of her own altar with much prayer and meditation involved. For Hobart, this protocol has helped her reconnect with herself and her body, and she feels the short psychedelic experience (taken sublingually, she reports the experience lasts about 90 minutes to 2 hours) is very manageable and “integratable” for her as a highly sensitive person who is recovering from trauma.
Hobart spent much of her monogamous year with salvia working in low dose ranges that gave her a more spacious quality to her meditative practice. She explains that for those with trauma, even meditating or connecting with the body can seem like “a daunting, almost impossible task.” But by working with different levels of salvia and titrating her dose to cautiously work her way up to a higher dose range, it became more manageable. “If there was anything I learned in my experience of healing trauma with salvia, it’s that I don’t have to go to the top plateau to do the work. There’s work at every level and you can be gentle and compassionate with yourself and your nervous system. And honestly, you can integrate better when you titrate.”
That was especially interesting to me as someone who went straight to a smoked high-dose salvia experience. Are there really other levels to this medicine that are less intense? Hobart definitely thinks so, and when I ask her about the uncomfortable feeling in the body at higher doses, she reports that with her tincture protocol, she doesn’t find that to be the case. She explains that she views a salvia trip as having 3 phases: the clearing phase, the resourcing phase, and then the re-embodiment phase. At higher doses in the clearing phase, she can have visions, which she interprets as a cleansing that’s connected to the trauma she holds in her body. Then, in the resourcing phase, she can experience a type of ego-loss where she becomes one with the earth, which helps her release the trauma that can come up during the clearing phase. “It helps me realize I’m more than this body,” she explains.
Then in the re-embodiment phase, she returns to herself, “clean and free of that trauma.” Hobart specifies that she’s not completely free of trauma though. “There’s always more work to do. But in that moment, for that piece of work that needed to be done, I can re-inhabit my body in a safer way than I ever have before.” In that year of regular practice, Hobart was able to clear a lot of trauma, which, in turn, helped her anxiety decline. “I was able to return to my own sovereignty and empowerment through the understanding that this story is mine to tell,” she says.
Somatic Salvia Therapy and Effects
Christopher Solomon, who is a somatic salvia guide, went down a similar path with the plant that started over 10 years ago. He had smoked salvia a handful of times as a teen in the early 2000s and found the experience pretty bizarre and unwieldy. “It just didn’t really make much sense,” he tells me over Skype. But one day, as he was loading his bong with salvia, he received a “download” from the plant. “Out of nowhere, there was a feeling inside of me that just said: ‘Wait. Meditate first.’” Even though he didn’t have much of a meditation practice at the time, he took 10 deep breaths before inhaling the salvia, “and it was just completely different… it was a lot smoother and more gentle on my system,” Solomon explains. “It was more grounded. Instead of me being taken elsewhere or torn apart, it was more like this other reality unfolded gracefully in front of me.”
Now, over ten years later, he’s also developed a very intimate relationship with the plant and its many levels of psychedelic experience, and he’s even started to guide others through salvia journeys. Like Hobart, Solomon also sees a lot of benefits in working in lower dose ranges. In fact, he’s theorized the salvia experience has about 10 levels, and a lot of the most therapeutic work is done in levels 1 through 7. Solomon explains that levels 1 through 3 are almost sub-perceptual.
“It’s very akin to being taken [to] a very, very deep, still place in meditation. One’s breath becomes deeper and there’s a feeling of grounding down and opening up. It’s not opening up to [the] world around one, it’s more as if one’s body is opening up to itself, like an internal opening. There’s a sense of slight physical tingles that come on the body and then the chattering mind gets a little bit less chattery. It can be summed up as being taken to a place of quiet, deep stillness.” He adds that finding this place in regular meditation practice can be very difficult for a lot of folks, echoing a sentiment Hobart expressed about how daunting it can be for those with trauma to try to reconnect with their bodies. But according to Solomon, in levels 1 through 3 of salvia, focusing on one’s breath feels pleasurable and comfortable, even euphoric. “It really increases your ability to remain attentive to whatever you put your concentration on. With the quieting of the mind comes a greater ability to concentrate on one’s own embodied self and be very present.”
This is a key concept in somatic therapy, in which Solomon is certified. “One of the main premises of any sort of somatic work is coming back to what is in the present,” he explains. “And instead of getting caught up in stories, expectations or memories, it’s about coming to the present moment- to the now, and seeing what’s right in front of one and seeing what we think.” When it comes to the salvia experience, the sense of presence that the plant insists on can be very healing. For Solomon, the lesson has been very clear- that learning to be present in the current moment is key to living a healthier, happier life. Salvia taught him: “Don’t worry about the future. Don’t worry about the past. Just be here now, and engaged, and aware, and playful. And then everything else kind of works itself out.”
These messages from salvia often come in the next dose range, in levels 3 through 7, where the feeling in the body becomes more intense (sometimes called “salvia gravity”), and visions, entities, and being taken to a new reality are more common. However, Solomon notes, the best preparation for these higher dose experiences is working in levels 1 through 3 first and getting comfortable there. But many of us don’t know about this preparation or don’t bother, and are shot straight to levels 9 or 10 on our first trip of smoking a bowl of 20x or 50x extract, and in turn, are completely turned off by the intensity of the salvia gravity sensation.
But when you prime your body first by titrating your dose and starting in lower, sub-perceptual dose ranges, “the pushing feelings do happen in your body, but it doesn’t feel as aggressive or foreign. It feels a lot more controllable instead,” says Solomon. And this is where things get really interesting and hard to explain. But through his deep practice with the plant, he’s learned that you can control those pushing and pulling feelings, or “energies,” and direct them towards parts of your body that need healing. Solomon’s most profound example of this is also the experience that led him to pursue sharing salvia with others as a somatic guide. Essentially, a few years ago, he had a swollen lymph node in his neck for months that he tried everything to cure, including three courses of antibiotics and diet and lifestyle changes. “But no matter what I did for months, there was this big swollen lymph node in my neck. It just didn’t go away.” At the time, he consulted with a couple of doctors who both said he needed to have his tonsils removed.
Before having the surgery, he decided to turn to salvia for the first time in nearly 2 years. “I smoked a bowl of 20x extract,” he says, “and usually when I do, I feel this pulling and pushing sensation on my body coming from outside, or it feels like I’m being moved through time and space.” But this time was different. “I felt all this energy tingling, kind of like little ants rushing up from every extremity of my body. And it all went straight to where the swollen lymph node was. This energy was congregating around the swollen lymph node and a thought came to me: ‘Oh, well, let me just heal myself.’” He says his hand “automatically picked itself up,” and he began pressing on his swollen neck like he had done many times before. But this time, as he rubbed his lymph node in a circle, “I felt it split in half,” he recalls. As he kept rubbing, it kept splitting. “It got smaller and smaller and smaller. It felt like tiny little grains of sand. And then those split even more, and it kept dividing until I couldn’t physically feel it anymore. Then all that energy that initially rushed to that part of my neck rushed over the rest of my body.” He reports that he laid there for about ten minutes until coming to, and his swollen lymph node was totally gone, and has remained absent ever since.
A Profound Salvia Divinorum Healing Ceremony
Kathleen Harrison, famous ethnobotanist, writer, psychedelic elder, and co-founder of the Botanical Dimensions library in Northern California, told a similar story in a talk at the Entheogenesis Australis conference in 2018. She sought out a Mazatec curandero who specializes in salvia healings and had a traditional ceremony in the highlands of Oaxaca. At the time, she was experiencing a lot of heart trouble and doctors told her that the only way forward was lifelong medication to manage her condition. But in a ceremony with salvia, she felt a female presence wave a hand right through her body and physically take her pain away. “A little door opened in my heart. It blew open like a sudden breeze had come, and I just saw this hurt fly out and dissolve. And my heart was better. I never had another problem with it,” Harrison describes in her talk. When she got back to her California home, medication was no longer necessary.
These healings are hard to explain in terms of what’s happening in the brain, even though there are psychedelic researchers looking into Salvia divinorum at Johns Hopkins and other universities. Formal research began in 1994, when ethnobotanist and researcher Daniel Siebert first isolated the psychedelic compound in Salvia Divinorum – Salvinorin A – and published his findings. Since then, Siebert has become salvia’s champion: he founded the salvia information vault, Sagewisdom.com, which includes a salvia safe-use guide, and he ended up piquing the interest of psychedelic researchers and run-of-the-mill psychonauts alike.
Is Salvia Legal?
Today, salvia is still legal in about 20 states, which makes it easier than psilocybin or MDMA for researchers to study. In 2010, Johns Hopkins University conducted the first controlled human study of salvinorin A, and their team is still looking into how salvia works. That’s partly because salvia is unique in the way it affects the brain, and so offers researchers a novel opportunity to study other psychedelic (and potentially therapeutic) mechanisms of action. Essentially, most classic psychedelics, like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT, mostly bind to the serotonin 2a receptors, and that action is thought to be responsible for most of their psychedelic effects. Salvia, on the other hand, has no affinity for the legendary 2a sites, and instead focuses the majority of its attention on the kappa opioid receptors.
But, How Does a Salvia Trip Work Exactly?
Yet, oddly enough, according to Manoj Doss, a postdoctoral scientist at the Hopkins Psychedelic Research Center (who is the lead on analyzing the latest salvia brain scan data), even though the receptor action site is different, the overall effects on the human brain are very similar to classic psychedelics. “We essentially found the same pattern [that Robin Carhart-Harris found with LSD],” Doss explains. “We got decreases in functional connectivity within network connectivity, so these networks are communicating less within themselves… [and] decreases in Default Mode Network connectivity, [which was the strongest effect]. And, we have increases in connectivity between areas that don’t usually communicate with each other as much.” However, although the effects were “quite similar” to other psychedelics, Doss believes more research is needed. “There are a few more caveats that are going to require a study with a larger sample size,” he says.
To folks like Solomon, while research is exciting, it’s not necessary towards understanding how salvia works for healing. “It’s very somatic medicine,” Solomon says. And it’s inspired him to complete a certification at the Hakomi Institute and provide guided somatic salvia sessions to clients. And unlike other traditions, Solomon’s clients smoke salvia, but not all in one go. In fact, Solomon has invented (thanks to a message from the salvia plant herself) an entirely new smoking apparatus for consuming salvia, aptly named “the salvia pipe.” The contraption has five separate bowls into which he sprinkles just a couple of flakes of salvia for clients. The idea is to titrate the dose to make the experience more similar to a chewed fresh leaf ceremony, which he admits is his preferred method of consumption, but isn’t very accessible unless you grow your own salvia. And so, his clients only smoke a very small amount at a time, then they meditate together for five minutes between each bowl to gradually work up to a level 3, 4, or 5 experience that they can manage and are comfortable in.
Solomon even does guided salvia sessions online, which have become increasingly popular since the pandemic, and the first thing he does is send clients a salvia pipe packed with the correct dose (if the client lives in a state where salvia is legal). He says folks come to him for a whole host of reasons: sometimes just out of curiosity, and others to work on self-esteem, physical ailments, or trauma. “I like to think of salvia as ‘the great neutralizer.’ If you’re feeling up, salvia will help bring you back down to a baseline calmness, or ‘groundedness.’ But if you’re down in the dumps, salvia can bring you up… and that is essentially how it incorporates so well into somatic therapy—because a lot of trauma therapy is getting the person to a sense of feeling grounded and stable, as if they have their own resources… it’s like a hard reset—a reboot to the present.”
Regardless of how Salvia divinorum works, it seems it has a lot of therapeutic potential that’s not getting a lot of attention, especially considering that it’s legal in 20 states. But I believe that’s because most of us go on one incredibly intense and off-putting first date with salvia at a young age and are completely unprepared for the experience. Yet it seems by building a relationship with the plant by preparing one’s set and setting, titrating dose, and being mindful of its sacred power, it can have lasting benefits for those who bother to take the time.
About the Author
Michelle Janikian is a journalist focused on drug policy, trends, and education. She’s the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, and her work has also been featured in Playboy, DoubleBlind Mag, High Times, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue. One of her core beliefs is that ending the prohibition of drugs can greatly benefit society, as long as we have harm reduction education to accompany it. Find out more on her website: www.michellejanikian.com or on Instagram @michelle.janikian.
Now that millions of dollars are being invested in psychedelics and platforms ranging from Fox News to Bloomberg are reporting positively on them, it’s safe to say that psychedelic therapy has entered the mainstream. But mainstream news tends to highlight catchy elements while glossing over other details, often resulting in an unbalanced portrait of the whole. For psychedelic therapy, you’re way more likely to hear about the “psychedelic” than the “therapy.”
No surprise there. Reports on people healing complex PTSD by taking the “party drug ecstasy” while wearing eyeshades and listening to music in a cozy office are more gripping than reports on the months of talk therapy that follow (ecstacy is not always MDMA, it sometimes contains other dangerous compounds). So, perhaps this article on the therapy side will not be as gripping as an Anderson Cooper60 Minutes special, but I hope it will prove informative for anyone who desires to learn more about how psychedelic therapy is currently being practiced, and the complex elements beyond the administration of a substance that go into achieving the astounding improvements in depression, addiction, and PTSD that have now been so broadly reported.
The Importance of Staying Humble
I’ll kick this off by recognizing it is not possible to “capture” psychedelic therapy in any sentence or article or doctoral thesis. There are as many approaches and strategies as there are practitioners, and eliminating the potential for exploration and breakthrough through a prescriptive definition would be an insult to psychedelics themselves, which have exploded understandings of phenomena for centuries.
“There’s a lot of impression about what psychedelics are, how they should be treated, and what the optimal therapy is,” explains Dr. Matthew Johnson, Associate Director of the Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University. “We need to keep humble in terms of how much we don’t know, rather than fooling ourselves into thinking something is cemented in.”
While the future is ripe for exploration, there are several trends in approaching psychedelic therapy. So, this article is simply a glimpse into these trends, rather than a concrete definition of the whole.
Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
“Psychedelic therapy” is more accurately termed “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.” This distinction is critical, because the psychedelic is an adjunct to the therapeutic process, rather than a replacement for the process itself. So, when I refer to “psychedelic therapy,” I am simply abbreviating “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.” And there are far fewer psychedelics being used in therapy than there are psychedelics in general.
Psilocybin and MDMA are the two predominant substances currently being researched in psychedelic therapy, and each has been granted “Breakthrough Status” by the FDA in separate clinical trials, which basically means even the government recognizes how promising they are in therapy. Other substances used in psychedelic therapy are ketamine, a legal medicine throughout the U.S., and cannabis, which is still fully illegal in only eight states.
Interestingly enough, only one of these substances—psilocybin—is a classic psychedelic. The other three are all noted as having psychedelic properties, but ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, MDMA is an entactogen, and no one can seem to agree on what cannabis is.
Other psychedelics, such as LSD, ibogaine, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO-DMT, are being researched, yet none appear close to becoming legal. However, research into LSD-assisted psychotherapy in the ‘50s and ‘60s, especially as spearheaded by Dr. Stanislav Grof, provided foundational elements for common frameworks implemented with other substances today. But LSD’s stigmatization remains heavy, and its unpredictable effects are particularly long-lasting, so it has not re-emerged to the forefront of psychedelic therapy. So, the “psychedelics” of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy of interest in this article will be psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and cannabis.
A Framework of Preparation and Integration
Psychedelic therapy is not as simple as administering a substance and Voila! Depression defeated! The psychedelic sessions—interchangeably referred to as “medicine” or “dosing” sessions—take place in a broader framework of preparation and integration therapy, neither of which involves the administration of a substance.
The ratios of preparation/integration sessions to medicine sessions vary widely and depend on many factors, such as dose size and financial limitations. The most widely-documented framework currently being practiced comes from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the organization behind the FDA-approved trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of PTSD. MAPS’ MDMA therapy involves three 90-minute preparatory sessions, a first MDMA session, three integration sessions, a second MDMA session, three more integration sessions, a third MDMA session, and three final integration sessions. In total, that’s three medicine sessions, and twelve preparation/integration sessions, a cycle that lasts about five months.
That’s five times as many non-medicine sessions as medicine sessions. MAPS’ significant results—i.e. one year after their Phase 2 trials, 68% of participants no longer qualified for PTSD—cannot be separated from this full process. Sara Reed, who worked on MAPS’ Phase 2 trials and is now the Director of Psychedelic Services at the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut explains, “The integration sessions are just as important as the dosing sessions, if not even more important.”
Johns Hopkins University’s research in psilocybin therapy also involves far more preparation and integration therapy than psychedelic sessions. Among the many focuses of their Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, Johns Hopkins is researching psilocybin therapy for smoking cessation.
Johnson is the study’s Principal Investigator. Results from the study’s pilot phase, published in 2014, found that after 6 months, 80% of participants had remained abstinent from smoking, compared to the 30-35% success rate of predominant treatment models. In the study’s second iteration, which is ongoing at the time of this writing, Dr. Johnson reports that at the one-year follow-up, 59% of the psilocybin group were biologically confirmed as abstinent, compared to 27% of the group who used a nicotine patch.
While the pilot study involved three medicine sessions, the current study involves only one. Everything else is preparation and integration. “Right now, they have integration sessions for ten weeks after the psilocybin session,” Johnson explains. “These are hour-long, weekly check-ins. With preparation, we have about eight hours across four different sessions.”
Given that ketamine therapy is being widely practiced, and numerous other psychedelic therapy trials are underway, it would take many articles to detail all the protocols being used. The trend to note is that sober preparation and integration sessions are essential to psychedelic therapy, and even tend to involve far more time than the medicine sessions.
A Relational Approach to Therapy
I’m tempted to write a section on what preparation and integration therapy looks like, but this would be impossible. These terms are vague; there is no set way to do them, no script to follow. Yet amidst common components such as intention setting, dose determination, and discussions of the particular psychedelic’s effects, the glue that connects these sessions across countless frameworks is the essentiality of establishing a strong and trusting therapeutic relationship.
“More important than the therapist’s psychological orientation is the rapport with the participant,” Johnson explains. “If you actually care for this human being you’re dealing with, and you’re making a sincere effort, and they get that—that overrides whatever descriptors you use.”
A client-centered, relationship-based approach to therapy arose in the mid-20th century in response to the dominant paradigms of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Back then, therapists were viewed as the “expert” in the room, interpreting and diagnosing clients while remaining emotionally detached. Carl Rogers then theorized that interpretation and theoretical expertise were not essential, or even necessarily helpful; the central element to a client’s healing was the quality of the therapeutic relationship, cultivated in a climate of genuineness, accurate empathy, and unconditional positive regard. This client-centered approach laid the foundation for humanistic psychology.
Whether or not one aligns entirely with Rogers’ framework and disposition, it is widely accepted in psychedelic therapy that the therapeutic relationship is paramount.
“When you’re getting into psychedelic work, there can be a subconscious pull toward skipping aspects of relationship building,” explains Rafael Lancelotta, who practices cannabis and ketamine therapy at Innate Path in Denver, CO. “That can really negatively affect the process. If you’re going to vulnerable places with someone you don’t trust, your system’s defenses are going to come up and prevent you from moving through a healing process.”
Therapy is already vulnerable; that vulnerability amplifies exponentially when a substance is involved. Imbibing a psychedelic, a client sacrifices control, accepting the heightened uncertainty of where the session may lead. If they do not trust the therapist, the lack of trust will likely manifest in the medicine session and impede the work.
An important element to a relational approach is respecting and understanding the identities clients hold. Sara Reedis part of several committees devoted to increasing access to psychedelic medicines for underserved populations, and she brings specific attention to the complexities of clients’ social identities.
“I approach ketamine therapy through an intersectional lens,” Reed explains. “I take into account a person’s age, race, sexual orientation, gender, geography, socioeconomic status, education, and what they’ve been exposed to in the world. I’m sensitive to the way they language their experience and the way they experience the world. From that lens, we create treatment plans specific to their symptom presentation and symptom severity to give them a tailored psychedelic psychotherapy experience.”
Reed does not position herself as the expert; she positions herself humbly in relation to the client’s experience, listening to their unique background and needs in order to develop a course of action. This humility, and the trust-building that comes through it, is the essence of a relational approach.
Given that psychedelics often attract people with spiritual and esoteric worldviews, therapists must be prepared and willing to enter and understand a client’s way of seeing. Michelle Anne Hobart specializes in preparation and integration therapy—which, by the way, is a legal therapeutic modality, so long as illegal medicines are not administered. Hobart is a specialist in “spiritual emergence,” which she describes as “a space of people expanding beyond the separate sense of self into a larger understanding of interconnection between other beings and the planet.” This inner awakening can occur through psychedelic experiences and potentially be destabilizing, and Hobart’s specialty allows her to meet her clients in their expansive worldviews.
“It can be helpful to check the astrology transits in preparation for journeys,” Hobart explains, referencing the Archetypal Astrology work of Stan Grof and Richard Tarnas. “It’s making correlations between the type of medicine experience that someone might be having with the overlay of archetypal dynamics at that time. It can be really empowering to know that certain tones might show up in the medicine journey.”
If an astrologically-minded seeker comes to a material scientist whose preparation cannot extend beyond images of entropic brain states and explanations of oxytocin, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, it probably will not be a good fit. A relational approach hinges on meeting clients where they are, and many psychonauts do not view the world through a strictly scientific lens.
Therapists cannot simply assume trust due to the position they hold. They have to earn it, and that process takes time and patience. If that process is not honored, numerous problems can result, including the potential for re-traumatization in the medicine session due to an unsafe container—an issue that Hobart rightly describes as a “shadow” of psychedelic therapy. Like therapy itself, preparation and integration are most effective when relational, adaptable, and responsive to clients’ individual needs. With a trusting relationship established, an “inner-directed” process can unfold.
Inner-Directed Therapy
Psychedelic therapists often maintain that the medicine helps incite an “inner-directed” healing process, where a client’s “innate healing intelligence” or “inner healer” can emerge from its walled-off container and catalyze the necessary internal movement.
“As a therapist, your therapeutic stance is to trust the process and not get ahead of the medicine, to follow the participant in their journey,” Reed explains. “In essence, you’re just really present with the medicine, the material, the client, and yourself, navigating that liminal space where transformation can happen.”
Again, the client is the expert, and the therapist skillfully cultivates space for a process to organically unfold. Stan Grof created the term “holotropic” for this process, which translates to “moving toward wholeness.” The therapeutic approaches then used in integration can come out of the client’s authentic holotropic experience, allowing for the integration to meet emergent needs rather than place an established framework onto a process.
Psychedelic therapists create trusting, comfortable conditions that allow the client’s inner healer to guide the medicine sessions, and all ensuing sessions by extension. What that clients’ inner healer brings forth depends on other measurable factors as well, such as the size of dose administered.
Psychedelic vs. Psycholytic Therapy
When folks are talking about psychedelic therapy, they are sometimes in fact talking about psycholytic therapy. “Psychedelic” therapy involves high-dose medicine sessions, in which the client may lose contact with the therapist, if not the physical world. “Psycholytic” therapy involves low-dose medicine sessions, in which perceptual doors are opened, but not obliterated completely.
Jason Sienknecht trains ketamine therapists through the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute (PRATI), an organization he helped found. In his therapeutic practice at the Wholeness Center in Fort Collins, CO, he facilitates both psychedelic and psycholytic ketamine therapy.
“In the psychedelic session, we use high-dose ketamine to induce a fully-dissociated psychedelic state,” Sienknecht explains. “They go in very deeply, and the ketamine and music helps them move toward insights about their life and give them clarity and perspective about their struggles.”
This high-dose, non-dialogue approach is used by Johns Hopkins with psilocybin in the smoking cessation study. “We use a high dose of 30 milligrams per 70 kilograms of body weight,” Johnson says. “That generally equates to about 5 dried grams of psilocybe cubensis. So, it’s the classic Terence McKenna ‘heroic dose.’”
In psychedelic sessions, dialogue with the therapist is kept to a minimum—sometimes by necessity, when clients temporarily lose the ability to speak. In psycholytic sessions, on the other hand, clients enter a “low-dose trance state” and stay engaged with the therapist.
“With psycholytic therapy, you don’t dissociate so much that you lose your capacity to sustain dialogue with a therapist,” Sienknecht explains. “You stay in contact the entire time. Some clients I work with really like that, as opposed to me saying, ‘Goodbye, I’ll see you on the other side,’ as we do with psychedelic sessions.”
Each approach has its uses. Some clinicians believe psychedelic sessions are necessary for clients to transgress their self-imposed limitations and open to a more expansive kind of healing. Psychedelic sessions can also be helpful for crisis situations. For example, some clinicians use high doses of ketamine for suicidal clients, as an ego-dissolving experience may be necessary to help the client “break out” of their all-consuming mentality.
Psycholytic sessions allow for conscious processing of emerging material through direct, intentional work with what arises. Further, these low-dose sessions allow clients to work directly with relational wounds by remaining in contact with the therapist through the non-ordinary state. Again, the significance of this relational element cannot be understated, especially as relationship-building extends beyond the need for trust in the session.
“I find it difficult to think of any form of mental illness that isn’t highly relational,” explains Lancelotta. “I think this work is for healing those core relational wounds.”
In this understanding, the relationship with the therapist is the relationship through which deep relational wounds can be healed. These “core relational wounds” affect people far more than they often realize, playing into numerous mental conditions and existential struggles that cannot be healed in isolation.
Whether a client’s healing will come best through psychedelic or psycholytic therapy—or a hybridization of the two, as Lancelotta envisions—depends on numerous factors, to which therapists must remain sensitive and attuned. A “more-medicine-is-better” mentality can be highly problematic and potentially destabilizing for an already unstable client. Regardless, medicine sessions cannot exist in a vacuum. Without preparation and integration to support the psychedelic experience, psychedelic therapy is no different than peer support, and while this can still be hugely impactful, it will undoubtedly diminish the potential for lasting transformation.
Bringing It Home
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is an umbrella term that is far more complex than someone taking a drug in a calm and comfortable room. It is an extensive framework involving a significant amount of “regular” therapy that adapts to clients’ unique struggles and needs. As much as mainstream news may want to convince you otherwise, psychedelics are not the “magic pill” panacea that will quickly and easily make all your problems go away. Yet psychedelic experiences can bring profound insight and meaning, and a growing body of psychedelic therapists use tried and tested methods to enhance these substances’ transformative potential, so that a revelatory trip can truly change a person’s life.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
In today’s episode, Kyle interviews Lauren Taus: yoga instructor with 20 years of experience, host of the Inbodied Life podcast, and psychotherapist specializing in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Taus talks about growing tired of more traditional therapy and cognitive loops so many people find themselves in through cognitive behavioral therapy leading to her taking a break from therapy altogether, trying psychedelics with her brother, learning of psychedelics being used therapeutically, and coming out of the psychedelic closet to her father (who now works with her). She speaks about her practice, and the process and importance of building up therapeutic relationships first before introducing any psychedelics.
She discusses how Covid-19, cannabis legalization and the way our culture is set up are all exacerbating mental health issues and the challenges of fighting through that while trying to better partner with disadvantaged communities, the frustrations around the illegality of certain medicines, the power of ketamine, the concept of spiritual bypassing, what she’s doing differently during this disconnected time, harm reduction around psychedelics without a therapist nearby, mindfulness, and the importance of touch and dancing.
Notable Quotes
“Healing happens in relationship, and it happens in relationship with self too. I believe that so many people (and I certainly have been one of them) are walking warzones. The violence that happens inside of an individual heart and mind is far more outrageous than what you’d read in the news, and what you read in the news is a lot. …With my work, I want to know you, I want to feel you, I want you to feel safe, I want you to feel love, I want you to feel unconditional regard and care. And that doesn’t happen overnight, and that doesn’t happen when you take a pill.”
“When I think about what’s happening with cannabis now, there’s essentially white cartels, and there’s cannabis stores on every block of Venice Beach, and people making lots and lots of money on weed. And then there’s so many black and brown people in prison for smoking a joint. And so the inequity there- what kind of reparations can we do? I like to say you can’t bypass the ‘fuck you’ on your way to forgiveness. And love is big enough to hold the anger and the rage, and there’s appropriate righteous anger that’s due.”
“People are struggling to be with what is- to welcome the wildlife that courses through their veins, to sit still with their fear and their sadness, and even their joy. I have so many people who try to crush their joy and celebration because they’re afraid of losing it. And they will- it’s going to shift. But can we be in the big wideness of what it is to be human? And in our inability to do so, we create all these different unique and not-so-unique misguided defense mechanisms. All these mechanisms for evasion- flight strategies. They can look like work, they can look like sex and food and drugs and alcohol and running or even meditation. The intention is what informs it a lot- what are you doing? Are you looking to go in, or are you looking to leave?”
“Do your work and remember to play along the way. Joy is an act of resistance.”
Lauren Taus graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College at Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in Religion before continuing on to NYU for her Masters in Social Work. Lauren is licensed as a clinical therapist in both New York and California with a specialty in addiction and trauma treatment.
As a clinician, Lauren integrates alternative modalities of treatment into her work. She trained with David Emerson under the supervision of Bessel van der Kolk at The Trauma Institute in Boston in trauma sensitive yoga, and she’s trained by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for MDMA assisted psychotherapy for complex PTSD.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and discuss two news stories emerging from Portland, Oregon- first, paramilitary-like federal agents showing up in unmarked cars and arresting protestors, and second, the beating and pepper-spraying of one of those protestors, Christopher David.
They look at these events from multiple perspectives- what fears are driving the opinions of people who are against these protests? Why does there always seem to be money when it comes to military expenses, but never any money when it comes to the wellbeing of people? How many police officers fully stand behind what they’re doing, and how many are simply following orders or deeming certain evils necessary solely to earn their federal pension?
They analyze systems and better ways forward, like considering a bottom-up approach vs. the standard top-down approach or Ken Wilbur’s framework of transcending an old system while including all the lessons from it. They also discuss decriminalization vs. legalization and the importance of regulation, and the massive scale of concepts and systems, like how MKUltra needs to be included when discussing the history of psychology.
They also discuss telehealth and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and the complications surrounding it right now, from both therapists and clients not wanting to be in an office to the concerns of self-administration at home, to the benefits of self-exploration for those who do feel comfortable and safe engaging on their own. And lastly, they talk about their upcoming Navigating Psychedelics class, which is selling fast and will never be cheaper than it is now.
Notable quotes
“This is illegal, and people seem to forget that it’s illegal. Even if it’s decriminalized in a locality, doesn’t mean the feds can’t come in and shut you down. And that’s why they call me the party pooper.” -Joe
“How many people get into higher systems and institutions with really good intentions [of] wanting to make change, and thinking… “I’m going to change it from the top down.” …What would a ‘bottom-up’ approach be, and how could we give power back to communities to start to create their own change, instead of thinking that we need to change it from these hierarchical systems? I always come back to Bucky Fuller’s quote about just creating a different system- you don’t change a system by trying to change it, you make a new system that’s obsolete to that old way of being. …I’m thinking also too, from the somatic lens in therapy- approaching it more cognitively, intellectually- this whole top-down brain approach vs. a body-oriented approach and working with the trauma, working with the body and thinking about, ok, what’s the body? It’s people, it’s communities. How do we start to work that way?” -Kyle
“I just prefer to see government funds spent on stuff like the green new deal to save us from climate change. Or health care for all- those kinds of things. Why spend to put people in jail, when we could have, just like with cannabis, taxable revenue. I don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because it’s not equitable, I don’t think that totally excludes the thing. I’d just like to see less people going to jail, less people being harmed by black market drugs, and more clean appropriate drugs available to the people who want them.” -Joe
“How do we have the money to send these paramilitary agents in but you didn’t have the money to produce personal protection equipment for hospitals? What’s going on here?” -Kyle
As a professional DJ and full-time psychotherapist offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy sessions, I love selecting music for people. Almost universally, clients report a heightened sense of significance and interest in music while on psychedelics. How you select music for your client’s experience can have a profound impact on what they experience and the depth of experience they have.
There are numerous approaches to selecting and playing music for psychedelic work. While the Holotropic Breathwork people have a sophisticated method of making playlists and supporting the arc of a session, they have the added burden of having to play music that is going to work for everyone in a group experience. As a psychedelic therapist, your task is to assist a client in having a powerful non-ordinary experience, and you’ll likely be working with one client at a time. As such, there is room to get more specific and tailored in the approach that will offer a deeper and more powerful session.
Music Selection – Recreational vs. Therapeutic
One of the large differences between recreational and therapeutic psychedelic use is the focus of the experience. While psychedelics can be used in a wide variety of ways that we might consider recreational, using them in a therapeutic context has one key feature- namely that the psychedelic journeyer has the full attention and attuned nervous system of the therapist with them through the experience. This situation allows the psychonaut to go to places internally that they may not have gone without the benefit and psychological safety of being held in another’s mind. As such, people are coming to know their own depth of being in a new way. I would encourage you, dear therapist, to play things for them that will help them go deeper into their experience. You are helping someone have an experience of themselves within a psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy session.
Is the song beautiful or are you beautiful in the presence of the song?
A critical question at the heart of psychedelic music selection that was put to me by a mentor of mine: “Is the song beautiful or are you beautiful in the presence of the song?” A well-curated playlist can be used not only to have a beautiful experience, but to come to know your own depth and beauty and emotional range more fully. One thing that will help your clients go into their experience is to select pieces that are less beat-driven. Here’s a rule of thumb: if you can bob your head to it, don’t play it. This rule breaks down in working with anger/rage. In that situation, the right kind of beat can be very helpful. Generally though, find pieces that are more open and moving than a beat-driven song.
When someone is having a psychedelic experience, they are feeling their sense of self being stretched to new dimensions. Having one’s awareness bent and moved emotionally by instruments and sounds that are less known is akin to being stretched in new ways emotionally. You’ll deny your clients this gift by playing music for them that is within their musical wheelhouse. The point isn’t to have a “good” experience, but a meaningful one. You can play music that will add to that sense by picking pieces they are unfamiliar with and therefore have fewer associations to. Examples include ambient or neo-classical composers. Another critical way of accomplishing this is to play music for them from other cultures, and luckily there is no shortage of absolutely beautiful, deep, emotional world music to choose from out there that is still quite accessible to most North American ears. Middle Eastern, Asian, and African string instruments, chants, and flutes from all over the world bring out an otherworldly quality that can help your client to stretch into new ways of knowing themselves.
How to select
Aside from what to play, let’s talk about how you should select music for psychedelic sessions. I’m of the opinion that a good place to start is with something that is soothing yet stimulating and emotionally neutral. This is a great way to do no harm, musically speaking. There are many playlists out there to give you the inspiration to start. Try searching “psychedelic therapy” on Spotify or any streaming service you use. If you never do more than this, your clients will have a worthwhile experience. However, in this emerging field, I think we can do better.
Here are some guidelines that help me select during a session. When emotions or emotional needs emerge, try matching them musically in tone, or leading with music that has a slightly stronger affective tone. This can also be great for people who are by nature less in touch with their emotions or have less access to certain emotional ranges like anger or sadness. Begin building playlists and finding albums that have consistent emotional tones you can call on- sorrow, sadness, playfulness, anger, confusion, or pensive, heroic or childlike feelings, etc. This way, you’ll have them at hand when you need them. Your collection of playlists can go on and on and get more and more refined as you build your library. For me, the joy of this kind of collecting is to find new pieces that open me up to different emotional tones, and over time, they get more and more nuanced. Then try them with clients and see if they support their experience. You might have a sense a certain song will work, only to find that it falls a little flat when you try it with clients. That’s no problem at all- just as in every other aspect of therapy, you make an informed guess, you try something, and you see how it lands. Put simply, your job in session is to sonically attune to your clients. Keep an eye out for their affect and consider playing something that matches that tone. It’ll help your clients go deeper into their experience and get more out of their session with you because the music offers them permission to keep going where normally they might hold back and where a stock playlist may totally miss them.
I regularly see clients go further and deeper into the range of emotions than they ever have before. And once something that a client didn’t even know was possible becomes an option, their life starts to change. New neural networks emerge to support that experience, and that deep, new experience they had with me in the office becomes something they have access to in other areas of their lives.
Since so much of what I encounter with my clients is relational wounds and developmental trauma, it can be helpful to play music that has the voices of the same gender as the parent they have a particular wound with. If Mom was cold or unavailable, it can be incredibly powerful for a client to hear warm, soothing (non-English speaking) women singing. It offers a missing experience. The same is true with fathers and masculine wounds. I have specific playlists built out of women and/or men singing or music that for me has a particularly gendered expression. I call them “limbic feminine” and “limbic masculine.” With transference, those limbic tones can be a crucial part of healing.
Here are a few examplesof different songs:
Reflective:
Emerging:
Pensive:
Heroic:
Limbic Femininity:
Limbic Masculinity:
Stimulating Neutral:
Mendel Kaelen is also doing beautiful work creating playlists that support people going through psychedelic sessions with gorgeous general arcs.
So to you, dear therapist, I have some suggestions on how you can integrate this into your psychedelic practice.
Engage in your own work: First and most importantly, you have to keep doing your own work. As is true in ordinary psychotherapy, you won’t be able to take your clients beyond where you yourself have gone. Continue exploring your own depth of being through ongoing work with the medicines you are working with.
Widen your Music Selection: Listen to lots of things! Search out sorrowful songs, find what instruments produce those best, listen to movie soundtracks for passionate or suspenseful elements, and find music from other countries and cultures that have different instruments and scales. This can go as deep as you want.
Use Spotify to find new music: If you’re using Spotify, let their algorithms suggest things! I can’t tell you how often I find new stuff through their suggestions based on my playlists.
The collection and selection of music for psychedelic work is an ongoing venture. You’ll get better as you go, and you’ll fall in and out of love with songs or albums. And you’ll get more masterful in your own approach.
At the end of the day, what we’re offering our clients is an education into their own depth and beauty. By selecting music well, we’re saying, “You’re more than you thought you were, and what you actually are is totally welcome here. In fact, it’s fantastic”.
I hope you enjoy the endeavor.
About the Author
Pierre Bouchard is a Licensed Professional Counselor with a private practice in Boulder and Denver CO and professional vinyl DJ. He specializes in blending somatics, embodiment, attachment theory, and trauma therapy with ketamine assisted psychotherapy. He offers supervision around ketamine assisted psychotherapy and training on music selection. He’ll be opening a clinic soon to expand ketamine access and to further prepare for the psychedelic revolution. You can find out more here pierrebouchardcounseling.com and on Instagram @pierre.bouchard.lpc
In this episode, Kyle speaks with Imperial College London research assistant and past guest, Dr. Malin Vedøy Uthaug, who just earned her doctorate and published her dissertation on Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT research.
Uthaug discusses how she started working in this field, why Prague is a good place for research, what past research has led to today, how certain factors could predict whether someone would have a more challenging or more mystical experience, how these experiences can treat people with PTSD differently, what dissociation actually means, the differences between vaporized 5-MeO-DMT and intramuscular 5-MeO-DMT injections and how injections typically lead towards better trauma resolution over the “too much too soon” effects of vaporization. They also talk about reactivation (re-experiencing parts of the 5-MeO-DMT experience at a later time) and why it might happen, how it is different from LSD flashbacks, and how expectations, the experience, and the facilitator all come into play.
They discuss her research and dissertation, which consisted of 2 studies on ayahuasca and 3 on 5-MeO-DMT, focusing on if participants saw improvement in convergent thinking and mental health variables (depression, anxiety and stress), and how her placebo-controlled study revealed that those who received the placebo still saw a marked improvement. This leads to a conclusion that often, context may play a larger role than the medicine- feeling safe and being heard in a ceremonial, community-based setting may be the biggest factor towards healing.
Notable Quotes
“Once you make the unconscious conscious, then you can learn from it, and [it’s not] so much about resisting anymore. Carl Jung says, ‘what you resist persists,’ and what I think is happening, especially with PTSD, is that you’re kind of just holding this ball underwater and it’s not allowed to float to the surface.”
“You need to feel safe, you need to experience being heard and seen. Psychedelics do help us remember things that we have repressed, but obviously, [they] also make us very vulnerable and things might come up. And having somebody witness that and validate those feelings that are expressed and shown can be incredibly healing for people.”
“What we can learn is to learn to sit with difficult emotions and to not push them aside. …I learned that there is comfort in the discomfort. I learned that you can basically figure out so many things about yourself if you just sit with yourself for a moment and you stay in that uncomfortable silence.”
Malin completed her PhD at the department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, at the faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. As part of her PhD, she investigated the short-term and long-term effects of Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT in naturalistic settings, while simultaneously initiating several other studies on the psychedelic substance Mescaline and the breathing practice known as Holotropic Breathwork (HB). Malin is currently working as a Postdoctoral researcher at The Centre for Psychedelic Research, at Imperial College London, led by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. Here she is investigating the effects of 5-MeO-DMT on mental health related variables, brain activity and consciousness together with Dr. Christopher Timmermann. Besides being a researcher, Malin is also an editor for the ‘Journal of Psychedelics Studies’, a board member of the American podcast-show known as Psychedelics Today, and the co-founder of the Norwegian Association for Psychedelic Science (Norsk Forening for Psykedelisk Vitenskap [NFPV]) whose main aim is to educate the general public as well as researchers, and mental health practitioners in Norway about psychedelics.
Mental health has become one of the central themes of 2020 thanks to COVID-19 and the resulting societal shutdown. In fact, the psychological spillover from coronavirus is projected to evolve into an entirely separate pandemic, according to the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association(JAPNA). Like the virus itself, the “second pandemic” is nothing to ignore. The United Nations, World Health Organization and other academic sources such as the Journal of the American Medical Association have also sounded the alarm about a potential mental health crisis coming down the pipeline.
The JAPNA study, however, calls for the implementation of “new mental health interventions” and “collaboration among health leaders” in order to prepare for mobilization when the masses are seeking psychological assistance. While psychedelic medicines were not explicitly cited in the study, these drugs offer an array of treatments that just so happen to address many of the mental health issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and paranoia. Specifically, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which is on the brink of legalization in Oregon, may serve as one such model to assuage the psychological fallout from COVID-19.
Causes of the Mental Health Pandemic
So, how can COVID trigger a mental health crisis? That answer is: Easily. At the time of writing, over 121,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and more than 2.3 million have been infected, according to data from John Hopkins University. The authors of the JAPNA article note that survivors of ICU treatment face an elevated risk for depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sleep disturbance, poor quality of life, and cognitive dysfunction.
Those who contract COVID are not the only ones facing psychological trauma from the pandemic, however. Healthcare workers on the frontlines are at a heightened risk of experiencing severe trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and depression from COVID. Family members of coronavirus patients also face heightened distress, fear, and anxiety, all of which are likely aggravated by the restrictions on hospital visits and lack of testing. The rapid influx of COVID-19 cases also has the potential to decrease capacity for treating other patients, such as those experiencing psychological issues.
Moreover, even people who have not directly dealt with COVID may experience mental health troubles. A lot of anxiety exists around virus exposure, which is triggered when having to leave the house for basic reasons, such as going to the grocery store or bank. The media’s inconsistent, doomsday coverage of the pandemic adds to the confusion around what’s going on, resulting in extreme fear, information overwhelm, and hysteria.
The unintended consequences of a nationwide shut down is also proving to have a negative impact on mental health, according to a study published in European Psychiatry (EP). Lack of social interaction, specifically, is a well-known risk factor for depression, anxiety disorders and other mental health conditions. Further, the study warns that the longer such policies are in effect, the more risk they pose to those with preexisting mental health issues.
“Most probably we will face an increase of mental health problems, behavioral disturbances, and substance-use disorders, as extreme stressors may exacerbate or induce psychiatric problems,” the EP authors write.
News from the economic front is also concerning. The IMF projects global GDP will contract by 3 percent this year—the most severe decline since the Great Depression—with the US GDP predicted to drop by a whopping 5.9 percent. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show more than 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March, a number that will likely increase. For many, job security means financial stability, which generally ties into one’s mental wellness.
Research published in Clinical Psychological Science found that people who lost their job, income and housing during the Great Recession were at a higher risk of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. This is particularly troubling considering the Great Recession only caused a .1 percent drop in global GDP, a decline 30 times less severe than the financial crisis caused by COVID-19. Moreover, suicide rates in the US are directly related to unemployment. In fact, for every unemployment rate percentage increase, the suicide rate rises 1.6 percent in the US, according to a study in the Social Science and Medicine journal.
Looking at all of these factors combined, a mental health crisis seems imminent. A report from the Well Being Trust predicts that COVID-19 and its associated stressors will cause anywhere from 27,644 to 154,000 deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide. The results of a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggest our trajectory could already be trending towards the worst-case scenario. The poll shows that 56 percent of Americans surveyed believe the outbreak has negatively impacted their mental health. But that number rose to 64 percent for those who experienced income loss.
How Can Psychedelics Help?
Psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine combined with psychotherapy show promise for treating an array of mental health conditions— many of which happen to be brought on by the pandemic.
Studies show that psilocybin-assisted therapy decreases depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening diseases, such as cancer. Participants reported reduced feelings of hopelessness, demoralization, and fear of death. Even 4.5 years after the treatment, 60 to 80 percent of participants still demonstrated clinically significant antidepressant and anti-anxiety responses. While we do not advocate for those sick with coronavirus to eat mushrooms, these studies suggest that psilocybin may be effective in treating the extreme fear, anxiety and depression activated by the virus and global shutdown.
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy also promises major relief from pandemic-related trauma. Multiple studies show that it is a profound tool in the treatment of PTSD for military veterans, firefighters and police officers with no adverse effects post-treatment. MDMA therapy could be particularly beneficial to healthcare workers, survivors of extreme COVID cases or those who lost a loved one to the disease— all of which can inflict significant trauma, and therefore, PTSD.
“We found that over 60 percent of the participants no longer had PTSD after just three sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy,” says Brad Burge, the director of strategic communications at MAPS. “We also found that those benefits persisted and people actually tended to continue getting better over the next year without any further treatments.”
Ketamine (and the esketamine nasal spray) treatment, on the other hand, is already available in North America. It’s especially effective in assuaging the tension of treatment resistant depression, bipolar disorder, chronic pain, and PTSD —all of which could be exacerbated by pandemic-related stressors.
Keep in mind, however, that using psychedelics at home is different than receiving psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Catherine Auman, a licensed family and marriage therapist with experience in psychedelic integration, warns that now may not be the best time to use psychedelics, especially in a non-clinical setting. She worries that pandemic-related stressors could impact a patient’s psychological state.
“Psychedelics are powerful substances and are best to do at a time in a person’s life when they’re feeling more stable, not less,” Auman explains. “This is good advice whether someone is using them recreationally or therapeutically.”
Will COVID-19 Impede Psychedelic Research and Delay Public Access?
The pandemic has impeded both psychedelic research efforts and access to currently available therapies. We’re essentially at a standstill until COVID is controlled. MAPS is among few—if not the only—organization with FDA permission to carry on research, but at a reduced scale. When we first spoke with Burge for this story, MAPS was on its first session of Phase 3 MDMA clinical trials. More recently, however, the FDA allowed MAPS to end the first round of Phase 3 early with only 90 out of 100 of the planned participants enrolled. Burge confirmed MAPS is already preparing for their second and last Phase 3 clinical trial. He predicts the DEA could reschedule MDMA by as early as 2022.
Usona Institute temporarily paused all in-person activities related to its Phase 2 clinical trials looking at psilocybin for major depressive disorder, according to its April newsletter. Usona is still recruiting participants for clinical trials at five sites, however.
Compass Pathways is not currently accepting any new patients in its clinical trials looking into the impact of psilocybin on treatment-resistant depression, according to a statement. They continue to support already enrolled patients remotely, when possible within the protocol. Pre-screening of potential study participants continues where possible, too.
Field Trip Health is a recently formed network of clinics offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. The facility opened its first clinic in Toronto in March. But, after seeing one patient, it promptly shut down due to the accelerating spread of COVID-19.
The decision for Field Trip Health to close its clinic was relatively easy, according to Ronan Levy, the company’s executive chairman. They didn’t have large numbers of patients actively receiving treatment yet. But, the pandemic has forced the organization to quickly adapt. “We launched a digital online therapy program, so patients can self-refer or have referrals to our psychotherapists, who are trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, with specific protocols and behavioral therapies,” says Verbora, Field Trip Health’s medical director. “Long term, as these clinics start to open up again, we’ll have dual streams. We’ll be able to sort patients in the clinic for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, but some of their care may be able to be done from home.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered research efforts in the short term and, the movement around the healing properties of psychedelic medicine is still going strong.
“The path to acceptance might be slowed down a little bit due to COVID,” Verbora says. “But the current path that’s being undertaken by a number of different groups and institutions is one that’s going to lead to profound changes in the way we approach mental health.”
The timing couldn’t be more perfect.
About the Author
Jeff Kronenfeld is an independent journalist and fiction writer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. His articles have been published in Vice, Overture Global Magazine and other outlets. His fiction has been published by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Four Chambers Press and other presses.
In today’s episode, Joe interviews Author Mike Crowley to talk about his book, Secret Drugs of Buddhism.
Links
About Mike Crowley
Michael Crowley was born February 26th, 1948 in Cardiff, Wales. He began studying Buddhism with a Tibetan lama in 1966, becoming an upasaka of the Kagyud lineage in 1970. In order to augment his Buddhist studies, he acquainted himself with Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin Chinese. Mike has lectured at the Museum of Asia and the Pacific, Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University, Cracow, the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been published in Fortean Times, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture, Psychedelic American, and Psychedelic Press UK. In January 2016, Mike received the R. Gordon Wasson Award for outstanding contributions to the field of entheobotany. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Psychedelic Sangha, a group of psychedelically-inclined Buddhists, based in New York and he teaches at the Dharma Collective in San Francisco.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and talk about various topics in the news.
They first discuss Rise Wellness (a company focused on teaching people how to microdose psilocybin)’s recent merger with CannaGlobal and Sansero Life Sciences to become CannaGlobal Wellness, and why many smaller companies are merging, and why Canada may be a hot new destination point for these companies. Joe suggests a new idea of helping people microdose through the use of a transdermal patch.
They talk about psychology today and the idea of no theory being complete without including all perspectives (including psychedelic perspectives), the concept of re-phrasing “what’s wrong with you?” to “what has happened to you?”, a recent student’s theory that schizophrenia may actually be a protection mechanism, Amsterdam-based psilocybin-retreat company Synthesis’ recent $2.75 million funding towards developing an end-to-end professional wellness & therapy platform, and what that means to the community- are these companies focusing on the drug as the crux, or the full therapy picture?
Lastly, they talk about the death of Elijah McClain from a 500-milligram injection of ketamine, using thoughts from past guest and regular administrator of ketamine to patients, Dr. Alex Belser. They talk about how ketamine can be necessary, but how it has unfortunately been used as a weapon for chemical restraint against people of color, which brings about larger questions on whether people should be allowed to hurt themselves or not- what role do physicians, therapists and police officers ultimately have in people’s freedom to do what they want with their bodies?
And just as a reminder, Psychedelics Today is currently offering a course developed by Kyle and Dr. Ido Cohen called Psychedelics and The Shadow: The Shadow Side of Psychedelia. And the next round of Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists will be starting in September, with a new self-paced option.
Notable Quotes
On William James: “As soon as he found out about other states of consciousness other than the normal waking state, he’s saying that no theory for how the world works is complete unless we include all perspectives. So, like, what is the American constitution when you’re on nitrous or on LSD? What is appropriate political idealogy, given all of these things? Essentially, he’s saying that we’re going to keep developing new tools to understand the universe, and every time we have one of these new tools, it kind of expands the scope of what we need in our theories for how the world works. …Psychedelic states, shamanic states- how do we include that into our worldview to have a complete scientific framework? I think it’s just a never-ending process, and a fun one.” -Joe
“Even the people that I’ve worked with [who] are really really struggling, and I’ve seen medication work really well for them at times, I always come back to: ‘what has this person been through? Do they actually have this thing that science and probably psychiatry would label as a disease?’ …Some of the trauma stuff that’s coming out, the neuroscience, some of the somatics- it’s all kind of merging. And with the help of psychedelics, I’m feeling more optimistic that maybe the field will go into more of a growth, healing-oriented route vs. this pathology [of] ‘sick.’” -Kyle
“With these clinics that are popping up- are you exclusively focusing on the psychedelic experience, or are you trying to focus on the therapeutic relationship, the rapport, the container, the trust that’s developed over time, and really developing that relationship with the client? There’s tons of research that suggests that a therapeutic relationship is the one factor in getting better in therapy. So, as money is coming into this space and more of these clinics are popping up, are you creating a center around therapy, and really thinking about how to bring wellness and work with people in this space, or are just focusing it exclusively on the substance, thinking that’s the change?” -Kyle
In today’s episode, Joe interviews Jesse Gould, founder and president of the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit organization that connects military veterans to ayahuasca retreats, and Keith Abraham, head of the newly created Heroic Hearts UK branch.
They discuss the similarities of their military pasts and post-combat struggles, and how they both took part in ayahuasca ceremonies at Peru’s La Medicina, where they eventually met. They note the need to create the UK branch came from the realization that UK vets simply weren’t getting as much attention as those in the US.
They talk about the unlikely allyship of Crispin Blunt, member of Parliament and co-chair of the All Party Parliamentory Group for Drug Policy Reform, the consideration of using psilocybin in future work as a less intense ayahuasca alternative, current microbiome studies and the excitement around new data vs. the “death by survey” complications when working with people in need, and how helpful a military mindset can be in these situations.
They share some success stories but talk about how far we need to go in helping veterans come back to society, and how much we’d benefit from a more ceremonial acceptance of the passage from one way of life to another. The corporate 9-5 world can be tough for anyone, but ultimately, finding a purpose and connecting to a community is what’s most important toward these veterans reintegrating back to their “pre-army” lives.
Notable Quotes
“Ayahuasca changed everything. I came out of that jungle a very different person. I wouldn’t say that I had a 400% healing experience, but I had that massive, massive, massive catalyst where I knew that my life had to change. And it has. And from there, in the year since, when I got myself together, I started realizing, ‘you know what? I’m in a good place. How can I introduce UK veterans to the experience that I’ve had, because I see that as vitally important?’ And then I was introduced to Jesse, and it turned out that the organization that I thought I wanted to create had already been created perfectly.” -Keith Abraham
“My sons actually in the same unit as I was (in the parachute regiment.) When I left the parachute regiment and went for my ayahuasca experience in Peru, I then came back, and my son was looking at me like, “wait, you’re a grizzly old war veteran, and now you’re talking about, like ‘everything is connected, and love and peace and harmony’ um… this is… strange.’’ He’s gotten really used to it now, but yea, it’s wonderful that these plant medicines can do these things for us. [We have] such strong minds and characters, and this ingrained training as well, but it can be overwhelmed in a good way.” -Keith Abraham
“One of the things we teach through Heroic Hearts, especially in the integration process, is: it’s fine to maintain your warrior- that warrior spirit, that warrior soul. But now you need to learn to use that energy and use that strength towards other means. You might be done with the fighting for now, but that doesn’t mean you’re set out to pasture and done with society. There’s a lot of different ways you can use that energy. …How can you continue to be a warrior, just on a different trajectory?” -Jesse Gould
Jesse Gould is Founder and President of the Heroic Hearts Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit pioneering psychedelic therapies for military veterans. After being deployed in Afghanistan three times, he founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017 to spearhead the acceptance and use of ayahuasca therapy as a means of addressing the current mental health crisis among veterans. The Heroic Hearts Project has raised over $150,000 in scholarships from donors including Dr. Bronner’s and partnered with the world’s leading ayahuasca treatment centers, as well as sponsoring psychiatric applications with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Georgia. Jesse helps shape treatment programs and spreads awareness of plant medicine as a therapeutic method. He has spoken globally about psychedelics and mental health, and received accolades including being recognized as one of the Social Entrepreneurs To Watch For In 2020 by Cause Artist. Driven by a mission to help military veterans struggling with mental trauma, he is best known for his own inspiring battle with PTSD and his recovery through ayahuasca therapy. Jesse’s work can be seen and heard at NY Times, Breaking Convention, San Francisco Psychedelic Liberty Summit, People of Purchase, The Freq, Psychedelics Today Podcast, Kyle Kingsbury Podcast, Cause Artist, WAMU 88.5 and The GrowthOp.
About Keith Abraham
Keith Abraham served 9 years as a member of The Parachute Regiment, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the latter years of his military service and during this time working for an investment bank, Keith began experiencing severe symptoms of anxiety and depression. After exhausting the majority of services and options offered by the NHS and military charities without much success, Keith realized a new approach was needed. His profound experiences with ayahuasca and psilocybin convinced him of the vital role plant medicines have to offer those suffering from PTSD, brain injuries and mental ill-health.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and talk about various topics in the news.
They first discuss the duality of how Covid-19 affects different people, and how much of a privilege it is to be able to reconnect with family in new ways and use this time to grow spiritually while so many are out of work and struggling to get by.
They discuss a recent tweet from @Shroomstreet concerning psychedelic stocks and the money being invested in this emerging market, and concerns that some of these unknown companies could be fake or following the “exit scam” model of holding onto investor money and then closing up shop. How many of these companies are in it for the right reasons, and what does this all mean on a grand scale? They talk about recent reports of psychedelic retreats in excess of $10,000 and the various aspects surrounding these prices, from the cost of education and the need for physicians and therapists to make a living while helping others, to the idea of “pay what you can” and taking a hit financially if it means helping the local community or those really in need without the finances to be able to participate in these retreats. Is pastoral counseling or group therapy the best way to help the most people?
And lastly, they talk about Oregon’s progress in getting legal psilocybin therapy on the ballot in November and the benefits of legality, most importantly towards the ability to report abusive sitters under a framework that would completely remove them from this field.
Notable quotes
“The Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm is just so focused on the how- on the mechanics of ‘how does a psychedelic work? Oh, ok, it can treat this. How does it treat this?’ vs. thinking about the idea of final cause and thinking about the why- why do these things exist? What is its purpose, and what is the potential implication here, on a bigger level, than just thinking about this how and thinking ‘this thing does this thing and that’s all we’re really worried about,’ not thinking about that overarching why- like, what is the purpose here?” -Kyle
“I think everybody really should be able to access healing eventually. I think people shouldn’t be starving to death either, but people are still starving to death. I remember Kwasi (Adusei, in Solidarity Fridays week 10) at one point was like, ‘should we bring psychedelics to minority communities for healing?’ Well, why not bring regular mental health services first? Let’s start with clean water, as opposed to ‘let’s give them a road that they didn’t want.’ What’s the cheapest, lowest-hanging fruit that’s going to give the best reward?” -Joe
“Education programs probably would be really helpful. And I think that’s how we fit in. It’s a philosophy thing that could be helpful for both recreationalists and people providing therapeutic experiences, and the experiencers themselves too. It helps to have some education before you go to see God.” -Joe
“I think states should be experimenting with different ways of going forward. Yes, I want everything to be decriminalized- I want everything to be legal, really- personally. I don’t think therapeutic use should be the only use-case. But it’s certainly a lot better than what we’ve got now.” -Joe
In this episode, Joe speaks with Peter Hendricks, Ph.D. and Associate Professor at the University of Alabama, currently involved in researching the effects of psilocybin on people dealing with cocaine-related substance use disorder.
He discusses the details of the pilot trial (following the Johns Hopkins model, with music created by Bill Richards), some early findings and speculations, what music might work best for these sessions, how excited he is to bring these findings to the criminal justice system, and how religion and tribalism come into play when looking at what people get out of these psychedelic experiences. Hendricks points out that while psilocybin is currently being researched as a treatment for tobacco use (by Matthew Johnson at Johns Hopkins) and alcohol use (by Michael Bogenschutz at NYU), this is the first large study with cocaine and could lead to the first medication for major stimulants. And while there have been many studies on psilocybin in general, they’ve rarely been focused on the people he’s working with, who are often poorer, less educated, often out of work, and usually struggling more than those typically involved in these studies. They also talk about what research of the past has given us data-wise, and how inspirational it has been to the work being done today.
Notable Quotes
“The participants in our trial- they haven’t read Michael Pollan’s book or others. They’re not in the know. I’ll have to explain to them what the drug is, and the common reaction is, ‘uhh, so you’re going to help me stop getting high by getting me high?’ and I’ll try to explain how the drug might differ from others, from more addictive drugs like cocaine. And as we know, it’s an ineffable experience- it’s a difficult experience to put to words…. I’m honored and I have admiration for our participants because they have the courage to dive into this study conducted at a University by people they’ve never met. It can be a very frightening experience and they say, ‘you know what, I’ve tried everything. At this point, I’m desperate, let’s give it a try.’ I probably couldn’t overstate how much courage it takes for them to do what they do. I don’t know that I could do it myself.”
“I think for most of the world’s fates, the tenants are that we’re all in this together, and we’re bound by love. And that really might be the message that most people get from psychedelics, but similar to religion, sometimes that message is perverted a bit and what you take from it is, ‘my in-group is what’s most important and I’m going to act to preserve my own tribe, even if it means treating others in an awful, inhumane way…’ Sometimes experiences that are really meant to foster a connection with everybody can go haywire and we have to be aware of that”
“One criticism of some of the studies conducted so far has been, how do we know that psilocybin might have these effects on a sample that isn’t all college-educated or doctorates or who are Professors at Universities who make more than 100,000 dollars per year and live comfortably? How do we know that this experience would have any meaning to somebody who’s making less than 10,000 per year, who has a fifth-grade education, who’s unemployed and homeless? I think in large part, this study might answer that question. If we find an effect, then we can say it appears to also have an effect among those who look different and whose life circumstances are much different than some of the earlier participants.”
Dr. Hendricks received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of South Florida and completed a post-doctoral Fellowship in Drug Abuse Treatment and Services Research at the University of California, San Francisco. His research centers on the development of novel and potentially more effective treatments for substance dependence, with specific areas of focus on tobacco, cocaine, and polysubstance dependence in vulnerable populations.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down to talk about topics in the news including Mindmed’s phase one research into DMT, the intricacies of intravenous or infusion-pump administration, the potential clinical application of DMT, and whether or not mainstream science is ready to handle some transpersonal phenomena like entity encounters that sometimes occur during DMT experiences. They also discuss the projections for the psychedelic drug market and the intentions of the companies entering this space, and a recent tweet from the Drug Policy Alliance discussing how the war on drugs is a tool of racial oppression.
They dive deep into the war on drugs and racial oppression by discussing how sentencing for crack-cocaine is much harsher than cocaine (while basically the same drug), how NYC’s “stop-and-frisk” program was essentially put in place to put people in jail for cannabis possession, and how Breonna Taylor never would have died if police weren’t looking for drugs. They discuss the tragedy of Elijah McClain and what purpose a lot of police activity really serves, while looking at the “protect ourselves first” fraternity mentality that a lot of these power organizations have and how difficult it can be for a good person to become a whistleblower in those situations.
They also talk about revisiting philosophy through Lenny Gibson and how beneficial it has been to explore that world as more mature people and see connections to psychology, as well as learning the limitations of scientific explanations when dealing with deep, transpersonal experiences. Lastly, they mention their excitement in participating in the re-scheduled Philosophy of Psychedelics conference coming up next year in England.
Notable quotes
“I stopped doing research on near-death experiences at some point, where I was just like, ‘I’m sick of reading about [how] these are just physiological reflexes and responses within the brain, maybe the lack of oxygen, or all the different neurochemistry that’s going on within the brain at the time of dying…’ There’s something so interesting about that experience, that no matter how much mechanistic information I have, there’s still something there that eats at me… kind of like this lore… the lore of beauty and life kind of unfolding. It’s oriented towards growth and beauty, and I guess that’s what some of these experiences have really taught me- and it is that lore to grow, evolve, and move towards something. And I think when I try to put some sort of biological explanation to it, it almost halts that and says ‘that experience doesn’t really mean that much.’” -Kyle
“Science has limited capacity to help people with meaning-making.” -Joe
“Do we have enough spiritual literacy? Do we have an inclusive enough cosmology to handle all of these cases? …Are psychologists willing to call in an exorcist of some kind? Or some sort of priest [who] can handle this kind of thing? …I tend to think shareholders might be a little creeped out if publicly traded companies are talking about spirits and entities. Are we ready for that?” -Joe
“What does it mean that you have to put somebody in prison for 10 years for a non-violent offense, as a cop? Like, you pulled someone over, you found some drugs in their car, and now they go to prison. And their life is essentially ruined. And you made the decision to become a police officer and uphold laws. Like, can you sit with that and be ok with that, as an individual? Why do you think drugs are so bad that locking another person up in a cage for years and years and years is ok? …[They say], ’because they have meth or fentanyl, they are the most dangerous people out there!’ What about the rapists and murderers? What about drunk drivers that could kill 20 kids in one night? Why are you spending time on drug offenses when there are rapists out there? There are tons of untested rape kids at all these police departments across the country.”- Joe
In this episode, Joe speaks with award-winning musician, producer, transpersonal guide, shamanic practitioner, and certified graduate of Grof Transpersonal Training, Byron Metcalf.
They discuss Metcalf’s path from being a Nashville-based studio musician (who played on Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”) to a “midlife correction” of taking a class with Stan Grof and Jacquelyn Small leading to him discovering holotropic breathwork: a whole new world he had never seen before that perfectly suited his musical mind.
They discuss how Metcalf works with music- from recording and producing to making mixes for sessions, how different types of music work better for different types of sessions, and how important it is to think about the flow of a mix and the transitions and mixing between songs in how it relates to the journey of the people listening- when does up-tempo music work best in comparison to more heart-centered, emotional music? When is more shamanic, percussion-based music more appropriate? He also talks about the effect of people’s projections in these sessions and a funny story of when he thought he heard Christmas music during a session, using Spotify for session music, streaming vs. downloading, 320kbps vs. 24-bit recordings, creating music sober vs. under the influence, the effectiveness of binaural beats, and co-creating retreats with clients to fit their custom personal and musical needs.
Notable Quotes
“It just… changed my life. I mean, literally, just like, ‘what is this? How is this even possible to just do some deep breathing and listen to this incredible music?’ …What it reminded me of was a psychedelic experience. And so I immediately saw the potential in it… And of course… how that model uses music was kind of just a perfect fit for me.”
“You’re doing your own work. The best healers or the best facilitators, therapists, whatever- are the ones who really have done their own work, and in fact, I don’t trust anyone [who] hasn’t.”
“I was really fortunate that Stan would enlist me to do music sometimes at these bigger events- the Insight and Opening where Stan and Jack Kornfield would combine the holotropic breathwork with Vipassana meditation for a week. And it was groups of 200, and so you got 100 people breathing at one time and it’s [a] pretty fantastic energy field as you could imagine. And just seeing- observing what happens for people and to people and through people, still- when I think about it and start describing some of the things that I’ve witnessed and observed and experienced, it almost sounds like [I’m] making this stuff up… It’s like trying to explain a psychedelic experience to someone that’s never had it before… There’s no way you can really convey that. So it has to be experienced.”
“There’s something higher, bigger- that’s at work here that we want to make contact with and surrender to. So that’s the goal. And sometimes if people are projecting on the music, not liking the music- sometimes changing it would be good. Other times, not. Because maybe it is bringing up a great piece for them. And [they say] “I don’t like this! I don’t like this!” Of course that’s projecting onto the music. What’s going on underneath that?”
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and talk about topics in the news including what psychedelic companies owe to the community (both indigenous people and the underground psychedelic world), psilocybin-like drug alternatives for treating depression and the many reasons newer companies are trying to remove the psychedelic part of the medicine, and Dennis McKenna’s recent appointing to New Wave Holdings’ psychedelic research advisory board and what that says about the current climate of corporations moving into this space.
They discuss the dangers of “sponsored content”-like corporate messages, the malleability of laws and power of lobbyists and interest groups, and how manipulation is faster and quieter than ever before, while many big decisions are being made by people crippled from decades of unseen cultural baggage. And why are companies trying to remove the psychedelic side of medicine? Is it solely for profit, or could it be because there are so many in need that streamlining the process or using these medicines differently than we’re used to in this space would be beneficial to the most people?
Lastly, they talk about the importance of making the right connections and having the right arguments and really asking yourself what you’re trying to do when engaging with those who disagree with you- are you just trying to be right, or are you trying to make a change?
Additionally, Joe shares an important harm reduction story and tip, and gives the news that Psychedelics Today recently surpassed 1 million downloads. Thank you for the support!
Notable Quotes
“Is the only box you can fit in, like ‘I want a career, a home and a family’? And everything else doesn’t matter? Is that it? I think it’s more complicated than that. We’re not just atomic units, like nuclear families. We’re far more interconnected than that, and it’s kind of irresponsible to ignore that.” -Joe
“Big businesses end up creating these systems that we all seem to rely on over time and to some extent, I think we appreciate the convenience. If that crumbled, what would our life look like? Could we tolerate living more locally, doing things on a much smaller scale? …What would that look like in a world where the government didn’t give huge bailouts to these big companies? Our world would drastically change, and could we shift?” -Kyle
“Maybe a thing to just keep in the back of our minds when we’re hearing all this stuff about new pharma companies is that pharma is not guaranteed money for these people. Pharma is still a gamble. Unless they really nail it, they could go bankrupt in a couple years, or just have earnings way lower than they hoped for. So it’s big money, it’s big bets, and they’re betting on big returns, so they kind of have to go out on a limb and stay stuff like this. But the fact that Forbes put that out- that psilocybin could be toxic- seems irresponsible to me… To me, this kind of looks like sponsored content. Or it’s just like, ‘how do we get these corporations to talk to us and be comfortable, so we have to promise fluff.’ Or, is this organized propaganda?” -Joe
“Some of the people in this space are just getting so nasty that a lot of people are just saying, ‘nah, I’m out, later. I’ll go watch Seinfeld reruns for the next couple years while this shit plays out.’ Are you moving allies away, or are you bringing allies closer to you? Think about that. You want more allies. What’s the best tool? Sweetness. Anger, bitterness, spite- those are things that make people want to go away from you. How effective do you want to be, why do you want to be effective, and what tools are you willing to employ to be effective?” -Joe
In this episode, Joe Interviews Dosed filmmakers Tyler Chandler and Nick Meyers, as well as the subject of their documentary, Adrianne.
Nick and Tyler tell the story of how they went from really knowing very little about the psychedelic healing movement to becoming advocates solely from a panicked call from Adrianne.
Adrianne speaks of her journey from opiate addiction and severe depression to trying mushrooms and eventually learning she needed Iboga and a community around her to really fight her way out of a life she no longer wanted to live.
They touch on the costs of Iboga compared to other rehabilitation methods, the often glazed-over dangers of Iboga, the effectiveness of psilocybin against opioid withdrawal, anxiety in the western world, holotropic breathwork as a safer method towards healing, the power of the Pixar movie, Inside Out, and why it would be beneficial for young viewers to watch Dosed.
Notable Quotes
“I have gotten sober and detoxed many, many, many times and not stayed sober, so obviously while the physical withdrawals are completely excruciating and definitely a big barrier to getting sober, there’s really something more to recovery than that, and that’s that kind of spiritual experience or awakening. And the psychedelic component is really important to that and I feel like that’s what’s contributed to me… not only getting sober but staying sober.” -Adrianne
“The real problem is that… people are forced to make these decisions and take these risks because something that has been known for 40 years to have this wonderful effect on opioid addicts is somehow something that nobody knows about and isn’t legalized.” -Nick Meyers
“No matter how you choose to recover or what you do to get sober and stay sober, having a community around you and staying connected with people is so, so important.” -Adrianne
“I definitely had a lot of discomfort just learning to… be still or be with myself and not have an escape. That’s part of recovery and it’s very uncomfortable. It takes time to get used to that. I was always used to having some kind of coping mechanism that took me out of myself, that just helped me not feel uncomfortable or whatever negative feeling I was feeling. So that’s always a challenge and there’s no shortcuts to that- you do have to just learn to be in your body and feel feelings, which I did not like very much. But, you know, it gets easier over time.” -Adrianne
“Everybody is so scared of just saying… ‘this is something that teens should do’ because nobody wants to have anything bad happen and then have it get traced back to them. But look at the realities of what teens are going through with… the rampant alcohol and other drugs, and… vaping and smoking and all the other vices- prescription medications, everything that’s available. And there’s like, no guidance, no supervision a lot of the time… What we’re doing right now isn’t working. Can I dare say it? It would be better if there were rites of passage with psychedelics in controlled settings with proper set, setting and dose with young people, because it really helps you recontextualize and reframe things in your mind.” -Nick Meyers
After many years of prescription medications failed her, a suicidal woman turns to underground healers to try and overcome her depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction with illegal psychedelic medicine such as magic mushrooms and iboga. Adrianne’s first dose of psilocybin mushrooms catapulted her into an unexpected world of healing where plant medicines are redefining our understanding of mental health and addiction.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and discuss topics in the media including the usefulness of brain activity scans and the idea that “brain does not equal mind,” how language can shift the social narrative to or away from stigma when describing substance use, and psilocybin testing in mice and when we might see psilocybin start being prescribed.
They spend a lot of time on the questions everyone is asking right now- what changes can we make that will help the most people and give the oppressed what they need? What tangible changes do the oppressed actually want? What should the role of police look like, either compared to or in conjunction with social work or therapy?
They look at these questions with hope, but through a realistic lens- disasters, illness and even global warming always affects the poor and oppressed more than those in power. And historically, people have always shown a natural tendency to want to hold others down. What is the real purpose behind what those in power do (for example, outlawing encrypted texting or arresting someone for doing drugs)? Are they trying to encourage only specific conversations they’re comfortable with?
Notable Quotes
So what really can we do, and what specifically can those with white privilege do? The answer there is to find where your voice is most effective, and to have those tough conversations. “Find those inarguable points. Don’t let the media steer your narrative. Major media outlets want you to talk about certain things. Don’t do that. Find out what you think is most important and most helpful to discuss with the people you’re around. Where do you have the most influence?” -Joe
“How can we… shift the narrative there to help people heal instead of… putting them in this lifelong box of ‘you’ll never heal from this because you have this disorder and this disease’? I’m always on the side of healing [rather] than trying to completely pathologize experiences.” -Kyle
“It sounds nice to say that we want to eliminate violence, we want to eliminate racism, we want to eliminate rape- all these really bad things. But how long have those things been with us? At least 14,000 years, I think. What’s it going to really take to totally reprogram the human genome- the human mind- to transition to this ideal? Is it possible? I don’t know… I want to see these police held accountable, I want to see… criminals in the government go to jail. But it’s kind of the nature of these institutions. They have this monopoly on violence that was granted to them a long time ago, and there’s no real recourse. They’ve got way bigger budgets than any of us as individuals or gangs have, much more training, much better gear… I don’t totally see a great path out.” -Joe
In this week’s episode, Joe discusses how he and his co-founder, Kyle Buller started Psychedelics Today, and how their podcast led to them developing a number of online courses. Their upcoming course is Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists. This 8-week course is good for both those wanting to learn how to better understand a client’s needs as a physician or a therapist and for those looking to get a taste of what the psychedelic therapy world is like before embarking on a more traditional and expensive training program.
Joe also talks about how mystical and spiritual experiences can play a role in psychology. While often overlooked in the current psychiatric system, Joe believes these spiritual and mystical experiences may help to heal patients in certain situations.
In this episode:
How Psychedelics Today started, and what led to offering courses.
What information Joe found lacking in the psychedelic community.
How psychological theories incorporate into the work of facilitation
Spiritual Emergence and its potential benefit to the current psychiatric system
Quotes:
“We just thought the psychedelic world is really interesting, but it is really lacking regular discussion of Dr. Stan Groff and Holotropic Breathwork. So really it [The Psychedelics Today podcast] was a way that we could contribute and bring voices that we thought were important back to the foreground” [5:13]
“I don’t want to be the Tony Robbins telling you how, you know, this is exactly how you should be charging at your problems. It’s like no – you need to take an individualized approach.” [13:03]
“If more people had a lot more support like we could see people self resolve things [trauma and psychological issues] instead of going into the psychiatric system for decades.” [26:13]
“You don’t get educated and then you’re done. This is a lifelong process.” [36:53]