Altered States, Fractured Systems: Psychedelics and the Elusive Path to Societal Healing
Psychedelics as Catalysts for Transformation, the Final of Five Parts
The first two of my posts on psychedelics might be summarized by the anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios and the medical doctor David Smith in their 1976 paper: “Members of the counterculture use drugs ritualistically to achieve many of the same goals that members of traditional societies sought to achieve through drug use. These goals include expansion of cosmic consciousness, enhancement of religious feeling, and improved self-understanding.”
It is precisely these deeper forms of understanding that are essential for transforming our ecocidal—and thus omnicidal—behaviors. An intellectual grasp alone of issues like climate change, habitat destruction, mass extinction, and extreme wealth inequality is clearly insufficient to inspire meaningful action.
The third and fourth posts suggest that, despite their potential, modern society’s fear and aversion toward psychedelics make these substances unlikely candidates for widespread acceptance or use.
Before we judge our institutions too harshly for their backwardness and unwitting complicity in our collective dis-enlightenment, we should acknowledge a deeper socio-psychological problem with the power of psychedelics: even their sacramental or religious use does not guarantee a higher (kinder, more empathetic and generous) level of consciousness.[i]
For instance, plant psychotropics have often been used by the expert practitioners to bestow “magical power to bewitch and kill.” Shamans in the Amazon sometimes use ayahuasca as part of their malevolent repertoire against other shamans and their patients.[ii] Psychedelics were part of the ceremonies associated with human sacrifice among the Aztecs, and they are still ingested as part of sacramental headhunting among the Ecuadorian Jivaro.[iii]
Given that they have been numerously described as “boundary-dissolving, non-specific brain amplifiers,”[iv] or having “hyper-suggestible” properties, psychedelics may serve just as often to reinforce cultural values and biases as to provide entrance into the realms of universal love and compassion.
And even for those who have experienced profound spiritual awakenings, everyday behaviors tend to remain the same afterward as before. The momentary flashes of greater understanding—like satori moments—do not often translate into a daily practice informed by greater wisdom. As the religious scholar Huston Smith has variously phrased it through the years: “Drugs appear able to induce religious experiences; it is less evident that they can produce religious lives.” And “The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits…”[v] and, “The goal, it cannot be stressed too often, is not religious experiences: it is the religious life.”[vi]
For our purposes, there is little evidence to suggest that psychedelic adherents live lifestyles that are more ecological or harmonious than the general population. Or as Huston Smith observed, psychedelics did not bring about the “greening of America”. According to Michael Parenti, New Agers move into positions of corporate and political power with no less enthusiasm than do the general population. Similarly, Jay Stevens, in his book Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, found that for every “Sixties kid” who questioned Civilization’s values and history there were ten who simply wanted to profit from it.[vii]
Leaders within the psychedelic community, who are otherwise advocates for their use, have been some of the most reflective on this point. The anthropologist Jeremy Narby was quoted in an interview saying, “I just don’t think that psychedelics—as a group of substances—are any sort of instant ecology-awareness pills.” Given the variation in people, he notes, there will be a great variation in the way psychedelics manifest.
And if they do indeed behave as Stanislav Grof suggested, as “unspecific amplifiers of mental processes that brings to the surface various elements from the depths of the unconscious,”[viii] then psychedelics may lead to ecological awareness for those who are so disposed, and for others they may amplify egoist characteristics such as intolerance, narcissism, a sense of spiritual superiority, and all sorts of selfish and destructive behavior.[ix] For some, Abbie Hoffman noted, the use of psychedelics creates “a feeling of definite separation from those who … [have] not.”[x] It creates just one more mental construct of us versus them.
Likely then, the judicious use of psychedelics will not by themselves guarantee a society with a more evolved empathic consciousness. They may, however, still serve as powerful tools towards that goal in the hands of a sensible society.
If, like meditation, psychedelics provide an entry to an alternative viewpoint that is ultimately adaptive for society, then we expect that it will one day become integrated into our culture and its traditions. This is the long view.
In the short term—in the half-century or so that we have left to change some of the most painful consequences of environmental destruction and inequity—psychedelics are no more likely to help us avert disaster than will meditation. They may help inform the consciousness of some leaders along the way, but the short-term prospects of their acting as a catalyst for cultural transformation are probably minimal.
Their illegality, alone, makes the road to sensible universal use a long-term prospect. And given that we have lost the protocols, traditions, and communal worldview of the ancients, we have to rediscover these for ourselves. Given the stringent laws against their use, the only legal avenue presently available is with scientists in the laboratory and “in the field,” who then communicate their findings in academic journals and conferences.[xi]
For some, this process seems to be agonizingly slow. Especially given the relatively few experiments that have been approved until recently by federal regulators. Still, although the ancient protocols and traditions were, as Neal Goldsmith put it, “honed through centuries of hard-won tribal trial-and-error experimentation,” the ways of modern science will surely take far less time.
Laws and cultural attitudes and traditions, too, can change quickly, especially in a secular post-modern society, where there is a “marketplace” of ideas. Most of the hard-won civil rights we now hold dear have been enshrined only within the past century, a single day in the life of our species, a mere blink in the vastness of geological time. Given the enormous changes that have revolutionized human culture in the past one hundred years and the acceleration of change in the human story, it seems reasonable to imagine that humanity will, in the next thousand years, or even in the next hundred, intelligently integrate meditation into its daily rituals and psychedelics into its appropriate role.
[i] Higher level of consciousness is being used here in the restricted sense, that is synonymous with a more empathic, more compassionate, more universal awareness, as opposed to simply referring to an altered state.
[ii] Harner, M.J. (1962) Jivaro Souls. American Anthropologist: 64(2): 258-72.
Harner, M.J. (1968) The Sound of Rushing Water. Natural History Magazine; 77: 28-33, 60-1.
Harner, M.J. (1984) The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls. Univ. California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Johnson, M.W., Richards, W.A., and Griffiths, R.R. (2008) Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety. Journal of Psychopharmacology; 22(6): 603-20.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] This has become a common description of the general effect of psychedelics, starting with Grof, S. (1975:6,32) Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. Viking Press, New York.
[v] Smith (1958/2009:429).
[vi] Smith (1976) quoted here in Forte, R. (2000:119) Entheogens and the Future of Religion. Council on Spiritual Practices, San Francisco, CA.
[vii] Stevens (1987:293).
[viii]Grof, S. (1975:6) Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. Viking Press, New York.
[ix] Strassman, R.J. (2000) Biomedical Research with Psychedelics: Current Models and Future Prospects. Pp. 153-62, in Robert Forte (ed.) Entheogens and the Future of Religion. Council on Spiritual Practices, San Francisco, CA.
Huston Smith (1964) noted that mystical experiences are more often chemically induced among those with strong religious inclinations.
[x] Abbie Hoffman quoted in Stevens (1987:327).
[xi] The laboratory and field in this instance is often a warm, comfortable room with soft lighting and music, etc.