CONFLICT
OKAY! Big week this week.
For one: Altered States of Context, the podcast I produce with my co-host Dr. Brian Pilecki, is back for Season 2. Here is the link to the first episode of the season, the 17th of the show: ASOC
Two: I haven’t published a newsletter in a few weeks, obviously, but it’s not because there isn’t anything to say- things are busier than ever on the psychedelic front. Also, however, things are busier than ever on the Nate front, so I’ve not been able to get to it. I’m going to try to publish every other week.
Three: Let’s talk about conflict and power!
So, yes- it’s time to talk about conflict and power.
First off- conflict. If you follow psychedelic news on any of the social media channels and pay attention to the discussion, you will notice that it is incredibly fractious and contentious. This may seem a little jarring given the stereotype of psychedelic drugs as the golden road to peace, love and understanding. It seems that before we get to the promised land, we’ve got to traverse the domains of a bunch of cranky psychonauts first.
OF COURSE psychonauts are a cranky bunch. A bunch of anti-establishment, counter-cultural folks are, even in nomenclature, much more clear about what they are against than what they are for. I am fond of referring to psychedelics as “conceptual solvents”, given their tendency to evoke in the user a taste of transcendence, a momentary glimpse into a reality that bursts beyond our small and limited attempts to define it. Upon returning to earth, the user may be left with a clear sense of what words and concepts no longer resonate- but it can be extremely difficult to verbalize a coherent idea of how to describe what they’ve experienced.
Thus, as people may be joined by the experience of deep, unitive connection that can be brought about by psychedelic experience, they can become divided by how best to articulate it. Like the great tower of Babel, psychedelic revelers come too close to understanding the mind of God, and are cast down, splintered over the crucible of words.
Words aren’t innocuous, neutral descriptions of people, places and things. They are ideas, at times abstract, that create their own material reality around them. Their power to shape human behavior is perhaps unrivaled- the human compulsion to adhere to verbally constructed rules, laws, and commandments can at times override primary motivations- base drives such as food and sex.
Are there universal beliefs that tend to emerge from the void of ineffable experiencing? Perhaps so, and the problem is simply one of translation. Though, perhaps not- the experience that unfolds beyond the verbally constructed cultural and historical bounds of the experiencer may still influence the manner in which it is later interpreted. And of course, the words that are used by others to describe your own experience…
The question of how to interpret the psychedelic experience is hotly disputed. This is, in my opinion, exactly how it should be. How do we describe it? With the utilitarian terminology of medicine? A poetic sensibility? A mystical one? A precise scientific taxonomy of elements of the experience? These languages don’t necessarily share much in common, and create vastly different contextual factors that may shape the verbally constructed meaning of the experience. Does this then lead to predicting, taming, or controlling it?
Who’s trip is this, anyway?
That’s what all the fighting is about. It’s about control, which dammit, is pretty much always what fighting is about. It’s about control over the right to hold the pre-eminent metaphorical description of the effects of psychedelic medicines on the user, and thus, at least partial linguistic control of the definition of human experience itself.
Does this sound hyperbolic? I don’t think it is. Especially in an age and era in which seemingly everything is commodified and nothing is sacred, a substance that is believed (rightly or wrongly) to offer a genuine experience of sacredness is… ironically….a very valuable commodity.
It’s SUCH a fascinating time in our cultural history for psychedelics to make a major resurgence. It’s a time in which our collective epistemic apparati are breaking apart, leaving insane Q-anon conspiracies and conspiritual wellness influencers to weave stories to “"help” wandering lost souls have something to believe in. We’re split over vaccines, masks, politics, race, gender- you name it. In this environment, the re-emergence of psychedelic drugs as a major cultural force is the wildest of wild cards.
Circling back, it really is remarkable how UNFUN the public conversation about psychedelic drugs has become. The irony of this is just so, so rich. The unfettered absurdism of psychedelia spares nothing it touches. An experience often marked by racaus hilarity becomes stodgy and unfunny, universal love becomes a scientific instrument and interconnection of beings becomes the invisible hand of the market.
It would be easy to become disillusioned and cynical… if it weren’t for one small thing. The experience of taking a psychedelic is still the same as it ever was. Everything around it is orbiting furiously, seeking to capture a bit of the brilliance, to capture a bit of control over the power of a free human mind temporarily de-shackled from its perceptual habits.
I believe this experience is a sacred one. As such, it belongs to the individual experiencer. It’s a gift, and the meaning one makes from such a gift is their own.
This is a commonly held view, in my experience, and explains a great deal of the resistance to medicalization, therapy, guides, and the like. The idea of someone selling access to this experience and then shaping it with their own interpretation and linguistic categorizations feels like a betrayal of the central feature of the experience itself- unmediated awareness.
I’m personally very sympathetic to this view. And yet.
While there are many, many different perspectives on psychedelics among users, researchers, profiteers and activists, there’s actually not that much disagreement that a trip itself can be a fascinating and ultimately beneficial experience for the tripper. It CAN help people. No, that’s not a proven fact, but there are multiple lines of evidence converging from many disciplines- various sciences, medicine, history, sociology, literature- that point to a transformative nature at the heart of psychedelia.
Shouldn’t a power like this be used? The overtones here are dramatic. Utilising a poorly understood power intimately related to a subject’s innermost spiritual/emotional/existential terrain- for the good of all- what could go wrong?
Lots can. I’d be remiss not to link to the podcast feature Power Trip, a production of New York magazine in their Cover Story investigative journalism series. It’s received a fair bit of criticism but has inarguably had an impact, and in my mind, a mostly positive one. I won’t go into a lot of detail, and I don’t intend this particular column to be taken as a full review, but the series does a great job of digging up and exposing malfeasance among psychedelic practitioners and organizations, and in many ways the more important tendency for those peripheral to the violations to fail to intervene and/or become complicit in covering the problems up. I wrote a long twitter thread (linked below) that goes into much more detail about my thoughts on the show.
This is a depressingly age-old problem. Vulnerable people are hurt while the people around them become more concerned with reputation management. It’s vital that the work they’ve done is witnessed and properly digested, for the good of everyone involved.
ALL THAT SAID, the fact remains that we have abundant reason to believe that psychedelic drugs can help people, and it’s also clear to anyone with eyes to see that there are a lot of people who are in need of help. I’m not at all suggesting that it’s as simple as matching up these people with the right psychedelic. Many of the reasons for our collective suffering right now have much more to do with economic conditions, social conditions, and perfectly natural responses to painful events than they do to any sort of medical diagnosis. This is yet ANOTHER reason why the debates surrounding psychedelics are so raucous- the internal debates within psychiatry/psychology/therapy are at a fever pitch over how best to conceptualize and treat problems of human suffering, and have been for over a century. Again: it is no wonder the debate over psychedelic assisted psychotherapy can be so intense, you are merging an already baggage laden subculture (psychedelia) into a famously controversial and difficult subject, concerning human suffering and the well-being of people in the modern context.
Nobody said this would be easy. Well, actually, I think a lot of people have been saying that, but they should STFU about that now. Of course it’s not easy. It’s not going to be. However, despite the risks, the pitfalls, the challenges- I believe it’s important to press forward, aggressively. We have a responsibility to get this right. There are no easy answers or a path forward that is without significant risk. However, there are also potentially tremendous rewards. This is why we have to keep fighting. We have to be clear that the rewards we collectively pursue are beneficial to all, not simply to a few. We have to ensure that autonomy is always placed at the center of any approach to treatment. We have to make sure that there are choices and options available to people, so that they may safely choose to encounter these experiences in a manner that feels aligned with their own wishes. We must not be overconfident about what we think we know, and allow space for the psychedelic experience to be merely what it is.
And, in the meantime, I also think it’s important to remember that this can be fun. That’s ok. We don’t always have to press on so seriously- this is HEALING, NOW, OPEN UP AND BE FREE. Sometimes the most healing thing in the world can be to just sit back and laugh your ass off. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes staggeringly weird. We have to let “it” be what it is, and let the experiencer be with their own experience, and build safe scaffoldings of support around them, without suggesting to them how it’s “supposed” to be.