The Stories we Tell Ourselves
Few things are more important to a person than a coherent, meaningful story. We tell stories about ourselves, about the world, about other people we know and people that we don’t. We are in many ways governed by our stories about how the world works and about what is right and what is wrong.
Stories are far, far more important than facts- at least insofar as they impact our behavior. An orphaned, unattached fact is mere trivia, knowledge that is generally considered to be little more than a curiosity. But a few facts, strung together in a manner that resembles coherence, can change the way a person views the world and his or her place in it.
To illustrate this point, I’m going to wade back in to “the dumbest debate on the internet.” No, I’m not talking about Joe Rogan, though that discussion might be pushing for the title. Most of this won’t be directly about psychedelics- it’s more of an illustration of the psychological context that psychedelics intervene so spectacularly within.
I’m once again going to talk about meat: to eat it or not. It’s a question I can’t really leave alone, it’s been one I’ve been on both sides of, and in between, for about 20 years. And wherever I have found myself on the question, I’ve generally found myself there with passion and conviction. I mean, I currently own beef cattle. As my son recently said to me “dad, you don’t ever do things just a little bit”. I’ve been very deeply invested in multiple stories about meat, and I know them well.
Stories help us make sense of the world, and how the world “is”. Let’s look at the vegan/vegetarian story. Before diving in, I want to express my respect for most views on this issue. I won’t say all, because some people can get downright nasty. But I want to explore this with as much sensitivity and respect as I can manage- because the subject deserves it. Also, before you go further, I am not writing this with the purpose of persuasion. Whereever you stand on the issue at the beginning of reading this, I expect you’ll still be standing at the end. This is an exercise in exploring worldviews and the power of narrative sensemaking, not making an argument. For all I know, I’ll do a “better” job with the veggie story than the carnivore one.
Yes, the vegetarian story. I think it starts with something simple and pure. A love for animals. One need only spend time with one of the various household mammals so many of us have come to love to understand the truth of their sentience and sensitivity. This is fact #1. Then, at some point, we learn that the food on our plate may, in fact, be an animal that has been killed. This is disturbing, and is fact #2. In order to eat meat, an animal has lost its life. Fact #3 is that it is possible to eat a diet that does not include animals, at all. These three facts form the emotional backbone of the vegetarian story.
Then a flurry of other facts come into play: the vast majority of farmed animals spend at least a portion, if not all, of their lives in inhumane environments that can fairly be described as torturous. Animal effluent, when pooled into gigantic lagoons, are a toxic ecological nightmare. Animals are not efficient, on a per calorie basis, at converting grain into flesh, and thus consume more human edible food than they produce. They consume a great deal of water. They emit methane (through burps, mostly, not farts, as the gas from the fermentation of grass in their rumens comes out the front, not the back), which is a potent greenhouse gas.
Not only that, but an entire literature has been created in the field of nutrition that report ill-effects of animal consumption on human health.
From the vegetarian story, this is the coup de grâce to the human consumption of meat- not only CAN we abstain from it, we ALSO decrease the suffering of animals, meaningfully help the environment, and provide MORE food for humans to eat in the process- and we can be slimmer and healthier in the process.
The story offers a great deal to the holder of the story, in terms of meaning and purpose. It gives a person specific actions they can take to deliver animals from suffering, and to make affirmative contributions to life on earth. This is the essence of a POWERFUL narrative. Indeed, this has proven to be so. Despite the fact that humans have eaten meat when it’s been available for the known entirety of our history as a species, that it is consistently the festive center of nearly all cross-cultural celebrations, that it features in nearly all ethnic cuisines and, generally, the more people can afford meat, the more they eat- the vegetarian story has earned a large number of converts.
That’s the power of a phenomenal story.
The first three facts mentioned are beyond dispute. As I said, they form the emotional core of the story. Many of the other facts are nearly as robustly supportable- modern, industrialized animal agriculture is a moral horror show of human cruelty towards animals. For this fact alone I cannot fault vegetarians for their convictions, even if I don’t at this point share all of them. However, at that, the facts supporting the vegetarian story become much more debatable and context-dependent. I don’t want to debate each point here- and strident vegetarians may (probably do) disagree with me, but the evidence regarding the health and environmental impacts of meat are… mixed. I do not think the answers are extremely clear, and that’s where I’ll leave it.
I’m going to tell a different story now. There are lots of stories about meat- there is the ancestral “paleo” story (this, specifically- paleo vs. vegan, is exactly what I mean when I say “the dumbest debate on the internet”). There is the family farms feeding the world story. There is the Christian dominion over nature story. There is the related but not exactly the same traditionalist story.
None of those hit home for me, I’ll tell you my story about meat. I don’t mean to imply that it is only mine, rather, it’s the one I am mostly in sway to at this point in my life. I’m also not saying it’s correct. I mean, it’s how I see things now, but who knows! I was a pretty strong adherent of the aforementioned vegetarian/vegan story a decade and a half ago, so, things change.
I will call this the perennial story.
The perennial story starts with the soil. This thin layer of mineral, organic matter, water and air teems with life- uncountable trillions of microorganisms. These bacteria and fungi colonize the living skin of the earth, stripping minerals from stone, decomposing dead organic matter, and reconstituting the chemical environment underfoot to make it hospitable for plants to root into- staking their claim to a place from which they can conduct the miraculous alchemy that turns sunlight into sugar.
Soil is a community, a vibrant ecosystem. All terrestrial life is supported by it. It thrives in a context of constant living and dying, growth and decay. It coheres to itself, forming aggregates that provide structured habitats for all sorts of life forms.
Tilling, plowing, and cultivating are mechanical processes by which the soil is churned up. This is more or less the foundation for modern agriculture, for centuries- even millennia. The problem with tillage is that it breaks down soil aggregates- damaging the health of the soil. Additionally, it kills (by design) plant life every year, paving the way for seasonal annual crops such as wheat, corn and beans- the products that make up the backbone of our industrialized food system- including most veggie proteins. That means that the root mass below the soil is only inches deep. Every year, the soil is exposed to the elements- and much valuable, vital topsoil is eroded by wind and by rain into waterways, down rivers, and to the sea.
Trees put roots down into the earth equal to what they put into the air, and draw minerals up from deep under the topsoil. Grasslands create a staggering mass of roots, 10-12 feet deep at times. The protected soil in a healthy ecosystem is a powerhouse- breaking down dead matter and freeing nutrients for plants to grow. Crucial to the function of soil is the presence of animals. Grasslands, in particular, thrive in the presence of large ruminant animals. In fact, every grassland ecosystem on the planet has coevolved with ruminants, who periodically prune grasses back and leave deposits of rich fertilizer to spur the regrowth of healthy, verdant vegetation.
Ruminant animals are admirable stewards of grasslands. They catalyze the death/rebirth cycle of a healthy prairie, stimulating ever deeper root growth and topsoil formation. They are adept nutrient recyclers. Much of the water they consume is returned right back to the ground below them- only now saturated with usable nitrogen in the form of urea. As the plants thrive, they continue to gobble carbon dioxide out of the air, sending it down into its gigantic tangle of roots, where it makes its way into the soil and is stored.
The perennial story suggests that to support healthy soil, and thus the ability of the soil to hold prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide, one must eat food that is derived from ecosystems filled with permanent plants. This includes trees, select vegetables, and animals that feed largely, or better, exclusively, on perennial plants in intact grassland environments.
The key facts involved in the crafting of this narrative are as follows: 1) All systems of life are incomprehensively complex and ordered in a way that we almost never perceive with fullness and accuracy. Soil is among the most complex and least understood. 2) Wide-scale, constant disturbance of natural systems have vast and observable negative environmental consequences. In the case of soil, this means mass erosion and leaching of valuable nutrients. 3) There is no such thing as bare earth in natural systems. Perennial plants protect and build soil, and accumulate carbon dioxide in the soil (exactly HOW much CO2 is still very much in question). 4) Animals play a role in every ecosystem on earth, and to remove animals from the environment is akin to removing a heart from a body.
This story also has the power to organize incoming information and orient around a particular course of action. Rather than refraining from participating in animal agriculture altogether, this story suggests that we support a nascent movement to steward the soil and practice humane husbandry so as to de-industrialize farming- the predominant and most impactful way in which humans interface with nature.
We tend to think that we are logical, fact gathering deciders, and that our actions are generally rational and calculated. We are not. Rather, we tend to identify with a story (which may be at least somewhat influenced by fact and reason, though not as much as we flatter ourselves to think) and then we organize the relevant facts around that story. This is a process we can put checks on- the scientific method is one such check- but it’s more or less how most of us make sense of the world most of the time. This process obscures from us many “blind spots”, aspects of the world that don’t jive with the stories we, usually unconsciously, hold about the world. We don’t see what we don’t expect to see.
Pieces of information can be neatly assembled to support many different stories. This is, I believe, part of why the world is such a mess right now- so many competing narrative understandings of the world allow different people to exist in apparently different worlds. Even individuals can be divided within themselves, holding stories about themselves and the world that are incongruent, even antagonistic, with one another.
It seems to me pretty clear that psychedelics disrupt this narrative process, at least temporarily. For one thing this “narrative” function is largely a product of language, and, however it happens in the brain, human language is very nearly completely disabled during a significant psychedelic experience. This gives us a pause from the narrative architecture we unconsciously inhabit all of our waking lives. Indeed, the entire structure of the world is rent asunder, leaving only scraps of perception and disembodied imagery.
I’ve often described psychedelics as “conceptual solvents”, which would be a way of additionally explaining their function as “narrative disrupters”. In a way, this is an incredibly neat fit with the aims of psychotherapy, at least insofar I understand it through my particular manner of practice. Psychotherapy is also a process of narrative disruption, of intervening in stories that have outlived their usefulness, or perhaps were never even useful at all.
These stories relate to one’s sense of self, ideas of how the world works and how they are “supposed” to be. Dogged adherence to unhelpful stories, conscious or not, drives a great deal of personal pathology. Taking a sharp pin and popping those forms of illusion is a neccesary precursor to change.
Here we come to an extremely interesting problem. In the vacuum created by a sudden pause in narrative sensemaking, what emerges? What new narratives and new structures of belief may spring forth? If we think in terms of narration and story, certainly that capacity does not shut off, even if we are granted temporary reprieve.
Another function often attributed to psychedelic experiencing is that it may enhance suggestibility. This might seem a bit incongruent- does it make one more likely to see through illusions or to adhere to new ones? The answer may be both. In the open, suddenly narrative-free space of experience, new, augmented patterns may congeal as things come back together.
This isn’t to say the tripping completely reshuffles the deck. But the pause enables a more flexible reassembly. This flexibility is the crucial therapeutic aspect of psychedelic experience, in my opinion. In the case of someone inflexibly trapped in painful patterns of living, this may truly present the opportunity for a new path forward.
BUT, there are risks. It is tempting to focus on the bursting of illusions/delusions that create the kind of rigidity that begets stuckness. But SOMETHING will always re-emerge. And we hope very much that something is at least a bit different, because, of course, isn’t that the point, at least if we are looking through a “therapeutic” lens? And HOPEFULLY the something that emerges will hold itself with a little bit more lightness- that in witnessing the deconstruction of narrative control altogether, one sees the temporal and provisional nature of all belief. But is that an inherently likely outcome? I think it is clear that that is not always the case, as sometimes people emerge with self-aggrandizing, narcissistic narratives, complete with messianic tendencies….
It seems that when considering this re-emergent something, we must very carefully consider the ethical implications at play. This could create a situation in which the individual tripper is exquisitely vulnerable to manipulation, of all sorts. In the course of normal psychotherapy, I am, as I believe other ethical therapists are as well, extremely cautious about my own beliefs and agendas and imposing them on others, even if it is for their own good. Even so, I can think of times in which I’ve violated this, and have pushed certain “narratives” of my own. I think this is almost impossible not to do, though I try to learn from my mistakes. If I’m careful and conscientious, the undue influence is likely mitigated by the fact I’m working with a person who, though perhaps vulnerable, is sober.
Is it ok to incept a narrative into another if it is healthy and for their own good? Might this be what we are doing, to some degree? Is this what we talk about when we talk about the importance of context, or “set and setting”? If we are clear about the values that we are promoting and very open about the sorts of narrative beliefs we seek to enhance- such as healing, compassion, empathy, courageousness, etc, does that meet our obligation to informed consent?
Often it is assumed, I think, that psychedelics, by their nature, evoke certain changes in the user that are often described with a certain narrative- more universal love, regard for nature, interconnection of living beings, etc. I think it is plausible that this is a natural result of an experience that disables one’s sense of conceptualized self, and allows one to see the fundamental unity of creation. In fact, that is what I think. That’s my narrative. But it is not everyone’s, and it is not the experience that everyone comes away with.
So what does this imply for the future of psychedelic psychotherapy, and for a post-prohibition psychedelic world? I think we need to fully reckon with this truth:
The power to change a narrative, to change a mind, is as tremendous and terrible a power as can exist.
Psychedelics are an extremely powerful tool. I do not believe saying THIS is hype. The idea that it can cure depression, spark a multi-billion dollar pharma boom, re-enchant western capitalism with values of peace, love and understanding…. THIS is hype. But the power to change minds- this is something to be held with great care.
The tendency in our current time and place when encountering something with great power is to control it. The drug war is the result of this mindset. Be extension, the idea that psychedelics should only be available in tightly controlled circumstances, distributed and supervised by state-approved experts, is really only a kinder, gentler version of the same impulse.
Psychedelics should be studied, and utilized- but never controlled. If a tool is as powerful as many proponents say- and I think they are- that sort of power should be widely distributed and available to free people everywhere. After all, that’s a foundational narrative of our society, isn’t it? Freedom, autonomy and sovereignty over our own minds? There are other stories available. This is one, however, that I don’t want to let go of.