As chemicals go, few are as vilified as those we call psychedelics. Today, over 180 countries adhere to the UN’s 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, classifying psychedelic chemicals such as LSD, mescaline, DMT and psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – as “Schedule I” drugs, a title supposedly reserved for only the most dangerous compounds.
Interestingly however, our relationship with these substances has not always been so fearful. Between the 1950s and 70s, these drugs showed great promise in the field of psychiatry, and had great preliminary successes in the treatment of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. As a result, many contemporary researchers called not for their prohibition, but their careful and considered integration into the medical mainstream.
But Nixon’s war on drugs derailed these hopes, and spread a deep and enduring fear of psychoactive substances throughout Western culture. Recently however, medical research has recently begun to reaffirm the potential benefits of these unique drugs, and in light of new and ever more intriguing studies, it is time we re-evaluated our relationship with these fascinating chemicals.
Although western science only “discovered” these drugs around the 1940s, the classical psychedelics have been in use for thousands of years. To be specific, mescaline, DMT and psilocybin occur naturally in countless plants including various cacti, vines and, most famously, mushrooms -many of which have been consumed in spiritual and healing rituals across the globe.
But despite the long history, and surprising ubiquity of these drugs, when clinical trials began in the 1940s and 50s, their effects appeared extremely difficult to describe let alone understand.
Psychedelics work by interacting with serotonin receptors in the brain, and in a materialistic sense are associated with visual and auditory hallucinations, feelings of elation, and increases in our sensory awareness. But these surface level effects are merely the tip of a much more elusive and complicated iceberg.
For instance, when clinical trials first began to test the effects of psychedelics patients reported a “transcendental feeling of being united with the world” that confounded researchers and completely reshaped our early understanding of these drugs.
And more recent studies have shown that psychedelics can reliably produce ”mystical experiences,” in which patients describe transcending time and space, and experiencing a kind of external unity and sacredness that in many cases revolutionised how they viewed the world (Griffiths, 2018).
These kinds of words have long been associated with the kind of new-age charlatans you might expect to see peddling healing crystals and other divine paraphernalia, and I assure you they feel as ridiculous to write as they do to read.
But these types of experiences have been consistently reported in scientific studies since clinical trials on psychedelics began, and the indigenous use of psychedelics is often linked not only to personal healing, but the experience of a deeper and almost religious connection with the world around us.
And it is exactly because of this transcendental quality that the effects of psychedelics can appear so difficult to understand. In fact, one of the most common feelings following a psychedelic experience is that the experience itself is impossible to put into words. It is almost as though we lack the linguistic tools necessary to describe the true core of the psychedelic experience, and that any attempt to paint such a picture is destined to lose the ethereal essence that is, to many, its most central feature.
Given our own culture’s relative inexperience with these chemicals, scientists and clinicians throughout the 1940s and 50s sought to better understand the effects and possible uses of the psychedelic experience.
Initially, their mind-bending abilities were so strange that psychedelics were seen as a way for the therapist to experience mental illness first hand, and thus devise better treatments for a variety of poorly understood ailments
But after some haphazard trial and error, psychedelic chemicals began to break out of this rather myopic paradigm.
This began with the work of Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond, who sought not to enlighten but to terrify their alcoholic patients away from drinking with a traumatic LSD experience. Yet to their surprise, and despite their best efforts, their patients continually reported positive and even enjoyable experiences. Once they shifted their strategy, and tried to foster these more positive experiences, the researchers only found more success in treating alcoholism, reporting that up to 45% of their patients had resisted relapse for a year following just one LSD experience (Dyck, 2006).
Despite the methodological looseness of some of these earlier studies, this capacity for psychedelic to help break various addictions has been reaffirmed by numerous studies since the 1950s, but interestingly, the positive aspects of clinically administered psychedelics have been observed since the earliest phases of psychedelic research.
For example, between 1949 and 1973, when therapeutic techniques were not what they are now, 75% of patients treated for various mood disorders showed “clinically judged improvement” following their psychedelic experiences (Rucker et al, 2016).
These promising, even ground-breaking results forced clinicians to reconsider their understanding of psychedelics, but even despite such progress these chemicals found themselves on the receiving end of a widespread and hysterical ostracism that, unfortunately, had its roots more in politics than it did science and medical research.
To be specific, it was primarily Nixon’s fear of the counterculture that propelled the moral panic that came to surround these drugs.
Nixon and his cronies (perhaps rightly) believed that these chemicals – LSD in particular – were fuelling the counterculture that posed such a novel threat not only to the imperialistic war in Vietnam, but to the American socio-political system itself.
In response to this perceived threat, Nixon sought to starve the counterculture of its chemical inspirations, and unveiled a vast programme of propaganda aimed towards the ostracism of these drugs and their allegedly mind-destroying effects (despite the fact that, at this very time, the CIA was conducting secret experiments on unwilling American citizens to determine whether LSD could be used as a mind-control tool – as conspiratorial as this might sound, the existence of the MK Ultra programme has been confirmed by the US government).
Among other things the American government, supported by a willing and compliant media, spread myths of psychosis, drug-fuelled suicide, and ridiculous claims that eating magic mushrooms would induce a sun-staring trance that would blind foolhardy drug takers (The only accounts of this emerged after Nixon’s fable had become common knowledge, when some admittedly moronic participants wanted to see if you really would go blind).
Often invented as much as they were exaggerated, such lies (or misinformation, to use a more propagandistic term) began to take hold over Western society in spite of the promising, and relatively well-established field of psychedelic research that had been building since the late ‘40s. And in 1966, American states began to outlaw the manufacture and possession of these drugs in a wave of prohibition that reached the shores of the United Kingdom before the year was out.
Interestingly, this is not the first-time psychedelics have been banned for the threat they pose to existing social hierarchies. When the Spanish first came to South America for instance, they viciously repressed local “mushroom cults,” whose little brown mushrooms offered seemingly sacred experiences that threatened to democratise the experience of divinity, and thus dissolve the authority of the church that had long proclaimed itself humanity’s only connection to the gods.
But to return to more recent history, as Nixon’s war on drugs (or the war on consciousness, as many psychedelic enthusiasts have taken to calling it) took centre stage, research funding dried up, new trials halted in their tracks, and we entered the dark ages of psychedelic research – accompanied by all the myths and fears you would associate with such a primitive chapter of human history.
But progress can only be resisted for so long, and since the 1990s psychedelic research has slowly made its way back into the mainstream, dragging us into something of a renaissance in a field that boasts ever more promising results.
The first and most important finding of these newer studies, is that the risks associated with the (clinical!) use of psychedelics are essentially zero.
For example, since the revival of psychedelic research in the 1990s over one thousand volunteers have been dosed with various psychedelics (although psilocybin is by far the most widely used) and not a single adverse effect has ever been recorded.
This reality is a stark contrast not only to what we have been taught to expect from drugs as “dangerous” as psychedelics, but even to the use of conventional and accepted anti-depressants – the possible side effects of which can range from suicidal thoughts to severe headaches and sexual difficulties (as if depressed people needed more depressing scenarios in their lives).
In large part the relative safety of these drugs, particularly in contrast to some less than promising earlier studies, comes down to our increased how best to guide and foster a positive psychedelic. To be specific, the concepts of “set” and “setting,” rather strangely, seem to almost entirely determine the kind of psychedelic experience you are likely to have.
The latter refers to the environment in which the experience takes place, and its importance has seen psychedelic therapy shift from the fluorescent setting of the hospital room into more homey, living room style clinics. Employing a combination of plants, natural lighting, comfy sofas, relaxing music and intriguing artwork, psychedelic therapists have learnt to use such scenery to build a much more welcoming environment for personal re-evaluation, helping to ensure a relaxed and productive experience for the patient.
The former on the other hand, refers to the mindset of the patient heading into the psychedelic experience. Everybody has heard of a “bad trip,” but interestingly, the negative and challenging experiences that can occur during the psychedelic experience are not necessarily associated with the drug itself, but with the nervous or fearful mindset of the individual.
By projecting their own subjective fears onto their surroundings, it is possible to transform the psychedelic experience into something more traumatic than productive, but again, psychedelic therapists have devised effective ways to prepare their patient’s mindsets going into the experience.
Often, this includes several relaxed, one-on-one conversations between patient and therapist. These are designed not only to give patient and doctor the opportunity to build a certain rapport and trust, but to but to brief the patient on what to expect on their psychedelic journey, and to provide them with the tools necessary to navigate various situations. Both of these are important steps, but the former perhaps more so. During the experience the patient is often accompanied by their therapist, whose presence, guidance and reassurance has proved extraordinarily valuable not only in preventing stressful or frightening experiences, but fostering the patient’s personal re-evaluation and therapeutic progress.
Thanks to psychedelic pioneers such as Al Hubbard and Humphrey Osmund, who developed and put into practice these pivotal concepts, there is a growing consensus that the (again, clinical!) use of psychedelics poses almost no threat to one’s physical and mental wellbeing. In fact, quite the contrary seems to be true. Whilst early studies illustrated the potential benefits of psychedelic treatment for psychiatric patients they often suffered from certain methodological weaknesses, not to mention a less developed toolkit for the guiding of the psychedelic experience.
But recent studies, incorporating improved therapeutic tools and much tighter methodologies, have reemphasised the electrifying promise of these unusual drugs, particularly when it comes to tackling issues such as depression and anxiety.
Katherine MacLean for example, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins university (the mecca of psychedelic research), found that a single psilocybin experience can produce lasting improvements in general wellbeing, as well as an increase in the personality trait of “openness to experience.” So noticeable were these improvements that they were reported not only by the patient themselves, but by friends and family members who often recognised a significant and positive shift in the attitudes and behaviours of the volunteer.
In another study, 12 patients suffering from treatment resistant depression, ranging from moderate to “very severe,” and lasting between 8 and 30 years, took psilocybin in a clinical setting. After a week, all of the volunteers showed improvements in their symptoms and two-thirds were entirely free of their depression. Three months later, seven of the twelve retained significant benefits from their experience, and when the study was extended to 20 people, six remained in complete remission six months after their treatment (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016).
This is a truly astounding result. Whilst conventional anti-depressants do little more than manage the symptoms of depression and anxiety, and might need to be taken up to three times a day to have the desired effects, psychedelic therapies might actually allow us to cure these widespread and elusive conditions, with a single dose of psilocybin having the potential to improve a patient’s wellbeing and depression for months.
It is perhaps no surprise then that a majority of volunteers receiving psilocybin tend to describe their treatment as one of the most personally meaningful experiences of their lives (Griffiths et al, 2006).
Largely, the difference in the effect and thus usefulness of these drugs comes down to the unique ways they interact with the brain and the mind.
SSRI’s for example, some of the most widely prescribed anti-depressants, combat depression by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin by our neurons. Theoretically, this improves one’s mood by increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain. But in practice, these drugs are associated less with an increase in happiness than they are a kind of emotional blunting, that reduces the patient’s experience of positive and negative emotions alike.
Yet whilst SSRI’s seal us off from our emotions, psychedelic treatment tends to emphasise a kind of emotional release which, under the careful guidance of trained therapists and counsellors, can help patients give voice to otherwise suppressed emotions and overcome deep-seated traumas.
In theory, it is this capacity to engage with our long-repressed emotions that makes psychedelics such a powerful tool for curing conditions like depression. In this sense, it is less the chemical that is important, but the experience it induces.
Neurologically speaking however, this experience is made possible because psychedelics reduce activity in a hypothesised part of the brain known as the default mode network (DMN). Sometimes referred to as the “me network,” the DMN is the library in which we keep the stories and narratives we use to construct our sense of self. In short, the DMN houses our own ego.
And this is important because in many cases it is our egos that stand in the way of our own recovery. Depression for example, is often associated with a torrent of uncontrollable introspection that occurs when the ego begins to target itself, ingraining an ever-stronger feeling of unhappiness, failure, or inadequacy.
Of course, this is destined to be an oversimplification. But by bypassing the neurotic voice in our heads that guides and rationalises our thoughts and feelings, we are hypothetically able to more freely explore the contents of our unconscious minds – the side of ourselves that so many psychoanalysts and therapists have sought to understand.
Another way activity in the DMN can be reduced is through mediation, and seasoned meditators seem to have much more control over this region of the brain than others (Garrison, 2015). But meditation is a skill that can take years of practice to truly develop. In contrast, one benefit of the psychedelic route is that it is open to almost anyone. A layman might meditate for hours to no avail, but give them 100mg of LSD, or a handful of psilocybin mushrooms, and something is sure to happen.
Similarly, Freud famously insisted on the interpretation of dreams as crucial to the practice of psychotherapy, referring to them as the “royal road” into the subconscious. But without serious training it is almost impossible to accurately remember our own dreams, and this innate fuzziness leaves any recollection and interpretation in the careless hands of our own ego.
Psychedelics on the other hand, provide a much more reliable pathway to the subconscious, and with the help of knowledgeable therapists and guides, can allow us to more actively and productively engage with the traumas and emotions we have filed away in our subconscious minds.
Yet whilst introducing us to buried emotions and experiences, psychedelics also give us an opportunity to approach these issues in new ways that might otherwise have been beyond our comprehension.
In a neurological sense, depression, anxiety and addiction (each of which psychedelics have shown a great promise in treating) are fairly similar conditions. In each case we find ourselves trapped in certain loops of thought, as our minds repeat the same narratives and stories about ourselves and the world around us.
And in the brain, these loops represent well-trodden neurological pathways that, for the sake of efficiency, our brains simply get into a habit of following. Interestingly however, psychedelics have a unique tendency to connect otherwise disparate parts of the brain, opening up new neural pathways that can introduce us to completely new ways of thinking that might otherwise remain unexplored.
By encouraging these estranged parts of the brain to engage in lively conversation, psychedelics might allow us to think about ourselves and the world around us in ways we never have before. And it is this capacity to, for lack of a better term, “rewire” the brain that may be key to treating depression, anxiety and addiction.
An overused yet undeniably useful analogy to visualise this process imagines our thoughts as sleds gliding down a snow-covered hill. Eventually the sleds carve a path into the snow, which grows ever more difficult to escape as the groves get deeper and deeper. As a result, wherever our train of thought sets off from it finds itself following the same grooves as so many before it, and ending up at largely the same destination.
A single psychedelic experience however, can act as the falling of fresh snow that, by levelling the proverbial playing field, allows our minds to wander more freely, emancipated from our own habits and prejudices.
When psychedelics were first trialled in the 1940s, researchers initially thought they produced a kind of temporary insanity, in large part because of the hallucinations and visions that can accompany a psychedelic experience. Interestingly however, the literal meaning of the word hallucination is “to wander in one’s own mind,” and it may be this very tendency of psychedelics to allow such care-free wandering that makes these strange chemicals such valuable tools for the treatment of mental health.
Save for the Inuit people (who perhaps unfortunately happen to live in an environment too harsh for psychedelic plants to take root), every society on Earth makes use of psychedelics for spiritual and healing purposes. And in light of the growing body of research that emphasises the value of these fascinating chemicals, it is time our own society began to seriously reconsider our attitudes towards them, and look to carefully integrate them not only into our understanding of medicine, but life and consciousness itself.
Of course, these drugs are not for everyone, and anyone with a serious family history of psychosis should stay away from them entirely. But for many of us, perhaps even a large majority, these drugs, when used in the right way and under the right guidance, offer potentially life changing benefits.
They might be illegal (for now), but it is increasingly possible and exciting to imagine a world in which we no longer fear the psychedelic experience, but welcome its lessons into our lives and our understanding of the mind.
Images (in order)
- https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1440817
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/126392958@N03/28306445805
- https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Upcoming/Photos/igphoto/2000505379/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/15520649009
- https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=288778&picture=yoga-meditation
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psychedelic_type_sampling.jpg
