Derek investigates a recent NY Times essay by Michael Pollan as an entry point to discuss big questions in psychedelics and conspirituality: How do we honor indigenous traditions as psychedelics are legalized (and monetized)? What dangers lie ahead as pharmaceutical companies and charismatic influencers exploit psychedelics for profit and power? How can we create psychedelic rituals that suit our current time and societal temperament?Show NotesHow Should We Do Drugs Now?Is This Peter Thiel–Backed Startup Trying to Monopolize the Astral Plane?
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Michael Pollan is a big reason for the resurgence of psychedelics in America.
His 2015 New Yorker article, Trip Treatment, about how psilocybin could ease existential distress in hospice patients triggered a national interest in the re-emerging field of clinical studies.
And as we know, the media doesn't just cover news but often shapes it.
And by the time his 2018 follow-up book to that article, How to Change Your Mind, was published, the country was ready to consider this class of substances for a variety of treatments in mental health.
Pollen isn't the originator of psychedelic studies, nor does he claim to be.
This field never really died, though it was on temporary hiatus from the early 70s until the mid-90s.
Compared to the thousands of research studies conducted on LSD in the 1950s, there was only a trickle of underground, non-clinical research after the Nixon administration outright banned this class of drugs.
Professor Charles Graub, who I chatted with for my 2020 book, Hero's Dose, was the first researcher granted FDA approval to study MDMA in Ayahuasca in the 90s.
A few years later, Rick Straussman was approved to look into DMT, the psychoactive ingredient in Ayahuasca.
By the time I was working on the documentary, DMT the Spirit Molecule, in the late aughts, the culture was already moving in the direction of decriminalization and even approval.
The question I want to look at today, how do we navigate this new phase of psychedelic usage?
I haven't been shy about my experiences with a range of these substances, which began in 1994, but I wasn't so vocal for the same reason most people didn't discuss psychedelics.
You could be thrown in jail for many years for even minor offenses.
Some of my friends in college were arrested and charged.
My good luck was that I happened to be not with them that day.
It took a while for me to come out and discuss my usage publicly even though I knew what it did for me personally, what it offered to my mental health, and how politics negatively shaped cultural sentiment around these substances.
I'm covering one aspect of this story today in light of Michael Pollan's recent New York Times essay, How Should We Do Drugs Now?, which discusses a few pertinent points that I'll begin with before describing my own experiences with ayahuasca and what that's led me to predict about the future.
But I do so with an even longer-term prediction in mind, one that I've spoken to a few listeners of conspirituality about in previous months.
Psychedelics being used by charismatic cult leaders, as well as yoga and wellness influencers, many of whom are novices to these substances, as points of indoctrination and monetization.
This trend is going to grow as psychedelics are legalized, and we should prepare for that.
I'm already tracking a few instances that are not ready to be discussed until firmer evidence is presented.
But suffice it to say, this revolution is occurring on numerous tracks right now, some of them progressive and healthy, others potentially dangerous.
I'd apply the latter to both pharmaceutical-based startups attempting to patent these molecules, such as Peter Thiel-funded Compass Pathways, as well as individual influencers that will take advantage of their followers' altered states to solidify their own agendas in their consciousness.
I'll link to Pollen's essay in the show notes, as well as one about Compass that I suggest you read.
But what I like about Pollen's take is a bit, from the culture of psychedelics users, counterintuitive.
He had never taken a psychedelic before beginning research for his book.
And in fact, based on how he concluded that book, he's unlikely to do them again.
And honestly, the weakest part of his book was his descriptions of the trip.
Not that they weren't authentic, but as with anything in life, repetition leads to knowledge in depth.
But Pollan as an outsider peering in is also part of his career as a journalist.
His 1997 book, A Place of My Own, details his journey building a writing shed in his backyard as someone who has never built anything.
And this sense of curiosity fuels all of his writing.
He's a fantastic writer, by the way.
In many ways, Pollan offers insights into psychedelics that practitioners cannot because he looks at them holistically.
Something that's often overlooked by advocates.
We're just too deep in it sometimes.
So in his essay, he does a great job of explaining the varying pathways forward, entertaining the reality that while the fast track to legalization is along clinical grounds, there are cohorts of people that use them for personal and spiritual purposes, And that should also not be overlooked.
Ritual usage is going to remain an important question moving forward.
Do we ignore the indigenous communities that have fostered and utilized these substances for centuries, if not millennia, in our quest for personal enlightenment?
Americans have a long track record of exploiting other cultures for personal gain, as we know.
So as Pollan writes, quote, Simply borrowing a ritual ceremony from any indigenous group probably wouldn't fly in 2021 America, and even if it did, would be an act of cultural appropriation.
In my interviews with Native Americans, I encountered a deep reluctance to share with a white journalist exactly what happens during a peyote ceremony.
The Great Spirit gave us his plan a long time ago, Stephen Benally, a Dine Leader of the Native American Church, explained when I asked him simply to describe a peyote ceremony.
I'm guessing you're white, yes?
All this information you want, what's in it for me?
So much has been taken from Native Americans that they are determined to safeguard their peyote and the rituals that accompany it.
We non-natives will need to design our own culturally appropriate containers for this secular, non-medical psychedelic experience.
But that process should be informed by the principles guiding these indigenous practices, since they are the product of deep experience with these molecules going back thousands of years." The next section of his essay references the incredible work on addiction by Johan Hari's illuminating book, Chasing the Scream.
Hari writes about the famous rat studies that showed rodents prefer cocaine or heroin-infused water over the traditional liquid, which defined addiction studies for decades.
As Hari details, this was put into question with the 1970s-era Rat Park Experiment.
So the initial studies were conducted with rats, literally, in a cage.
Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander realized that prisoners were likely to turn to sedation or stimulation when the environment offers none.
This was around the time when Timothy Leary coined the term set-in-setting to describe key factors in a psychedelic trip.
Your mindset and environment are just as important as the drug itself.
Alexander showed that if you give rats a Rat Disney World to play in, they'll choose good old-fashioned hydration over stimulant-laced water most of the time.
Humans are the same.
Give them something to do, and they're less likely to depend on drugs for stimulation.
This is also why psychedelics aren't exactly monetizable.
You don't take them often.
I haven't had one in nearly two years, and I'm sure I will again, but I'm not called to do it at the moment.
So if you're a company trying to push a product, especially one for recreational purposes, a once-every-two-year sale is not scalable.
Which is why I treat the whole microdosing-for-productivity market with skepticism.
But back to pollen, it's simply important to point out that the bifurcated environment in America right now makes the psychedelic pathway forward even more challenging.
How do we broadly introduce a traditionally ritualistic set of substances into a culture whose rituals are mostly dependent on everyday drugs like caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco, for which the rituals tend to be less intentional and more habitual?
What type of spiritual growth is possible in a society that lacks nuance around the experiences of others?
Pollan weighs in on these issues when writing, quote, The drug war's blunt, black-and-white approach at least had the virtue of simplicity.
Just say no is certainly easier to follow than yes, but only this way and not that.
With all illicit drugs lumped together in the drug war, there was no need to take account of the different properties and powers, what they are good for and what they are bad for.
Nor did we need to figure out the best cultural container for each of them, the set of rules and rituals and taboos that might allow us to use them safely, productively, and, yes, with pleasure." So there are no definitive answers as we're creating this reality right now collectively.
I'll only point out that recognition and possibly remuneration to indigenous cultures that have developed the rituals would behoove the companies currently testing out psychedelics.
And like Pollan, I'm not advocating for using the Native American peyote rituals that he cited.
Mimicry in this sense leads to exploitation.
You simply can't take one culture and attempt to jigsaw it into another.
