Hi all, thank you for everything you have done in this area.
Do you think it will be difficult for North American/European cultures (bit vague, sorry) to integrate the experiential aspect of these drugs? The clinical results are amazing and will speak for themselves but the black box that is the mystical-religious type experience with it’s unitive consciousness, self transcendence, union with “God”, entity interactions etc etc
I fear this aspect of the drugs (IMO the most interesting/profound aspect!) will be hard to integrate with wider culture. Do you have this fear? How have you thought about how this can be integrated and taken seriously and not dismissed as a delusion/hallucination ?
Yes, I think it will definitely be difficult. I think the biggest difficulty will be folks in science, medicine, business, and in the culture in general to “fill in the blank” when it comes to defining the ultimate meaning of these experiences. There will be increasing numbers of gurus and religions built around these mysteries. But from where I sit my focus is to make sure science, clinical psychology, and medicine don’t get warped. When we use these as therapeutics or research tools, we much guard against the temptation to interpret the metaphysical meaning for people. This is already happening too much. One can set the occasion to bring someone to the experience, and provide for close and caring personal support to help the person make their own meaning, but we must resist the temptation to provide a metaphysical interpretation for people. I wrote about these themes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198
The kinds of big often spiritual experiences people have on psychedelics could be difficult for our highly instrumental capitalist culture to absorb; such experiences are threatening to many people. This might explain why so much work is being done to develop non-psychedelic psychedelic compounds—drugs that offer the benefits without the “experience.” This strikes me as mis-guided—the experience may well be the “drug” not the compound, but we’ll have to see....
Hi all, thank you for everything you have done in this area.
Do you think it will be difficult for North American/European cultures (bit vague, sorry) to integrate the experiential aspect of these drugs? The clinical results are amazing and will speak for themselves but the black box that is the mystical-religious type experience with it’s unitive consciousness, self transcendence, union with “God”, entity interactions etc etc
I fear this aspect of the drugs (IMO the most interesting/profound aspect!) will be hard to integrate with wider culture. Do you have this fear? How have you thought about how this can be integrated and taken seriously and not dismissed as a delusion/hallucination ?
Regards
Yes, I think it will definitely be difficult. I think the biggest difficulty will be folks in science, medicine, business, and in the culture in general to “fill in the blank” when it comes to defining the ultimate meaning of these experiences. There will be increasing numbers of gurus and religions built around these mysteries. But from where I sit my focus is to make sure science, clinical psychology, and medicine don’t get warped. When we use these as therapeutics or research tools, we much guard against the temptation to interpret the metaphysical meaning for people. This is already happening too much. One can set the occasion to bring someone to the experience, and provide for close and caring personal support to help the person make their own meaning, but we must resist the temptation to provide a metaphysical interpretation for people. I wrote about these themes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198
The kinds of big often spiritual experiences people have on psychedelics could be difficult for our highly instrumental capitalist culture to absorb; such experiences are threatening to many people. This might explain why so much work is being done to develop non-psychedelic psychedelic compounds—drugs that offer the benefits without the “experience.” This strikes me as mis-guided—the experience may well be the “drug” not the compound, but we’ll have to see....