Are you taking medicine or getting high?

When I went to raves in the mid-1990’s, we did “drugs.”  Raves were a primal ecosystem of ecstatic communion, pulsing syncopated rhythms and sweaty bodies usually found in sketchy warehouses in burned out sections of cities (Baltimore and D.C. in my case) where I never once heard someone refer to the marijuana, MDMA, or mushrooms we were taking as “medicine”. So when I had healing or spiritually profound experiences with those substances I had no framework to process what was happening.  How could these drug experiences actually be helpful? 

For a little historical context– President Nixon named marijuana a schedule 1 drug, which meant that it had a high potential for abuse but no medicinal value.  This was primarily a way for Nixon to go after his political opponents, the hippies.  He couldn’t lock up his opponents for their beliefs, so he made their “drugs” illegal. Illegality and immorality became tied together in the 1980’s and 1990’s. A lot of people thought that marijuana, MDMA and psychedelics like LSD and mushrooms were as bad as hard drugs like cocaine and heroin or that they were at least gateways to those drugs. I, along with many other people of my generation, were inundated as kids with the simplistic message that “Drugs are bad.”

When I left the rave scene I floated around for awhile, trying to explore the things I experienced there more deeply.  In 2008 a friend invited me to an ayahuasca “ceremony.” I found her use of the word peculiar at first.  It was clear I wasn't going to attend a “party” where we would take “drugs.”  I was going to a “ceremony” where we would take “medicine.”  No one at these ceremonies called ayahuasca a “drug.”They called it a sacrament, medicine, or “la medicina” if they were feeling particularly reverential. 

This reframing was a really positive thing for me.  When I attended these ceremonies, I was in a structure that helped me to go deeper into what I had started to experience in my rave days.  The two main differences were that I was surrounded by people who were there for similar reasons, and we had a guide to support us through our journey. One of the things that made ayahuasca a “medicine” for us was that we related to her as a plant teacher with a consciousness and a beingness all her own, an identity. She was a powerfully wise guide.  It was clear that she could rip me apart and then put me back together in a new way. What a beautiful and challenging experience!  To drink a “medicine” and then surrender into, learn from and receive healing from a being that knew more about me than I did. This deep and complicated work is what I and many people in this world refer to as “medicine.” 

Although profound and wonderful, there is also a shadow side to this new acceptance of mind altering substances. We can become so enamored by how they function as a medicine that we can forget how they also still function as a drug.

I’ve known quite a few people who have been sucked into a fantasy land of self delusion through using these substances in an ungrounded way. I’ve been there myself. A common delusion is when someone starts to believe that they have been chosen by God to save the world. Some people go the opposite way and start to believe they’re the devil. This type of experience is not uncommon. Substances can act like drugs by magnifying our propensity for self-delusion. We can create fantasy lands of escapist bullshit and use powerfully wise plant teachers like mushrooms and ayahuasca to run from our pain.  So while we embrace them as medicines, we also need to recognize how we may still interact with them as drugs.

There is a different way that drugs turned into medicine in the modern scientific world.  This transition occurred with research showing that many of these substances could treat psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety and PTSD. 

But because the world of science is more deeply plugged into the worlds of law and commerce, the transition from drugs to medicine has incredibly profound effects for all of us. 

For many, the acceptance of certain substances by the medical establishment means a lessening of the stigma around what was previously called drug use. The people that used to feel shame about or hide their substance use can now tell their friends and coworkers “I’m not getting high on ecstasy, I’m taking a dose of MDMA my doctor prescribed to treat my PTSD.”  The clinician has replaced the drug dealer with profound effects. 

The first effect is that authority confers legitimacy.  Instead of feeling like a druggie, or that we are “self-medicating”, we are now able to take our substances in a clinical setting that reinforces the idea that it’s for the right reasons.  Could the fact that these are now clinically approved “medicines” just give us a socially acceptable way to get high?  Does it matter?  It is interesting that many people feel the need to get some authority’s approval to access non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Along with the authorities conferring legitimacy on these “medicines” comes a whole set of social and legal parameters on how they may be used. These rules are being made right now and being implemented in clinics all over the country. Big pharma, along with other actors who probably don't have purely selfless motives are doing a lot of decision making.

My biggest concerns with modern use of these “medicines” is the contentious relationship the scientific world has with “spirit,” and the fact that the clinician has not just replaced the drug dealer but also the shaman or guide.  The role of shaman/guide in animist cultures involves years of deep relationship building with spirit allies, and integration of the guide’s specific medicine into the social fabric of the community. The depth of these relationships are way beyond what is imagined in most scientific settings, and it can't it be taught in a classroom.

Modern psychedelic training has recently started to incorporate what they generally call “indigenous knowledge” into workshops and seminars where some of these perspectives are brought up.  But I’m concerned that this means nothing more than bringing in an indigenous person to speak on stage at one of their conferences, where participants can nod their head at the wisdom, write it down in their notebook and go right back on doing what they’ve been doing.

So what to make of all this? Well, what a fascinating time to be alive!  We’ve made it through the “drugs are bad” phase of culture into the “psychedelics are being subsumed into the corporate nanny state, but we’ll pay lip service to spirituality” phase. Knowing what I do about the deep wisdom of these plant spirits, I’ll just have to stay humble and recognize that there is more going on here than what I see on the surface.