The Psychedelic Boom

Psychedelics are getting big, and they're poised to get even bigger. I wanted to share with you a little about my own journey with them, and some of my internal struggles with them that are now being played out in the wider world.

First off, I owe a great deal to them for my own emotional, spiritual and even physical development. By "them" I am referring to mushrooms, ayahuasca and even marijuana. When I was a teenager, they helped me crack open some doors and experience something beyond the daily misery I was immersed in. Most of my experimental friends were interested in them to get high. I can't deny that I loved the high too! But for me there was something more. Something I couldn't name. Anyone who has experienced psychedelics knows that language (especially the english language) is poor at describing the experience.

Not only was the English language unhelpful, so was the culture I grew up in. My friends who were using these substances to "get high" or escape couldn't relate to the experiences I was talking about. Amongst people In the "respectable" world like teachers, preachers and other authority figures, drugs were for losers who had no other options in life. According to them, anything I experienced with these substances was a "hallucination" with no connection to the real world. Any transformations or revelations I experienced with them were viewed as mental distortions or psychosis.

What I was coming face to face with, though I had no concept for it, was the lack of a socio/cultural framework for processing and interpreting my experiences with these substances. Our culture has no tradition to rely on, no wisdom passed down from grandmothers and grandfathers about how to use these substances safely and productively. I had no mentors to talk to about what I was experiencing. So as I set off on my healing journey I became like a ship at sea trying to navigate treacherous waters without a map.

Eventually I found some guidance. The first pieces of guidance I received were from the major figures of the 60's counterculture. Notably-- Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Das). I don't have the time or space to dive into who these people were and what all that they meant to me (that'll have to be another blog post!)-- but I will say I devoured everything about them I could get my hands on. Their writings became the first pieces of the map being constructed in my soul.

Though both the Pranksters and Ram Das took different journeys, they both started out at the same place-- expanding their mind with LSD. They also ended up at the same place-- that mind-altering substances, while incredibly helpful, could become a crutch. People could become dependent on a substance for a "peak experience" and could spend their life trying to recreate that peak experience. Instead of opening the door to the spirit world over and over again with psychedelics, they came to the conclusion that the most important lesson from psychedelics was to teach us about the structure of the door itself.

Nowadays, amongst people in the "medicine" community, the goal revolves around "integration". Instead of chasing after the "peak experience", the goal is to bring something back for ourselves and our community. This frequently involves processing and releasing trauma-- individual, familial and collective. In this sense, processing our repressed trauma is the door that leads to a fuller life.

In the vein of my own process of integration, I want to discuss the trauma of our societal disconnect from spirit, and how that trauma is perpetuated in the current psychedelic climate.

Nowadays, the people dominating the discussion are psychiatrists, academics and researchers. With them come the corporations and pharmaceutical companies. On the opposing side are what podcaster Tim Ferris calls the "drum and feather crowd.", of which I would claim as my tribe!

For the psychiatrists and academics, these substances are used to "treat disorders"-- things like depression and anxiety. That is a wonderful effect of psychedelic use, but there is a bigger point being missed. The deeper potential of psychedelics is that they can help us uncover what author Martín Prechtel calls the "indigenous self". The indigenous self is what is buried underneath all the layers of culturally-bound dissociation and ancestral trauma. It is the deeply felt knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things and is the gateway to spirit. Spirit is the felt sense of divine intelligence, wisdom and compassion, and for those of us in the "drum and feather" crowd, spirit is the force behind all healing.

Unfortunately spirit cannot be measured, and if it can't be measured or studied then it has no relevance for the academic crowd. I feel that much of the sickness in our world is due to our individual and collective traumatic disconnect from spirit. And this becomes problematic when the academics treat people without treating their own spiritual disconnect. This disconnect is itself a layer of trauma, unwittingly transmitted by the guides in our current psychedelic culture.

I had a vision about this from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. There's a temple room where if one holds up the staff of Ra at the right time of day, the sun's light will hit the headpiece of the staff and illuminate where the ark is buried. There's a medallion that instructs how high the staff should be-- 6 kadams high. The nazis construct the staff, and start digging where the light illuminates.

In this context, the medallion and staff are the psychedelics. The light is the healing power of spirit. The temple is our ceremonial space, and the place the light illuminates is the wounded part of our body/mind/spirit matrix.

However, there is a problem! Indiana Jones knows that the nazis don't have all of the information. On the other side of the medallion, it says to remove one kadam from the height of the staff to honor God. When Indiana Jones goes to the the temple room with the staff of the correct height and realizes where the ark is buried, he exclaims that the nazis are "digging in the wrong place!" In this context, Indiana Jones has access to knowledge of God and Spirit, and because of that he knows the correct place to dig (in the unconscious) to find the treasure.

Unfortunately, though I don't believe that academics are nazis, I do believe that they are digging in the wrong place. Without the "respect for God" or spirit they will not find the treasure they are looking for.

To be fair, I also believe that those of us in the "drum and feather" crowd have much to learn from the researchers and academics. We also have our issues! What needs to happen is a synergy and co-operation between our 2 worlds. But right now, my concern is that the researchers have the money and the megaphone and are dictating the way this current revolution is happening.