Processing Climate Anxiety and Eco-Grief Through Psychedelics

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Chemical Collective or any associated parties.

The climate crisis has seen, in response to it, a worsening of many people’s mental health. Climate anxiety (distress related to climate change and its effects) and eco-grief (mourning the damage and loss seen in the natural world) are on the rise, and mental health professionals are noticing that more clients are experiencing these forms of distress. One psychologist, Carly Dober, offers her own advice in a piece for The Guardian:

I constantly return to the message that there is so much beauty and life in the world that can be saved – and is absolutely worth fighting for. I encourage people to curate their social media feeds and to seek out good news stories about the climate action around the world. I get them to envision a world that is fair; where everyone has enough resources to meet their needs. I ask them what they can do now to contribute to this world, and ask them to move towards this.

I talk to them about connection with like minded peers, and joining a local climate action group. I talk to them about nature based therapies – hiking, swimming, listening and watching wildlife, attending beach clean ups and tree planting days. I talk to them about choosing financial institutions to bank with that rule out funding fossil fuel projects. I encourage mindfulness, enjoying the present moment, working through their grief through art, and working through their stress, rage and anxiety with movement.

All these strategies can be helpful. We also know that climate anxiety can trigger pro-environmental action (although the extent of pro-environmental behaviour varies based on the severity of the anxiety), so it’s possible to transform this form of distress into positive change that, in turn, helps to quell the anxiety. (On the other hand, some people who get involved in climate action may also find themselves struggling with burnout or worsened climate anxiety and grief if they sense their efforts – and those of others – aren’t amounting to much.)

Psychedelics are also being proposed as a catalyst for dealing with climate anxiety and eco-grief, and the effects of these compounds may facilitate some of the strategies that Dober has in mind. But the picture is complicated; we also have to acknowledge that, in some cases, psychedelics may trigger or exacerbate these forms of distress.

Nature Connectedness, Climate Anxiety, and Eco-Grief

Multiple studies have found that nature connectedness (the extent to which you include nature as part of your identity) is associated with climate worry, which, in turn, is associated with psychological distress. And this makes sense. If you include nature as part of your identity, and you see the destruction of various ecosystems and the loss of many species, then you are seeing a loss of something deeply intimate to you and valuable. If you also see nature as essential to your survival, or the survival of the human species, then this form of identification will, understandably, feed climate anxiety. After all, the threat to nature is a threat to us and everyone we know.

We also know that psychedelics enhance nature connectedness, and while this is seen as purely a positive effect (as this is shown to predict mental well-being), I wonder how this effect fits in with research on the link between nature connectedness and climate anxiety. I’d be curious to know if psychedelics can trigger or worsen climate anxiety and eco-grief via increases in nature connectedness. If psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers, then they may, in some cases, magnify pre-existing climate anxiety and grief, especially if the psychedelic experience involves intense visions or insights related to the climate crisis. Nonetheless, post-psychedelic climate anxiety or grief is not an extended difficulty I see reported or discussed much.

Coping with Climate Anxiety and Eco-Grief Through Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Research has also found that nature connectedness predicts pro-environmental behaviour: the more connected someone feels to the environment, the more likely they are to care about, and want to protect, it.

Pro-environmental behaviour (also known as green-, sustainable-, environmentally-, or eco-friendly behaviour) includes activities that aim to protect the environment. These actions may include responsibly engaging with the outdoors, recycling household waste, purchasing sustainable products (e.g. local food, green cleaning products), conserving water or energy, altering transport habits (e.g. walking, cycling, or using public transport instead of driving; or taking the train instead of flying when going on holiday), buying an electric vehicle, having one fewer child, eliminating or cutting down on the consumption of meat and other animal products, volunteering for environmental projects, or donating to environmental charities.

When you engage in one or more of these activities, you may gain the sense of having agency (the ability to enact actual change), in contrast to previously feeling ineffectual and hopeless. This may, therefore, work to combat climate anxiety and grief. However, in a blog post, I argued we should be sceptical about the idea that psychedelic use, even if widespread, would make a significant impact on the climate crisis. Perhaps there are instances in which psychedelics do help reduce climate anxiety and grief, via the promotion of pro-environmental behaviour, but this reduction in distress could be based on a kind of idealism or utopianism.

For example, say someone makes significant lifestyle changes after a profound psychedelic experience: the nature connectedness they experienced, and continue to experience, motivates them to go vegan, child-free, flight-free, and switch to a career in the environmental sector. Based on these (commendable) individual changes, they may have the impression that widespread psychedelic use would encourage the same type of psychedelic experience and the same type of post-psychedelic changes. But we don’t have robust evidence to suggest this would occur. Psychedelic experiences vary, and so do people’s decisions in response to what they experienced. Not everyone will end up processing climate anxiety and eco-grief through the effects of psychedelics.

How Else Do Psychedelics Help People Deal With Climate-Related Distress?

Beyond nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviour, there are other ways that psychedelics can help people manage climate-related distress. In an interview for The Guardian, Michael Pollan notes:

The first person I talked to about this was Rachael Petersen, an environmentalist. She worked at the World Resources Institute developing software that allows you to watch fires around the world in real time to see whether deals to protect lands, specifically in the Amazon, were being honored or not. This was incredibly depressing work. She watched the Earth burn in real time and as a result entered into a serious depression. She received psychedelic therapy, and while it was not a panacea she felt it helped her, allowed her to reset and continue to do this difficult work.

He adds:

I can’t speak for her, but one of the things psychedelics can do is [help] people find more hope in their circumstances. After these experiences, they tend to feel less isolated and more connected – more connected to other people, to the community, and to nature. It made her realize that there were a cohort of people like herself who’d been working on this issue a long time. They’ve seen us go backwards under the Trump administration, and they’re incredibly discouraged to the point of despair. To call it an antidote is perhaps a bit strong, but having an experience like this may help them deal with their depression.

…

Does it fix the environmental crisis? No. But keeping these people mentally healthy is very important to all of us. This could shift their thinking in ways that allow them to go on doing really hard work that they might otherwise give up in despair. I think the challenge is to organize a study, take a group of people who struggle with climate grief, and see if this could indeed help them sustain their commitment.

Essentially, one way in which psychedelics could help people manage their climate anxiety and grief is by improving their mental well-being in general, by decreasing negative feelings like despair and increasing positive feelings like hope, optimism, motivation, and resilience. As Pollan puts it, “I think they [psychedelics] could be a climate tool, to help us fight the battle, keep up our morale.” Yet, as he also stated, we need research to establish whether psychedelics do help people struggling with climate grief and sustain their commitment to tackling the climate crisis. We at least have powerful anecdotal accounts of how key players in climate action were inspired to get involved in the movement through their psychedelic experiences.

Enhancing Psychotherapy for Climate Anxiety and Grief With Psychedelics

Various approaches in psychotherapy may be helpful in dealing with climate anxiety and eco-grief. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can allow one to accept difficult thoughts and feelings related to the climate rather than fight them. Mindfulness- and compassion-based approaches may help one to recognise one’s distress, and direct kindness towards oneself in response, which can improve distress (even if it doesn’t eliminate it).

Cognitive-behavioural approaches are aimed at challenging ingrained thought patterns that feed and sustain distress. If, rationally, there are good reasons to challenge climate anxiety and grief – i.e. change is possible; positive change is happening; one can contribute to this change; the worst effects of climate change can be avoided – then the severity of distress may decrease.

Eco-therapy, meanwhile, is based on using the natural world to promote psychological well-being. It can be highly relevant in the context of eco-grief because interacting with nature can combat the feeling that we’ve ruined the planet or that ecosystems can’t recover. Experiencing the richness, diversity, and beauty of the natural world – and seeing the effects of rewilding and planting projects – can lead to feelings of gratitude, awe, and hope. While it’s important to accept and process feelings of grief for what has been destroyed and lost, it’s also crucial not to let this mourning turn into despair and inactivity. Getting out into nature – through hiking, forest bathing, wildlife spotting, or ecological restoration – can encourage one to turn grief into the desire to protect the natural world that remains. It can make environmental protection a bigger priority in one’s life.

Psychedelics may act as effective catalysts in the context of these various forms of psychotherapy. They may encourage one to work with a therapist trained in one or more of these modalities, and they can facilitate the psychotherapeutic process by generating insights and magnifying conscious and unconscious material. Psychedelic-assisted therapy may be especially effective for climate anxiety and eco-grief because it combines the psychedelic experience, which may feature climate-related themes, with psychotherapeutic approaches that are relevant in dealing with these themes. Benefits may be further enhanced by integrating nature into psychedelic treatments. Additional integration sessions could also be pursued if someone experiences ongoing distress related to the climate.

It is probably unrealistic to imagine that psychedelics will eradicate climate anxiety and grief, but they should certainly be considered as a potential tool for dealing with these feelings.

Sam Woolfe | Community Blogger at Chemical Collective | www.samwoolfe.com

Sam is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at samwoolfe@gmail.com