So what are the different factors which determine someone’s set when entering into a psychedelic experience? Our internal state is profoundly impacted by socio-economic factors, with some research showing that children and adolescents with low socio-economic status suffer from greater mental health problems compared to those with a high socio-economic status. The psychological aspects of social class can have a lasting impact on personal and social identities, which then contribute to the behaviour of individuals within society, along with their thoughts and feelings about their social environment. Other contributing factors, such as pre-existing trauma, race, gender, disabilities, or poor health, can shape the extent to which individuals are able to comfortably engage with psychedelic experiences.
Are we making enough allowances for these contributing factors, or do we assume that the psychedelic experience begins from a neutral starting point? When speaking about the impact of psychedelics on culture, ethnobotanist and psychedelic philosopher Terrence McKenna stated:
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
The idea of dissolving opinion structures, as well as culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing, might imply that our expectations of psychedelics are for them to remove some of the foundations that might inform our particular worldview. This might reflect the sentiments behind the white, middle-class members of society who have been talking and writing about psychedelics for so many years. Perhaps this is a narrow scope to view psychedelics with, as they could, in fact, change or inform our worldviews, rather than totally dissolve them.
Research has shown that marginalised individuals from minority groups are less likely to gain the benefits of psychedelics compared to white people, with white men in particular gaining the most benefit from their psychedelic experiences. The intergenerational impact of structural racism, combined with the cumulative effect of trauma on mental health issues, such as depression, is carried with people from marginalised communities. This can make different groups hypervigilant and less trusting of authority-led psychedelic spaces due to previous experiences of discrimination.
The wider issue of mistrust in the medical model from minority groups can also create some challenges when it comes to engaging with psychedelics as potential treatments for something like working through trauma, and it might be useful to think about how the way in which we talk about these benefits might not be appealing to everyone. In rare cases, psychedelics can even create traumatic experiences, where pre-existing trauma might emerge – this point is often bypassed by those wanting to only think about positive vibrations or see these challenging experiences as “lessons”, rather than feeling a need to guard against these kinds of experiences in order to create a safer environment.
Clinical psychologist and professor Monnica Williams has been on a mission to bring psychedelics into therapy in order to heal racial traumas. This is something that goes beyond just healing the conditions that the individual is grappling with and could be more related to intergenerational trauma. Williams has experienced this personally, as her parents grew up in the Deep South in the USA during the Jim Crow era. As African Americans, they were subject to segregation and extreme oppression. She says that it affected the whole African American community, and something which needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to psychedelics:
We’re looking at historical trauma, that may have happened decades or even centuries ago, that is still associated with the person’s cultural group. These could be catastrophes that happened to a whole group of people, like ethnic cleansing or genocide, the Holocaust, or it could be a natural disaster.
I recently spoke with Akua Ofosuhene, the founder of African Spiritual Practices events and organiser of the African Spiritual Conference, who said that we’ve ended up in a curious place with psychedelics, where it seems that only black or brown people are the ones talking about these disadvantages. When those of us who are in privileged positions don’t say anything, then this is saying something:
It’s always up to the privileged to do the speaking. Anywhere where we’re aware of our privilege means it’s incumbent upon us to do the speaking. We can’t deny the privilege, and our proximity to it means we have to look for it and actively call it out.
Akua said this to me after I mentioned how writing this article feels like I’m telling someone else’s story – but as a white middle-class male who’s often existed between different social spaces, there’s a level of awareness which I feel can be positive in this exploration. Having attended state-funded primary and secondary schools in London, I grew up with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and I don’t feel like I necessarily fit neatly into a particular social box. Often, I feel that the more middle-class environments end up having an essence that feels somewhat controlled, where I run the risk of saying the wrong thing or making people feel uneasy by pointing out some uncomfortable truths.
We might also risk engaging in tokenism by symbolically including people from minority groups to speak about the topic of racial inequality within the psychedelic space. This could potentially further entrench our privilege as being the ones who decide who is represented and who isn’t, rather than calling out the lack of representation and making it known to our peers.
Despite the underrepresentation of black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) in psychedelic research, however, there has been some research to suggest that psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA can decrease the cluster of psychopathology often associated with racism (traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and stress).
When speaking to Akua about the work she facilitates in Ghana with ayahuasca, it was interesting to hear how wider questions might arise for black and brown people regarding the nature of reality, where they might ask about concepts such as racism, where the answers could potentially re-jig their position in the world. Psychedelic experiences can sometimes provide ‘ontological shock’ where our beliefs about the world and the nature of reality can drastically change – but this could allow us to flow with the change and be part of it; as Akua said, “The more we work with the medicine, the more we can ask.”
More research and inclusion are needed, however, to explore the efficacy of psychedelic therapy for individuals with a history of racial trauma to see how engagement with psychedelics can potentially be more positive. If we’re also able to create environments that feel welcoming and inclusive, then this could also provide more potential for positive experiences with psychedelics.
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