When I recently spoke to Dr Andy Letcher from the University of Exeter on the topic of animism (the belief shared by many indigenous cultures across the world that all things in existence have some kind of spiritual essence, or ‘aliveness’ – all the way from humans, other animals, plants, and rocks), we explored the concept of healing from an indigenous approach. Looking at it from the perspective of a community, healing might come into play when something in that community just feels ‘out of whack’. The point of attention is not necessarily on the self, and the importance of connection and belonging takes prominence within an indigenous approach to working with different plants and fungi, where individuals can feel seen and not isolated in dealing with whatever is going on.
When speaking to Andy, he asked, “Why do the indigenous cultures always have to justify what healing means?” Healing is a deeply strange thing, but the West is often in a position of asking or exploring what other cultures mean when we talk about healing. This is where the conversation can potentially become difficult regarding healing with the use of psychedelics, as we might be trying to fit our understanding of an indigenous approach into categories or systems that don’t necessarily represent the true essence of the approach itself. This is the legacy of the colonial worldview, which is difficult to escape from, and even writing this article might fall into that same trap of ‘othering’ by looking at the differences between indigenous and Western approaches.
When looking at things in a general sense, it seems that many indigenous cultures utilise the benefits of different plants and fungi within the context of ceremony and ritual, and a focus on the idea of relationality to the natural world (rather than a focusing on the specific issue itself that someone is presenting with). Existing in this interrelated world allows for an understanding of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual side of things as being interwoven with a collective sense of identity, and it also opens us up to the experience of awe and gratitude for nature.
An example of this can be seen in the use of psilocybin mushrooms and Salvia divinorum in Mazatec shamanism in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, where fungi and plants are seen as more than just molecules or substances to consume. These organisms are thought of as being conscious entities that are capable of facilitating healing or the communication of wisdom, being used in a ritualistic setting, and combined with chanting and invocation to guide participants and engage with the spiritual forces involved in the healing process.
Similarly, in the Peruvian Amazon, Shipibo ayahuasca practitioners (onanyabo) utilise songs in the form of icaros (the generic name given to medicine songs from this region), which are intended to create a structure of safety around the experience, and to facilitate the cleansing of energies which might be stuck or problematic. The icaros, in combination with the ayahuasca, are intended to dispel the energies from the individual and send them back into the earth, which can allow the participants to re-establish a relationship with themselves and the rest of the world. Once the cleansing has taken place, the focus of the practitioner is on aligning and protecting the body, mind, and spirit of the participant.
This isn’t to say that the Western approach doesn’t have some aspects of these elements, but maybe we can think about it more in terms of being ‘clinical’ rather than necessarily ‘Western’. Before prohibition came into force in the 1970s, there was promising research exploring the potential benefits of psychedelics to treat a wide variety of mental health problems, which has now been built upon in contemporary clinical research. These early studies lacked the same kind of scientific rigour or safety measures that we have today, and now this is a primary feature of understanding how these substances can be beneficial if used in the right context. (On this note, however, there have certainly been instances of alleged abuse of participants in some clinical trials, and we shouldn’t necessarily assume that ‘Western’ or ‘clinical’ always means ‘safe’.)
Certain measures of symptoms and psychometric data are utilised to build a framework to understand how these substances are affecting us, and the role of the clinician has been emphasised as an essential contributing factor to the positive outcomes of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. When LSD was first synthesised in the late 1930s, it was recommended as being a “psycholytic” where it could be utilised as a tool for psychotherapy, with the therapist and form of therapy remaining central to the practice, and the psychedelic providing some extra facilitation. The term ‘tool’ has continued to be used in a positive way, with the Western approach being almost entirely concerned with utilising psychedelics to primarily treat mental health problems from an individualistic point of view. This can be a positive thing for those who are grappling with the harsh realities of life but might lack the community or access to the natural world to allow for a greater, more interconnected sense of healing.
We can’t control where we’ve been born and don’t always have the power to change our environment to be closer to community or nature, so the option to take a targeted approach and deal with specific conditions fits in practically with the way in which Western society is set up. Growing urbanisation has led to a decrease in direct experiences with the natural world, and this is representative of a general worldview in the West of humans being separate from the rest of nature. This might be why there is such a focus on the idea of treating specific conditions, rather than looking at things in a holistic way, or how our conditions relate to the natural world or communities around us.
This approach has led to certain protocols being implemented, such as one for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat moderate to severe PTSD, or trials being conducted by Compass Pathways to develop a protocol to utilise synthetically produced psilocybin to treat depression. This ‘dialling in’ to the level of milligrams when it comes to dosing is providing an opportunity to really target things in a way that can be measured and repeated, and ultimately market treatments in a way that would be applicable to people who are not already initiated in the psychedelic space. Not all Western consumption of psychedelics is clinical (far from it, given the rich history and impact that psychedelics have had on our culture), but this provides some people with an opportunity to perhaps go down a path they might not have previously considered to deal with certain issues. Despite the attention on the self in the Western approach, there is still other stuff that comes in, whether we like it or not, and this might lead us towards attempting to integrate or combine indigenous approaches to understanding how we engage with psychedelics.
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It’s such a complex and thorny issues, aren’t they all when you really start looking? A corridor of doors leading to another corridor of doors.
Your final question: “how can we prevent extraction” feels beyond me as an individual, and I can’t see joining a collective will shift the dial on the law, let alone the science or market forces.
It feels like all I can do is forge my own path with what’s around me, what’s truly local. For me, that’s liberty caps in the Welsh valleys and there are hundred of thousands of people in this land who’ve use those particular little mushrooms for fun, recreation and perhaps healing and (hate this word) ‘wellness’. Maybe I just need to get out there? Into the valleys this autumn, meet the pickers and the seekers and see what they’re up to.
When I first arrived here I was in a second-hand electronics shop, looking at hifi stuff. I happened to have a mushroom print bag on my shoulders that I got from Medicine festival the previous year. Someone, a total stranger, just came up to me…
“Hey man, do you like mushrooms?”
“Sure…”
“Wait here…”
5 minutes later, after a trip to his house and back, I’ve got a bag full of dried Liberty Caps…
“There were SO many last season, had bin bags full of them, can’t give them away”
It was a lovely introduction to my new home in Wales.
The other thing that feels like ‘mine’ is LSD. It’s rooted in the West, the Western Scientific Tradition… perhaps I’m already off course, Albert Hoffman was EXTRACTING and MEDDLING, & SYNTHESISING, right? But… And… at least it is from ‘my culture’. Do I need to go to South America on a long pollution flight to go get some ‘authentic medicine’? It’s sad we’ve lost of indigenous ways… truly (Bloody Romans/Saxons/Normans/Victorians/Thatcherites!).
But… if I turn my head the right way… think animisthically and magically for a moment… I really like the idea that the force of the discovery of the atom bomb was balance by the opposing force of the discovery of the LSD molecule. I can totally take Albert, like Alex Grey does, as some angelic avatar bringing something magical and healing, out of conceptual space and into the world… and what an effect it had! It didn’t start with Wasson/Huxley/Hoffman, I understand the indigenous history, but… in a way… it really was the start of a new lineage, the Elders are not that old, some are still with us, I was listening to Stan Grof at a conference just last week…
I think that’s where I have to start, my land, my people, my culture… it may be a new kid on the block but… all traditions start somewhere… Santo Daime is, I think, well respected in the psychedelic world but… it’s pretty new as far as traditions go.
So… I find myself a white, cis male, middle class and rational Western trained, with a Buddhist and Western panpsychist idealist metaphysics trying to make sense of my world which is also very open to animistic and other ways of seeing. I’m postmodern (maybe meta modern), eclectic and, sadly, not connected to a long lineage of elders who know what they’re doing. But that lack can’t, it seems, be filled by importing that from others from far away lands, that don’ts seem right either.
So I’m here, with Hoffman’s magical medicine… working it out… and trying to learn from the highs and lows of the 50s and 60s… it’s a young lineage… but… who knows what it could look like in 3000 years?