- Capitalism on Psychedelics: The Mainstreaming of an Underground - September 25, 2018
I am currently recovering from three very full days of the Chacruna Institute’s Religion and Psychedelics Forum. The event went amazingly well, with a high level of discourse from both panelists and chatting attendees, a diverse and ecumenical array of views unmarred by haters and trolls, and a lovely fusion of head and heart rare to find in such an abstract, draining thing as an online conference. I moderated a bunch of panels, interviewed Brian Muraresku, and, since I was involved with a lot of the programming, watched pretty much everything. When we make the recordings available, I will try and write more about the conference, but I do believe the Religion and Psychedelics Forum will stand as one of those rare Zoom (actually, Crowdcast) conferences that are worth returning to after the fact.
The Forum reminded me just how wild, enchanted, and disruptive the psychedelic waters become when neuropsychology can open to phenomenology and mystery.
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The timing was also perfect: psychedelics and religion is fresh and resonant right now, partly because the topic sidesteps the medicalizing and commercial rhetoric that has made the psychedelic scene both boring and aggravating. Obviously religion can be a huge problem, and future conversations will no doubt have plenty of challenges to wrestle with. But with psychedelic chaplaincy just starting to bloom, we are in a sweet spot, at once calming and intoxicating. The Forum reminded me just how wild, enchanted, and disruptive the psychedelic waters become when neuropsychology can open to phenomenology and mystery. Plus it was just wonderfully weird hearing mainline liberal Christians from the American South lovingly describing their trips.
Many of the more-or-less religious substances discussed at the conference were linked to sacred plants and fungi and the indigenous and mestizo peoples and religions that nurture that botanical knowledge. (Chacruna itself is named after the leaves in the ayahuasca brew). There was some discussion of ketamine, and LSD was mentioned on occasion, but its presence was most strongly felt in a panel I organized called “The Psychedelic Religion of the Counterculture.” This panel, which included Christian Greer talking about the psychedelic church movement of the ‘60s, Hog Farmer Maria Mangini on the rituals of acid (and nitrous oxide) communitas, and the amazing Nick Powers on Burning Man’s profane spirituality, was a good reminder that, in WEIRD societies—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—acid is at least as much of an ally or lineage or sacramental pact as anything else.
A lot of psychedelic discourse today is driven by an overt or covert struggle over legitimacy. Who gets to speak for psychedelics, and in what tongue?
A lot of psychedelic discourse today is driven by an overt or covert struggle over legitimacy. Who gets to speak for psychedelics, and in what tongue? This struggle is partly an institutional one, which is why it feels so real. In the domain of mental health, professional bodies—including credentialed therapists and the institutions that license them—are now directly competing with already existing underground therapy networks whose days may well be numbered already. Recent debates about governance and abuse within underground therapy networks, however vital and deserved, must also be seen in light of this larger movement towards professionalization.
This therapeutic land rush is in turn dependent on the “return” of psychedelic science and clinical research. Here too we have seen various professional bodies and discourses, with rivalries between them, attempt to establish their dominance over the knowledge basis of psychedelics, partly with an eye to extract value for a hungry pharmaceutical and mental health industry. One example of this tension is a topic that frequently came up at the Chacruna Forum: what is “mystical experience,” and is it really translatable to data, as the popular Mystical Experience Questionnaire implies? The labs at Johns Hopkins and NYU dig this stuff, but other psychedelic scientists—for some very good reasons—think these measures open the door to supernatural obscurantism.
…at a time when many young psychedelic seekers are yearning for shamanic wisdom, the West’s own bohemian ancestors are aging and dying all around us.
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One reason I brought together some friends to discuss “The Psychedelic Religion of the Counterculture” was to see how our understanding of the counterculture shifted when we looked at it as a religious movement rather than simply a spiritual one. But a more pressing reason was to draw attention to the fact that, at a time when many young psychedelic seekers are yearning for shamanic wisdom, the West’s own bohemian ancestors are aging and dying all around us. Just as a rising tide of voices, including my own, demand a place for indigenous folks and organizations at the psychedelic table, so too might we more consciously acknowledge, affirm, and empower our own often marginalized psychedelic elders, that Trippiest Generation of freaks, heads, and freelance mystics now reaching the end of the road. For a glimpse of what I am talking about, check out Christopher Gray’s criminally unknown and phenomenally inspiring 2010 book The Acid Diaries, a record of the boomer seeker’s late return to LSD.
For all their fuck-ups, the chaotic underground lineage of the psychedelic counterculture may paradoxically hold the sort of “traditional values” that could help guide us through the ferocious new psychedelic frontier, where the digital railway networks unload a fresh swarm of carpetbaggers, snake-oil salesmen, and robber barons to be on a daily basis. If we want to prepare ourselves for the massive bloom of psychedelic experiences that lies ahead—which, let us not fool ourselves, is going to get seriously out of hand—why would we ignore the first wave of mind-expanding mass democracy in the West? If the sacred is what we are after, why ignore the blotter host? If celebration, why not join the Mad Hatter in a sillier sort of tea ceremony? And if you want to get to the heart of the Mystery, don’t you think you might wanna follow that white Pooka down that long strange rabbit hole?
Art by Mariom Luna.
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Note: This article is a selective adaptation from The Elephant LSD which was originally published on Burning Shore.
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