Psychedelics and the modern world II — shamanism, prophecy and the unconscious mind

Note: this is part of an essay series on psychedelics, you can read part one here.

It has taken us decades since the rediscovery of psychedelics in the West led to their mass banning and illegal status to recover the possibility that rather than being dangerous stimulants they relate to a set of experiences that are not pathological but something the human mind is wired with the capability to enter into, and the effects of a positive experience can be extraordinarily beneficial. Although they have their set of dark experiences and a ‘bad trip’ remains a risk, scientific research, as I wrote in the last essay, is making steps towards understanding how these ‘drugs’ might be used within a medical environment to treat the mental health of patients.

Again as I wrote in the last essay the appropriation of the sheer mind-shattering experiences of Psychedelics to ‘drugs’ that ‘treat’ mental health is woefully reductionist. We are nowhere near the beginnings of understanding what is going on, or why on earth our minds have the capacity for such non-pathological experience, let alone why certain plants illicit them.

One thing we do know is that their use in human culture is more ancient than our recent rediscovery and dismissal of them. It has been suggested…