Neuroscience vs. Spirituality
The Bay Area is once again proving itself as the ground-zero for a groundbreaking cultural movement in 2019. Decriminalize Nature Oakland, a group dedicated to “improving human health by expanding access to entheogenic plants and fungi through political and community organizing, education and advocacy,” proposed a resolution to decriminalize entheogenic plants that is expected to pass this coming December. Those involved in the process are excited to be at the forefront of not only a restoration of the area’s counter-culture reputation but also one of the most critical advancements in mental healthcare since psychotherapy. If the resolution is passed, these mind-altering drugs will be propelled out of the underground “counterculture” that they have existed since the War on Drugs, and come December, will be welcomed into our modern and dynamic healthcare industry.
Now that decriminalization will once again allow for research on Entheogenic plants, are we considering their history of spiritual rituals and traditions while we attempt to see their full medical potential?
Larry Noris, the founder and executive director of ERIE (Entheogenic Research, Integration, and Education), is opposed to describing “shrooms” and their mind-altering cousins, as psychedelics. “Psychedelic only arrived in the sixties and seventies and kind of refers to that timeframe. So that word has only been used for 50 something years. Granted, we’re using a word, [Entheogen] that is also more recently coined, but at the same time, it speaks to a longer tradition.”
Entheogenic plants, described by the Decriminalize Nature Program as being able to generate or inspire the divine within, do indeed have a long tradition. Frescos of mushroom-holding shamans were found in caves on the Tassili plateau of Southeastern Algeria as early as 5000 BCE. However, the reintroduction of entheogenic plants into modern western culture was as recent as November 16, 1938, when Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, was attempting to create a stimulant and instead synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a psychedelic which later spurred a new spiritual movement that captivated mushroom and LSD-taking “hippies” of the 1960s. However, this culture’s appreciation for entheogenic plants was not passed on to its next-generation, with Nixon’s War on Drugs preventing any further research on psychedelics from happening and the medicinal value of mushrooms from being realized.
Now, decades since its criminalization, its potential to better society and improve mental health is being revisited. In a time marked by instantaneous gratification and infinite knowledge being available to us every day, a time reserved for introspection and self-improvement seems elusive. As a result, it is not surprising that this seemingly magic fix for depression, addiction, anxiety, and other issues has caught the attention of the modern pharmaceutical industry. While many are optimistic about the medical benefits they have with low potential for addiction or abuse, many are still left wondering if a purely scientific perspective will be able to fully appreciate the influence these drugs have on the human psyche, beyond the tangible, observable changes in users’ neurochemistry.
With the intention behind taking psychedelics shifting towards a necessity to cleanse the mind, is the sense of spirituality historically derived from these substances still sought after?
Larry Noris thinks the playing field has changed: “People are resistant to the idea of spirit still in this day and age. Unfortunately, that’s a byproduct of us living in a reductionist society where the scientific industry wants to reduce it down to the single thing that they can profit off of.”
He compares THC, one of the leading chemical components of marijuana, to Psilocybin in Mushrooms in how just one element of each drug cannot produce the most beneficial experience for a user. Introduced in 1998 by S. Ben Shabat and by Raphael Mechouleum, the Entourage Effect is the idea that cannabis compounds, primarily cannabinoids, and terpenoids, work synergistically together to create the overall effect of cannabis. THC is often extracted from marijuana to deliver the drug’s psychedelic properties more efficiently, but many argue that the other compounds should not be omitted in this process. Now that entheogenic plants may become decriminalized as marijuana has, Noris fears that psilocybin may be extracted from mushrooms in the same fashion for convenience purposes, which is not the way this spiritual device was intended to be taken.
“There’s a whole conversation on the entourage effect because there was no money around data, the entourage effect, and mushrooms because the money is just reducing it down to psilocybin. The conversation and the research on [this] hasn’t really happened yet with mushrooms. And I don’t know if that research will be funded, but it’s something that’s a really important consideration being missed by the medical industry.”
Noris and I discussed the recent 60 Minutes episode on Psilocybin. Anderson Cooper investigated recent clinical trials conducted by pioneers in the new field like Roland Griffiths, a professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, who studied psilocybin extensively until the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 was passed. Now, having received FDA approval to study this Schedule One drug, Griffiths’ findings are leaving him in awe. He says of his participants’ results: “The red light started flashing. It’s unprecedented — the capacity of the human organism to change. It just was astounding.” Many reputable researchers and doctors share this same realization of psilocybin’s ability to not only seemingly “cure” depression, anxiety, PTSD and addiction, but to fundamentally alter the functions of the brain.
However, to many cultures in the world and the US, this is not new information. But are the researchers conducting these trials and publishing their findings giving credit to whom its due? Noris is disappointed: “Especially as we’re here on Columbus Day today. And it’s just like I was saying earlier; it’s the same kind of thing in that Columbus didn’t discover America and scientists didn’t discover the healing properties of psychedelics.” He tells me one way we could begin to remedy this lack of recognition for religious, spiritual, or cultural users who have been driven underground would be to incorporate their perspectives when crafting or conducting clinical trials. The models for tests including a “trip” and psychotherapy session for the participants are, as Noris says, “very, very strict and very, very regulated, which it takes it outside of its original context. There’s no ceremony; there’s no ritual, there’s no understanding. The sacrality of those things is really important when you’re talking about healing. But they’re not really being addressed.” Many organizations are exploring the idea of integration, the process by which a participant will attempt to make meaning of the experience after his trip, possibly within a support group. Before integration is fully implemented in clinical trials being conducted now, these research organizations “can’t do long term follow up because once the study is over, it’s over.” Of those who have been pursuing relief from mental issues, some choose to go through a traditional route versus a scientific and medical path to become involved with that community and understand its origins. These spiritual groups are often difficult to uncover as mushrooms, and other psychedelics are still classified as Schedule One drugs.
As marijuana has been decriminalized, with mushrooms showing promise to follow suit, we are officially entering what millennials are calling the “Psychedelic Renaissance.” The most popular opinion is that neuroscience should be the field through which we conduct all research with this controversial psychedelic compound. This opinion presents one of the last remaining conflicts between science and spirituality in our modern times as the mystical and perspective-altering aspects of hallucinogenic trips, like those induced by mushrooms, currently elude scientific definitions. Trips are described as hypnagogic, dreamlike conscious states where time is distorted, color is amplified, and depth perception is warped. Introspective thoughts about existence and reality are common, and users may even experience even synesthetic sensations, such as being able to “see” sounds. If entheogenic plants continue to become destigmatized and widely used, our culture’s perceptions of reality and existentialism may be disrupted on a large scale.
