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Walking in the Underworld
Psychedelics, Paradox, and the Language of the Soul
The current renaissance of psychedelics is enormously significant for the future of mental health treatment and extremely welcome after the decades-long psychedelic dark age that followed the free-for-all of the sixties. While there have been setbacks — such as the FDA’s rejection of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD — the explosion of research and the rise of legal, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is highly encouraging for all of us who know first-hand the transformative healing effects that these compounds can have.
Yet this re-emergence brings with it real challenges. There is a fine line to tread between mainstream legitimation of psychedelic therapies and the commercialisation and medicalisation of substances that many traditional societies have regarded as fundamentally sacred. Here in Melbourne, Australia, one centre recently opened with a price tag of $22,000 for a single course of treatment. This is obviously prohibitively expensive for all but the most affluent of patients. Consequently, many people who are desperate for a drug increasingly seen as a silver bullet for a range of difficult to treat mental disorders will go underground, where the support they will receive to integrate their experiences will vary from limited to non-existent.
