Psychedelic Therapy: hope and healing amidst the hubris

RAIN visits the European Parliament for a session on Psychedelic Therapy

When people in Europe stop and listen to Indigenous folks, it's something to celebrate - especially when perspectives that have been marginalised for centuries can illuminate the most intractable problems of modernity.

Communities that have lived in harmony with nature for millennia clearly have something to teach those whose systems are going out of balance, if we are prepared to listen. While RAIN is more focused on the resilience of our food chains and ecosystems, the polycrisis has various dimensions that traditional wisdom can shed light on.

A response to the global mental health pandemic

Figures reveal that over 37% of women and nearly 30% of men in the UK report high levels of anxiety. While psychiatric diagnoses are so common that they regularly feature in Instagram bios and lover's tiffs, however, the best that psychiatry can generally offer is to help manage symptoms. The impacts of mental and emotional troubles go beyond distress for the individual or the family, beyond even the economic implications of treatment clinics or productive work days lost: Every one of the problems we face in the 21st century, from political upheaval and war to economic disparity and ecosystem destruction, has a mental component.

For that reason, it is good news that people across Europe and beyond are (re)discovering how psychedelics can stimulate rapid and profound changes in people's outlook, their aspirations, and the energy available to achieve them. When a grassroots organisation called PsychedeliCare took this important matter to the European Parliament with a citizen's initiative, a couple of RAIN agents were dispatched to the meeting to listen. And also to ask some questions.

Taking Indigenous thinking to the European Parliament

Psychedelics can offer a way forward through confusing territory, and Indigenous folk know more about the terrain of this particular jungle than anyone else. Many tribes developed cultural practices to safely and effectively use the plants of their local ecosystems in order to treat illness, to guide their lives, and to maintain the wellbeing of their communities and individuals.

Though colonial forces often did their best to stamp out such traditions, much has been preserved even through the long years of the War on Drugs. Generally, Indigenous groups are only too happy to share what they know - in many cases they believe that the survival of both their local communities and our global environment depends on it. I wanted to ask at the European Parliament how traditional wisdom will be incorporated into the emerging matrices of psychedelic therapy, and what can be done to reciprocate to Indigenous nations facing extreme poverty, political marginalisation and land grabs from developers and big agriculture.

Present at the PsychedeliCare meeting were several MEPs (members of the European Parliament), Tilly Metz and Tomislav Sokol among them, psychedelic integration specialists, journalists and activists. There was a great round-up of research from neuropsychopharmacologist Dr. David Erritzoe (who once injected me with psilocybin and measured what it did to my anterior cingulate cortex), but perhaps the most powerful presentation was from Andrea Siclari. His testimony about the part LSD played in his journey with cancer was deeply moving, and you can see it and the whole session here: Of course, no one claimed that psychedelics can cure cancer - a thoughtful person would never to such a thing when speaking at the centre of European lawmaking (or when writing a blog post for that matter). In jungle communities, however, making large claims about the power of power plants is not uncommon. This is one of the interesting conundrums that our joined-up world presents us when our conceptions of the possible do not join up so neatly.

In that same recording, at 1:31:31, you can hear the question I asked and the answer Andrea and the others gave. I was speaking as a representative of RAIN but also as a person who has treated a potentially fatal disease with jungle-style psychedelic therapy while living in the Amazon. I also did my best - as a freckly white person with some humility about what I am entitled to speak about - to advocate for the Indigenous perspective in the centre of power in Brussels.

Beware the spiritual bypass

It is empowering to recognise that the challenges we face have a mental component, because at least some part of the remedy can be applied in our own homes, in our own lives and bodies, in our schools and workplaces (obviously I'm not recommending distributing psychedelics at schools!). Some might take the idea further and say that these problems all begin in the mind of humans, which may be more empowering still.

And then there are the people who claim to have eased themselves into the fifth dimension, during a holiday at a retreat centre in Peru.

My own journey into this world began in earnest in 1998, with an ayahuasca ceremony in Japan where I was living. Later I became the librarian of an academic ayahuasca list from 2011-2018, and was the ethics lead of Breaking Convention until they kicked me out last year. While I am generally positive about the direction of the movement, I have seen sides of the psychedelic world that are less wholesome. Generally the problem is hubris - either people excluding traditional communities and traditional wisdom from the conversation (as per this talk at Breaking Convention), or people setting up psychedelic retreats with neither the experience and nor the humility to do so safely. Sometimes the hubris is intertwined with venture capital, and then - not always but sometimes - the boundaries can get blurry.

The session in Brussels was surprisingly holistic in character. My question was well-answered, and the subject of Indigenous reciprocity kept coming up throughout the various events and meetings that followed the session. Nearly everyone was coming at the topic with a holistic and nuanced perspective, and some of the initiatives people are involved in were truly inspiring.

The final meeting I attended was not part of the general program of events, and it had a different character. We were at De Muze bar in Antwerp, and it began with my counterpart showing me pictures of the people to whom he had been introducing ayahuasca at DAVOS - including a NATO general in a Hawaiian shirt. After holding my tongue for as long as humanly possible, I eventually asked how he could square the beautiful potentials of ayahuasca with the actualities of realpolitik and ethnic cleansing with artillery fire in residential districts.

The answer was that I was worried about unimportant things because of my low spiritual vibration. People more deeply immersed in the fifth dimension, who can feel the New Age rapture soon to sweep the earth, do not let such matters as genocide cloud their minds. Perhaps ayahuasca provides such soothing vistas for the DAVOS set and the service providers who tend to them, but in 24 years it never said anything like that to me.

I can count on my thumbs the number of times I've left a meeting with a potential business partner, and I'm very difficult to offend, but I grabbed my glass and took myself elsewhere before something unsightly happened. Outside I met a guitarist with whom I felt more in common.

Back down to earth

Danny and Aimé outside the European Parliament.

Psychedelics, and the many other routes into the mysteries, can offer us a glimpse of our glorious potential, but beware the path that leads up your own root chakra - you may not like what you find there once you realise where you are. I'm delighted that psychedelics can sooth the agonies of our troubled historical moment, and ease the birth pains of whatever is being born from it. But I'm more excited when I hear about people coming back from their journeys with practical ideas and energy focused into making things happen on the ground - in education, in ecology, in citizen journalism, in community organising, in whatever has an effect that those of us stuck in a low spiritual vibration can see. This is what PsychedeliCare are doing in the realm of policy, and if you’re from a European Union member state you can help them out with your signature here.

RAIN is a web you can use to make things happen, and no one cares how high you get as long as you come back down in one piece. If you have ideas or energy to bring to the network, or you’re part of a business wanting to give something back by supporting frontline communities, let us know!