By Patric Plesa
As interest in psychedelics research and popular psychedelics culture resurges, it is becoming progressively more difficult to discern facts from fantasy. As an academic with expertise in psychology, I too share in the growing enthusiasm for psychedelics research, especially toward therapeutic ends. But I believe a critical perspective, characterized by open science practices and critical theoretical lenses, is indispensable if this field is to avoid the errors of the past and the neoliberal pitfalls of the present.
The current trajectory of the emerging psychedelics industry—which I consider here as the amalgamation of research centers, biotech companies, retreats, dispensaries, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, conventions, and online forums—draws a dangerous parallel to the ill-reputed self-help industry. Compounding academic and popular critiques of the latter point out the questionable science of positive psychology as a neoliberal project that helped give credibility to the promises of self-help. Other critics argue that self-help suffers from a lack of oversight, misinformation, manipulation by self-help gurus and coaches, and unsupported claims. Similarly, as the inevitable psychedelics industry emerges with evangelical supporters in research, therapy, biotech, and psychedelic subcultures, the nascent science may be too slow to compete with the true believers and their enthusiastic claims.
These issues are especially troubling given parallels with the first wave of psychedelics research, which ended in the early 1970s due in part to irresponsible and overzealous researchers, questionable therapeutic practices and research, the psychedelic subculture in the hippie movement, increasing recreational use, and ultimately the U.S. War on Drugs. The reemergence of psychedelics research in the second wave promises potentially breakthrough therapeutic interventions for a litany of increasingly diagnosed mental health conditions. The science continues to provide encouraging evidence to support the therapeutic use of psychedelics, and theories are being proposed for how these substances affect our bodies and brains. Researchers are seemingly mindful of avoiding the errors of the past by focusing on stringent scientific practices. Nevertheless, we do not yet know the mechanisms of action behind the purported therapeutic effects of psychedelic substances, dosing procedures have not been standardized, the medicalization of psychedelics overshadows and ignores Indigenous practices, and many studies have constraints on generalization and lack open-science practices. Meanwhile, decriminalization and legalization policies are sweeping North America and Australia, and venture capitalists are investing in psychedelic startups and biotech companies.
The proselytizing of psychedelics as a panacea for mental health and wellbeing incentivizes the commodification of psychedelics with a rush-to-market strategy that lacks sufficient oversight, verified claims, and adequate risk analysis. Compass Pathways, one of the largest for-profit psychedelics companies, has already been criticized for misleading collaborators, trying to gain exclusivity rights, and streamlining operations. The zealous claims about psychedelics are not exclusive to reclusive psychonauts and investors: some therapists have also been documented as true believers, ignoring the power of suggestion (i.e., undue influence while a client is in a suggestible state) and countertransference (i.e., projecting irrational beliefs onto the client) when administering psychedelic substances to clients or advising clients to take them. Underlying the true believer mentality is psychedelic exceptionalism, which discounts psychedelic substances as drugs, instead considering them non-addictive, non-drugs, and their users as distinct from, and implicitly better than, “drug users.” Psychedelic exceptionalism also helps with policy to decriminalize and market these substances—for profit—as spiritual or medicinal, without including spiritual and medicinal Indigenous practices and knowledge, which amounts to appropriating their cultural aesthetic.
The relatively small body of literature on Indigenous knowledge and practices with psychedelics in contemporary research has additional consequences for ostensibly therapeutic interventions. Much of the focus on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy follows an individualized modality, which deviates from the traditionally collective rituals in Indigenous practices with psychedelics. Individualized therapy renders mental health as a personal responsibility toward recovery and reintegration into society; however, the social matrix from which we come into therapy, and must return to afterward, is largely ignored. First-wave psychedelic psychologist, Betty Eisner, originally conceived of a trifecta: set, setting, and social matrix, yet only the first two constructs have survived into the second wave research, which provides an incomplete framework for integrating psychedelic experiences as one returns to their home, family, friends, and work. Further, individual psychedelic interventions fail to address the possibility for communal meaning-making and solidarity that could be actualized with group psychedelic-assisted therapy, which may help individuals reassess the social matrix they exist in as a potential source of mental health concerns.
Despite the lessons of the first wave psychedelics research and the contemporary critiques of the state of psychedelic science and therapy, the unbridled enthusiasm for these mystical substances continues to grow, and with it, so do prospective profits in the psychedelic industry. Evangelism and true believers are not solely in the fringes, but also make up some of the venture capitalist investors, psychotherapists, and possibly even researchers. Without committing to open science practices, adequate drug policies that include decriminalization of not only psychedelics as exceptions to “drugs,” the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge and people in all areas of research, and the exploration of alternatives to individualized therapies, we risk producing a psychedelics industry with the same efficacy and integrity as the self-help industry.
Dr. Patric Plesa‘s research focuses on psychedelics, existentialism, ecopsychology, and critical psychology.
