The pharmaceutical machine is turning its attention to psychedelics. Having finally milked dry the antipsychotic and antidepressant market, Big Pharma has sniffed out new profit potential in using psychedelics to alleviate mental illnesses. This new paradigm brings the potential for great benefits if we get it right, but also great risks if we get it wrong.
Research suggests that MDMA alleviates the suffering of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, psilocybin alleviates the suffering of Major Depressive Disorder as well as alcoholism, ketamine also alleviates the suffering of Major Depressive Disorder, LSD alleviates end-of-life anxiety and depression, ibogaine alleviates the suffering of withdrawal when overcoming substance abuse and that psychedelics in general alleviate psychological distress and suicidality.
All of this research, however, is currently just data points, with no unifying theory to explain it.
Researchers understand that psychedelics can alleviate the suffering associated with several conditions, but they don’t understand why, or how to maximise the benefits of these mysterious substances. The danger is that they will never come to understand, because their science is based on erroneous assumptions about the nature of reality, and these erroneous assumptions prevent them from seeing reality accurately.
The vast majority of researchers in the field of psychology are materialists who believe that the brain generates consciousness, and therefore that all of the contents of consciousness are simply brain states. This is, in fact, the great delusion of psychology as it is currently practiced. The delusion is so prevalent that it’s rare to ever hear a psychologist challenge it. Anyone who does is usually shunned.
This materialist paradigm is assumed without any hesitation or doubt. One consequence is that all psychedelic phenomena are explained in materialist terms. Some researchers define a psychedelic as a high dose of a hallucinogen. Others group psychedelics based on which receptor sites they operate on. Inevitably, the psychedelic experience is explained (but only ever conjecturally) by a change in brain state.
The end result of the assumption that all suffering is caused by chemical imbalances: psychiatry has been reduced to dishing out pharmaceuticals. This is why modern psychiatry is next to useless (although it is true that a great many acutely psychotic people can benefit from being administered a sedative for a while). In this context, psychedelic sacraments have shown great promise, as a medicine that need only be administered once, and with a minimum of physical side-effects.
But in order for them to be properly understood, and therein properly utilised, psychological science will first have to outgrow materialism.
The fact is that psychedelics don’t alleviate suffering by altering brain chemistry or brain structure (at least not primarily). They primarily alleviate suffering by destroying spiritual illusions and delusions. The word ‘psychedelic’ means ‘soul-revealing’, and it’s precisely this quality that enables psychedelics to have their therapeutic effect. They reveal – in Aldous Huxley’s words – the fundamental all-rightness of the Universe.
In Western society, a great deal of suffering has resulted from the adoption of certain false metaphysical beliefs. The three most prominent false spiritual beliefs are: this physical world is all there is; the brain generates consciousness; there’s nothing divine about either this physical world or consciousness. All three of these beliefs are harmful, but the second one is particularly so.
If a person truly believes that the brain generates consciousness, then it inevitably follows that consciousness ends with the death of the brain. Because the death of the brain is inevitable, from there it follows that all experiences and memories of experiences are meaningless, because these are dependent on the brain and will disappear with brain death. Because nothing continues beyond the death of the physical body, there’s no overall purpose or goal to life here. It’s all just one bizarre fluke.
What remains to be commonly accepted is that this attitude leads to colossal amounts of misery, hopelessness and despair – and it’s not even correct.
If a patient comes to a psychiatrist in a state of existential despair induced by the apparent meaninglessness of life, the psychiatrist can do little other than commiserate on a human level (and perhaps dish out some pharmaceuticals). They cannot assure the patient that consciousness survives the death of the physical body and therefore that life actually is meaningful, because the vast majority of the time psychiatrists are materialist atheists. Christianity can’t fill the gap because no-one really believes it.
The uselessness of psychiatry, as it is practiced today, is why so many people take drugs.
Many addictions are fuelled by despair at the apparent meaninglessness of life. To get forced into existence as a mortal creature, doomed to suffer old age and death for no apparent reason, seems like a kind of torture. Many find this torture so excruciating that they decide it’s worth numbing the pain with alcohol or heroin. Others fill the gap with sex, power, social status or any of the other ape instincts that can substitute for a meaningful life.
Pharmaceuticals don’t help here. They can numb and stupify, and they can prevent the extreme agitation that often leads to fatal consequences, but they don’t alleviate any spiritual suffering. They don’t free people from fear of death. They don’t help people find any meaning in life.
Psychedelics liberate people from this spiritual suffering. They blast away the delusion that consciousness is trapped in the brain and doomed to die with the body. They reveal an entirely new world: one of meaning, purpose and fundamental all-rightness. This explains why there is a correlation between feeling mystic experiences on a trip and the therapeutical efficacy of that trip.
In other words, the more a trip helps a person to see beyond, the more suffering that trip will alleviate in that person. This is because so much psychiatric suffering is ultimately caused, not by material causes, but by spiritual illusions and delusions. The therapeutic effects of psychedelics lie primarily in their ability to dispel these illusions and delusions, and not until this is understood can the benefits of psychedelics be fully realised.
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