The New Yorker: “Are Psychedelics Right-Wing Now?”
Me:
Um, paging Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.1
Look, if you’re taking psychedelics and you’re still right-wing…THEN YOU DIDN’T TAKE ENOUGH.
I’ve never been tripping balls on shrooms and thought, “We need more masked agents grabbing people off of the street and putting them into unmarked vehicles! Now crank the Khruangbin, man.”
According to the piece, the psychedelic spotlight is now shining on Ibogaine. Why? One big reason is because no one knows what the hell it is – and the real drug our society is addicted to is novelty. We long for things that are “BREAKING,” the latest trending topics, and anything else that comes without the baggage of history.
In this case, the focus on Ibogaine conveniently lets Rick Perry and crew rave about the healing power of plant medicine without having to deal with messy hippies prattling on about peace and patchouli. After all, Gabon, the African country where Ibogaine originates, is literally far out.
Meanwhile, the other hot substance du jour is 5-MeO-DMT. That’s too processed for me…I only lick farm-to-toad.
Anyway….
This whole “the GOP is trippin’” premise is pretty rich considering the right flank are the folks who brought us the war on drugs (not to mention all the other unwinnable wars America’s been fighting).
A guest raised what he saw as the central contradiction of the evening: preaching “just say no” to kids while the attendees sat at a fund-raiser for ibogaine. “Most of the people in this room are probably conservative, and we’ve had to take a position that is almost the opposite of where we were, say, five years ago,” he said.
How can you preach “just say no” to kids while advocating for plant medicine? Here’s an idea: Stop putting all drugs in the same evil bucket. We’re able to cheer on antidepressants while criticizing heroin usage. Embrace nuance a bit. After all, ayahuasca is often a way for people to beat their addiction.
And speaking of wars, pro-legalization orgs like MAPS focus their PR efforts on how plants can help heal veterans. The goal is to get the PTSD & BBQ set onboard in order to grease the legalization wheels. Start with these Texas good ‘ol boys and the rest of the dominoes will fall (in theory).
I get the strategy; the psychedelics industry thinks veterans with PTSD are the guards and tackles to get clinical trials/legalization over the goal line. Sure, whatever it takes. But c’mon, don’t make me pretend there’s depthful alignment with a right-wing political philosophy so wildly disconnected from the lessons plant medicine teaches.
That said, I’m onboard with whatever it takes to get those injured soldiers the help they need. And my psychedelic dream is one day we’ll stop focusing so much on giving plant meds to PTSD vets and give them to the guys who keep starting these wars instead. Let’s sign up the board of Halliburton for a jungle retreat in Peru, y’know?
As I’ve argued before, I also wish the emphasis wasn’t constantly on the ways plant medicine can cure PTSD, addiction, and “deaths of despair.” Of course, go for that. But the result is so much energy going toward toxic stuff when betterment of the well is glorious too. Michael Pollan discussed that here…
[Researcher Bob] Jesse was ultimately less interested in people’s mental disorders than in their spiritual well-being—in using entheogens for what he calls “the betterment of well people”…
The first time I raised the idea of “the betterment of well people” with Roland Griffiths, he shifted in his chair and chose his words carefully. “Culturally, right now, that’s a dangerous idea to promote,” he said. And yet, as we talked, it became clear that he, too, feels that many of us stand to benefit from these molecules and, even more, from the spiritual experiences they can make available.
“We are all terminal,” Griffiths said. “We’re all dealing with death. This will be far too valuable to limit to sick people.”
“Culturally, right now, that’s a dangerous idea to promote.”
Bummer sentiment. We’re a spiritually sick society and plant medicine might be our best hope for chaging that. Feels like it’s actually more dangerous for us to not promote that idea. If the antidote to all this venom is out there, let’s not hide it away.
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Comedy
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More on psychedelics
🍄 Men need psychedelics to realize things women know innately. And women need alcohol to experience the unearned confidence men feel innately.
🍄 Babies love peekaboo because our entire lives are peekaboo. Time went on for centuries before us and will go on and on after us. Our lives are but a mere blip. The universe: “Now you see ‘me,’ now you don’t.”
🍄 Men learn empathy from shrooms because we’d rather listen to the woods than women.
🍄 People are afraid to do psychedelics because they might have a bad trip. But then they doomscroll all day long which is the ultimate bad trip.
🍄 “I’m afraid to try psychedelics.” One thing to note: Fear is often ego in disguise.
🍄 Psychedelics people talk a lot about how ya need to “shake the snowglobe” which is weird ‘cuz that sounds much more like something coke people do.
🍄 Some people say doing psychedelics is like 10 years of therapy in a single day. And to those people, I offer this humble suggestion: Your therapist might suck.
🍄 We treat psychedelics like GLP-1s for the brain. “Flip the switch” and you’ll no longer be an addict, depressed, have PTSD, etc. But let’s get real: Actual change usually comes with time/effort.
🍄 I keep changing the channel yet always wind up back at the default neural mode network.
Thanks for reading. ✌️
-Matt
P.S. Plenty more on psychedelics and my ayahuasca “downloads” in the archives.
An adage stating any news headline ending in a question mark can be answered with the word “no.”
