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Psychedelics, Spiritual Narcissism, And Vaccine Resistance Gone Insane (Part One)
The psychedelic community is in a state of deep crisis as conspiracy theories run amok, and vaccine resistance reaches new levels of crazy.https://thebanter.substack.com/p/psychedelics-spiritual-narcissism
Back in 2015, I travelled to the Amazon rainforest in Peru to take part in four ‘Ayahuasca’ ceremonies with indigenous healers. Ayahuasca is an extremely powerful psychedelic brew that has extraordinary healing potential for both physical and psychological ailments. In stark contrast to my experience of Western spirituality and religion, Amazonian Shamanism was frighteningly real, and beyond my comprehension. There were no prayers, no religious texts, no cosmology to understand, just a direct experience with an ancient medicine that tore apart almost everything I thought about reality. Why I went is a story for another time (you can read a bit more about it here), but I found the experience to be both terrifying and immensely beneficial. Thousands of others have found similar healing with psychedelics, and communities have now sprung up all over the world as part of a giant psychedelic renaissance. Substances like magic mushrooms, MDMA and Ayahuasca are currently being taken very seriously by Western scientists, and due to relaxing drug laws we are now able to study them properly. Ayahuasca, for example, has enormous medicinal potential for conditions like depression and PTSD via mechanisms we are now only beginning to understand.
The dark side of psychedelics
As exciting as the new research on psychedelics is, there are many risks that need to be addressed, particularly by those advocating them. There is a darker side to Ayahuasca and the broader psychedelic community, and it is one that has exploded in recent times. Psychedelic tourism in places like Peru has created significant problems for many indigenous peoples. The industry is completely unregulated, and there are many unscrupulous actors taking advantage of vulnerable people for profit (and sometimes worse). Psychedelic experiences can also be extremely destabilizing, and without proper care before, during, and after, psychological problems can be amplified greatly. New Age spiritualism in psychedelic communities is often a byproduct of these experiences. Those raised in Western societies have little understanding of indigenous cultures, but try to approximate it with a hodgepodge of unrelated spiritual traditions after experiencing psychedelics. They create new practices and belief systems that are totally removed from the ancient traditions psychedelic medicines come from.
I have seen this first hand in Western run Ayahuasca retreats, and have seen many friends turn to New Age spirituality after powerful psychedelic experiences. This phenomenon isn’t necessarily all bad, but many people use psychedelics to heal serious psychological issues and they often come away with only half the puzzle solved. Ayahuasca experiences for example can be extremely confusing and hard to make sense of. Without proper after care and integration, many adopt new belief systems and begin projecting their unresolved issues onto them. I have seen many people have powerful experiences and come away believing that they alone have special insight into the nature of reality and the divine. Spirituality then becomes a form of escapism that can lead to narcissistic behaviour, God complexes, belief in conspiracy theories and the participation in cult-like organizations. This problem has exploded during the Coronavirus pandemic, leading many in the psychedelic community to go completely off the rails. The community is now in a state of deep crisis as conspiracy theories run amok and many engage in extremely harmful acts of disinformation.
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The bad trip gets worse
I fell out with several people I know in Ayahuasca circles because of this mind bendingly stupid nonsense. One former friend messaged me this after reading one of my posts denouncing the New Age nonsense ripping through social media:
Having had several family members get Covid and nearly die, I had little patience for this type of egoic fantasy, so I blocked him from contacting me. Unfortunately, these fantasies have now become the dominant narrative in psychedelic communities, and it is about to get a lot worse.
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