[THS] Daniel Pinchbeck: The Future of Psychedelics

[Peter Webster]

The Future of Psychedelics

http://commongroundmag.com/2008/05/pinchbeck0805.html

by Daniel Pinchbeck
May 2008

The 2008 World Psychedelic Forum was an almost shockingly respectable
affair. Held in Basel, Switzerland, in a spacious convention center next to
the five-star Swissôtel Basel, the event drew 1,500 visitors for a two-day
symposium on the past and present state of psychedelic thought and
research. Despite flashes of eccentricity and DayGlo, you could have easily
thought you were at a conference for alternative medicine or some abstruse
but uncontroversial hobby. I felt honored to be one of the speakers, part of
a high-profile group which included the Czech LSD researcher and theorist
Stanislav Grof; Ralph Metzner, a well-known author and teacher and one of
Leary's original partners at Harvard; botanists Dennis McKenna, Christian
Raetsch and Kat Harrison; MAPS director Rick Doblin; anthropologist and
author Jeremy Narby; visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey; and many
more.

The Gaia Media Foundation organized the forum, following upon their
successful LSD conference, marking the 100th birthday of LSD chemist
Albert Hofmann, two years ago. The 2008 event mingled nostalgia and
insularity, futurism and hope, in equal measures. On the nostalgia side,
Timothy Leary's archivist Michael Horowitz mounted an exhibit of
psychedelic art and media imagery, much of it from the heyday of late-
sixties flower power, while Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia gave a heartfelt
speech about her journeys with the Merry Pranksters and the early Haight
Ashbury days of the Grateful Dead. Although Hofmann is still alive, he
declined to attend the festivities. A proper Swiss bourgeois, he didn't
approve of the conference being scheduled for Easter weekend.

Sixty-five years since Hofmann's first accidental dose, new frontiers in
psychedelic research are opening up, represented at the Forum by an array
of therapists and scientists from institutions across Europe, the U.S. and
Canada. After a 35-year blockade on the subject, psychedelic research with
human subjects is being permitted again. In Switzerland, a new study
explores LSD as a tool of psychotherapy ­ the first such study to be allowed
since the early 1970s. After years of persistent effort, the Multidisciplinary
Association of Psychedelic Studies (maps.org) has succeeded in
shepherding a number of projects through the regulatory system. Studies
underway in the United States include research on use of psilocybin as a
treatment for cluster headaches, and on MDMA (Ecstasy) as a treatment for
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a complex likely to haunt tens of thousands
of veterans as they return from the Iraq War.

Today, there is potential for psychedelics to be reintroduced into
mainstream culture, not as drastic catalysts of social upheaval but as tools
that can help people overcome serious problems. In the future, MAPS sees
itself becoming a "nonprofit pharmaceutical company" that distributes
psychedelics to qualified professionals. On a deeper, almost subconscious
level, cultural and political resistance to the scrupulous study and use of
psychedelics seems to have dissipated. A recent study conducted by John
Hopkins, giving psilocybin to subjects who had never taken a psychedelic
before, found that most subjects had long-lasting positive changes in their
worldview. CNN and The Wall Street Journal gave prominent coverage to
the results of this study.

Beyond the scientific framework, there is compelling anecdotal data on the
benefits of psychedelic use for creative processes, intellectual work and
personal development. Recently, British newspapers reported that Francis
Crick may have been taking low doses of LSD when he discovered the
double helix shape of the DNA molecule (although he refused to allow this
to be published before his death). The Nobel Prize winning biochemist Kary
Mullis openly discussed the inspiration he gained from psychedelics. Many
pioneers of the Internet and the personal computer experimented with
psychedelics. And of course, the anthemic music, film, literature and visual
culture of the late-1960s remains iconic.

During his speech at the conference, Dr. Tom Roberts, a psychology
professor at Northern Illinois University, proposed that the rediscovery of
psychedelics in modern culture is creating a "second Reformation." During
the first Reformation, the Bible, which was only available to a priest class
able to read Latin, was translated, printed and distributed to the masses,
who were then able to read and interpret the "word of God" for
themselves. By providing direct access to the mystical experience described
in sacred texts from around the world, this "second Reformation" will,
eventually, eliminate the need for a priest class that stands between the
individual and personal revelation. Of course, such a deep shift in cultural
perspective is a long process ­ the first Reformation developed over a few
hundred years.

At this point in time, those of us who see validity in the psychedelic
experience can feel cautiously optimistic that we are reaching some tipping
point in cultural perception. The discourse around hallucinogens has
become far more sophisticated and measured than it was a generation ago.
While Timothy Leary argued psychedelics were a shortcut to
"enlightenment" and that everyone should "turn on" and "drop out,"
researchers today consider psychedelics to be powerful tools that have
negative effects if used improperly, like all tools. But these substances may
also have tremendous benefits for the individual and society, when we
become mature enough to make use of them.
--

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic
Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books,
2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His
features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone,
Esquire, Wired and many other publications.