Psychedelic Healing

Undergraduate / Graduate

Psychedelics have been used for thousands of years by many cultures, to the point that scholars sometimes describe them as a norm for humanity. Yet they have been mostly absent from Western culture, emerging only into mainstream consciousness in the 50s/60s and relegated to countercultural currents. In other cultures psychedelics have contributed to rich spiritual practices, but in the West psychedelics are predominantly associated with political counterculture, consumption or appropriation of indigenous shamanic practices, and most recently biomedical and psychotherapeutic models of healing. How to make sense of this divergence? After decades of censure, in the past 20 years psychedelics have begun to enjoy increased attention in the West. A psychedelic renaissance in scientific research has led some scholars to believe they represent the next frontier in mental health treatment. Psychedelic tourism in the Amazon jungle is booming. How can we understand the current surge in interest? Given histories of indigenous use of psychedelics and the extractive history of interactions between Westerners and indigenous people, what ethical considerations might psychedelic practitioners and researchers have when consuming, adopting, and adapting psychedelics? We will investigate the historical, political, and cultural context of psychedelic use in the West and especially in the U.S., reflecting on how psychedelics have served different functions for different groups of people.