Society Archives - Maps of the Mind

How Will Our Value Systems Affect The Psychedelic Movement?

How are the value systems of our world affecting the trajectory of the psychedelic movement?

What societal forces are shaping its course?

How will this in turn affect our culture and society’s evolution?

These questions were brought to my mind recently as I finished listening to the audiobook version of The Nature Of Drugs.

The Nature of Drugs is a series of lectures from a class that legendary folk chemist cum psychedelic lore legend Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin gave. It has been lovingly transcribed and put together by those wonderful folk at Synergetic Press. Through the series of lectures, Sasha details a lot of biological knowledge whilst touching upon politics and culture, and mixing in some funny and insightful personal anecdotes.

It was one of those personal anecdotes, in one of the last chapters, that got me thinking about this topic of cultural values and reward systems in regard to psychedelic work.

Sasha and his wife Ann contributed massively to the psychedelic world. They were true pioneers. Sasha was known as the ‘godfather of MDMA’, and he discovered over 200 psychedelic compounds, including 2-CB. Sasha even created his own scale for measuring the effect of a drug: the Shulgin scale.

Something that I found to be thought-provoking is that Sasha, one of the greatest figures and contributors to the modern psychedelic movement, was only able to do the depth of work that he did because he developed a drug for industrial purposes.

How Sasha Gained Freedom

Shulgin acquired the freedom to do his independent research because of a prediction he made that helped chemical corporation DOW to develop a hugely profitable insecticide. In other words, he was able to help a commercial company make tons of money out of drugs. Because of that, DOW rewarded him with free reign and the resources to do his own research.

‘Sasha’ Shulgin – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

With that freedom, he was able to do the work that he really wanted to do and was passionate about: drugs of the mind. He cooked them up in his shed/lab in his back garden and tested them on himself. He was able to do his research fully legally and had a license under state law for everything he was doing.

I think this mixing of a commercial interest with psychonautical passion illustrates something about how entangled everything we do is with commercial prospects. With big money, commercial interests, and pharma-like corporations already having entered and influenced the space, I think this is a worthy consideration. This topic was explored brilliantly in the online comic We Will Call It Pala.

What If?

What if Sasha Shulgin had never developed that insecticide? How much contribution from him would we have actually seen? Where would the psychedelic space be without his and his wife Ann’s contributions?

To tie it into our current reality, how many potential amazing underground researchers, activists, artists, and creators are out there, who might be deprived of contributing their gifts to the world because of financial interests? Because they’re not able to make fat stacks for a big company?

How many choose paths that aren’t to their heart’s calling, because of how our society rewards and incentivizes financial profits? Or status via money? What ripples are we missing out on? What revolutionary and groundbreaking work for humanity is going unrewarded and unrealized?

Maybe it’s the case that brilliant minds find a way to bless the world in their own ways regardless of circumstances. Perhaps if it wasn’t through an insecticide development for DOW, Shulgin would’ve discovered another way to do his work. Maybe there is some truth to that.

But what about all of us with less-than-genius philosopher-chemist minds? And what about all the big hearts? How might the world look different if we found a way to encourage and foster the ability for all of us to do work that lights up our souls?

There are a lot of questions here. And this isn’t something I pretend to have the answers on. But when we consider the type of world that we want to create, they are topics I think we should all be thinking and talking about.

08/12/2022/by John Robertson

Psychedelics, Society

Punk Ethos & Psychedelic Practice

Not a lot of people that know me through my psychedelic work know about one of my biggest loves:

Punk.

Punk music?

Absolutely.

But more relevant to my psychedelic work; punk ethos.

Punk and its associated ideas have played a huge part in my growing up, my identity, and the person I’ve become. A lot of the values I hold are also shared by punk as a movement.

If you think punk is all about people getting angry and shouting “fuck the system”, I’d like to show you that there is much more.

Here are some crossovers between punk and psychedelics.

Non-conformity

Punk challenges conformity. It challenges the norms of society. In a world where we’re burning our own house down, where corruption and inequality are rife, I think it’s a good time for us to challenge a few social and cultural norms.

If I conformed to the rules of the world, and the laws set in place by governments, I never would’ve started on my psychedelic journey. I never would’ve been able to receive these beautiful, wonderful, and healing experiences.

I never would’ve become able to help others on their psychedelic journeys either.

“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
– Dr Martin Luther King

Anti-Authoritarianism

Punk as a movement is anti-authority. It allows people to form their own beliefs rather than being handed them by people who are in positions, or supposed positions, of authority. Punk encourages you to question authority.

Do you believe what you believe because this belief has been passed on to you? Or have you come to this conclusion yourself through your own reasoning, agency, and experience? Punk encourages us to become our own authority and to discover truth for ourselves.

Psychedelics encourage us to find our own truths too. They help us to face truths, sometimes they will reveal them even if they’re f-ing uncomfortable.

Emotional Expression

As a genre of music, punk is pretty expressive.

Punk doesn’t repress. Punk lets it out and lets it rip.

And psychedelics encourage this in us too. Psychedelics do not reward suppression or repression of our deeply held emotions or beliefs. In fact, they punish them. They will often squeeze them out of us. Even those which may seem to be pretty full-on.

Some say punk is all about needless anger, for me it’s about standing up for what you believe in and being honest with yourself about things that you’re not cool with. It’s about not having your boundaries crossed.

As Pema Chödrön says, there is compassion, and then there is idiot compassion:

“For example, trying to smooth everything out to avoid confrontation, not to rock the boat, is not what’s meant by compassion or patience. It’s what is meant by control. Then you are not trying to step into unknown territory, to find yourself more naked with less protection and therefore more in contact with reality. Instead, you use the idiot forms of compassion and so forth just to get ground.”

Psychedelics encourage acceptance, but likewise, there is acceptance and then there is idiot acceptance. Idiot acceptance is pretending we’re OK with things and that it’s all love and roses when it’s not, it’s being soft when we actually need to draw a line.

DIY

Finally, something that comes from the punk movement but for me is very relevant to my psychedelic practice is the DIY ethic. With various organizations looking to establish themselves as gatekeepers in the psychedelic space I think this is becoming more and more important.

DIY as a subculture was brought forward by the punk movement of the 1970s.

Punks would release their own music on self-funded record labels, create and publish their own books and zines, put on their own shows, and book their own tours – without relying on an external source of authority or permission. Artists like Black Flag were trailblazers in the movement of underground do-it-yourself record labels within the subculture, exemplary in their tireless promotion of an autonomous DIY punk ethic and aesthetic.

Before the technological advances of the last few decades, this was a huge deal.

This ethic is something that informs my own psychedelic practice. I learned to DIY with psychedelics. I learned to journey solo and self-organize sessions with friends. Without therapists or guides.

And man I’m so glad I did. I love helping others to learn to DIY and self-organize, and I want to help you learn to DIY and self-organize. Because like punk I believe in the decentralization of power. I believe in the dissolution of the old systems that have led to this breaking point we stand as a species, as a global society.

I also love jumping around to some fast pumping riffs and jumping off the stage for a cheeky little crowd surf from time to time. Try it out, it’s hella fun.

Walkthrough Preparation Guide for Self-Organised Psychedelic Sessions

06/12/2022/by John Robertson

Society

Legalize Psychedelics for Freedom

The first cage is the mind.

Psychedelics break the shackles. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong. When you let go of every opinion, belief or conviction that you are consciously or unconsciously holding onto, you have the opportunity to finally be free.

From a blank slate, you have the possibility of consciously deciding which beliefs or frames you wish to adopt. You have agency in the perspectives you want to hold. Do you want to see reality from those that will support you, that are conducive to the life you want to lead?

Everything comes down to perspective. How we perceive reality comes down to the perspectives we take. Two different people in what looks like the same experience from the outside can be going through two totally different lived experiences. “Truth is subjectivity” as Kierkegaard once said, and there is no denying that our internal experience plays a central role in our experience of life and reality.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Victor Frankl

As humans our ability to create meaning, to find it in our experiences, is what makes us unique. It’s what makes us who we truly are. Victor Frankl is someone who underwent an incredible atrocity, but yet still was able to find meaning, freedom, and purpose in his existence.

Psychedelics ability to enable us to see things from a new angle and offer a new perspective is ultimately their greatest power. It gives us a real chance to see difficulties or hardships from the past in a new light and find meaning and purpose in them. It also allows us to see new connections, sparking our creativity.

“Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
― Terence McKenna

It’s almost a bad joke that we are not free to use these plants and substances which can help us find inner freedom. That we do not enjoy cognitive liberty. That people are locked in cages for their use or involvement with them. The fact that people have had their physical freedom taken from them is a gross injustice. I believe this to be a key civil rights issue of our time and with psychedelics’ ability to help us to see past division, to see our unity and interconnectedness, they can inform and accelerate other civil rights movements present in the world today. Understanding our connection with the planet, they can help our ecological awareness and movement too.

Freedom is something I believe we all ultimately strive for. With their power to break boundaries and burn down limiting beliefs, psychedelics allow us to believe in the impossible. They allow us to dream. And for that reason psychedelics are the greatest tool that we have for freedom. And I believe we should legalize, and liberate, psychedelics.

Photo taken of a t-shirt from ICEERS, as part of their campaign to liberate plant teachers

This post is day 16 of PSYJuly 2021.

16/07/2021/by John Robertson

Psychedelics, Resources, Society

Talking About Psychedelics

Psychedelics are not an integrated part of our culture in the West and as such they can be difficult to talk about. There is still social stigma attached to the topic, and even though they are increasingly gaining credibility and acceptance, they are still in many ways taboo.

How easily and openly you can talk about psychedelics of course depends on who you are talking to. If you have a very open minded friend then perhaps it is no problem to speak with them about your interest or experience with psychedelics. However, if you come from a conservative background then it may be very difficult to speak about with family members and even bringing up the topic might start ringing alarm bells.

Selective Sharing For Integration

When it comes to a successful integration of your experience, selective sharing is an important point. Just as you have certain friends that you might speak to about certain things like music or philosophy, in the same way you probably have friends that would be more open and receptive to the topic of psychedelics.

Choose carefully who you will share your experience with and how much you will share. The experience can lose some of its magic if not held properly by the listener. A highly skeptical or even mocking response can really dampen what was a very personally meaningful experience and detract from it’s power to catalyze positive change in your life. In some cases it may even cause you to doubt what you experienced and and be encouraged to brush it off as nothing more than a weird drug experience.

Know Your Crowd

Selective sharing should also take into account which aspects of your experience you choose to talk about. If you had a spiritual experience and you have a friend who is very firm in their material mechanistic worldview, then it may not be worth speaking to them about the spiritual aspects of your experience or connecting with the divine. Most likely it will be written off and rationalised by someone who at the end of the day did not experience what you experienced. However, you may be able to speak to that same friend about some of the positive changes you have felt since the experience. You could talk about how you feel or think differently and can even reference some of the science which has shown the changes that happen in the brain. Referencing some of the scientific research that has been done may provide a perspective on the experience that your friend will more readily trust.

With this in mind it may not be that with some friends you can speak about psychedelics with and others not. It is more a case of choosing how you speak about psychedelics with each individual.

Opening a Conversation

A good entry to a conversation about psychedelics is to ask a question. Rather than opening up with “I had an amazing experience last weekend on LSD“ you could open up with:

“did you ever try LSD?“
“did you have any experience with psychedelic drugs?“
“do you know anything about psychedelic drugs?“

Entering into a conversation this way is a good way of putting the feelers out. You can get a gauge on persons perspective without commiting yourself to anything and can proceed accordingly in the conversation. If it seems like you do not want to go any further you can say “oh I just read something interesting about it the other day and it got me quite interested.”

Choosing a time to share

If there is someone who you would really like to speak to but are afraid of their response, try to choose a time when they are in a more open and less judgemental state. Generally if someone opens up or shows a vulnerability to you then they will be in a more open frame of mind. Another good sign is when they are really listening to you and asking questions that come from a place of curiosity rather than challenge.

Shifting the landscape through conversation

Talking about psychedelics is an important part of shifting the cultural conversation around the topic and moving the psychedelic movement forwards. With that in mind I would like to share a quote from my friend and Altered founder Dax DeFranco from an interview I did with him back in 2017:

“I think the most important thing is to use and talk about them in an honest way. There’s a lot of talk about ‘coming out of the psychedelic closet’ – like I mentioned before, when you’re the only person who’s experimented with x, it’s hard to talk about it or make it a part of your identity, but the more people that do, the less pressure and fear others feel to identify that way. I think the simple act of being a psychedelic person who’s honest about being a psychedelic person is extremely powerful.”

24/07/2020/by John Robertson

Blog, Psychedelics, Society

The Changing Landscape of Attitudes Towards Drugs

Something I find very interesting is how perspectives change on a collective and societal level. At our current point of incredible and accelerating global change, many societal shifts are underway, and this is happening with attitudes towards different types of drugs too.

Very taboo ones, like psychedelics, are becoming more accepted, championed even, and party drugs like MDMA and ketamine are gaining respect as therapeutic treatments.

Perhaps the most obvious example of how quickly a collective attitude towards a drug can shift from negative to positive is that of marijuana. Not so long ago it had fairly firm connotations of lazy people and potheads, and now in the States, it is a legitimate and respected medicine prescribed by doctors, with that reputation making its way worldwide.

In the other direction, older ones that have long been accepted like alcohol are dying down. Many people are cutting back, or quitting altogether, and the young generation are not drinking nearly as much as those gone before, even as recent as the youth of 20 years ago. A great example of this trend is the rise in alcohol free beers.

I happened to walk past this bar this morning

Sugar is another one that seems to be on the decline, something that people seem to be more conscious of in their use. The fact that many people now even view sugar as a drug is notable and this is something I think we will continue to see.

Another one which is beginning to be viewed more as a drug is caffeine. More and more people seem to be cutting back on coffee and keeping an eye on their caffeine intake. The idea that people have coffee addictions would have seemed very strange to me just 10 years ago. Now it seems totally normal, and also totally understandable due to the jitters and anxiety that a high intake can bring. I myself am currently doing a 30 day coffee break this month (yes another 30 day challenge, I know ).

What is Shifting Awareness and Social Acceptability of Drugs?

Awareness around mental and physical health is growing in general, as can be seen by the rise in the term ‘wellness’ which is at least in part as a response to rising rates of mental health problems. Also a big contributing factor is lots of good science and solid data, combined with thoughtful researchers and writers.

Recent examples that spring to mind are Michael Pollan’s best seller How To Change Your Mind, and The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. Pollan’s book tells us before we even begin, through its subtitle, that psychedelics have something to teach us across a wide variety of topics, and Taubes title sets the tone, with the book basically concluding that sugar should be a controlled substance.

New Categories Of Drugs

Another type of drug which is on the rise, and whose category bleeds into that of enhancer or supplement, is the nootropic. Nootropics are riding the wave of the rising trend of human performance and optimisation, and is linked to health as well as productivity. The category of nootropics is not that specific and could generally be termed as cognitive enhancers. As such it is wide ranging and includes things like medicinal mushrooms supplements, vitamin pills, and ‘study drugs’, such as modafinil. Because of its wide ranging term, it also includes drugs from other categories, such as coffee and microdoses of psychedelics.

What’s The Difference Between Drugs and Food?

An interesting discussion point made by both Terence McKenna and Michael Pollan is that of the distinction between food and drugs. Both affect our neurochemistry, our mood, health, energy, and sense of wellbeing. Both are consumed, as an external item into the body (this is where you would exclude exercise, for example, as a drug). Previously, one might have said that what is made in a lab is a drug and what is grown on land is food but the lines are blurring.

Some examples to consider the distinction:

Magic mushrooms
Processed food. Factory farmed meat.
The very idea of ‘organic’ food

Are mushrooms food or drug? If they have a psychoactive effect, do they stop being a food? If diet affects mood and how our mindbody organism operates, is food a drug? If standard coffee is a drug, is decaffeinated coffee not? If our food is created in a lab or factory, is it still a food?

I find this to be a very interesting topic and I think the changing attitudes to drugs are intertwined with changing trends and increased focus on nutrition and diet. This can be seen with the huge rise in veganism, and also in new ideas of diets, such as gluten free, lactose free, paleo, keto etc. In general we are paying much more attention to what we are putting in to our bodies and the impact it has on us.

Where will be in 20 years?

I think that psychedelics will continue to rise, as both a means of self exploration and a science backed response to the mental health crisis, and I’d also suggest that veganism will continue to rise, as awareness rises of the appalling conditions of exploited animals, and seeing as the environmental problems we are facing don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

As for the others, I really am not sure. Perhaps nootropics will usher us towards the next stage of our evolution and we will merge with tech in an transhuman stage of life on earth. Really, its anyone’s guess.

08/07/2020/by John Robertson