Simon Powell - The Psilocybin Solution

Notwithstanding the saturation of the entire globe in fungicides, restricted access to wilderness areas, or other madcap responses to the presence of psilocybin fungi, we have a choice as to whether to investigate the Earth’s alchemical skin further or to turn our backs for fear of the unknown. If we do decide to pick up the “entheogenic gauntlet,” we might well be rewarded with a cascade of novel insights into the deepest mysteries of being along with a vastly improved relationship with the rest of Nature. Official science can play a role in this noble venture as can independent research at the behest of no authority other than one’s own.

With various species of psilocybin mushroom growing throughout most wild places of the world (more than one hundred species are now known to flourish across the globe), and bearing in mind their illuminating properties, with which more and more people are becoming familiar, one suspects that some innervating cultural alchemy is at hand. As we shall see in more detail later, paradigms—conceptual belief systems—crumble and are rebuilt in the wake of the psilocybin experience. This kind of paradigm shifting is not simply an event that transpires after ingestion of the mushroom; rather, the process can continue long after the original experience, almost as if some process of long-term digestive refinement was taking place. By this I mean that if we reflect on the experience in terms of how, say, the mushroom works chemically, then we gain exceptional knowledge about the underlying chemistry of the brain and the potential parameters of consciousness. And if we reflect on the self-knowledge that the mushroom affords, our inner lives may duly be improved. The very real possibility of perceptual enhancement is also at stake, potentially raising our dialogue with Nature to new levels never imagined by conventional science and philosophy.

It is through these new conceptual tools, or new improved lenses, to borrow from an earlier metaphor, that old paradigms will perforce be challenged. If these old paradigms cannot deal with the psychedelic experience, then they must either be adapted or be confined to the past. It is in this way that psilocybin and its effects can become integrated into our culture.

By now, the reader might assume that mainstream science only skirts around the issues we are most concerned with, that the only extant psychedelic research revolves around ethnobotany. Indeed, with America’s illegalization of LSD in 1966 and with the subsequent illegalization of almost all psychedelic drugs (Europe followed suit), human-based studies stopped dead. Everything on the experimental front went into cold storage. You could almost hear the bolts and locks sliding into place. Consciousness alteration had become a hostage to politics.

However, after all these years the locks have been surreptitiously picked and the politics of consciousness challenged. To be sure, a new kind of psychedelic research is gradually becoming apparent. This time around the scientists involved do not throw wild parties, nor do they exhort young people to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Dressed in traditional lab coats and sensible shoes, the second generation of psychedelic scientists have got their empirical act together. Human-based psychedelic science is now returning to the academic fold, only with far less publicity than fifty years ago and with a lot more caution and circumspection. This time around, science is taking it step by careful step.

Leading the resurgence are two American organizations: The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which I briefly mentioned in the last chapter, and the Heffter Research Institute (HRI). Founded in 1986, MAPS actively funds psychedelic research (as well as medical cannabis research) and helps scientists draw up their research protocols, a tough job when you have to approach notoriously conservative governmental agencies for permission to do your study. The HRI is a slightly younger organization, inaugurated in 1993 and named after Arthur Heffter, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, became the first scientist to isolate and systematically study a psychedelic compound from a plant—in this case mescaline from the peyote cactus. Of particular interest is a 2006 psilocybin study by the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine that was partly funded by the HRI. Researchers looked at the effects of psilocybin in healthy volunteers and found that when administered in comfortable and supportive conditions psilocybin potentiated life-affirming mystical experiences in the majority of the subjects. While this is nothing new, it is at least refreshing. The study also made headlines in many magazines and Internet video reports.

Apart from studying the effects of psychedelics upon healthy people, the main thrust of both MAPS and the HRI is finding a therapeutic use for these substances. This is a practical agenda that appears to be more acceptable to the various officiating bodies that control the availability of psychedelic agents to science. In reality, I believe that both organizations are acutely aware of the role that entheogens can play in the study of consciousness in and of itself. They are, perhaps wisely, less vocal about this “other” agenda. Despite wishes to the contrary, politics and science invariably mix, and this is the main reason why the therapeutic application of entheogens gets priority funding. Perhaps we are witness to paradigm shifting by stealth.

One recent study of note involved giving psilocybin to patients suffering from advanced-stage cancer. This was done to ascertain if psilocybin could, somewhat ironically perhaps, alleviate feelings of anxiety. Although the study was tentative and only involved a dozen terminal-cancer patients, the results were encouraging and showed that, according to some scales, anxiety was indeed reduced. This suggests that psilocybin can allow one to come to terms with troubling processes beyond one’s control, to let go as it were to that which must perforce be left behind, and thereby find some kind of peace and acceptance. I have seen a poignant video clip of Pam Sakuda, one of the subjects involved in the study, and was deeply moved by her account of how the psilocybin experience helped her deal with the terrible ordeal of having a terminal illness. I was even more moved when I did an Internet search about her and learned she had died a few years after the study. It seemed that her psilocybin experience enabled her to speak bravely about what she was going though at the time.

Similar tentative studies have been conducted in which psilocybin was administered to patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). All those in the study showed decreases in their OCD symptoms while under the influence of psilocybin, with an improvement in their condition generally lasting more than 24 hours. As of 2011, psilocybin investigations are also under way under the auspices of the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust based in Oxford in the United Kingdom. They are currently setting up studies to investigate psilocybin’s role in memory recall, particularly the recall of repressed memories, which can be useful in psychotherapy, along with studies that will determine whether psilocybin can be used to successfully treat addiction to drugs like nicotine and alcohol. This latter study will prove interesting. For if psilocybin can, through sheer spiritual force, help people kick their addiction to booze and tobacco, then millions of people will likely be up for treatment and thus millions of spiritual experiences might be in the making. Who knows? Maybe we will be witness to an alchemical plot of global proportions in which various psychoactive substances are mingling, catalyzing one another’s production, and even vying for cultural supremacy.