Written for Expanding a Science of Consciousness (CogSci 190), UC Berkeley, Fall 2021. Opinion essay, revised in February 2022.

In disparaging the use of psychoactive drugs, the focus is often on their ostensibly destructive nature — the homeless crack addict with rotting teeth, the binge drinking husband who beats his wife or the stoner student slavishly stuffing pizza on the couch — drugs are portrayed as nefarious bandits of morality that pilfer and plunder society or as viruses that irrevocably corrupt human potential through their vicious ensnarement. Thus, the noble proselytizers state: for a society to remain safe and healthy the use of drugs, barring a few sanctioned exceptions, must be forcefully banished.

There are multiple points of failure in the above argument and thinkers more illustrious than I have convincingly pointed out where such lines of reasoning go wildly astray. The author Sam Harris has been an influential advocate for the vast benefits of intentional psychedelic use and has openly lambasted the American prohibition movement, aka the War on Drugs, calling it a carnival of moral errors (Harris 2011, 2020). The neuroscientist Carl Hart makes a forceful case for why drug addiction is not a brain disease (Hart, 2017) and then goes further than most in his latest book ‘Drug Use for Grown-Ups’, where he challenges what he calls ‘psychedelic exceptionalism’ and makes the forthright case that all drugs, even those ringed by taboo like heroin, can be used in a manner conducive to human flourishing. (Hart, 2021) While I concur with Harris and Hart’s sentiments, I think there is something missing in their attempts to persuade naysayers to the value drugs can have in modern society. Inspired by Dale Pendell, I think we must adopt the metaphor of Allyship rather than Objecthood to reframe our interactions with psychoactive substances. [Pendell, 1995]

Humanity’s tryst with drugs has been an enduring feature of our civilisational voyage through the millennia, if not, as Terrence McKenna would claim, an integral part of its very genesis. (McKenna, 1999) Crucially, until the advent of sophisticated chemistry post the Industrial Revolution, our psyche rendezvousing tended to take the form of consummation rather than consumption as we were part of a symbiotic and co-adaptative relationship with the bearers of psychoactivity - the plants, animals and fungi that formed the environment in which we were embedded. Armed with our new-found appreciation for the extent of plant intelligence (Gagliano 2017) and fungal consciousness (Stamets 2005 ), as well as the vantage point afforded by cranium transcending theories of mind (Noë 2009), we can begin to better understand the complex and dynamic enfolding taking place within drug-induced altered states. It is wise to never underestimate the world manifesting power of words. The words we use become the frames with which we view a portion of reality and the change in perspective afforded can be substantial. The rich experimental lineage of Sapir and Whorf confirms this even for such perceptual truths as color and space (Kay & Kempton 1984). The more abstract a domain, the larger divergences in perspective can tend to be, as both the Indian philosopher Swami Vivekananda and American cognitive linguist George Lakoff elucidate in their extensive scholarship. (Vivekananda, 2019) (Lakoff & Johnson, 2008)

The monumental ramifications these divergences can have on our epistemology is skillfully explored by David Delgado Shorter in his essay Spirituality. Shorter notes that the blanket use of the word ‘spirituality’ to describe components of the metaphysics of the constellation of Native American tribes, instead of the more apt word ‘relatedness’, has concrete and profound effects on the legal and societal perception of Native American beliefs. (Shorter 2016) Such a word choice ends up causing harm to Native peoples by making the practical and intimate intersubjectivity seem esoteric and wooey. This practical intersubjectivity is particularly pertinent with respect to the sophisticated rituals and practices of mind-alteration that many indigenous tribes continue to follow, many of which can be thought of as embodying the metaphor of Allyship. This is all not to say that by virtue of being synthesized, drugs such as LSD and ketamine cannot be conceptualized in a similar fashion. Keeping aside the ontological question of what it even means for man and nature to be separate, the primary point at stake remains clear — a recognition of how the individual beliefs and societal culture around drugs can indelibly affect experience. This is perhaps best exemplified in the Western medical model context by Irving Kirsch’s work on expectancy and the placebo effect (Kirsch 1999) and how myth and narrative can lead to significant physiological and psychological consequences.

Like Hercules and the Hydra and Ram and Ravana, humanity faces an awesomely monstrous set of problems that seem only to grow in their menace as time marches forward. Drugs could turn out to be crucially important allies in a successful overcoming of these epic trials. However, this can only truly enter as a possibility by framing drugs as Allies to be respected as opposed to Objects to be (ab)used.

References

  • Gagliano, M. (2017). The mind of plants: Thinking the unthinkable. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 10(2), e1288333. ↗
  • Harris, S. (Host). (2011, July 4). Drugs and the meaning of life (No. 1) [Audio podcast episode]. In Making Sense. ↗
  • Harris, S. (Host). (2020, June 18). Can we pull back from the brink? (No. 207) [Audio podcast episode]. In Making Sense. ↗
  • Hart, C. L. (2017). Viewing addiction as a brain disease promotes social injustice. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 0055. ↗
  • Hart, C. L. (2021). Drug use for grown-ups: Chasing liberty in the land of fear. Penguin Press. ↗
  • Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis? American Anthropologist, 86(1), 65–79. ↗
  • Kirsch, I. (Ed.). (1999). How expectancies shape experience. American Psychological Association. ↗
  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. ↗
  • McKenna, T. (1999). Food of the gods: The search for the original tree of knowledge. A radical history of plants, drugs, and human evolution. Random House. ↗
  • Noë, A. (2009). Out of our heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. Hill and Wang (Macmillan). ↗
  • Pendell, D. (1995). Pharmako/poeia: Plant powers, poisons, and herbcraft. Mercury House. ↗
  • Shorter, D. D. (2016). Spirituality. In F. E. Hoxie (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of American Indian history. Oxford University Press. ↗
  • Stamets, P. (2005). Mycelium running: How mushrooms can help save the world. Ten Speed Press. ↗
  • Vivekananda, S. (2019). The complete works of Swami Vivekananda. Partha Sinha. ↗