Psychedelics beyond psychiatry
Building a post-prohibition world for psychedelics that doesn't stop short
Hi, I’m Oshan. This newsletter explores topics around emancipatory social science, consciousness studies, & together, the worlds they might conjure. If you missed it, the last dispatch was on cessations of consciousness and poverty. If you’re reading this but aren’t subscribed, you can join here:
Hello friends,
My first long-form piece for Vox is up. I wrote it after growing sufficiently frustrated at the glaring absence in just about every single mainstream piece on the Western psychedelic renaissance.
Even though we’ve already created a hype-bubble that researchers argue should be systematically deflated, just about every headline still focuses on the therapeutic value of psychedelics for treating mental illness. This aspect of psychedelics is both important and deeply exciting. But it’s only the foothills of what revitalized worlds a resurgent effort of serious research into psychedelics makes possible. From the piece:
But as important as anything that can turn the tide on mental health is, the frenzy over transforming psychedelics into new treatments for illness obscures — and may even interfere with — their further potential to expand our understanding of what healthy minds could be. The deep history of psychedelics shows they have far more to offer than simply the next generation of psychiatric treatment.
But it’s generally tough to get into all that without going off the deep end, in a way that doesn’t find much purchase on large platforms. Then, Roland Griffiths, one of the central scientists behind today’s psychedelic renaissance, received a terminal cancer diagnosis, and publicly stated that research on spirituality and well-being in healthy volunteers (as opposed to those with mental illness) is “the most consequential direction for future psychedelic research,” and I knew I had a solid foundation to write something on it.
I wound up writing a ‘state of the psychedelic renaissance’ piece that doesn’t stop short at therapy, but explores the underlying mechanisms that might help explain why anyone, mentally ill or otherwise, might benefit from psychedelics, and the legal/political dimensions of how to build a far more diverse and accessible post-prohibition world for psychedelics.
I received some wonderful feedback (and some derision, which was also fun), but my favorite review might’ve been this from Zach Haigney (who has a great newsletter on psychedelics):
If you want to read the piece, you can do so here.
II. All plasticity, no entropy
Since most media focus has gone towards the therapeutic benefits, neuroplasticity has had plenty of time in the spotlight (drawing a line from heightened plasticity that favors reshaping patterns of thought and behavior to therapeutic outcomes is easy enough).
But boosting plasticity is only one of a handful of mechanisms we know that underlies the psychedelic experience. Far less well known, and yet perhaps farther-reaching, is the way that psychedelics spike entropy levels in brain activity. You may recognize entropy as what the second law of thermodynamics states the universe is tending towards: disorder. In the brain, you can think of entropy as the diversity, randomness, and unpredictability of electrical activity across brain regions.
In 2014, Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuroscientist who was then the head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, published a landmark work on what he called “the entropic brain.” The basic idea is that what any state of consciousness feels like — and in particular, what he calls the “richness” of its feeling — depends on the amount of entropy in the associated brain activity. Brain entropy is low in reduced states of consciousness, like when you’re under general anesthesia. During altered states, from psychedelic trips to deep meditation, entropy is higher. In ordinary waking consciousness, it rests somewhere in the middle.
Carhart-Harris argues that the brain evolved an ability to strike a useful balance of entropy levels. In particular, he believes that the collection of regions known as the default-mode network (DMN) is primarily responsible for suppressing entropy in the ordinary brain. Doing so favors forms of cognition that help us make sense of our environments in ways that are useful for survival. “Equally however,” he writes in the paper, “it could be seen as exerting a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness.”
Psychedelics reduce activity within the DMN, loosening its hold over entropy levels. The resulting high-entropy states may not have been the most beneficial for our ancestors on the savannah. (Predators would welcome blissed-out prey, marveling at their surroundings rather than scanning for threats). But for a species where basic survival can now mostly, kind of, be taken for granted, these states may have much to offer. Beyond mere vacations into “richer” states of consciousness, entropic states can cast new light on the ordinary ones we return to when a trip subsides. Sometimes it’s tough to imagine how different something that’s grown so familiar can be — like the habitual ways we’ve come to process experience — until we’ve had the direct experience of it being otherwise.
III. Next steps towards the post-prohibition world
Ok, so entropy is interesting and can benefit anyone, wherever they fall along the diagnostic spectrum of mental illness. But given the reality of path-dependence, how do we get from where we are today, to a world where psychedelics are sanely, even wisely, stewarded?
I closed out the piece with an idea I’m confused as to why I haven’t heard more about: licensed legalization. Think of it like getting your driver’s license, but for buying psychedelics. Once you are a certain age, you would become eligible for a supervised psychedelic experience at a licensed facility — a sort of initiation ritual where you learn the ropes. Perhaps there’s a written portion to ensure basic safety knowledge (remember that permit test?). Afterward, you receive a license that allows you to purchase psychedelics for use however and wherever you see fit1. The license could be revoked for any number of infractions, just as we do for drunk drivers.
I got a lot of shit on Reddit for suggesting any form of gatekeeping. Why should someone’s first trip have to be at a government-approved facility? Why not with your parents, or a community of practice? Why not wherever or however one wishes, so long as they aren’t harming anyone else?
In a vacuum, and in the core of my being, I agree. A paragraph that got cut from the piece, but that I feel is still the most relevant case for broadly legalizing psychedelics:
Beyond cost-benefit calculations that weigh risks and rewards of wider access, some psychedelic advocates point to a deeper rationale for legalization: cognitive liberty, which reimagines access to psychedelics as a basic human right. On this view, the right to use non-addictive substances in the peaceful stewardship of one’s own consciousness is a fundamental freedom that continued prohibition violates.
But these things are path dependent, and advance iteratively through the adjacent possible.
Also, in the course of my research, I found out that cognitive liberty does not poll well, which is one reason why advocates working on the legal end of things have sort of abandoned it as a path towards legalization. But licensed legalization feels like a sensible stepping stone from the current adult-use model shaping up in Oregon and Colorado. Would love to hear if folks see any others floating around.
IV. Loose ends
I’ll be at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver later this month. If you’re gonna be there, say hello! I also seem to be Vox’s ‘psychedelic guy’ at the moment, so if you have any thoughts on what deserves wider readership in the scene, I’d love to hear.
For unrelated psychedelic content, my conversation with Chris Letheby on his ‘self-unbinding’ account of high-dose psychedelics continues to inform how I understand the space. But to add contrast, Anna Ciaunica has a fun paper out arguing that in deep contemplative experiences of selflessness, psychedelic or otherwise, a minimal form of the self is never actually lost. Whatever you experience in your mind, the homeostatic processes that keep your body churning along remain uninterrupted, and thankfully so. Unless you die the sort of death that consciousness does not return from, but that’s a different trip.
Until next time,
Oshan
Doblin doesn’t specify from where. State-licensed producers? Anyone who grows them? Questions remain…