Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 43 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos 3. The claim that entheogens encompass the entire gamut of spiritual activity across all sacred traditions that use them in a ritual context, rather than serving as adjuncts in support of genuine religious practices. [3] If we are going to take the highest ambitions of modern psychology seriously – for, as James Bugental (1915–2008) insists, “[a] truly human psychotherapy must celebrate the uniqueness of humankind and of each human individual” (1999, 61) – we need to acknowledge that secular therapies are unable to fulfill such promises, which is why we must turn to the sacred forms of therapy rooted in humanity’s spiritual patrimony. Czech-born psychiatrist and entheogenic therapy pioneer Stanislav Grof emphasized that “[p]sychedelic therapy can use the framework of different religions” (1980, 109) yet, to date, this has not been realized. It follows that entheogenic therapy must not be situated within the reductionistic and desacralized foundations of modern Western psychology. This has been pointed out for some time, yet it still holds for the plethora of novel therapies that have emerged since these words of caution from Robert Masters (1927–2008) and Jean Houston: “psychedelic[s]… as an ‘adjunct’ to old, and in some cases obsolete, therapies will not provide us with equal benefits” (Masters and Houston 1970, 342). Many have observed that psychedelic therapy, as practiced today, lacks a fully developed theoretical basis [4]. The need for a properly integrated framework has been advocated by numerous authorities: “The fault lies not in the drugs, but in the psychotherapeutic framework in which they are used. The psychedelics are, after all, merely adjuncts to therapy, not a form of therapy per se” (Caldwell 1969, 285). As the wounds of our collective psyche become more apparent by the day, there is perhaps nothing more urgent than the need to recover an authentic psychology or “science of the soul” that is rooted in metaphysics, sacred science, and the spiritual healing of psychic illness. In this connection, we need to stress that we are facing a global mental health calamity right now (Insel 2022). Statistics demonstrate the alarming rise in the number of people taking psychotropic medications. There is mounting research suggesting that these drugs fail to work as commonly expected – in many cases, they not only create more problems (such as unwanted side effects), but they can also cause chronic and irreversible harm. The fact that more people are being diagnosed and treated does not mean that there has been a decrease in mental health problems; on the contrary, the number of those seeking support has markedly escalated. To escape the “counter-cultural” baggage of the term psychedelic (a Greek compound coined in 1956 meaning “mind-manifesting”) [5], the word entheogen (Gr. “accessing the divine within”) was proposed in 1979 (Ruck et al. 1998, 137–139). Prior to the introduction of these terms, a common label was hallucinogens (Lat. “traveling in the mind”) or psychotomimetic (also known as psychotogenic), which referred to the ability of these substances to mimic symptoms of psychosis, such as the alteration of perception, thoughts, and feelings. 2 Psychedelics in the Modern World After nearly five decades of being underground, psychedelics have returned. Before they were banned, psychedelic research was burgeoning in the 1950s and 1960s (given the anticipated therapeutic potential), but these endeavors were hampered globally in the 1970s and 1980s despite purported evidence of enduring benefits. In the wake of the prohibition, we are now experiencing what has been widely hailed as the psychedelic renaissance, which began with the revival of research in the 1990s. Some divide this period into an initial wave of psychedelic research in the West (approximately 1950–1985), followed by a subsequent wave (2000 to present). However, by many accounts, while such research was officially curbed, there were always those dedicated to this cause who continued this work in underground communities. The war on drugs has, in large part, shaped the public’s opinion on psychedelics, equating them with illegal activity and criminal behavior. These policies have disproportionately affected people of color and those struggling with mental health difficulties which, in turn, has led to mass incarcerations. This has conferred a tremendous stigma on these sacred medicines in the public mind, which is still difficult to overcome. To be sure, there were abuses of psychedelics that led to their proscription, and to scheduling that precluded clinical research from continuing, yet not everything reported was accurate. Much was sensationalized in the mainstream media, which was focused on the detrimental effects of psychedelics. An example of this was the cover story published in the March 1966 edition of Life magazine entitled LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got Out of Control (Moore and Schiller 1966), and the December 1965 editorial LSD – A Dangerous Drug (Editors 1965, 1280) in the New England Journal of Medicine, a respected medical publication, that
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