Calling to deCommodify Psychedelics
Psychedelic "medicines" (naturally occurring and lab created) are powerful substances for helping humanity reach collective enlightenment. These medicines help humans get past their blocks, their traumas, and find new discoveries. Scientific and anecdotal proof of reduction in depression, resetting of addiction patterns, and responsible for several huge cultural shifts in human evolution / society.
We should be giving that away for free.
The original “psychedelic Americans” were aiming to do just that. Cary Grant and Hollywood, Timothy Leary and The Merry Pranksters, Ram Dass and the transcendental meditators, Bill W. and Alcoholics Anonymous; Get everyone high on LSD and stop fighting. Stop war. Change the status-quo. Feel better.
Short Circuit Control.
They could see where society was headed. They could see how the “old world” was going to conflict with the “new world”.
2 things happened after Vietnam: 1. Technological Boom and 2. Psychiatric Pharmaceuticals
My parents' generation, born in the 1940/50s, traumatized from seeing Kennedy shot and their friends go to Vietnam battling live on TV, fought, but then, stopped. Became complacent.
This was enough, they said. We have women's rights, birth control, and cheap houses. But wait, that was only for the middle class white Americans. So then we got affirmative action, but then the oil crisis, then Reagan, then the great gay plague of the 80s, and crack invading our urban cities. All of this fomented FEAR inside of the middle class and controlling governmental cultures of the USA.
Meanwhile, Gen X, the kids of the Summer of Love / Vietnam generation, grew up without all of the things previously had. Dinners on the table, 2 parent homes, activity in politics, and ability to reach higher levels of success.
Instead we got divorces, microwave dinners full of preservatives, corporate apartment rentals, crippling DEBT, ancient policy makers. It just goes on and on.
The boomers started the current “mental health” movement with pharmaceutical benzos and valiums, and fed the Gen X kids Ritalin and Lithium. Some it helped, most it just caused more problems. Diluting down what we now define as neurodivergence, or put simply, seeing the world in a non-traditional way.
RAVE.
Rave culture was the first inclining of Gen-X/Xellinials expansion. A dark warehouse, on the shitty side of town, where all sorts of races and genders would experiment with the substances of our parents' generation, and learn about infinite possibility together. I have been to raves all over the US at the height of its popularity. There was always one constant, that the people who spent all night dancing in the dark together would gather to come down at sunrise. Chatting, bonding, integrating.
JAM.
The other side to rave was the jam band scene. Day parties in the sun listening to bands that would meander on and on and on. But still, chatting, touring, integrating. Making lifelong friends through this shared community and substance-filled experience. The amount of visual artists, production folks, and inspired artists to come out of this community is unmeasurable.
INTEGRATE.
What's the point of having a mind blowing experience if you don’t have anyone around to integrate with?
Booze. Alcohol abuse and as a “recreational substance” keeps people in the same low vibrations they have always been in. Work. Eat. Drink. Hangover. Work. Alcohol numbs the self to the pain and stagnation around them. It's a wonder why it's the global altered state of humanity.
Cocaine. Cocaine feeds the ego. And not in the way of “oh, im going to feed my ego so i can see what serves me and what doesnt’”, it turns the ego into a monster. Thinking it's right, and the best, and ‘OMG I WANT MORE COCAINE!’.
That's just not sustainable. The most common thought someone has after a coke bender is: “I let so much fall behind, I shouldn’t have weekends like that anymore, I gotta catch up. But let me just do a little bump to motivate me…”
The commodification and commercialization of psychedelics is an errand of the ego, and even more so of the corporate ego. Yes. Corporations have Egos in the USA, because they are treated like people. To control the receiving of evolution, only in the way they say, and when they say it.
WHO IS THEY?
Psychedelics should be FREE for all those that seek it. The focus should be on creating structures and places for integration of those experiences. What's the use of blowing your ego out if there's no one there to help you put it back better than it was? I think about the right wing political scene, how they are doing psychedelics and just confirming their own biases. Not learning a better way or a more universal truth, because they don’t have a culture of integration. In festival culture, there is integration but it is with people who don't look any different than themselves and why we get so many carbon copies of styles and thoughts.
SHORT CIRCUIT CONTROL
Give the drugs away for free, but require integration sessions. Pay the integrators what they are worth for their time. These are folks that will be moving immense amounts of evolutionary energy for those that need integration. They are trained. They have willingness and desire to walk hand-in-hand with those through their own gates. Pay them. Give the drugs away for free.
We shouldn’t be prescribing psychedelics, nor should we be using rituals that aren’t ours. Ayahuasca is not an “American” sacrament. In my experience, transformation shows up as a delusional continuation of the ego. Americans are mutts. Genetic and historical mishmash of types, cultures, colors, and experiences. We don’t have the genetic imprint of those who evolved in the mountains of Peru and South America where the Ayu vine has been used.
Americans are a culture of LSD, Opiates, Cocaine, Coffee, Cigarettes, and Pharmaceutical Drugs. We have no business appropriating substances that are from other cultures, and really have no knowledge for us other than feeding one's biases.
Here's an example from my life of misguided psychedelic use, because of the unavailability of integration sessions. I was seeing a couple in New Orleans. The husband was microdosing Ibogaine. IBOGAINE. The most powerful plant medicine in the known world. Specifically used to reset the physiology of addicts. A last resort to growth past a block. Now, did the person who sold him this substance give him any advice on how to work with it? No they didn’t. I merely suggested he get a journal and start to write about what he’s thinking and how he’s feeling and what comes up.
I got the worst response, “I know what I’m doing!”
Sure, ok.
Slowly he stopped trusting me.
The relationship fizzled.
I don’t know what happened after. Ego.
This is why I say we have to de-commodify psychedelics. It's not high school and college kids dropping acid at Phish shows. It's not a few friends drinking mushroom tea on a Saturday. It's not ravers staying up all night on MDMA.
It's everyone and their geriatric uncle trying these medicines, cause it’s hip. They don’t have years of experience in the “psychedelic world” and they certainly don’t have the ability to integrate themselves.
If we decriminalize / legalize these substances, we will have the same result as when MDMA was offered in the early 80s as a therapy. The underground got a hold of it, and suddenly the new youth were discovering love and acceptance. The olds of the time couldn’t take that, so less than a decade after its use in therapy, it became a schedule 1 drug with no medical use. Odd right?
SHORT CIRCUIT CONTROL
The future possibility can look like this. Someone meets someone at a party, or sees an ad. They contact the integration specialist, who sets them up with a server. The server delivers the substance. The someone then does the substance at their leisure. They have their integration session and move forward.
It would help in making parties more intentional, if everyone attending that suburban Molly fiesta could get their doses at once by setting up their sessions. This could also provide steady income to the therapists.
Do I consider that a $5 dose of LSD becomes a couple hundred dollars? Yes. Because, 1. Those that want to find it other ways will. 2. Those that need integration the most, deserve to give their money to Gen Z psychedelic therapists.
Let’s deschedule them all, make them free, but require all users to have integration sessions. Make sense of what they went through. Grow and evolve.
Can’t create new pathways, using all the same old methods.
Honor the Chemists and the Cultivators.
Praise the Integrators.
Support the Workers.
Envision the Future.
Short Circuit Control.
