We’ve come a long way from the days when the majority of us knew with total certainty that mushrooms and other hallucinogenic drugs have only negative impacts on our bodies.
That certainty came from the widespread condemnation of these drugs from governments, medical associations, and most major institutions in the developed world.
But as a great songwriter once said: The times they are a’changing.
In a recent and very moving piece from International Business Times, a 60-year-old Ontario woman dying of breast cancer described the way psilocybin had allowed her to accept death and cope with a shorter life than she’d expected.
From the article: “I’m still dying,” Andrea Bird said matter-of-factly, but added that psilocybin “makes me feel like I can stand up.”
Bird is one of about 30 Canadians, most of them struggling to face the end of their lives, who have received federal dispensation since August 2020 to use psilocybin for therapeutic purposes, according to the article.
If that doesn’t move you, I don’t know what will.
This movement is growing fast and will only accelerate with the increased acceptance of medical treatments.
The psychedelic drugs market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.3 percent over the next eight years, reaching $6.85 billion by 2027, according to Data Bridge Market Research.
The key factors fueling this growth include the increasing prevalence of depression and other mental health disorders in the U.S. and Canada and other nations, and the growing acceptance of psychedelic drugs for the treatment of depression.
The reality is that these drugs have never been the bugaboo so many of us were led to believe. In fact, the research supporting their medical benefits has existed for decades, as illustrated by Michael Pollan’s most recent book, “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.”
As Pollan lays out in detail in his book, Indigenous peoples have been using psychedelics for millennia, while Western researchers only began studying them in the mid-20th Century.
Unfortunately, governments cracked down on the research and use of the substances when they became intertwined with the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s.
But many medical researchers, convinced of their potential, especially the psilocybin found in “magic mushrooms,” persisted in their work.
Now, after decades of misinformation and draconian laws banning their use, the Internet is buzzing with activity about the medical possibilities of psychedelic drugs.
Perhaps most interesting, medical researchers are also embracing the spiritual dynamic of these drugs, as well as their ability to improve mental health.
Michael Pollan describes this in great detail in his book:
“I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps these remarkable molecules might be wasted on the young, that they may have more to offer us later in life, after the cement of our mental habits and everyday behaviors has set,” Pollan wrote. “Carl Jung once wrote that it is not the young but people in middle age who need to have an “experience of the numinous” to help them negotiate the second half of their lives.”
For all these reasons and more, we can no longer allow psychedelics to be a relic of our past, but an important and fascinating part of our future.
George Scorsis 