The origins of psychedelic medicine are shrouded in our prehistory, perhaps even deep in our evolutionary past. But what is certain about these transformative experiences produced by psychedelics is that they presented themselves as entheogenic revelations. Entheogens refer to diverse substances that stimulate experiences of spiritual encounters emerging from within the person who ingests these sacred substances. Whatever the ultimate ontological nature of these spiritual entities experienced—delusions, psychological structures, or empirical realities—what is certain is that entheogen-induced experiences must have played significantly in our primordial religious conceptions and perceptions of spiritual powers that had the capacity to enhance human well-being.
These entheogenic experiences of powerful spiritual beings might be conveniently dismissed as drug-induced illusions, a primitive fantasy, a delusion to be superseded by rationality and science. But scientific rationality and its clinical methods have soundly supported the power of the entheogenic experience. It is precisely these encounters with the mystical and spiritual dimensions of life that lend the psychedelic experience its powerful therapeutic effects. Whatever may be the ultimate ontological status of entheogenic spirits, whether they are external entities or just the neurophenomenological effects of these substances, the indisputable fact is that the experience of these realms has profoundly transformative effects verified repeatedly in clinical studies and embodied in religious traditions around the world.
We are now seeing a growing number of clinical studies evaluating psychedelics’ effectiveness for a wide range of conditions, from treatment-resistant depression, trauma and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder to cluster headaches, addictions, cancers, Alzheimer’s, and other dementias. Psychedelics’ transdiagnostic applicability, a wide range of conditions effectively treated, and with just a single or few doses, is something otherwise unheard of in the pharmaceutical industry. This is nothing less than astounding, especially given that 50 years ago, President Nixon’s War on Drugs declared these Schedule 1 substances without medical benefit and with a high risk potential. And now, they appear as savior drugs for a vast range of ailments afflicting the contemporary world.
These wide applications of psychedelics are of little surprise to those who have followed the history of the current psychedelic renaissance as ethnobotany and anthropology have reported discoveries of diverse ethnomedical applications of the entheogens over the last one hundred and fifty years. The ability of entheogens to effectively treat the wide range of conditions for which traditional cultures have claimed effectiveness boggles the imagination, literally constituting dozens of conditions. The wide range of physical, emotional, psychosomatic, and psychological conditions, as well as social problems that entheogens are used to treat, all too easily leads one down the dismissive path of attributing their success to placebo effects.
But, the likely real effects of entheogens for treating diverse medical and health conditions are receiving support from contemporary clinical science. The transdiagnostic applicability of psychedelics is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to their effects on neuroplasticity, neural regeneration, and other effects enhancing regrowth of neuronal networks. Consequently, psychedelics’ ability to treat diverse conditions is real, not placebo-induced.
The entheogenic stance—that a spirit entity is responsible for the effects—certainly has the potential to dissuade scrutiny by scientific minds. But the blinders presented by hostile atheism also need to be questioned as we come to appreciate better the nature and effects of the spiritual dimension. While centuries of scientific thought have derided as illusions and delusions the beliefs presented by religions, even the evolutionary sciences have done an about-face in recent decades. Now, religious thought is recognized as a product of our evolved psychology, with spiritual beliefs conferring numerous adaptive benefits for individuals, populations, and societies. It has become increasingly well-established that religious beliefs play essential roles in organizing pre-modern societies worldwide. Their adaptive functions are well-recognized in their ability to produce altruism, cooperation, and even self-sacrifice for the common good, and undergird moral systems with omnipotent supervision that helps assure conformity to values.
Spiritual beliefs are a fundamental form of symbolism, perhaps even the original form of symbolic representation, an effort to characterize powerful influences that early humans intuited as significant influences on individual and collective life. This symbolic orientation, complemented by a neuroturn in the understanding religion as a natural and biologically based phenomenon, provides new scientific paradigms for appreciating the power of the entheogenic paradigm as well. Rather than discounting spiritual thought as a sign of a primitive and confused mentality, these new perspectives allow us to appreciate the power and naturalness of spiritual orientations. This perspective is exemplified in the recognition of the symbolic—a system of representation held in the collective beliefs of a community—as one of the most defining distinctive qualities of the human species.
When we extend the symbolic paradigm to understanding the foundations of the supernatural, the power of spiritual beliefs becomes even more apparent. Spirit beliefs, whatever the ultimate ontological status of their objects of belief, have the power to organize thought and behavior. The conformance of spiritual beliefs with the principles of the brain and our evolved psychology enable populations to organize into societies in conformance with shared higher order principles, and to organize the emotions, thoughts, and behaviors of their members into a collective concordance. Whether or not any spirit beliefs have a referent beyond mere belief, as an aspect of empirical reality, the fact is that when spiritual beliefs are shared social realities, their consequences are extensive.
How the psychedelic renaissance comes to deal with the entheogenic experiences of psychedelics remains a challenge to the field. Medical science has already established that religious beliefs and behaviors have powerful effects on objective health measures. The same will undoubtedly apply to the entheogenic experiences as we come to more fully appreciate the power of the spiritual to shape the emotional, psychological, and social dimensions of our well-being.
Michael J. Winkelman, M.P.H., Ph.D.
Pirenópolis, Goiás, Brazil
November 11, 2024