Reasons for using Psychedelics

People primarily use psychoactive substances for one of four different primary purposes – recreational, medicinal, utilitarian, and some substances, including psychedelics and especially entheogens are used for spiritual purposes.

While recreational drug use has long been frowned upon, it is somewhat glossed over that this is the primary reason people use alcohol.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the recreational use of nearly any substance, so long as that use is done responsibly, such that it does not cause significant negative impact on the life and livelihood of the user, their family and friends, or their local community.

The recreational use of psychedelics has a long, strange history dating back to the 1950s, peaking in the late 1960s, but never completely fading into obscurity, as the word psychedelic has become a permanent and significant part of Western culture due to its influence on art, music, literature, and movies. “Psychedelic” is still used today, even in children's movies to describe busy and/or colourful patterns.

Despite the stigma of recreational use of psychedelics being associated with cannabis “stoner culture” and “potheads”, and such users being labeled as “acidheads”, “shroomheads”, or perhaps simply “druggies”, actual recreational use is about recreation in its true sense, and can be just as positive as other forms of leisure and play, as long as done responsibly. It is not shameful to have fun.

Burning Man Festival, in Black Rock City, Nevada, USA, has been happening since 1986, sometimes with over 70,000 participants, is viewed as a sort of Mecca of psychedelic expression.

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy has received a lot of attention and recognition recently, but its origins date back to the late 1940s. For close to twenty years, psychedelics such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin containing mushrooms were considered to be invaluable tools for advancing the understanding of the mind, as well as treating mental illnesses before almost all research was halted at the end of the 1960s. Alan Watts was quoted as saying, “LSD is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or telescope, except this one is inside of you instead of outside of you.”

Most current psychedelic research is focused on reproducing the results of the research from the 1950s and 1960s, with updated (double blind) scientific methods, and using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better see and understand what brain regions are affected.

That said, little has significantly changed over the past 60 years aside from the accumulation of irrefutable hard scientific evidence that psychedelics in fact do have enormous potential for medical use.

It has long been a well kept secret that psychedelics provided the catalyst for the the Silicon Valley phenomenon, and that countless computer scientists that were responsible for designing microprocessors, improving human user interfaces, and “thinking differently”, had relied on psychedelics to assist in complex problem solving. When psychedelics were forced underground, those with means and the right connections were able to benefit, and this practice continues to this day, where developers are actually encouraged to microdose to help “think outside the box”.

While we do not endorse the practice of multi-million dollar technology corporations encouraging already overworked developers to use performance enhancing drugs to think more creatively, personal use of psychedelics for improving cognition and general well-being is perfectly fine.

Last, but not least, psychedelics (and entheogens) have been scientifically shown to be reliable catalysts for fostering mystical experiences. Not only this, but recent research has shown that the measurable improvement from psychedelic assisted therapy is directly proportional to the patient having a mystical experience.

Plants containing molecules, such as mescaline and psilocybin have a very long history of ceremonial use, possibly dating back many thousands of years, and typically tend to have the potential to induce a mystical state where the user becomes “one” with God, the Universe, or the Absolute. Other experiences can involve feelings that everything is connected, or that everything is alive (animism).

The mystical potential of psychedelics has long been studied, most notably as part of the Good Friday (or Marsh Chapel) Experiment on April 20th at Boston University in 1962, which was essentially repeated at Johns Hopkins University by Roland R. Griffiths in 2002. There are a few different scientific scales on which to measure the results of such experiments, such as the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS), the Spiritual Transcendence Index (STI), the Hood Mysticism Scale, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), and the “revised” Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30).

While it may seem strange (or potentially sacrilegious) to apply the scientific method to what are considered to be sacred and personal experiences, it should be noted that many scientists who work within the psychedelic space are far more open to the idea that there is a scientific basis for spiritual beliefs to play a significant role in health, wellbeing, healing, and recovery from illness.