The Benefits & Drawbacks of Using Psychedelics for Spirituality

As individuals have increasingly sought to personalize their spiritual experiences in recent years, the use of psychedelic drugs as a quasi-religious practice has become more common. However, this isn’t necessarily a good thing.?

Mind-altering substances like psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca can provoke deep spiritual experiences, and they’re a useful tool for many people on the hunt for meaning. However, too great a focus on psychedelics can result in a disregard for the foundational practices that provide the real insight associated with religion.

The Case for Psychedelics

In Ayahuasca Shamanism, indigenous Amazonian groups use the intense psychedelic properties of the ayahuasca vine as the basis for ritual ceremonies. Despite the opposition, at various stages, of health organizations, missionaries, and guerrilla groups, the practice has taken place for centuries and remains popular today.?

Other surviving religions that feature the use of psychedelics as a central ritual include the Native American Church (peyote), the Rastafari movement (cannabis), and the Bwiti religion practiced in Gabon and Cameroon (iboga).?

In more recent times, as the previously intertwined notions of spirituality and religiosity have diverged, many popular thinkers have advocated the psychedelic acceleration of the spiritual journey in a secular context.?

Psychologist Timothy Leary is among the best-known of these psychonauts. In the early 1960s, while a member of the teaching faculty at Harvard University, Leary conducted the Harvard Psilocybin Project alongside colleague Richard Alpert (another famed psychedelics advocate who later became known as Ram Dass). The pair administered LSD and psilocybin to themselves and other volunteers and tested their effects; the highly controversial research became a driving force behind the countercultural adoption of psychedelics in 1960s America.?

These experiments came at a time when the word “drugs” was a deeply negative catch-all term describing everything from heroin to cannabis. The work of Leary, Alpert, and other advocates popularized the notion that certain psychoactive compounds might have functions beyond pain relief or debauchery.?

Sam Harris is another noteworthy contributor to the movement. A secular practitioner of mindfulness meditation, Harris has advocated the use of MDMA, LSD, and psilocybin (alongside meditation) in the pursuit of meaning. He has also explicitly distanced himself from organized religion, insisting that it’s preferable to pursue spirituality without subscribing to a religious tradition.?

Harris’s work treads similar ground to that of Michael Pollan. Pollan’s 2018 book, entitled “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence,” examines how the dissolution of the ego can benefit those suffering from severe mental health issues. Pollan’s work does not present psychedelic use as part of a broader pursuit of religious practice but as a worthwhile spiritual experience in its own right.

So, What’s the Problem??

Psychedelic drugs undoubtedly can further the pursuit of religious meaning. Say you’re a rationalist; someone who has difficulty embracing concepts unless they exist in the realm of the obvious and provable. A drug trip could help you to jump this barrier, to engage with that which is not directly in front of you, and to embark on a larger journey of meaning.?

However, difficulties arise when those on the path to self-discovery mistake psychedelics for a viable shortcut. Why spend years praying or meditating when you could go on a life-changing spiritual voyage over the course of an afternoon? Many who consider this question come up with the wrong answers, encouraged by the work of writers like Leary, Harris, and Pollan.

I have practiced meditation in the Theravada Buddhist tradition for decades. This daily ritual has brought me on an immense spiritual journey, one that could take numerous lifetimes to complete, according to my tradition. No single psychedelic experience, or series of such experiences, could provide a similar level of insight.?

When aspiring meditators sign up to do Vipassana retreats, they are asked about their recent history of substance use. Despite the fact that psychedelics interfere with the clear perception of reality, a necessity for effective Vipassana meditation, many simply give a false response to the question and go on the retreat anyway. This is particularly common among younger meditators.?

It’s important to realize that this fundamentally alters one’s ability to search for meaning through meditation. Once the mind experiences the increased sensitivity associated with the use of psychedelics, the neural circuitry activated by meditation changes, and effective practice becomes very difficult.

Psychedelics illustrate the different meanings of the terms “spirituality” and “religion.” It’s not difficult to see why one might describe as “spiritual” the experience associated with psilocybin or LSD; the sense of self dissolves, and the previously solid structures upon which we live our lives start to bend and melt before our very eyes. This experience, or a close substitute, appears in religious literature; many have proposed that the Buddhist insight of anatta, or non-self, might be discovered through psychedelics. However, Buddhism teaches that we should pursue anatta over time with meditation; not with drugs, since it cannot be reached that way.?

Part of the attractiveness of psychedelics clearly lies in the idea that they provide an “easy” path to spirituality, but even the most intense hallucinogenic experience cannot replace proper religious practice, and may not even make sense without a religious framework to give it context.?

While psychedelics can and do form part of religion, such as in the case of Ayahuasca Shamanism, the majority of the countercultural curiosity about psychedelics does not bother with this deeper level of commitment. Unfortunately, though, a couple of ayahuasca trips on a jungle retreat cannot be compared to a lifetime of practice in the Shamanic tradition. It’s also important to remember that there are risks inherent in conducting these experiments; people shouldn’t play with forces beyond their understanding.?

The more we try to replace religious life with discrete, secular spiritual experiences, the further we will stray from the path of order, grounding, societal cohesion, and personal development that comes with organized faith.?

It’s also important to note that, while psychedelics are not typically associated with abuse, dependency, and organ damage, like other drugs, they don’t come without health risks. In one study on the “bad trip” phenomenon associated with psilocybin, 39% of respondents ranked their worst “bad trip” experience among the “top five most challenging experiences of his/her lifetime.” Furthermore, 11% put themselves or others at risk of physical harm, and 2.7% required medical help.?

Microdosing, the emerging trend of people using very small amounts of psychedelics on a regular basis to improve their focus or mental health, also comes with risks. As noted in this study, “chronic psychedelic microdosing” may increase the risk of valvular heart disease.?

Even Sam Harris, a proponent of using psychedelics for spirituality’s sake, warns against its allure; discussing the drug-fueled pursuit of “rapture” in the 1960s, he muses that: “For every insight of lasting value produced by drugs, there was an army of zombies with flowers in their hair shuffling toward failure and regret.”?

There are far higher and more refined levels of spirituality than what drugs can induce; “rapture,” as Sam Harris calls it, is just the beginning.?

Where Do We Draw the Line?

Clearly, psychedelic experiences are far from worthless. They have directed countless spiritual experiences throughout human history and will continue to do so in the future.?

There is also the question of the “No Hate” concept that I previously discussed here. Religion has increasingly come to be associated with intolerance, moral superiority, and discrimination against individuals or organizations with differing values. The religions of the future must shed this skin if they wish to flourish; so, if individuals wish to explore psychedelics for spiritual reasons, their faith should not stand in their way.?

It’s noteworthy that this is a new approach for a religion to adopt. Buddhism bans the consumption of intoxicating drugs, as do many other faiths.?

Advising against psychedelics is therefore wasteful and counterproductive, particularly for people with mental health issues that could potentially be addressed by some of these compounds. However, it’s crucial that those who choose to experiment with psychedelics avoid the trap of substituting them for religious practice in their entirety and expect an equally rewarding outcome. Not only will the result be less profound, but it may compromise the ability to search for meaningful insights through prayer or meditation.