Where social services are the new gods

Integration

Atheists need answers from their insights too. So do jedis. And children in care

OMA studio for Prada

How do you explain a mystical psychedelic vision to a devotee of science?

“There’s no magic to being a good humanist,” says Psychedelic Renaissance author Dr Ben Sessa who’s likely to have doled out some unconditional love in his time working as an addiction specialist, “kindness and compassion straddle all religions.”

Though “I'm not a particularly spiritual person” he says, like most other Brits – hundreds of thousands of whom answer ‘Jedi’, referring to the mystic order from the Star Wars movies, when asked if they are religious in national census forms. Others enter ‘heavy metal’.

But the religious-style ‘peak experience’ is considered so key to treating addicts that ‘giving yourself over to a higher power’ has a whole step (number four if I remember rightly) in the 12-step program. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) founder Bill ‘W’ Wilson was apparently thinking of exactly the non-denominational spirit of psychedelics when he coined the non-denominational ‘higher power’.

“The psychedelic community puts itself out there as open and free, but they’re dogmatic about some things”

Wilson’s inspiration, the philosopher William James thought that only religion was powerful enough to wrest a mind away from the demon drink. But so could LSD, which Wilson was treated with and espoused until AA pharisees put the kibosh on it.

“There's no magic lost in psychedelics by just being a good humanist. Kindness and compassion straddle all religions”

My Vital colleague Christine Caldwell of Diaspora retreat centre in Treasure Beach, Jamaica spoke about her scientific framing of peak experience in our study group. “Quantum mechanics teaches us that what we think of as our physical bodies and brains is just a slower frequency or vibration of the energy from which all the universe is made,” she posits. “And entanglement, created through the explosion of the Big Bang from which all energy in our universe was born, dictates there can be no separation within that field. Not only does entanglement dictate we exist as an evolution of the primordial soup in our connectedness, it also means what affects one can instantaneously affect another in an eternal dance.”

That’s some solid ammo for the committed atheists. Mirroring the patient’s own beliefs is the goal in MDMA-AT though, and they could range from ‘lapsed high elf’ to devout Neo-Satanist.

“Patients are equally likely to talk about Social Services as they are chakras”

Normalising the peak experience on the patient’s own terms, like Dr Sessa avoided by not imparting his neurological frame on his patient who asked ‘Is this what love feels like?’ is key to its comprehensive integration.

“I use universal language, meeting the patient where they are,” explains Sessa, “It comes down to: ‘What are your relationships with others? How are you getting on with people? Do your children like you? Have you got a job? Does your girlfriend like you? Are you a law abiding citizen that spreads love and kindness?’”

The ebullient Sessa says therapists must be happy to go down a rabbit hole of any choosing: “If my patient wants to talk about Kundalini and chakras, I'll do that till the cows come home. But they’re equally likely to speak about getting their kids out of Social Services care.”

We must be careful not to weave a new narrative of disapproval, insisting our own prejudices take the place of those we hold in contempt, insists the man who literally wrote the book on the Psychedelic Renaissance. “The psychedelic community puts itself out there as being so open and free, but they’re so dogmatic about some things” he says in response to evangelical mysticism on behalf of the space.