“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement with beards to match

Psychedelics have a purpose beyond healing or good times according to the next generation of philosophers.

Dr Chris Letheby is a laid-back (seemingly, you never know with these philosophers) Australian contemporary thinker. Say ‘epistemology’ in the accent.

He likes jumpers and beards, and was the first to bring out a book titled The Philosophy of Psychedelics, published by Oxford University Press in 2021. 

During a Letheby lecture I sneak into from Berlin-based MIND, Dr Letheby academic definitions of ‘knowledge’ onto psychedelic insight with skill and precision, deploying bon mots from global philosophers and key points from contemporary research along the way. 

“Social, ethical, legal, and metaphysical issues can undergo psychedelic transformation akin to that achieved in therapy”

Psychedelic philosophy’s nemesis is ‘the comforting delusion’; are we communing with the cosmos or just high and talking bollocks? Is psychedelic therapy, in Charles Grob’s phrase, an “existential medicine?” Or is it, as Michael Pollan wondered, ‘simply foisting a comforting delusion on the sick and dying”?’ Dr Letheby addresses in this article for MAPS.

He’s calling for a ‘Psychedelic Enlightenment’ to follow our current ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ period: “Social, ethical, legal, and metaphysical issues can undergo psychedelic transformation akin to that achieved in therapy,” he declares unpretentiously and convincingly.

Philosophical debate though is not for the feint of heart, or head. Throw some ‘non-specific amplifiers’ into the mix and things get more real than real. Indeed as I write Vital week six lecturer Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes is fencing wits with Chris Letheby in the specialist press, about… admittedly I’ve not quite figured it out just yet from giving the article a scan. Although chances are it’s something to do with ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ (how life springs from matter, or otherwise). It usually is.

Launching himself into this moshpit of contemplation is Aiden Lyon, another Australian with no beard this time but plenty of jumpers, out of Amsterdam University whose book… Psychedelic Experience is out soon, again from Oxford University Press. The formidable Lyon has a mind like a steel trap, unsurprisingly, plus the air of a frustrated Victorian man of reputation who’d prefer to be searching for King Solomon’s Mines, but the transpersonal will have to do instead. He opens a Mind lecture I attend by pointing out his ‘circular’ theory taking the ‘mind-manifesting’ definition of psychedelic experience has been approved by Imperial College’s Dr Robin Carhart-Harris. 

“Nature has intrinsic worth. Not just spiritual worth”

Lyon, who’s already set up in consultancy, slices his way through the ‘Are psychedelic insights to be taken seriously?’ thing to point out that they can be very useful. There’s loads more in this issue’s Medical item. Lyon and Letheby are both terribly plausible chaps. But you may be forgiven thinking it’s all a bit monochrome geometric patterns, and not enough Tarot cards. Left, as opposed to right brain.

Step forward Sjöstedt-Hughes, a former schoolteacher whose repertoire arguably channels the psychedelic. He does have a beard, but the similarities end there.

“There’s seemingly something in us that needs expansion”

He’s catalogued philosophy’s psychedelic associations, and spares no superlatives when addressing the power of 5-MEO DMT compared to earthly religious experience.  Rarely (but not uniquely) among contemporary Western psychedelic renaissance types he tackles subjects like the ‘trickster’ archetype and its association with psychedelics, non-dualism and subjective morality, the existence and nature of ‘God’ – “looks like he’s out there but he doesn’t love you – nature has intrinsic worth, not just spiritual worth.”

Sjöstedt-Hughes proposes the return of metaphysics to the political conversation and the high street: “like we’d see a therapist, we’d consult a philosophical-spiritual advisor… ‘the metaphysician will see you now’,” is just one flourish he delivers from behind his tinted aviators, “you could grab a leaflet featuring suggestions for alternative spiritual paths, like the simulation theory, or the receiver, on the way out.”

But the psychedelic philosophers have ambitions way beyond the ivory towers of academia, or the medical industrial complex. Sjöstedt-Hughes in particular.

“I hope psychedelics can be part of a grander idealism for civilisation. There ‘s seemingly something in us that needs expansion. Psychedelics might offer this. I do hope for it. and I do believe it’s actually going to happen.”