Disruption of Everything Series (1) The Benefits of Psychedelics for Personal Wellbeing and Mental Illness

Psychedelics need to be legalized, decriminalized and medicinalized. Having tripped lsd myself I know the profound benefits of psychedelics on mental health and spiritual well being.

There are a lot of misconceptions around psychedelics.

First a little background.

Psychedelics really became popular during the 1960s during the counter-cultural movement. The counter-cultural movement was linked to the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Liberals and Progressives, particularly young college students joined the counter-cultural movement as they became distrustful of government and the administration under Nixon. During this time period, they experimented with psychedelics such as Shrooms, LSD & Molly. However, the Nixon administration launched a War on Drugs because they feared the repercussions of a "Woke society".

And from my own personal experience I can infer that the counter-cultural movement and experimentation with psychedelics help fuel the other Progressive Movements.

What is a psychedelic trip?

A psychedelic trip is going through ego death and losing all of your inhibitions for 8-12 hours. But the difference between psychedelic trips and highs from other drugs, lie in the ego death. Imagine losing all of your bearings and preconceived notions of reality and the world order as you know it. And asking yourself profound questions that you usually don't stop to ask in your day to day routine. Questioning power structures, questioning inequalities, questioning a broken judicial system. Questioning the nature of work and how so many people go through their lives killing themselves working jobs they hate just to survive. Questioning the attraction to material things and money over the pursuit of happiness. Questioning the capitalist and industrial-military complex which lead to war, poverty, inequality and destruction of our planet/environment.

You also become like a child again when you trip in the sense that your worries melt away and your creativity and passion for the world come back in full droves. In fact, certain parts of your brain light up and certain parts of your brain that are responsible for stress and depression are turned off. You lose all of the anxieties and societal expectations/norms that you have grown up with for decades. You are also able to recontextualize your personal situation and change it for the better. You start to think highly laterally and your ability to make connections between otherwise seemingly disconnected ideas goes up.

But the best part of psychedelics is that these effects are long-lasting even after the trip is over. There are countless articles and videos of the benefits of psychedelics for psychotherapy and for really thinking in profound, different, innovative and highly optimistic ways. You can change your habits, explore your passions further and connect with your child self which is fundamentally important to your well-being. You think more creatively, optimistically and curiously about the world and you feel 10 times lighter like burdens have been lifted off your shoulders.

I think that the current class of treatments for mental illness such as antidepressants are not useful and not helpful. I think psychedelic treatments are far more superior because they are not just a band-aid. And they don't just target neurotransmitters or your brain. They target your soul and literally heal you and augment you on many different levels. The way your brain is rewired, the way your soul works operate on a higher frequency/wavelength/vibe. And your heart also feels healed if you have been through trauma or depression.

We need a resurgence of conversation surrounding psychedelics and their benefits. These drugs have lower neurotoxicity than alcohol and tobacco yet they are classified as Schedule I Drugs. According to Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, authors of Stealing Fire, psychedelics shut down parts of your brain that cause stress and depression and lead to transient hypofrontality which leads to selflessness. These drugs are literally good for your spirituality, mental health, emotional wellbeing and yet we have to resort to darknet markets and back alley street dealers to access them. Why? We need to change the system. We have so much positive medical and scientific research which has happened in the last 4 years in regards to the benefits of psychedelic drugs. It starts with people like us, discussing, trying, crowdsourcing disruptive and fringe ideas in order to change the arc of where we are heading in regards to the classification of psychedelic medicine in the future.