of the churches that use ayahuasca in a ritual context, administered by
experienced elders in a group setting.) Others envision a time when
people seeking a psychedelic experience—whether for reasons of mental
health or spiritual seeking or simple curiosity—could go, very
occasionally, to something like a “mental health club,” as Julie Holland, a
psychiatrist who used to work with Stephen Ross at Bellevue, described
it. “Sort of like a cross between a spa/retreat and a gym, where people can
experience psychedelics in a safe, supportive environment.”*
Everyone speaks of the importance of well-trained psychedelic guides
—“board certified”—and the need to help people afterward integrate the
powerful experiences they have had in order to make sense of them and
render them truly useful. Tony Bossis paraphrases the religious scholar
(and Good Friday Experiment volunteer) Huston Smith on this point: “A
spiritual experience does not by itself make a spiritual life.” Integration is
essential to making sense of the experience, whether in or out of the
medical context. Or else it remains just a drug experience.
As for the guides themselves, they are already being trained and
certified: late in 2016, the California Institute of Integral Studies
graduated its first class of forty-two psychedelic therapists. (This is a
development that worries some in the underground, who fear being left
behind when psychedelic therapy is legitimized. Yet it’s hard to imagine
such experienced and highly skilled practitioners won’t continue to find
clients, especially among the well.)
When I asked Rick Doblin if he worries about another backlash, he
pointed out that our culture has come a long way from the 1960s and has
shown a remarkable ability to digest a great many of the cultural novelties
first cooked up during that era.
“That was a very different time. People wouldn’t even talk about
cancer or death then. Women were tranquilized to give birth; men
weren’t allowed in the delivery room! Yoga and meditation were totally
weird. Now mindfulness is mainstream and everyone does yoga, and
there are birthing centers and hospices all over. We’ve integrated all these
things into our culture. And now I think we’re ready to integrate
psychedelics.”
Doblin points out that many of the people now in charge of our
institutions are of a generation well acquainted with these molecules.
This, he suggests, is the true legacy of Timothy Leary. It’s all well and
frankie
(Frankie)
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