Skeptical mysticism: success stories

There’s a good chance you’ve heard about Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything. She’s getting a lot of media coverage and very positive reviews. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book yet.)

Wild God is Ehrenreich’s public confession that she’s a mystic, a person who started having powerful visions of heightened reality as a young girl. This revelation wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in a book by Deepak Chopra or Sylvia Browne, but Ehrenreich is an atheist best known for hardheaded books about politics and economics.

What’s more, Wild God doesn’t follow the conventional script of the former skeptic who sees the light. This is not Proof of Heaven. Ehrenreich can’t deny her perception of a living cosmos, but she’s unwilling to interpret it as anything more than personal experience. She’s still an atheist.

So, we know it’s possible to be both a skeptic and a mystic, at least for one person. They say that one person is an outlier and two are a trend. I discovered number two on a recent episode of Oh No Ross and Carrie.

Unlike Barbara Ehrenreich, “Fire Lyte” is a believer—a practicing neo-pagan who worships the ancient gods. He performs rituals and works magic like thousands of contemporary Wiccans and shamans. Unlike most of them, however, he doesn’t feel the need for any supernatural or paranormal beliefs. No psychic powers. No quantum healing. He can fully appreciate his religion within the context of science and rationality.

In their unique ways, Ms. Ehrenreich and Mr. Lyte came to terms with reason and magic. It’s fascinating that they came from opposite directions—one from belief and one from atheism—and wound up in a similar place. They both discovered the common ground that exists between the two poles of human nature, the two powerful forces that get out of whack in so many of us.

They say that two people are a trend and three are a movement. Are you number three?

“Neurons to Nirvana,” the one-stop doc

“You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.”

— Richard Nixon, 1971

Today, four decades after Nixon inaugurated the War on Drugs, 85% of Americans support the use of marijuana for medical purposes. 54% support outright legalization. There’s still a long way to go, but there’s hope for a happy ending to a sad story.

The situation with psychedelics isn’t as clear-cut. Although the medical and scientific potential of psychedelic drugs was apparent back in the 1950s, politics won out. The substances were banned, the research halted, and the whole topic buried in a very deep hole.

The story of the psychedelic renaissance is, well, a long, strange, trip. It’s all on display in Neurons to Nirvana: Understanding Psychedelic Medicines, a new documentary on the politics, culture, and science of psychedelic drugs.

Directors Oliver Hackenbull and Mikki Willis collected film clips dating back to the days when LSD was a laboratory curiosity. We see footage of the Good Friday Experiment in 1962 when psychologists administered psilocybin to a group of divinity students, establishing the mystical nature of the psychedelic experience. We learn that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was an enthusiastic proponent of LSD for treating addiction.

The hippies are there, of course, with the long hair and loud music that scared the Silent Majority into line with the drug war. One revealing clip from this period shows a clean-cut young woman reading a pamphlet titled “LSD: How Can We Fight Back?” The story could have easily ended there.

They say that “Only Nixon can go to China.” Likewise, the public faces of the new psychedelic renaissance bear little resemblance to Timothy Leary. They’re mainstream MDs and scientists with impeccable credentials. Neurons to Nirvana features a number of them.

There’s Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins and Charles Grob of UCLA, both of whom have studied the use of psilocybin for treating end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients. Ingrid Pacey, M.D., studies the use of MDMA/Ecstasy for treating PTSD. The who’s who includes Stan Grof, David Nichols, Stephen Ross, David Metzner, and many others.

Most important, we hear from patients, people suffering from serious medical conditions who found relief through drugs that were feared and condemned for half a century. These are the people who will bring the psychedelic renaissance to the mainstream public. Regardless of your politics, everybody has a grandparent with cancer, a spouse with a drinking problem, or a friend who came back from the Iraq war with PTSD. The village comes together when there’s a little girl trapped in the well.

Neurons to Nirvana provides an excellent introduction to a vast and messy topic. There are other films that cover specific aspects of the psychedelic story in greater detail, but none that give a better overview. It’s the one to have if you’re just having one.

Neurons to Nirvana is available on iTunes and on Mangu.TV. It’s also playing in selected theatres around the country.

“Neurons to Nirvana” in Madison

The Wisconsin premier of “Neurons to Nirvana: Understanding Psychedelic Medicines” will be on Monday, April 7, at 5:00 PM in the Marquee Theatre at UW Union South. This documentary explores the new science of psychedelics with some of the leading researchers in the field. After the film, there will be a Q&A session with director Oliver Hockenhull, UW scientist Nick Cozzi, Northern Illinois University psychologist Thomas Roberts, and therapist Bruce Sewick. See you all there?

Book reviews

I’ve added a section on the Downloads page for book reviews. The books there contributed a lot to the ideas in this blog. Eventually, I’d like to put together a reading list of books related to skeptical mysticism. Suggestions welcome.

Aphorism of the day: Disillusionment

If death is a blessing to those who suffer, disillusionment is surely a blessing to those who are enchanted.

“Machine elves” identified at last?

The other day I was listening to a Shpongle album with a song that included an audio clip of Terence McKenna. They sped up his voice and distorted it to make him sound like an insectoid alien or, perhaps, one of the “self-replicating fractal machine elves” he encountered under the influence of DMT.

Anyway, while the music was playing, my wife walked into the living room. The following conversation ensued:

My wife: “What’s that?”

Me: “Shpongle.”

My wife: “Oh, I thought you were watching the Teletubbies.”

Santo Daime Journal

I’ve collected all the Santo Daime posts from this blog (minus photos and videos), arranged them in chronological order, and placed them in a single PDF file. You can view it here or on the Downloads page.

Psychedelics and autism

The most recent Psychedelic Salon podcast features new research on the use of psychedelics (specifically MDMA/”Ecstasy”) for treating social anxiety due to autism.

Psychologist Alicia Danforth surveyed autistic adults with MDMA experience. Many reported sudden, dramatic, and long-lasting improvements in social anxiety due to the use of MDMA. These reports are anecdotal and Danforth emphasized the need for further, quantitative research.

To that end, Danforth and UCLA Psychologist Charles Grob are currently recruiting adult volunteers with autism for a clinical trial of MDMA therapy. More information is available on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Psychedelics and dreaming

Lots of people have commented on the similarities between dreaming and the psychedelic experience. We may be closer to a neurological explanation, according to this article by Robin Carhart-Harris and David Nutt of Imperial College, London. (Via the Psychedelic Frontier community on Goggle Plus.)

French researchers produced “transient dreamlike states” by electrical stimulation of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a central part of the brain’s default mode network (DMN). Carhart-Harris and Nutt compared these results with their own studies of the brain during the psychedelic experience.

They report that changes in the PCC were “the most conspicuous and reliable finding of our psilocybin imaging studies.” They also note the role of the PCC in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the phase of sleep associated with dreams. Psilocybin and other psychedelics bring on rapid eye movement during sleep.

Another similarity suggests that psychedelics may have long-term therapeutic benefits. The patient in the French study reported a sustained period of “absolute happiness” after the experiment. Likewise, some subjects in psychedelic studies report a long-lasting sense of well-being after a few sessions.

Carhart-Harris and Nutt speculate that “psilocybin produces a sustained alteration in PCC and/or DMN activity that could account for its putative therapeutic potential.” They intend to follow up by testing the use of psilocybin for treating major depression.

Welcome!

I’m delighted that news of this blog is spreading via Facebook and other channels. Welcome, one and all! I hope you’ll enjoy your visit. If you have any questions, suggestions, useful links, or anything else you’d like to see here, please let me know.