3rd way between recreational & medical

[Miriam van Groen]

3. Developing and proposing a third way between underground and unregulated trip sitters/ guides/ shamans/ facilitators on the one hand and the medicalization and scientific study of psychedelics as “formal mainstreaming” on the other.
As such we try to do justice to the various psychedelic modalities that are underrepresented by the formal mainstreaming; the weird, spiritual, religious, queer, recreational (divine playfulness), ecodelic, holistic therapeutic, and social activist, to name just a few.
We are highly critical of the capacity of the current established mental health care to provide the right context, understanding and support for having psychedelic experiences. As long as a spiritual emergency isn’t recognized as something discernibly different from psychiatric pathology, we fear misdiagnosis and the subsequent lack of proper help and support to those who need it. We furthermore feel these experiences should not just be available to those who suffer from mental and physical health problems.
At the same time we also acknowledge that the unregulated underground ways can reinforce and reproduce ‘bad practices’ such as sexual misconduct, poor or dangerous medical screening, lack of understanding of (counter-)transference processes, power disparities, and unwholesome group and client-facilitator dynamics. And that these, in turn, could damage the (scientific-therapeutic) psychedelic renaissance, the perceived legitimacy and wholesomeness of psychedelics specifically, and the various iterations of mainstreaming these tools/medicines in general.
Our third way, therefore, seeks to integrate the professional, therapeutic and spiritual; arguing for sensible forms of legalization, based on both cognitive and religious liberty and medical (self)regulation.

[Author]

Posts