The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience
(With apologies to William James)
I’m writing a short book on psychedelics with MIT Press. One of my tasks is to sketch out for the new reader all of the different ways people have used these substances, across different cultures, contexts, and centuries.
Here’s my current working list of psychedelic use-cases:
🧠 Therapeutic & medical
Formal or informal, above-ground or underground, Western or otherwise. Clinical trials, self-treatment, or community/peer-supported healing. Addiction, depression, trauma, and much more.
💡 Creativity & insight
Divergent or unusual thinking, cultural appreciation and expression, new ways of seeing or feeling the world.
🤝 Relational & communitarian
From sacred rites and ceremonies, to couples therapy and group bonding (or mending). In relation, not isolation.
🌌 Spirituality & exploration
Mysticism, religion, and awe. Wondering at the existence of existence, or the nature of nature.
🚀 Productivity & performance
Flow states, confidence boosts, executive retreats. Or just managing to stay sane & on top of things.
🧬 Neuroscience, psychology, & consciousness research
Understanding the brain or mind by (gently?) destabilizing it. A tool for studying brain function, subjective experience, or the “mind at large”.
🔁 Microdosing
Any or all of the above, but dialed down.
🎉 Recreational
Admittedly a little fringe, but I should probably include the utterly impractical - beauty, dancing, joy, love - for the sake of completeness nonetheless. Some people even claim to enjoy this.
These aren’t hard categories - plenty of overlap. But I’d love to know if I’ve missed any, or if you’d slice it differently. Drop a comment or send me an email!
This is super cool and I look forward to reading what you publish. Two quick thoughts were: (1) On the therapeutic/medical, I’d suggest distinguishing pure ‘mental health’ conditions from other emerging possibilities, like pain management, or even some of the potential against inflammatory or immune-mediated disease. (2) Your description of spiritual use reads like one written by someone who’s not a true believer; when I think about people using psychedelics for religious purposes, they are doing so to actually encounter and interact with god/the divine/ entities. So you might take that up a bit from just wondering at the mystical. Just some thoughts. I’m glad you’re working on this.