The Tie-Dyed Elephant in the Room

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”  ― Terence McKenna

“LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it.” ― Timothy Leary

 

When I met notorious serial killer David Berkowitz, a.k.a. “The Son of Sam”, I didn’t know who he was.  I did know that this chapel assistant at Sullivan Correctional Facility in Liberty, NY sent ice water coursing through my veins.  There was something subliminally creepy and disconcerting about him, more so than the hundreds of other violent murderers and rapists he cohabited with.

There was nothing behind his eyes you might recognise as human.  I felt instinctively that this person could kill me with less emotion than he might have for eating his morning toast.  He was a dead, empty space in the shape of a person.  I felt like I had met true evil.  This wasn’t the Hollywood version where someone seeks other’s pain for their own pleasure or greed, it was total apathy; an inability to see others as valuable in any way.

Berkowitz was the most memorable inmate I met because of his palpable aura of ‘otherness’ but he was by far neither the worst nor the most dangerous inmate I encountered during my year as a New York State Corrections Officer.  I worked in notorious prisons like Auburn and Sing-Sing and less well-known locations like Sullivan, a “maxi-max” prison designed for the most violent and dangerous felons in the state.

I was not a good fit for the job and after slightly less than a year I was let go.  Being sacked is never fun but in retrospect this was the best sacking possible.  American prisons are places where the human soul is battered into submission each and every day, both for those that live there and their caretakers.  They are cruel and violent places that strive to kill any compassion or empathy left in you.  They are a place of punishment, not reform as they are in more advanced societies. There is a near total absence of anything positive or healthy behind the barbed wire perimeter fences.

I spent 8-16 hours a day in and amongst inmates who live 24/7 in a state of fear and aggression.  They are constantly trying to get over on their fellow inmates, the guards, or the system itself.  There is no happiness, no joy; even laughter always had derision or cruelty behind it.

Within a few months I became paranoid.  I would not sit with my back to a door or a walkway in public.  I began visually scanning people in public for weapons, preparing myself for an attack.  I began to have trouble sleeping and saw threats everywhere.  I began carrying a gun with me, even sleeping with it under my pillow.

I mention all this to put some context behind the following statement, to fully illustrate that I’m talking from a standpoint of experience- I am more afraid of prison than I am of death.

There is a melancholy poetry and condemning social commentary to the fact that the work I do with psychedelics, which has so vastly improved my quality of life and relationships, puts my newfound existence in danger.  Psychedelics saved my life.  This is not an exaggeration or argument-driven hyperbole; I mean it very literally.  My first ever blog post was How MDMA Saved My Life and the title was chosen very deliberately.  I was ready to send a bullet careening through my brain pan to end my existence as a sentient being.  Then I happened upon an underground therapist offering miraculous healing with outlawed methods.

Not only did psychedelics save my life in the quantitative sense, they also did so in the qualitative sense.  I am happier, more content, more alive, more compassionate, more forgiving, and more capable of joy than I ever could have been before beginning psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

And yet, these substances, many of them occurring naturally in the wild, are illegal.  Possession of any of these miracle medicines is a felony.

This scares the bleeding shit out of me.

Yet I persist with this work because of the value in improved quality of life I have received from them.  Even if I only get a few happy years, they are more than I would have had without the medicine.  We only get a limited time in the world, I’m going to make the best of it.

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s.  ‘Just Say No’ and ‘This is your brain on drugs, any questions’ were drilled into my head countless times.  Print and television ads about the horrors of taking any illegal drug whatsoever were omnipresent. It was a clear and unequivocal message with no room for discussion- drugs are bad, mmm-kay?

But what if this dogma is wrong?

Entheogens (an increasingly popular term for psychedelics) are generally very safe to use, non-addictive, and only in very rare cases cause any side effects.  In fact, psychedelic use has been shown to correlate to increased mental health¹. They never told us that in school.

The most public example of the misleading nature of drug war propaganda is that surrounding marijuana.  The light of history has shown that it was made illegal to give authorities additional powers to control specific segments of the population, specifically African-Americans².  When marijuana use increased in the African-American community it became stigmatised by the ruling white class and in relatively short time was made illegal as yet another tool of racial oppression.

There is no evidence-based reason to restrict the use of marijuana in adults. The refrain from anti-marijuana politicians about its harm and abuse potential have been utterly debunked.  What there is evidence for is that marijuana has many medicinal applications and is usually less harmful to you than the cheeseburger you had for lunch yesterday.

The ‘war on drugs’ began as yet another tool of social and racial oppression; Nixon is on tape discussing how making psychedelics illegal would help control “the blacks and the hippies.”³

I also object to the blanket term ‘drugs.’  Some drugs do not qualify as medicine; heroine, cocaine, meth, etc.  While I personally believe that you should be able to put whatever you want into your own body and it’s none of the government’s business, there are massive differences between the ‘hardcore’ drugs and psychedelics.

LSD, the heavily demonised icon of the counter culture in the 1960s has been shown to safe and effective as a therapeutic tool⁴.  This is not to say it is without its risks but responsible use is generally as harmful as a walk around the block and much more healing.

Doesn’t LSD make you jump out windows and scramble your chromosomes?

To the latter question: no.  (eye-roll is inferred)

To the former, this is mostly an urban myth.  One known case of this was Frank Olson.  Mr Olsen was a CIA agent unknowingly dosed with LSD by his employer, the CIA.  In 1953 he fell or jumped to his death from a hotel window presumably under the influence of the substance.⁵  Given that Mr Olson had no idea he’d been surreptitiously dosed with a mind-altering substance his disorientation comes as no surprise.  I’m sure it was terrifying.  Being dosed without one’s knowledge could easily cause a person to think they were going utterly mad.

Responsible, informed use, however, poses few if any risks to a person in decent health.  That is not to say there are no risks; psychedelics like LSD do change our cognition and ability to make sound judgement and assess danger.  So does the beer you buy at the corner pub.

MDMA, 3.4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, the molecule that saved my life, was made Schedule I in 1986 despite the recommendation of a 2-year federal inquiry that it should continue to be allowed to be used as a psychotherapeutic tool as it had been for some time⁶. The DEA ignored this recommendation, feeding into the anti-drug hysteria of the time.  Thankfully, a resurgence in MDMA research is ongoing and is proving to be so efficacious in treating trauma-related symptoms and full-blown PTSD that the FDA designated it as a breakthrough therapy in August of 2017⁷.  There is some evidence that in massive doses (many times the typical amount used) MDMA can be neurotoxic.  In therapeutic doses and frequencies, however, it has been shown to be very safe⁸.

To achieve a potentially fatal dose of magic mushrooms the average person would have to consume 17kg (37.4lbs) of fresh mushrooms: that’s a volume of more than 120 litres⁹.  That same average person has a total bodily volume of around 95 litres.  These measurements are extreme generalities but it’s that ratio of the lethal dose to the size of a human that’s important- it’s physically impossible to overdose on magic mushrooms.

There is an entire litany of facts and figures; research that sheds a clear light on the irrational and scientifically indefencible drug laws as pertaining to psychedelics.  Yet in this discussion facts don’t seem to matter.  Psychedelic prohibition is about dogma and emotion, not reason.

Thanks to Nixon’s political demonisation of psychedelics, classifying them alongside other truly harmful substances, we now have an uphill battle to prove something that was relatively common knowledge amongst therapists a few decades ago; psychedelics are powerfully effective tools in the hands of mental health professionals.  The tide may be turning, however.  As noted above, MDMA is on track to be re-scheduled. Hopefully we will see it back in legal therapy sessions in the next 2-3 years given the impressive results shown in treating PTSD.

Research shows that use of psychedelics increases an individual’s senses of connected and openness and that these increases persist for long periods of time after the psychedelic experience¹⁰.  Connectedness is a feeling of being related and invested in others around. Openness is the free willingness to engage in new experiences, to entertain new ideas or ways of thinking.  (The government probably has a document somewhere that labels these things as ‘subversive’)

Yet the fact remains that as of today doing this life-saving, life-affirming, life-improving work is a felony in every state.  All of the valid arguments against psychedelic prohibition are immaterial to the legal system.  Getting caught with a single dose of magic mushrooms, which may grow naturally in your own yard if you’re lucky, is just as bad as getting caught with heroine or cocaine.

The cops, district attorney, and judge aren’t likely to care about the fact these substances can and do heal; the law is the law.  If a person is unlucky enough to stand before a jury, those 12 people are almost guaranteed to be as uneducated on the subject of psychedelics as the court officials, there will be no distinction drawn between psychedelics and any other illegal drug.

Now in my late 40’s, I find myself engaged in a semi-regular life of crime. It is an ongoing act of bravery and defiance for me to do this work and write about it publicly.

If the cost of being a better, happier, more healthy and engaged human being is risking punishment by incarceration then I will have to continue to risk it.

The truth is I have lived most of my life in a prison where the bars and walls were made of my old wounds and traumas.  I’ve only been free of that gaol for a relatively short time and each day I get farther from those psychological  walls.  Maybe someday they will fully disappear over the horizon.

Until they do, I will continue this work not only for myself, not only for those around me, but for society as a whole.  The dogma and laws need to change so that unmeasurable healing and growth can take place.

One of the tenets of this work is that by healing ourselves we also heal the world, for we are as much a part of the organism we call Earth as the oceans, deserts, and forests.  When we are happier and more peaceful, we share that energy with those around us and it has a real impact.  I say this entirely without hubris or exaggeration: we’re doing this work and taking these risks as much for you as we are for ourselves.

 

 

References

1- Krebs, T. & Johansen, P. (2013). Psychedelics and mental health: A population study. PLoS ONE, 8(8), E63972.

2- Muhammad, K. (2011). The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.  Boston: Harvard University Press.

3- Baum, D. (April 2016). Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs. Harper’s Magazine. Retrieved from https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all

4- Gasser, P., Holstein, D., Michel, Y., Doblin, R., Yazar-Klosinski, B., Passie, T., & Brenneisen, R. (2014). Safety and Efficacy of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202(7), 513-520.

5- The Guardian. (n.d.).  CIA sued over 1950s ‘murder’ of government scientist plied with LSD. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/29/cia-lawsuit-scientist-1950s-death

6- In the matter of MDMA scheduling.  (1986) Retrieved from http://www.maps.org/research-archive/dea-mdma/pdf/0112.PDF.

7- Burns, Janet. (2017). FDA Designates MDMA As ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ For Post-Traumatic Stress.  Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/08/28/fda-designates-mdma-as-breakthrough-therapy-for-post-traumatic-stress/#4d5e2d0b7460.

8- Doblin, R., Jerome, L., Mithoefer, A., Mithoefer, M. & Wagner, T. (2010). The safety and efficacy of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine- assisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25. Retrieved from http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2782/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881110378371.

9- Amsterdam, Opperhuizen, & Brink. (2011). Harm potential of magic mushroom use: A review. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 59(3), 423-429.

10- MacLean, K., Johnson, M., & Griffiths, R. (2011). Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(11), 1453-1461. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3537171/.