Psychedelics, Entheogens, and Altered States of Consciousness

"Today, the fact that psychedelics create powerful religious feelings in people cross-culturally is considered unlikely to be coincidental. Winkelman (2000) suggests a “neurophenomenological” framework to approach Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs). He argues that psychedelics do not merely cause temporary “psychoses” or “mere hallucinations” in people but instead work with existing, adaptive mechanisms in the brain for generating ASCs that can be used constructively. Such researchers do not see shamans as maladjusted, but instead as people who use psychedelic plants to fulfill their roles in the community. Today, the term “entheogen” (Ruck, Bigwood, Staples, Ott, & Wasson, 1979) – meaning “bringing forth the divine within” – is preferred by some and indicates a shift to sacramental use of some of these substances. However, the psychological paradigm tends to dominate discourse, as most westerners will pursue psychedelic plant medicines for psychological healing.

"In the 1960s, artists and writers, such as Allen Ginsberg with his poems on LSD, contributed to the increased interest in psychedelics. This interest has had an enormous impact on the native peoples who originally used them. Gordon Wasson, a former banker, who visited Mexico in the 1950s and tried psilocybin mushrooms with Maria Sabina (Wasson, 1957), is responsible for the waves of Western seekers that flooded Oaxaca in the 1960s the effects of which were rather disruptive (Feinberg, 2003). Something similar is happening in Amazonia surrounding ayahuasca today. Wasson himself, even though he was responsible for popularizing mushrooms and effectively changing the history of the area, frowned upon these spiritual pilgrimages (Znamenski, 2007)."