Are Psychedelics Addicting?

12 steps, escapism, kindness

This last week I sat in a Psychedelics in Recovery (PIR) meeting at our local Port Townsend Recovery Cafe. PIR is a nation wide organization blending the 12 step model with psychedelic education and resources. This is an evolution for the foundation of 12 step culture which holds a substance free life and “life on life’s terms” as 2 of its main tenets. It is also another step in the direction of advocacy for psychedelics (mainly entheogens) as medicine rather than “drugs” or addictive and harmful substances.

There was a main question in the room: Are psychedelics addictive?

Will using psychedelics trigger reliance on a substance, evading the life on life terms model the 12 steps has cultivated?

First, what does life on life’s terms mean? In order to do life inside of a society that thrives and relies upon addiction, we all must in some part be addicted, and therefore in constant recovery. The system relies upon this so that it can create “solutions” that cost money and typically create more addiction and illness. At some point we have to break the cycle.

The addict disappears when we do life on Life’s terms-not society’s impostering of Life. When we can be in the discomfort of our multiple personalities coming for a visit, sometimes all at once. What is sobriety anyhow when we all live under the rule of codependency. Codependency is the trademark of addiction and the bedrock of how the industrialized complex stays in power. Sobriety begins when we can differentiate between a vice and receiving help along our path.

Sobriety is feeling the expanse of human sensation and responding differently within ourselves- which confronts our personality and typically requires some sort of ego death- which is greatly assisted by sacred medicines.

Until the recent research around psychedelics in the healing of addictive disorders, the only option for recovery were avenues that, at a closer look, foster continued codependency- pharmaceuticals, talk therapy for years, rehab centers and 12 step groups that unfortunately keep the individual looped into their identity as an addict.

Little blue pills can save a life in the short term but they don’t heal and in the long term cause harm.

Talk therapy keeps us afloat for awhile and is very helpful as a starting point. But it is challenging to find a therapist who can work the mind/body connection so that the addiction pathways can re-pattern themselves.

Rehab centers can detox someone and put a screeching halt to the behavior by way of isolation from the triggers while providing some good tools for mindfulness, but they don’t rehabilitate the individual past coping skills which are flimsy in the face of addiction.

And, the 12 step model is a profound saving grace, an oasis of belonging for someone who is burdened with the shame and isolation that addiction breeds. I bow to the lives it has saved. It was a landing place for me in Manhattan when I almost lost my life. It is still the best community for overall addiction recovery. However, our words cast spells and at some point we must evolve our story and allow a new identity to birth forth.

I digress a bit. Ahem- are psychedelics addicting?

~Entheogens/psychedelics are not addictive. They heal addiction more than anything I have seen. Entheogens don't cover up what we are running from and they definitely don’t numb the pain. (The wild card in all of this is Marijuana which has mostly been desecrated). They are also not for everyone. There are other pathways if you have the time and dedication to go sit on a mountain in Nepal for awhile and let the wind gods chisel away at you.

There was a man in the group who had a lot of cynicism around those of us claiming profound healing from addiction as he has witnessed his very dear friend fall prey to what I call “Ayahuascaism”.

You know, the person who sits every weekend and their whole life is about the next ceremony and they tend to turn away from those who don’t partake. Take the “spirituality” out of it and you have classic addiction. But it has nothing to do with the sacred medicine.

The inability to integrate our experiences with the repeat use of entheogens, while calling it “doing the work”, potentially discredits their efficacy in the minds of those who are considering their use but have been groomed by a society who has demonized natural healing substances for hundreds of years or more.

Humans are messy. Unfortunately we are going to fumble the sacred a few times because we have had few to no teachers on the path. And, the intact indigenous cultures serving medicine live in a different mindset than that of west which fosters codependency and spiritual bypass. But a few squeaky wheels cannot be allowed to silence the sacred wisdom.

Entheogens are not addictive but escapism is. Entheogens can reconnect us with amputated feelings- like big huge love and an expanded sense of belonging. We can see God and feel super human and we want more of that.

When someone, diagnosed addict or not, experiences this sense of elation, there can be a risk of becoming attached to the grandiosity. Without guidance to integrate the sensations into a human life- which is the path of the Divine- then the hyper seeker can emerge and this can look like being addicted to Ayahuasca circles etc.

We are addicted to the idea that there is THE thing that is going to save us. That there is a brighter tomorrow if we just do this one thing. That whatever it is will be around that next corner, or in that next ceremony. We are a desperately hurting people crying out-

WHERE ARE YOU?!

There is no THE thing except that ONE thing. And it has never left. Psychedelic work can restore the memory of our true nature but, it can’t give us the wholeness we have always been- only we can do that through incorporation of the ceremony into daily life.

The deeper drive I see towards repeat trips, and I am particularly, talking about Aya ceremonies as this is where we see the impulse to keep drinking our weekends away, is the severe lack, or absence, of community culture in our society.

To go through a three night, life changing, healing experience where there are songs and hugs and a common bond and a room infused with heart blasts after listening to your fellow travelers purge out their pain and you, for the first time ever, don't feel alone, and not only not alone, but way better than you ever have- why not keep drinking the vine or taking the shrooms? Who are you really hurting anyhow? Because I have not seen anyone beat their wife after drinking too much Aya or after a big mushroom trip.

Really, do you blame people? We have been so deprived of belonging, safe places to express feeling and love that why not go get lost in a jungle. It may be better than many of the alternatives we have been given. I would rather have someone’s version of the weekend warrior be drinking the Mother vine than the soulless bar scene that breeds a lot of harm.

No one comes our the other side of psychedelic experience with their body craving more mushrooms or a black eye unless they ran into a tree branch during a frolic. No hair of the dog to cut the hangover the next day needed. There are no withdrawals other than the potential mini serotonin drop the next day that rebounds back to a greater equilibrium in the following days, and the oxytocin drop after being in a love puddle with your community.

However, I would not call someone drinking Aya every weekend sober unless repeat journeys have been recommended over a long period of time and they are working the integration path, or they are an initiated medicine carrier serving medicine.

The thing is, people can go too far with psychedelics. Not because they are addictive, but because addiction lives within most of us. Without awareness and proper boundaries in place we will easily pass up one vice for another. We have been wired for it. Yet, regardless of how clumsy we can be I have only seen that on the other side of a journey our impulse to gravitate towards destructive behavior is greatly diminished. We become more mindful of our sensations and our responses to them.

We can dedicate our life to a sacred path that includes the lifelong use of sacred medicine. I have. So where is the balance? Again, the balance lives within the differentiation between codependence and interdependence. It depends on the individual circumstances and the lessons that each soul is here to learn. In other words, unless there is direct harm, don’t worry so much about how many shrooms someone is doing, because the mushrooms at some point will handle it - so to speak.

There is a mysterious intelligence beyond our understanding integral to entheogens that tracks our psyche for integrity. I have first hand experience with and have heard a handful of stories of sacred medicines revoking the privilege of individuals by either no longer working no matter how much medicine one takes, or making someone very ill. Sacred medicines are connected to a covenant that upholds interdependence, not co-dependance. If someone is imbibing a lot and not walking a path of integrity, the medicines no likey. It is not to punish but to teach. There is no punishment system in the Universe. Humans created that complex. Which means there is also no reward system.

There is great value in asking the question around these medicines being another vice. There is a deep fear of being gripped again once there has been a breaking free, even just a little, from the voices of manipulation and impulses of addiction. When an addict has put down the bottle and has connected to any sense of Self stewardship again it is powerful. It takes tremendous will force to uphold personal power in the face of addiction. How dare anything confront that.

We have been nefariously manipulated away from the voice of our heart. To trust ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to trust life and make choices based in self love, which eliminates the poison of shame, fear and confusion, is all we want deep down. To be able to follow our own wisdom within, be supported for it and not live in fear is a birthright.

No one wants to be swayed and seduced (unless there is consent to be seduced which can be fun ;)). I get it. However, If someone is afraid psychedelic therapy will trigger that love of being high, then there is deeper work to be done as to what that sensation is serving and what is missing in their life. It has very little to do with the substance.

There is a deep innate intelligence that is trying to wake us up to our sovereign ability to be guided by the wisdom of our soul. In order to trust this voice of wisdom we must move towards aligning our lives with that which operates within structures of reciprocity and sustainability. Essentially it is a breaking free from systems of oppression.

Only a small few will brave this terrain. I whole heartedly believe our addicts can help show us the way. Our addicts are sobering mirrors for the wounds at the root of why we are in a collective survival crisis. The cast aways are well equipped to make a collective shift as many of them have little to lose if they die taking new pathways home through the jungle. They have had a more visceral experience with codependency and how it travels in the psyche so the ego death isn’t as daunting.

However, the challenge I foresee in people who have been supported by the 12 step model is in letting the identity of the addict die after it has supported so much of their life. Especially when there has been a supportive community that has formed around them. But if we can do it together and allow that model to evolve then we can create communities that begin to rebuild a society based in a new story. The collective vibration shifts towards a new consciousness based in interdependence and unity- through our most castaway parts of society. I love it.

It is moments like this, where I am honored to have walked through the gates of addiction, to be given such an opportunity for rebirth and to be a mouth piece for the Divine Mother and her medicines.

All in all, regardless of what we judge others to be doing or not doing, we must try kindness. We are navigating a LOT collectively and this is going to amplify. It is helpful to cultivate compassion around the inevitable mess we are going to make along the winding road to recovery from a society that wants us all addicted.

Blessed Be.

For more info:

https://www.psychedelicsinrecovery.org/